THE FUTILITY OF U.S. AGGRESSION

 

 

According to the logic of the centennial cycles of accumulation, the U.S. cannot win the war that it provokes. It should be replaced by a new world leader, who will appropriate all the trophies. Moreover, this leader has already appeared in the person of China. However, the theory of cycles is not a dogma and only helps to streamline the understanding of the historical process. Unlike the cycles of engine rotation, the cycles of technical, social, political and economic development are very different from each other, and the very allocation of them is arbitrary enough. The change of epochs is not a strictly periodic process, their duration can vary considerably. Nevertheless, the knowledge obtained in theories of long waves and centennial accumulation cycles allows us to identify with precision the threats and challenges of the next twenty years.

The era of American hegemony in the world is nearing its end. The system of institutions that has set the course for the American cycle of accumulation does not ensure a steady development of the productive forces anymore. According to many forecasts, a new Asian cycle of accumulation begins, which entails corresponding relocation of the institutional, production, financial and technological center for the development of the world economy.

However, the mechanism of this transitional process is not yet clear, as well as the forms of resolution of the conflicts connected with it. This section represents an attempt to sort out these issues in order to obtain a conceptual basis for forecasting possible scenarios of resolving the Ukrainian crisis and further development of the world economy and world economic ties.

 

 

From the American to the Asian

Global economic paradigm

As it was shown in the first section, currently we witness a restructuring of the world economy connected with its transition to a new technological paradigm based on a complex of nanotechnology, bioengineering, information and communication technologies. Soon, advanced countries will reach a long wave of its economic growth. The slide in oil prices is a characteristic sign of completion of the phase of birth of the new technological paradigm and its reaching the exponential part of the growth trajectory due to the rapid spread of new technologies that drastically improve resource efficiency and reduce the energy intensity of production.

It is during such periods of global technological shifts that the lagging countries have the opportunity for an economic dash towards the level of advanced countries, while the latter are faced with an overaccumulation of capital in obsolete production and technological complexes.

This dash is being made today by China and other countries of Southeast Asia. Over the past three decades, China has made impressive advances. From the deep periphery of the world economy, it leapfrogged into the group of leaders, reaching in 2014 to the first place in the world in terms of physical GDP and exports of high-tech products. Over three decades, Chinese GDP has grown 30-fold (from $300 billion to $9 trillion at the current yuan-dollar exchange rate), industrial production – 40-50-fold, foreign exchange reserves – by several hundred times (from several tens of billions to 4 trillion dollars). According to the level of economic development measured by GDP per capita, China ascended from the position at the end of the list of the poorest countries to the group of top thirty countries (with average income)[138].

China is becoming the global engineering and technology center. The share of Chinese engineering and scientific staff in their global number reached 20% in 2007, having doubled in comparison with 2000 (1, 420 and 690 thousand, respectively). By 2030, according to forecasts of Chinese scientists, there will be 15 million engineering and scientific employees in the world, of which 4.5 million (30%) will be scientists, engineers and technicians from China[139]^{, [140]}. By 2030, China will gain the global lead in terms of expenditure on scientific and technical development, and its share in the global costs will be 25%[141].

China stands out not only by the dynamism of its development and the enormous size, but also by the history of reforms that created the conditions for its economic miracle. The Chinese approach to building a market economy is fundamentally different from the post-Soviet one in its pragmatism and creative attitude to reforms. They are based not on dogmatic cliché s issuing from abstract ideological ideas about socio-economic processes, but on actual management of the economy. Like engineers constructing a new machine, Chinese leaders are consistently perfecting new production relations through solving specific problems, conducting experiments, selecting the best solutions. Patiently, step by step, they build their market socialism, constantly improving the system of public administration by selecting only those institutions that actually work to develop the economy and increase public welfare. Keeping the " gains of socialism, " the Chinese Communists build into the system of state administration the regulators of market relations, supplement state forms of ownership with private and collective ones in such a way as to achieve higher efficiency of the economy in the public interest.

