SPEAKING
FREELY Building a new world
order By David Gosset
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
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In the first week of
September, leaders of the European Union will meet
their counterparts in Beijing for the 8th EU-China
Summit, and Hu Jintao will visit Washington for
the first time as China's president to discuss
Sino-American relationship with President George W
Bush. International pundits are focusing on the
coming encounter between Hu, who became president
in March 2003, and the American president. Soon,
analysts will compare in details the issues and
outcomes of these two parallel events.
In
Beijing, the Chinese leadership will face a EU
that is at a critical stage in his history. France
and the Netherlands have rejected the proposed EU
constitution, and the current United Kingdom
presidency of the EU is a reminder of Europe's
internal divisions. Embarrassing negotiations and
renegotiations on textile
trade with China reflect tension between powerful
lobbies and underscore north-south divisions
inside the EU. Last but not least, Germany,
Europe's sluggish largest economy, will go to
polls on September 18 in an early election called
by Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder after the SPD's
(his Social Democrats party) defeat in North
Rhine-Wesphalia in May.
The US president
is not in a strong position either. His "war on
terrorism" is deepening, America is losing
credibility all over the world and, to use Joseph
Nye's (dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of
Government) notion, Washington's "soft power" is
evaporating. Even victories by CDU (Germany's
Christian Democrat party) leader Angela Merkel and
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who
faces an election a week earlier than Schroeder,
will not much help the US to regain trust. Both
Merkel and Koizumi are considered as being
pro-Washington.
A relatively weakened EU
and an American president under growing criticism
in a dangerously polarized country do not mean
that all the cards are in China's hands; China is
a developing country facing huge internal and
external challenges. "China fever" and its
variations are as excessive as all the expressions
of "China's threat". The reality is that Brussels,
Beijing and Washington need each other in an
interdependent world. As central issues become
increasingly transnational, answers cannot be
formulated at the nation-state level. In that
context, everything has to be done to ensure
understanding and convergence among the old, the
new and the middle worlds.
Soon Brussels,
Beijing and Washington will have to meet to better
coordinate their efforts to manage globalization.
The goal is not to form a global hegemonic troika
but to work for a process of constructive and
inclusive triangulation. Observers like to refer
to triangles: US/India/China triangle where
Washington uses New Delhi to contain China and
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is the 21st
century Henry Kissinger; China/Russia/US triangle
where Moscow and Beijing show Washington they have
muscles too, as witnessed by recent joint military
exercises; China/Russia/Iran triangle where the
three capitals' strategists agree to maintain
Central Asia's status quo. The list is not
exhaustive. These, if triangles, are heterogeneous
sub-triangles, parameters of a larger equation,
the highly complex EU/China/US relations.
At the center of the current world system,
the transatlantic relationship has been already
affected by divergence in the post September 11
world configuration. The US is at war, Europe - or
a part of it - is engaged in a police operation
looking for criminals. China is a factor that is
also having an impact on the way Europe and the US
see and treat each other. However, the current
European disagreement on the ongoing arms embargo
on China - a matter indirectly related to war and
peace - and the potential frictions over Iranian
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's nuclear policies
are just elements of a much broader question: Are
we going to stay within the chessboard - tactical
temporary agreement or containment - or can we
open ourselves to long-term strategic cooperation?
Put in perspective, the importance of the
dynamics between Brussels, Washington and Beijing
is obvious. Five major phenomena having genuine
global reach are at work to shape our future:
1) The asymmetry between the "hyperpower"
(US) and the other members of the international
community has no precedent: the Roman Empire and
the Chinese Tang Dynasty were macro-regional
superpowers, but the hyperpower's extension - less
than 5% of the world population and in 2003, 47%
of the world military expenditure - is global.
There is, however, a growing disproportion between
America's hard hyperpower and its soft power.
2) A fifth of the world population shares
the oldest continuous history and belongs to the
same political entity, while China is entering
into a world system designed by the West: such a
phenomenon is unprecedented. Russia's rise within
the 18th century European system as well as German
and Japanese respective rise at the end of the
19th century were comparatively processes of a
far-lesser magnitude. Moreover, China is a state
of 1.3 billion inhabitants but also - and above
all - a unique civilization with deep, consistent
and strong values different from the values
developed by the West.
3) Effects of the
former Soviet system's disintegration are
producing instability and uncertainty at the very
heart of Eurasia.
