Our Purpose – To achieve victory, first we must seek it!

The purpose of this book is to encourage Christians to discard any remaining conspiratorial viewpoints and begin to think providentially about being in the world as ambassadors for Christ. If we truly wish to make our nation great again, we must realize a simple truth.

To achieve victory, first we must seek it!

There is a new multipolar world emerging. It is vital that Christians not only recognize and take part in it, but lead in it by providing examples of excellence that can be birthed only through the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Will there be a single hegemon in the future or many?

Prior to the Age of Exploration, large civilizations rarely came into contact with each other, and when they did it was often with great violence. Examples of this include the Greek conquest of the eastern world by Alexander the Great; the Punic Wars between Carthage and Rome; the incursion of Arab Muslim civilization into Christian Northern Africa and Southern Europe; the Mongol and Turkish invasions of Russia and Eastern Europe; and the Spanish conquest of the New World. After the Portuguese circumnavigated the world, European Christian civilization assumed that it was the superior culture everywhere it went. From a Christian perspective, that was true in one sense. The Gospel has done an immense amount of good in the world, but of course not everything that the European colonizers did was godly.

During the Modern era, there was always one nation among the Europeans that controlled the largest navy, the trade routes, and the reserve currency. Each nation’s empire lasted for about 80 to 100 years and then hegemony passed to another European nation. Now the empire is associated with the United States. America has become dominant in the western hemisphere and has a huge geopolitical and economic influence in much of Europe, but the vision of a unipolar world has always been an illusion. As we will see, China was actually the world’s largest power in the two centuries before Columbus. They explored in ships much larger than their European counterparts all the way to the coast of Africa and were well aware of European civilization. They even made accurate maps of the coastlands they explored that were more comprehensive and accurate than the European knowledge of the world for many years. Although these explorers from the East gave and received tribute in the name of the Chinese emperor with the new peoples they encountered, they did not trade, conquer or colonize. They thought China’s culture and achievements were superior and that there was nothing else in the world worth having. No further Chinese exploration was attempted after the 1300s. They felt it was too costly, dangerous and unprofitable. The idea that one nation or civilization could dominate the entire globe is recent, coming only after the invention of fuel burning engines, and other technological innovations providing faster travel. The first two nations to seriously attempt total world dominance were Great Britain and the United States. The British did it through trade, colonization and conquest. The Americans did it by expanding military bases, controlling the world banking system, owning the world reserve currency, and influencing the nations through numerous types of hard and soft culture.

By the 1990s, the neoconservatives and neoliberals believed that “The End of History and the Last Man” (Francis Fukuyama’s book title) had been achieved after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Surely, the only option now was for every nation in the world to become a Liberal democracy following the pattern of the United States. Now we are seeing that this is not likely to happen. The United States government – through military power, the global banking system, and the USD reserve currency – has acted as though it were the hegemonic hyperpower. Now that has all evaporated. We are now seeing more and more evidence of a multipolar world.

Most of this shift has nothing to do with economics, politics or even military might. The root cause is almost entirely demographic and cultural. About 100 years ago at the end of World War I, almost 40 percent of the world’s population was in Europe and North America. Today, the Western bloc is less than 15 percent of the world. The global population has shifted toward the East and the South. And even more recently, we have seen these nations break away from their colonial masters and found emerging economies that have huge potential. Demographics and the force of the market have shifted dominance away from the Liberal systems and toward traditional ancient civilizations. Far from being a negative development, this should be exciting for Great Commission minded Christians. Together with these exploding populations and markets, the number of Christians around the world has nearly quadrupled in the last 100 years, from about 600 million in 1910 to 2.4 billion in the 2020s. Within this growth is a momentous global shift. Today the majority of Christians live in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

In 1776, the year of America’s independence, Adam Smith, a Scottish Enlightenment philosopher, published The Wealth of Nations. Smith rejected mercantilism, or government interference in market activities. He believed that a government’s three functions should be to protect national borders, enforce civil law, and engage in public works (education, common institutions). Smith believed that if the nation’s civil government was limited in the role it could play in economic manipulation, then an “invisible hand” would guide and drive all growth. Eventually, this would cause all nations to become prosperous. What Adam Smith forecast 250 years ago is being seen right now.

The discovery of America, and that of a passage to the East Indies by the Cape of Good Hope, are the two greatest and most important events recorded in the history of mankind. Their consequences have already been very great; but, in the short period of between two and three centuries which has elapsed since these discoveries were made, it is impossible that the whole extent of their consequences can have been seen. What benefits or what misfortunes to mankind may hereafter result from those great events, no human wisdom can foresee. By uniting, in some measure, the most distant parts of the world, by enabling them to relieve one another’s wants, to increase one another’s enjoyments, and to encourage one another’s industry, their general tendency would seem to be beneficial.

To the natives however, both of the East and West Indies, all the commercial benefits which can have resulted from those events have been sunk and lost in the dreadful misfortunes which they have occasioned. These misfortunes, however, seem to have arisen rather from accident than from anything in the nature of those events themselves. At the particular time when these discoveries were made, the superiority of force happened to be so great on the side of the Europeans that they were enabled to commit with impunity every sort of injustice in those remote countries. Hereafter, perhaps, the natives of those countries may grow stronger, or those of Europe may grow weaker, and the inhabitants of all the different quarters of the world may arrive at that equality of courage and force which, by inspiring mutual fear, can alone overawe the injustice of independent nations into some sort of respect for the rights of one another. But nothing seems more likely to establish this equality of force than that mutual communication of knowledge and of all sorts of improvements which an extensive commerce from all countries to all countries naturally, or rather necessarily, carries along with it.³⁷

In 1866, popular American Civil War field journalist and author, Charles Carleton Coffin, took a trip around the world by steamship and locomotive with his wife, a new possibility at that time. He wrote a book, Our New Way Round the World, recounting his observations and experiences. The reason Great Britain and then America began to dominate not just the Western nations – but the whole world – was the invention of steamships, steam powered trains, gasoline engines, airplanes and then jets. Coffin was amazed at how fast the world was changing through coal burning steam engines. Through fast moving innovations, springing mainly from British and American minds, the world was being drawn together. He had hope that the world could learn from America’s experiment with civil liberty. Yet he did not suppose that it was right for one nation to dominate the world. His view was that at least three other great powers would emerge in the next century – Russia, India and China.