The rise of China entails reformation of the global economic system and international relations. The revival of planning of socio-economic development and state regulation of the basic parameters of capital reproduction, an active industrial policy, control over cross-border capital flows and currency restrictions – all this can turn from the bill of fare prohibited by Washington financial institutions into the generally accepted tools of international economic relations. In opposition to Washington, a number of scientists have started talking about the Beijing Consensus, which is much more attractive for the developing countries inhabited by the majority of humankind. It is based on the principles of non-discrimination, mutual respect for the sovereignty and national interests of the cooperating states, targeting them at upgrade of the public well-being rather than servicing international capital. In so doing, a new regime for protection of intellectual property rights and transfer of technology may arise, and new standards for international trade in energy and resources, new rules for international migration, new agreements on limiting harmful emissions, etc. can be adopted. The Chinese approach to international politics (refraining from interference in internal affairs, from military intervention, from trade embargoes) provides the developing countries with a real alternative of building equal and mutually beneficial relations with other states[142]. China fundamentally rejects the use of force, as well as employment of sanctions in foreign policy. Even in its relations with Taiwan, China always emphasizes the expansion of economic and cultural cooperation, while the Taiwan authorities resist this[143].

Apologists of American hegemony try to take no notice of the key elements of the Chinese approach to reformation. Instead of adopting the Chinese experience, they come up with " objective explanations" for the rapid growth of the Chinese economy now by foreign investments, then by imitation of Western technologies, then by the flow of cheap labor resources from backward agriculture to urban industry. Chinese reforms are sometimes compared to the Soviet New Economic Policy, which also featured a combination of socialist and capitalistic elements, along with high growth rates.

All the " objective" explanations for the high growth rates of the Chinese economy by its original backwardness are partly true. Partly, because they ignore the main thing – the creative approach of the Chinese leadership to building a new system of production relations which, as the Chinese economy advances to the leading position in the world, becomes more self-sufficient and more attractive. Before our eyes, a new social and economic system is being formed that is more effective than the previous ones, the center of world development is moving to Southeast Asia, which allows a number of researchers to talk about the beginning of a new (the Asian) centennial cycle of capital accumulation[144]^{, [145]}.

We have already referred above to the theory of systemic cycles of accumulation, the essence of which is that each historical period, about a century long, forms its own system of capital accumulation, the center or leader of which is the most developed country. A core of sorts is formed around the leader out of other developed countries, while the rest of the countries form the periphery of this accumulation cycle. The leader creates the appropriate institutions with which he coordinates the activities of the entire system and, most importantly, through which the appropriation of surplus value is carried out through the market or through a non-equivalent exchange between the core and the periphery. Naturally, the leader gets the lion’s share of the appropriated surplus product[146].

The system of national and international institutions that ensure expanded reproduction of the national and world economies in each centennial cycle of accumulation has been defined above as a world economic paradigm. Each of these paradigms has its limits of growth determined by the accumulation of internal contradictions within the framework of reproduction of its constituent institutions. The unfolding of these contradictions occurs until the moment of destabilization of the system of international economic and political relations, which have been resolved so far by world wars.

Thus, the two world wars of the last century mediated the transition from the world economic paradigm of colonial empires to the paradigm of liberal globalization due to the contradiction between the rapid expansion of production on the American and European periphery by Britain that dominated the system of global economic relations, and the latter’s ability to retain global control. The British decision to introduce protectionist measures to defend the economic interests of their empire in the 1930s indicated the achievement of the threshold of conflict-free unfolding of this contradiction. Britain was facing a choice, either to stop growth of the periphery segments that it did not control, or give in its leadership. Having arranged the First World War, the British retained leadership by destroying their main competitors in Eurasia – Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary and Turkey. But at the same time, their U.S. periphery became stronger. As a result of the second round of this struggle, global leadership passed to the U.S. and the USSR. Their confrontation continued for more than half a century, till the modern world economic paradigm became finally established on the principles of liberal globalization, which was optimal for the institutions of the American cycle of accumulation.

