Believe It Or Not, Tony Blair Has Some Decent Insight Into The Global Systemic Transition

The ideologically driven prevailing narrative propagated by Western influencers and officials is surprisingly being discredited by none other than one of its main masterminds, Tony Blair himself, though he isn’t doing this out of charity in selfless pursuit of enlightening the Western masses but solely because he’s convinced that failing to accurately assess the global systemic transition will guarantee that his civilization irreversibly loses its half-millennium-long supremacy over International Relations.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair gave a detailed speech at his Institute of Global Change on Saturday titled “After Ukraine, What Lessons Now For Western Leadership?” Despite being widely reviled across the world and especially among the Alt-Media Community (AMC), this former world leader and current behind-the-scenes influencer actually has some decent insight into the global systemic transition to multipolarity. One can acknowledge the legitimacy of some of his observations that extend credence to the multipolar interpretation of these rapidly unfolding geostrategic processes while still disagreeing with his worldview. The point is to draw attention to the fact that an influential Westerner is finally beginning to see the world in a similar way as many in the Global South already do.

Blair’s first observation that stands out is his opening claim that the West is at an inflection point similar to the ones that it experienced in 1945 and 1980, the first of which resulted in the creation of new Western institutions while the second ended up convincing the West to pursue the complete collapse of the erstwhile Soviet Union. He laments the economic and financial stagnation that’s set in over his civilization in recent times and led to an explosion in populist movements. In his eyes, the West lacks vision for dealing with domestic, international, and technological challenges, the last of which he strongly alludes to being what many call the “Great Reset”/”Fourth Industrial Revolution” (GR/4IR). Blair believes, however, that the Ukrainian Conflict has imbued the West with a renewed sense of purpose.

Despite lauding his civilization for coming together to contain Russia, the former British leader implies that it should look beyond that Eurasian Great Power and already begin preparing to contain China in the coming future. According to him, “the biggest geopolitical change of this century will come from China not Russia. We are coming to the end of Western political and economic dominance. The world is going to be at least bi-polar and possibly multi-polar. China is already the world’s second superpower…Plus, China has now caught up America in many fields of technology and could surpass it in others. This new inflection point is qualitatively different from 1945 or 1980. It is the first time in modern history that the East can be on equal terms with the West.”

It's these observations that most closely resemble the multipolar worldview that’s already widely embraced across the Global South and has been for a while, in fact. Indian thinker Sanjaya Baru postulated a few years ago that International Relations are presently in a bi-multipolar intermediary phase characterized by the American and Chinese superpowers exerting the most influence over events, below which are Great Powers like India and Russia, and finally comparatively medium- and smaller-sized states. While the West already acknowledges its own influence across the world, it’s remarkable that Blair is so candid about China’s, which he predicts will continue increasing its array of allies. This contradicts the conventional narrative about the West “inevitably winning” the soft power struggle.

In response, he proposes a preemptive policy of containment that he calls “strength plus engagement”, which is exactly as it sounds: the West should be strong enough to keep China in check in all respects while still pragmatically exploring the potential for mutually beneficial cooperation, primarily in the economic domain. The former British leader explained that this requires a mix of realpolitik and values-driven foreign policy whereby the former ensures that the West is strong enough to uphold the latter, thus enabling it to flexibly adapt to forthcoming challenges as required in order to “be superior enough to cater for any eventuality or type of conflict and in all areas.” Put another way, Blair believes that the West should continue striving for global dominance, but do so more effectively than it presently is.

Pursuant to that, he proposes that it improves its soft power outreaches across the Global South in the face of heightened competition from China, Russia, Turkey, and even Iran, which he says “have been pouring resources into the developing world and putting down thick roots in the defence and political spheres.” This observation is just as remarkable as his prior ones about the present inflection point in International Relations and China’s status as the second superpower in the present bi-multipolar intermediary phase of the global systemic transition to multipolarity. It throws cold water on the ideologically driven prevailing narrative that the West will “inevitably win” the soft power struggle and is thus destined to maintain its dominance over International Relations no matter what happens.

To the contrary, Blair believes that this shouldn’t be taken for granted since rapidly unfolding processes across the world pose an unprecedented challenge to his civilization, hence the need to accurately assess the aforesaid in parallel with formulating an associated grand strategy for most effectively countering these developments. Of particular focus should be the West’s engagement with Africa and in particular the Sahel region, he advises, whose leaders should be cultivated by his civilization. What he describes as West Asia’s “modernization movement” should also come under Western influence and remain there. Taken together, robust Western engagement with those two Global South regions should enable his civilization to more effectively compete with China’s Belt & Road Initiative too, he predicts.

On that topic, Blair suggests prioritizing the recalibration of global supply chains, though he cautions against this trend transforming into anti-globalization protectionism. On the foreign policy and military fronts, he insists that the West “must show staying power – commitment – even when it is tough. Even when it is not popular.” He cites Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya as examples that should have taught his civilization this lesson, which hints that his worldview is one of so-called “endless proxy wars” against China, Russia, Iran, and those other rising multipolar Great Powers that his civilization regards as a challenge to its declining unipolar hegemony. India, however, is considered by him to be a rising superpower who “must be kept onside”, as should Indonesia to a comparatively lesser extent too.

The former British Prime Minister then concludes by remarking that “This inflection point is, in some respects, more grave than those of 1945 or 1980. We require organisation, intellectual heft, sustained focus, a sense of common purpose and a shared strategy to achieve it.” That’s certainly true and is a concise way to summarize his speech. As was written in the introduction, one can disagree with his worldview and related policy prescriptions while still acknowledging the legitimacy of some of the larger observations that he made connected to the global systemic transition to multipolarity. The very fact that someone as influential and infamous as him has finally come around to seeing the world in a somewhat similar way as the Global South already does is truly remarkable in and of itself.

That just goes to show that the multipolar worldview was always much more accurate than the unipolar one that he used to ascribe to and which many of his ilk still delusionally cling to. The ideologically driven prevailing narrative propagated by Western influencers and officials is surprisingly being discredited by none other than one of its main masterminds, Tony Blair himself, though he isn’t doing this out of charity in selfless pursuit of enlightening the Western masses but solely because he’s convinced that failing to accurately assess the global systemic transition will guarantee that his civilization irreversibly loses its half-millennium-long supremacy over International Relations. In other words, he’s saying the right things but for the wrong reasons, though a lot of what he said is still correct.