Multipolar disorder
They are working, plotting and joining forces to try to bring about a new multipolar order where they have sufficient influence to hold the political, economic and social reins. They have the support of the Global South. For several years now, a series of movements have been taking place whose main objective for China is to strengthen and grow its economy in order to cope with the high costs of its domestic politics and the enormous expenditures undertaken in an arms race that aims to match US potential.
Russia plays a supportive role for Chinese interests by selling the oil and gas that the Asian giant needs at a good price, allowing it to withstand the challenge in Ukraine and the development of its arms industry.
Both Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin run many risks because there are clear indications that China's great economic bubble could burst because it is not capable of sustaining the dynamic undertaken as a military power and, at the same time, avoiding the fall in domestic consumption, the decline in its foreign trade and investment, the increase in unemployment and other demographic and endogenous factors. A very serious warning is the real estate problems as an example of the challenges facing the Chinese leader who has been forced to travel to France, Serbia and Hungary in search of some urgently needed resources.
The Soviet empire collapsed in the twentieth century and now Putin's recovery during his terms in office hangs in volatile circumstances that are compounded by the continuing conflict in Ukraine. The iron dictatorial control exercised by both leaders with their interest groups allows them to seemingly disregard democracy, freedom, and a public opinion anaesthetised by propaganda and repression. They have no shame in making maximum use of cyber-attacks against strategic institutions and companies in the Western world and in orchestrating destabilising interference wherever they can manage to complicate the existence of liberal democracies that do not know how to defend themselves adequately against the attacks of authoritarian populisms.
And, on many occasions, these democracies have the enemy at home, as is being demonstrated in the United States with Donald Trump and in too many European and Western countries where the lack of effective and forceful responses to solve the problems of the majority of citizens is opening the door to radical positions of the extreme left and extreme right. This Western weakness is a large part of the problem because the situation would worsen substantially with a multipolar disorder and chaos managed with an iron fist by China and Russia.