Today, only a quarter of a century after the establishment of the U.S. global dominance, the world market no longer ensures an expanded reproduction of the institutions of the American cycle of accumulation. The financial pyramids that formed its foundation went far beyond the limits of stability. At the same time, a new center of rapidly expanding reproduction appeared on the periphery of this world economic structure, which surpassed the U.S. in the production of goods. China’s decision to stop increasing its dollar reserves marked the limit of conflict-free resolution of the contradiction between expanded reproduction of the U.S. debt obligations and global investment opportunities. To resolve this contradiction, the U.S. has a choice, either to attempt establishing a forcible control over the periphery segments that have gone out of hand, or to give way to the new leader. So far, the U.S. ruling elite prefers the first option, not realizing the limitations of its capabilities. These limitations are determined by the greater effectiveness of the new world economic structure institutions, the basis for the formation of which is China and other countries of South-East Asia.

In accordance with the theory of change of centennial cycles of capital accumulation, the emerging Asian cycle must rely on a new system of capital reproduction institutions that retain the old material and technical achievements and create new opportunities for the development of the productive forces of society. To make predictions of the further development of events, it is necessary to understand the structure of the institutions of the new world economic paradigm.

The Chinese themselves call their formation a socialist one, developing at the same time private entrepreneurship and growing capitalist corporations. At the same time, the Communist leadership of China continues to build socialism, avoiding ideological cliché s. They prefer to formulate tasks in terms of national welfare, setting objectives to overcome poverty and create a society of average prosperity, and in the future, to achieve the world’s foremost standards of living. At the same time, they try to avoid excessive social inequality, preserving the labor base for the distribution of national income and directing the institutions of economic regulation towards productive activities and long-term investments in the development of productive forces. This is a common feature of the countries forming the core of the new world economic paradigm.

Regardless of the dominant form of ownership, be it state, as in China or in Vietnam, or private, as in Japan or Korea, a new world economic paradigm of accumulation is characterized by a combination of institutions of state planning with market self-organization, state control over the main parameters of the economy reproduction with free entrepreneurship, the ideology of the common good with private initiative. Given that, the forms of political organization can fundamentally differ from the world’s largest Indian democracy to the world’s largest Communist Party of China. The invariable constant is priority of national interests over private ones, which is expressed in strict mechanisms of personal responsibility of citizens for conscientious behavior, proper fulfillment of their duties, compliance with laws, and serving nationwide goals. In this context, the forms of public control can also fundamentally differ, from seppuku committed by top managers of bankrupt banks in Japan to death penalty applied to officials in China who were caught stealing. The social and economic development management system is built on mechanisms of personal responsibility for enhancing the national welfare.

The primacy of public interests over private ones is expressed in the institutional structure of economic regulation typical for the new world economic paradigm. First and foremost, in the state control over the basic parameters of capital reproduction through mechanisms of planning, credit, subsidizing, pricing, and regulation of basic entrepreneurial conditions. In so doing, the government not so much gives orders, as performs a moderator’s role forming mechanisms of social partnership and interaction between the basic social groups. Officials do not try to manage entrepreneurs, instead they organize joint work of business, scientific, engineering communities to form common development goals and elaborate methods for their achievement. The mechanisms for public regulation of the economy are also tuned up to this end.

The state ensures long-term and cheap credit, and businessmen guarantee its targeted use in specific investment projects for production development. The state provides access to infrastructure and services of natural monopolies at low prices, and enterprises assume responsibility for the production of competitive products. In order to improve their quality, the state organizes and finances the necessary R& D, education and training, and entrepreneurs implement innovations and invest in new technologies. The private-public partnership is subordinated to the public interests of economic development, improvement of the national well-being and the quality of life. Accordingly, the ideology of international cooperation is also changing, that is, the paradigm of liberal globalization in the interests of private capital of the leading countries of the world is replaced by the paradigm of sustainable development for the benefit of all mankind.

