There is a significant difference between politics and geo-politics. Politics is about the existential present. Geopolitics is about the structural constraints that govern, over a medium run, the interplay of the longer-term political and economic interests of the major players in the world system. Geopolitical trends are not found in the headlines. Indeed they are largely hidden from the view of the political actors. The geopolitics of the world system nonetheless shapes the short-term actions of political agents, quite often without them even being aware of it. The single most important geopolitical change at the moment is the precipitate decline of the world-systemic power of the United States. The world-system has moved from a situation of creeping multipolarity to one of undisguised multipolarity. If we are to imagine them as a singular locus of geopolitical power in the coming decades the first question that is posed is whether or not there will be some sort of reunification of the two Chinese and the two Korean entities. For if there is not, it is hard to see how there could be some sort of structure that would link meaningfully China, Korea, and Japan, at least to the level that exists in the European Union. The modern world-system has reached its moment of structural crisis. Consequently, we are in a period of transition from the existing capitalist world-economy to something else. The way this happens is via systemic chaos and structural bifurcation. Because this is a world in systemic crisis—that is, in chaos—the fluctuations we encounter are enormous. This is true in all the arenas of social action—economic, political, cultural, social, and military. We are living not only amidst the long-term uncertainties of transition but the short-term uncertainties of a world that is far more chaotic than the one that we have known for the past 500 years.
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