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There is no escaping it. Prof John Mearsheimer, the priest of Realpolitik, tells us that there are today three great powers – and two paradigms of belligerent contention: US vs Russia and US vs China. These two paradigmatic contentions define our era.

Of course, this a valid observation -- but it is also US-centric;  a view from Washington. Looked at from the other end of the telescope, these battlescapes are not two, but one. Which is a globe, reflecting past humiliations, challenging continued western hegemony. When Mearsheimer divides the battlescape, he reflects the US hope to keep the ‘contentions’ strictly compartmentalised: China in one corner, and Russia in another.

But it won’t work. Multipolarism is unfolding -- but only for the BRICS+.  The West, for now, has doubled-down on its ​"​rules-​based" hegemony​, ​and thus is demanding full compliance from allies to wall-off the apostates.

The Realpolitik perspective – though truncated by its absence of differentiated cultural understanding – nonetheless does offer important perspectives about how the tentacles of contention are shaping those who are not ​the ​Big Three.  

Events in Europe may offer an object lesson for other regions.

Washington is prepping the EU ruling élites to sever from China as fundamentally Europe has done from Russia​, with Europe’s largest economies already taking a harder line on Beijing. Washington will squeeze the UK and EU ‘til the pips squeak to get full compliance on a China ‘wall-off’​​ in pursuit of China rollback. ​​The EU already has hoisted the ‘white flag’.

The first ‘takeaway’ from the EU deference is that ​it has opted to made itself utterly impotent to protect its own interests. Under pressure from Washington, it has assumed a narrative divorced from the realpolitik of the battlescape. The EU insists to stand by Ukraine - ​'​for as long as it takes​'​ - to achieve a Ukraine ‘victory’. But, as Mearsheimer observes, the contention is not between Kiev vs Moscow ​-- ​it is between the US vs Russia.

Europe thereby is stripped of political agency. Its narrative precisely excludes it from having any meaningful role in bring the conflict to an end.  It is hostage to the unfolding of events bringing its own conclusion.

Everybody knows that. But the requirement to fall in with America’s ‘Ukraine must win’ paradigm makes the EU politically irrelevant because pursuing an indeterminant Zelensky–Putin settlement can’t begin to resolve the US-Russia issue, which is the real decider.

Plus, the actual situation in Ukraine today is almost completely at odds with the EU’s own narrative of Ukraine ‘winning’. Yet, so heavily has the EU invested in its Ukraine narrative that it just doubles-down, demanding a ‘win’ as precondition to ending its sanctions on Russia. So, the Russia sanctions must remain as ‘forever sanctions’, leading Europe deeper into economic crisis ​--​ with no plan ‘B’.

And​, ‘as long as it takes’ also gives the conflict an indeterminate horizon​, yet leaves Russia effectively in control of the timetable. Russia can extend, or shorten the contention in line with its wider geo-political aims. These likely will include watching how Europe survives the coming winter.

So, with the EU tying its sanctions policies to the utopian aim of instantiating a ‘free, democratic and sovereign’ homogeneous state (when Ukraine – in reality - is in civil war, and far from ‘democratic’) ​,​ the EU now proclaims that by its partisan engagement in the conflict​, ​it has secured the ‘win’ of freeing itself from energetic dependency on Russia.

This is a logical nonsense. The EU has no indigenous energy source. It may have cut dependency on one​,​ but only to exchange it for dependency on a cut-throat high-cost international energy market.  A ‘win’?  The EU has lost Russia, is about to lose China​,​ and its industry is in process of off-shoring to low-cost American energy.

What does this experience suggest for the Middle East?  Well, firstly, many in the Middle East will try to position themselves as aloof from contention. Smaller Asian countries also are saying they do not want to have to choose between China and the US. They wish for good relations with both.

It is here that Prof Mearsheimer’s Realpolitik is so relevant: Hegemons are, by nature, he says​ ​ ‘​G​odzillas’! They insist that their near-abroad should not be weaponised against them.  They have weight, which they can throw into contention.  This is their nature.  And things become that much more fraught and dangerous when a dominant hegemon (i.e. the US), fears to lose its primacy, he notes.

And so ‘Godzilla’ doubles down to weaponise its rival’s backyard (it is what hegemons do), and also tries to force emerging rivals into a lockdown quarantine. As Mearsheimer says, it is what it is​;​ this is how hegemons act. 

Look what this Realpolitik meant for the EU: The latter posits Europe as a strategic player; a political power in its own right; a market colossus​; ​ a monopsony with the power to impose its will over whomsoever trades with it. Simply put​,​ ​he ​contends that the EU possesses meaningful political agency.

But the Washington ‘Godzilla’ just trampled that narrative.  Its ‘friend’, the Biden Administration​​ is gone​,​ whilst disdain for the EU’s anti-culture accumulates around the globe (viz: the antics at the football World Cup, in Qatar). The EU political class never had a good grasp of its limitations ​--​ it was ‘heresy’ even to suggest there were limitations to EU power. 

It has built ​a ​storyline of European success rooted in institutional co-operation, that fosters fantasies about its political agency. It has discovered that the world has entered an era of contestation – not co-operation.​ ​The EU political ​class ​is in shock and denial. Managing contestation is counter-culture for the Brussels élite.

Message: the EU’s pretensions are mere ‘road-kill’ on Godzilla’s path.

States in the rest-of-world will make up their own minds about the direction in which history is moving​,​ but the lesson of recent events ​is that Realpolitik contention is inexorable. It starts slowly​,​ but the walls incrementally close in.

First, with sanctions, then energy flows and then the binary ultimatum: ‘with us or against us’.  But just to be clear, culture will not lag far behind.

On the one hand​​ ​we have western ‘culture’​, ​and on the other, the Non-Western world​, ​ whose faiths, despite their diversity, in many ways have far more in common with one another than with the LGBT cancel culture of the western world. The issue is what will be walled in​, and  what walled out​.​

Already there are straws in the wind that as the shift into separate spheres continues, the separation will not be confined to fenced-off economies. Western ‘degenerate culture’ will be walled out too, as states rejuvenate old civilisational values at loggerheads with European contemporary mores.