The Chinese leaders modestly continue to call their country developing. This is true judging by the rate of growth. But in terms of its economic potential, China has already achieved the level of the leading countries of the world. And in terms of the production relations structure, China is becoming a model for many developing countries that are eager to replicate the Chinese economic miracle and are approaching the core of the new world economic paradigm. One should regard the industrial and socio-political relations that formed in China not as transitional, but as characteristic of the most advanced social and economic system of this century.

Along with China, the countries involved in shaping of the new world economic paradigm core are Japan, Singapore and South Korea. Despite significant differences from China in terms of political structure and economy regulation mechanisms, many stable cooperative ties are being formed between them, and mutual trade and investments are growing rapidly.

Both the neighboring countries, such as Russia, India, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the countries of Latin America, including Brazil, Venezuela, Cuba and others, are pulling themselves to the emerging core of the new world economic order. The attraction of the African countries to it is also increasing. Taken together, the economic power of these countries is already comparable to the core countries of the American cycle of accumulation. They also have Japan with a powerful banking system as their common element that can act as a tunnel of sorts for moving capital from one cycle to another.

BRICS, the informal union of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, has become a popular image of the new global economic order. After the appearance of the abbreviation " BRIC" in 2001, the GDP volume increased more than threefold, and they accounted for a third of the increase in world output. " The five" (with the accession of the Republic of South Africa), occupying 29% of the terrestrial land (excluding Antarctica), have almost 43% of the world’s population. According to the share in the total world gross product by PPP, the proportion of BRICS is almost 27%, but by contribution to the growth of the world product in 2012, the share of the " five" exceeded 47% (see Table 2).

Table 2. Share of BRICS in global indicators, %[147]

 

Indicator	2000	2005	2010	2011	2012
GDP volume by PPP, in prices of 2005	16.8	20.0	25.3	26.2	26.8
Investments in fixed capital, in prices of 2005	9.3	14.2	28.2	30.0	31.4
Electric power consumption	22.0	27.4	32.7	34.1	35.2
Net inflow of foreign direct investments	5.9	11.2	25.0	24.9	27.1
Export of goods and services	7.0	11.3	15.3	15.7	16.2
Export of goods and services	13.3	27.1	40.2	40.2	39.3

Source: Sadovnichy V, Yakovets Yu., Akayev A.[148]

The authors of the fundamental report[149] prepared for the meeting of the BRICS leaders in Russia this year, determine BRICS as " a transcontinental coalition that has emerged over a wide range of geoeconomic and geopolitical motives connected with the change of weight categories in the world hierarchy and global regulation mechanisms..." which "...will eventually come to an institutionally established structure."

Unlike the core countries of the existing world economic paradigm that has imposed on the world the universal system of financial and economic relations as the basis of liberal globalization, the emerging core of the new world economic paradigm is very diverse. This difference is also evident in the common values of BRICS: freedom to choose the ways of development, denial of hegemony, sovereignty of historical and cultural traditions. In other words, the association of the " five" is a qualitatively new model of cooperation, paying tribute to diversity as opposed to the uniformity of liberal globalization, which is equally acceptable for countries that are at different stages of economic and social development.

The main factors for the convergence of the BRICS countries are:

· the common desire of the BRICS partners to reform the outdated international financial and economic architecture that does not take into account the increased economic weight of emerging-market and developing countries[150];

· strong support by the association participants of generally recognized principles and standards of international law, rejection of the policy of forceful pressure and infringement of the sovereignty of other states;

· similar challenges and problems of the BRICS participants related to the needs of a large-scale modernization of the economy and social life;

· complementarity of many sectors of the economy of participating states[151].

