NCTCA 2021

Humanitarian rhetoric aside it is not a coincidence that actions and inactions in the New Cold War (NCW) align with self interest. Hybrid Warfare against Venezuela, Haiti, Honduras, Bolivia, Brazil and Argentina continued the Monroe Doctrine’s pursuit of Tribute and Regional Hegemony. The NCW continued the policy of containment of Russia with hybrid warfare in Ukraine, and both Russia and Iran in Syria. The destruction of Libya defeated the economic and geostrategic threat of Pan Africanism (a united and independent Africa acting in its own interest). The NCW’s current fronts include the containment of Russian integration with Europe, Russian and Iranian Petroleum and China’s New Silk Road with its proposed integration of Eurasia and Africa. The US has no peer rivals in its hemisphere but the world order may transition from unipolarity to multipolarity. Great Power Competition will not be entirely, perhaps even not primarily military; let us hope so at least. The Second Thirty Years War flouts the International Laws established at the end of the First, in the Treaty of Westphalia. A semi-anarchic system where “the strong do what they will” seems set to continue with no Peace of Westphalia in sight.