GLOBAL ECONOMIC ASYMMETRIES AS A CATALYST FOR SYSTEMIC CRISES OF HUMANITY IN THE 21ST CENTURY

Abstract

This article presents a comprehensive study of the nature, forms of manifestation, and systemic consequences of global economic asymmetries as a key factor determining the emergence and cascading spread of systemic crises facing modern humanity in the 21st century. The relevance of the study lies in the fact that traditional models of international economic relations, built on assumptions of convergence and the gradual equalization of development levels, can no longer adequately explain the deepening stratification between the global core and the periphery. It is demonstrated that economic asymmetries have ceased to be a local or temporary phenomenon and have become a structural attribute of the global economic system, which reproduces itself through the distribution of capital, income, technology, energy resources, information, and ecological space. It is substantiated that the modern global economy gives rise to the phenomenon of "asymmetric interdependence," under which developed countries concentrate technological rent, financial capital, and institutional power, while peripheral and semi-peripheral countries are increasingly fixed in the role of suppliers of raw resources, cheap labor, and, in effect, "absorbers" of environmental risks. Five key types of asymmetries are identified and systematized: income and property asymmetry, technological asymmetry, financial and monetary asymmetry, resource and environmental asymmetry, and information and digital asymmetry. The mechanisms of their mutual reinforcement and accumulation under the conditions of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the digital platformization of the economy, and the reconfiguration of global value chains are established and analytically described. The author's own concept of "cascading crisis-generating potential" is proposed, according to which structural asymmetries give rise to an interconnected chain of sectoral crises: financial, food, energy, migration, climate, and geopolitical, which, interacting with one another, acquire a synergistic and self-reinforcing character rather than remaining isolated shocks. On the basis of the analysis conducted, the necessity of forming a new architecture of global economic governance is argued, aimed at mitigating structural asymmetries through the reform of international financial institutions, a fairer redistribution of technological rents, and the introduction of carbon and digital taxation mechanisms at the global level. In the concluding part of the article, practical proposals are formulated regarding Ukraine's strategic priorities and its possible positioning in the global economic space amid post-war recovery and European integration.