The historical mission of BRICS as a new community of countries and civilizations is to propose a new paradigm that meets the needs of sustainable development, taking into account the environmental, demographic and social limits of development, the need to prevent economic conflicts[152].

The paradigm of a new world economic structure proposed by BRICS is fundamentally different from the previous centennial cycles formed by Western European civilization. S. Huntington acknowledged that " The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence." [153] Currently, the Western powers, using the same patterns of behavior described by Huntington, forget with surprising ease the old humane traditional values and are now trying to retain power and hegemony by force.

Simultaneously with the rapid growth of the core of the Asian cycle of accumulation, the core of the American cycle is relatively decreasing. This process is sustainable and will continue in the future (Table 3).

China, the new leader of the Asian cycle of capital accumulation, has already become the " world factory." Within the framework of the SCO, APEC and BRICS, it began to form a new world economic paradigm with its system of economic regulation, which has already been called the " Beijing Consensus." It is no coincidence that at the last BRICS summit in Brazil, the financial basis of the new world economic structure was created in the form of two banks responsible for the stable development of the new world financial architecture. This is a direct threat to the domination of the U.S. and the receding American cycle of capital accumulation. The main contradiction of the current historical moment is that the accumulation of capital takes place at the center of the American system, in the developed countries, while the consumption potential is concentrated in the Asian and other developing countries. Therefore, financial bubbles are inflated in developed countries, while the developing countries do not have enough finance to develop and satisfy the growing consumption[154].

 

 

Table 3. Comparison of the GDP of the core

of the American and Asian cycles of capital accumulation[155]

 

	1820	1870	1913	1950	1973	2000	2010	2020	2030
Countries of the South	70.3	53.1	42.1	39.5	39.9	43.0	52.4	60.5	66.9
Developing Asian countries	56.5	36.1	22.2	15.3	15.8	29.2	40.9	49.1	58.2
China	33.0	17.1	8.8	4.6	4.6	11.8	20.7	28.9	33.4
India	16.1	12.2	7.5	4.2	3.1	5.2	8.0	12.2	18.6
Russia	5.4	7.5	8.5	9.6	9.4	2.1	2.4	2.7	3.0
Brazil	0.4	0.6	0.7	1.7	2.5	2.7	2.6	3.6	5.1
Countries of the North	29.7	46.9	57.9	60.5	60.1	57.0	47.6	39.5	33.1
The U.S.	1.8	8.9	18.9	27.3	22.1	21.9	18.4	16.7	15.1
The EU	23.3	32.0	35.8	27.1	27.1	21.5	18.1	15.7	13.1
Japan	3.0	2.3	2.6	3.0	7.8	7.2	5.4	4.4	3.2

 

Source: Sadovnichy V.I, Yakovets Yu.V., Akayev A.A. (Eds.). Prospects and Strategic for the Rise of the BRICS. Moscow, MSU – Pitirim Sorokin – Nikolai Kondratieff International Institute – INES – National Committee for BRICS Studies – RAS Latin American Institute, 2014.

 

These arguments are confirmed by the data of the analytical service of the U.S. bank Goldman Sachs, which predicts that by 2020 the total world " middle class" will reach 3.85 billion people, of which the share of G-7 countries will be reduced to 21%, while the share of the BRICS countries will grow to 44%. By 2030, the " middle class" of the world will reach 5.2 billion people, of which more than half (52%) will reside in the BRICS countries, while the share of the G-7 countries will drop to 15%. At the same time, consumption growth will increase by $10 trillion, and by 2020 this figure in developing countries will reach 13 trillion, giving 43% of the world’s total. Growth in consumption will take place in the BRICS countries exponentially: their share will increase from 23% in 2000 to 62% by 2020[156]. The center of gravity in international trade and production has shifted from the North to the East and South: In the next ten years, South-South trade will continue to develop, with the BRICS countries taking the lead in it. At the same time, the role of developing countries will increase substantially in the market of direct and portfolio investments in the coming years, and this will include investments of developing countries into each other. This will greatly weaken the monopoly and dominance of Western transnational corporations in the sphere of international investment and production[157].