Coal, the stored-up sunlight of a million years, is the grand agent. Liberty lights the fire, and Christian civilization is the engine which is taking the whole world in its train.

There are but three aggressive nations, – England, America, and Russia, – and together they are to give civilization to six hundred millions of the human race. England is already moving the dead mass of India; Russia is advancing upon Central Asia; and America, now brought in direct contact with China, not by force of arms, but by commercial intercourse, and good-will, is to make her power felt among the millions of that empire.

After an absence of two years and five months, we have returned to our home, having lost some prejudices and gained some new views. America does not possess all the virtues in the world. We have something yet to learn. If we have larger liberty than any other people, we must confess, on the other hand, that there is no city in any land as badly governed as the commercial metropolis of this country. We may revise our liberty without detriment to ourselves.³⁸

In 1866, there were fewer than 1.4 billion people alive on the planet. Just three great powers – England, America and Russia – made up over 25 percent of the world population. China and India already had 358 million and 200 million people respectively – about 40 percent of the world population. (Coffin rounds this to 600 million). Notice that Coffin does not speak of America teaming up with England to outpace, dominate, or defeat Russia, China, and India as our leaders do today. His dream was to see the power of Christian civilization made known throughout the world by example. Liberty must come from within individuals and permeate through families, churches, cultural groups before impacting civil freedom. Civil liberty cannot come by a great power forcing or cajoling weaker nations into compliance. One group of people tried to build a unipolar world at the time of the Tower of Babel. God was not interested in letting man’s dark schemes succeed. It has never worked out well since then. It is impossible that any one nation in our time can be the global hegemon.

The BRICS coalition (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) is just one of several ways the shift is being facilitated. It is a way to organize a separation between the emerging nations’ economies and the United States’ global monopoly through the World Bank, world reserve currency, international exchange, and military power. BRICS has also become a bulwark against the bullying of US unipolar hegemony. The BRICS model is not a unipolar or even a multilateral order. The stated purpose is to be a model of how great powers can cooperate peacefully in a multipolar world.

The Americas of the western hemisphere were founded as Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, French, and English colonies of European empires and kingdoms ruled by monarchies at the time of the Age of Discovery. If we look at a map of the languages of the New World, we see a history of five empires each lasting roughly 100 years. The sixth empire of the Modern age, the United States, dominated the 20th century. Each is defined as an empire not because of the size of their homeland in Europe and New World, but because of the control of a powerful reserve currency; sea trade routes extending to Africa, Asia, North and South America; and a large navy and military dedicated to protecting those routes.

The language map of the New World is a history lesson of the five European empires since the 1400s. In order, the prevailing languages spoken are Spanish (418 million); English (280 million); Portuguese (209 million); French and Creole (14 million); Dutch, German and Italian (2 million).

Economist Ray Dalio in his book, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order, notes that the European era was centered around a single empire in each century. Each period of dominance lasted for 80 years and included an approximately 20-year crisis period as the succeeding empire defeated or overtook the preceding one. Fortune in trade always favored a certain nation over the rest. The currency of the leading economy then became the most stable reserve used in exchange between nations. To protect the trade routes and ships carrying goods and gold required a large military investment. Eventually, the cost in maintaining its military, complicated by a crisis or war, brought an end to the unipolar dominance of each one of the European sea trading nations. The empire of each century either fell to a rival (violent ends befell the Spanish, Dutch and French empires); or the former imperial power intentionally chose a successor state that had a similar language, religion and culture (a smooth and gradual transfer of power was negotiated between Portugal and Spain; Great Britain and the United States).

The exact dates here can be disputed, but momentous dates in history round out to 80 to 100 year time periods for each colonial empire. Some will note that although these nations were succeeded by a stronger power, in some places their empire continued to grow all the way up to the 20th century. One of the characteristics of the collapse of great empires is that they often do not fall dramatically, but go into a slow decline and give birth to smaller successor states. Many times, the populations of these nations went on thinking of their nation as the world’s leading empire even after their influence had waned. This is mainly due to the reality that the wealth of the nation remained in the hands of a few while the majority of the population lived in comparative poverty. The lords and merchants of such empires most often became an elite class who were isolated from the reality of the common people and the rest of the world.

³⁷ Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, volume 2, 141.

³⁸ Charles Carleton Coffin, Our New Way Round the World. Boston 1869, 507-508.

Book

The Fourth Political Theory in Biblical Perspective

Jay Rogers

A Christian civilization is emerging from under the wreckage of Modern culture.

A Christian civilization is emerging from under the chaos that has been strewn throughout the wreckage of Modern culture. As dawn breaks through the darkness, many will be awakened to a new understanding of the fulfillment of the Law through love and grace. Many will comprehend, as if for the first time, what it means to be truly human. We are being prepared to overcome a world system that has denied God, faith, family, and even humanity itself. This book analyzes and critiques several leading experts in the theory of the rising multipolar world including –

• The Changing World Order by Ray Dalio
• The Clash of Civilizations by Samuel Huntington
• The Fourth Political Theory by Aleksandr Dugin