24/01/2024 11:35
Throughout world history, there has been constant competition between countries, because whoever takes the lead can have the greatest influence on changing the world order.
Until the Age of Discovery, countries strove to be the strongest economically and militarily in their own region, and then to see who could acquire more valuable new land through colonisation. And with the industrial revolutions, competition in technological development began. These intertwined competitions culminated in the two world wars: Land acquisition, military might, technological advantage, prosperity. In the Cold War, of course, military power, technological development and the economy remained part of the competition, but since it is no longer possible to colonise, discover and acquire new land, the former colonisation was replaced by the development of alliance systems and the idea of acquiring territories outside the earth.
As we have seen in history, the Cold War created two blocs, i.e. two federal systems, each led by a superpower (the US and the Soviet Union), and in the current changing world order, we are witnessing a kind of bloc formation, with the ideological West and the East, which is centred on national interests, building their systems. But space exploration has also become more important. Between 1957 and 1975, the space race between the Soviet Union and the USA began with the launch of the Soviet Sputnik-1 satellite, followed by a race to see who could send the first man into space, then to the moon, then to space stations and finally to see who could fly further and further or stay in space longer and longer. This fierce competition ended in 1975 with the realisation of a joint American-Soviet Apollo-Soyuz space flight.
Now, in the 21st century, with the economic, military and technological strength of Asian countries, a new competition is emerging in which not only two countries are involved, but also China, Japan, South Korea, India and European countries, which have already signed up and achieved important results. China now has its own space station in addition to its numerous satellites, and India successfully reached the moon in August 2023 with its Chandrayaan-3 mission, which consists of a lunar lander and a lunar rover.
Although the 1967 Outer Space Treaty prohibits states from making territorial claims to celestial bodies, it does allow the utilisation of resources there. In the course of the current transformation of the world order, the race for resources and thus for technological, economic and military power in space is once again in full swing. Ultimately, it is a question of who will be the dominant player in the new world order.
Cover: iStock
When it comes to the changing world order of the 21st century, the rise of Asia is the talk of the town, but the news is mostly about China. However, the Southeast Asian region plays a prominent economic and geopolitical role on the vast continent.
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), launched a decade ago, has achieved numerous results, although it is usually portrayed in a negative light in the Western media and presented as a kind of neo-colonisation.