As noted by A. Ayvazov and the authors of the book " Prospects and Strategic Priorities for the Rise of the BRICS, " the American cycle of capital accumulation has entered the " autumn" period of its development, or the " financial expansion" stage. In 1980, financial departments gave 15% of the total profits of U.S. industrial corporations, while now they yield more than half of the profits of TNCs. With the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the USSR, the core of the U.S. world system obtained huge sales markets for its goods and application spheres for its surplus capitals. However, it did not seem to be enough for the global financial oligarchy that started arranging financial crises everywhere, which the Anglo-American geographer D. Harvey, one of the founders of the so-called " radical geography", called " accumulation by dispossession, " [158] when hundreds of billions of dollars were withdrawn from the periphery and transferred to the U.S. and other countries of the global capitalist system core. The capitals withdrawn from peripheral countries were applied not so much for the development of new industries, but rather for stock market speculations. As a result of this specific redistribution, in 2000-2001 NASDAQ, the stock exchange of the " new economy, " crashed (the crash of stocks of Internet companies was called the " Dot-com bubble" crash), and in 2007, there happened a financial collapse caused by the mortgage crisis in the U.S. It is noted that currently, the U.S. economy is in a state of recession. It is under pressure of the huge public debt that is approaching $18 trillion. Based on the objective data, forecasts are made that the U.S. economy will plunge into the deepest depression in the next few years, which will mark the end of the American centennial cycle of capital accumulation and the transition to the Asian cycle[159].

In order to neutralize the impact of the ever-increasing burden of its debt obligations and to take turn to its own account the opportunities arising from the expansion of overseas markets, the U.S. is making efforts to organize the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TTP) and the U.S.-EU Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). In the future, there is a probability of integration of these major transcontinental free trade zones, the core of which will be the U.S.[160]

The U.S. desire to exclude from the new stage of liberal globalization China, India, Russia and Brazil that have veered out of its control testifies to the achievement of the limit of conflict-free resolution of the contradictions between the opportunities and the needs for ensuring an expanded reproduction of the existing world economic paradigm. Further liberalization of world trade initiated by the U.S. is unlikely to give it any additional competitive advantages. It resembles the unsuccessful attempts of Britain to fence off the American competitors with protectionist measures in order to defend the domestic market of its empire a century ago. Just as then it became a signal to the ruling elite of the U.S. about the need to break the colonial world economic system, so today these initiatives of the U.S. are perceived by the countries of the core of the emerging new world economic paradigm as the reason for demolishing the old one. If the U.S. seeks to improve its competitive position at their expense, then they have no reason to keep maintaining the American financial pyramid. It would not mean for them anything but new attempts of the U.S. oligarchy to perform " accumulation by dispossession." Following China, the accumulation of U.S. debt obligations is stopped by Russia. This process will inevitably start snowballing in a short time, which will entail destruction of the U.S. financial system and the entire current world economic paradigm based on it.

Undoubtedly, the oligarchy ruling the U.S. will try to slow down the process of growth of the new center for global economic development. But the options to do this in a non-conflict way, as was done in 1985 with regard to Japan, the rising " first robin" of the Asian accumulation cycle, by artificially reducing the competitiveness of its economy by imposing the " Plaza Accord, " [161] are hardly available today. China feels strong enough to disagree with discrimination. India has traditionally been very sensitive to attempts at compulsion by the Anglo-Saxons. The independent policy of V.V. Putin excludes the possibilities of manipulating Russia, as the U.S. did in the 1990s.

Despite liberal globalization, the opportunities for mutual understanding between the leaders of the old and new world economic paradigms are not so great as in the previous transitional crises. Whereas the Dutch, British and American cycles of accumulation were based on their common Anglo-German civilizational foundation and Protestant ethics which rested on individualism and competition, China, Japan, Korea, Russia and India belong to other civilizations based on collectivism and solidarity.

As far back as in 1964 P. Sorokin, a remarkable Russian thinker living in the United States, foresaw this historic transition and defined the key difference between the new era and the previous one: " the dominant type of the emerging society and culture is likely to be neither capitalist nor communist but a type sui generis which we can designate as integral type. This type will be intermediary between the capitalist and communist orders and ways of life. It is going to incorporate most of the positive values and to be free from the serious defects of each type. Moreover, the emerging integral system probably will not be in its development a simple eclectic mixture of specific features of both types, but the integrated system of integral cultural values, social institutions and integral type of personality substantially different from the capitalist and communist models." [162]

Using this definition of P. Sorokin, let’s designate the new world economic paradigm forming in the course of establishment of the Asian cycle of accumulation as an integral one. The paradigm corresponding to the current American accumulation cycle will be designated as imperialistic, and the preceding one as colonial. These short names symbolize the essence of the worldview of the ruling elite that belongs to the core of the relevant world economic paradigm. Fig. 6 shows the scheme of successive world economic and technological paradigms and their corresponding long cycles of economic and political dynamics, compiled on the basis of A. Ayvazov’s model with the author’s changes.

Perhaps the West still has the opportunity to give the emerging new world economic paradigm the form of a " new imperialism." Like the traditional one, it could be based on private property and competition, while having built-in social and environmental restraints preventing financial institutions from steamrolling over the real sector of the economy and ignoring the interests of the majority of the population. This concept could overcome the current contradictions of the historically established model, ensure a fair distribution of material wealth between classes and territories based on the parameters of sustainable development. development. That is, take into account the environmental and demographic limits, the priority of solving social problems, the need to prevent conflicts on economic grounds[163].

This opportunity was not used in the period of Perestroika that destroyed the USSR. Through the efforts of Western institutions and advisers to Soviet, and later to post-Soviet political leaders, a false mythology of " universal human values" was imposed, under the guise of which the barbaric colonization of the post-Soviet economical space by American-European capital went off. Presently, U.S. political engineers are trying to repeat this experience, resorting to direct aggression against peripheral countries in order to establish their control. By so doing, they exclude the possibility of a conflict-free transition to the new world economic paradigm.

 

Fig. 6. Periodic change of world economic paradigms (Source: A. Ayvazov (2012), with the author's changes)

 

Throughout the entire capitalism development epoch, the global center of capital accumulation was situated within the framework of Western European civilization which, after the collapse of the USSR, transformed the rest of the world into its periphery. The previous centennial cycles of capital accumulation were formed by Western European civilization with its characteristic ideology of profit and coercion, based on the Golden Calf religion, that is, faith in the universal power of money and reduction of the value of an individual to the amount of his or her capital. Although this faith mimicked Christian ethics, Weber has shown that its meaning in Protestant heresy was reduced to monetary wealth as a criterion of grace and a sign that the person belongs to God's chosen.

The formation of an integrated world economic paradigm takes place on a different civilizational basis. Despite its complex composition, the common values in the spiritual traditions of the core countries of the Asian cycle include renunciation of violence as the main form of spelling things out, seeking harmony between man, nature and society, condemnation of money-grubbing, aspiration for mutual cooperation and balance of interests. In international relations, these values are manifested in the mutual respect for national sovereignties, the desire for cooperation while preserving the diversity of countries, and in elaboration of common development strategies. In the economic sphere, they are manifested in the criticism of the current world economic order as unfair and ensuring the enrichment of the " golden billion" countries by exploiting the rest of humanity through an unequal foreign economic exchange. These values condemn aggression and set a negative attitude to violence in international relations. However, they cannot prevent aggression on the part of the U.S. trying to maintain its global dominance.

 

 

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