4) An intensifying
techno-economic globalization is producing a large
zone of exclusion. At a moral level,
never-emerging economies can justify "sinking
countries".
5) Five hundred years after
having invented the nation-state, Europe is
transcending it for a not well-defined political
construction without clear geographical limits.
Highly dangerous instability is the main
corollary of this evolving configuration. How long
can our unbalanced Pax Americana last? Is there a
path to stability? In the foreseeable future a
relatively stable system would depend very much on
positive dynamics between the EU/US and China.
Are Brussels, Washington and Beijing able
to put themselves under shared principles or are
they going to accept the risks of imminent and
tactical games between superpowers?
The
EU, a model of cooperation between nations, the
US, a reference for techno-economic vitality, and
China, are an example of how developing countries
could complement each other. Potentially these
three matrices can help humanity overcome war,
poverty and obscurantism. A positive EU/US/China
triangulation - a renewed West, a cooperative
Eurasia under a Sino-European arch and a
China-centered US policy toward Asia - would
definitely close the 20th century and ensure the
21st century world order.
Twenty years ago
the Japanese consultant Kenichi Ohmae published
"Triad Power" where he studied the
emergence of the "Triadians" or the residents of
Japan, America and the then European Community and
its effects on the world affairs especially global
competition. In 1985 Kenichi could not be
concerned with the effects of the USSR's
disintegration and was not yet forced to integrate
in his equation the techno-economic globalization
producing large zones of exclusion or the
consequences of China's opening up to the world.
The American analyst David Shambaugh -
Washington Quarterly, Summer 2005 - refers to the
Moscow, Washington, Beijing "old" triangle to look
for distinctive features of the Brussels,
Washington, Beijing triangle, the new triangle
being more fluid, less static and less concerned
with national security.
To approach the
new triangle it is necessary to have in mind the
three configurations. If the (Henry) Kissingerian
triangulation - "old" triangle - was an
antagonistic triangulation, the triad club very
much exclusive, today's dynamics between the US,
China and the European Union are more cooperative
due to the nature of the EU and more inclusive due
to the nature of China.
Immediate trends
and current events are not conducive to such a
positive new triangulation. The EU is not one
political player, the US tends to place the
continuation and the consolidation of its
socio-economic model above other considerations
and China's emergence collides with various
geopolitical interests of the hyperpower. Fred
Bergsten, director of the Institute for
International Economics, wrote in the Financial
Times on August 25 that "a clash - between US and
China - at least in the economic domain, seems
probable". However, it is precisely because we are
on the verge of major contradictions that we have
to explore ways to avoid tragedies or indicate
directions above a purely competitive and
one-dimensional chessboard.
The vision of
a global res publica helps Brussels,
Washington and Beijing to work simultaneously for
internal and external purposes. Internally more
cohesive, the EU is constructive externally.
Respectful of its constitutional principles, the
US is more cooperative. A more pluralistic China
is internationally more responsible.
Current issues are testing the
triangulation. The US legitimately worries about
nuclear proliferation in North Korea and in Iran.
China's main goal is to achieve political
integration of the Chinese world. The EU needs an
international environment - rule of law,
environmental standards, balance between economic
efficiency and social fairness - which gives its
post nation-state political construction chance to
maintain itself.
Both the EU and China
have to help the US avoid proliferation in the
Middle East and in North East Asia. Simultaneously
the US and the EU need to facilitate the dialogue
across the Taiwan Straits. At the same time the US
and China have to adopt for themselves some of the
standards that are at the heart of the European
construction.
Brussels, Washington and
Beijing (governments and think-tanks) have to set
up mechanisms through which they can make the best
of a positive triangulation. On the top of that, a
regular summit bringing together the highest
authority of the three sides should take place.
The path to a multipolar system will be
the gradual outcome of a strategic vision, or
forever an ideal translated into international
organizations that do not really decide on war and
peace. Defending the League of Nations Woodrow
Wilson was clear enough: "The arrangements of this
treaty are just, but they need the support of the
combined power of the great nations of the world."
In the long term the United Nations and its
agencies will be able to efficiently tackle the
transnational issues (socio-economic,
environmental, political) only if in the mid term
the EU, the US and China enter a truly cooperative
interaction.
Coincidentally, the Beijing
EU-China summit and the encounter between the
Chinese and American presidents in Washington will
take place only one week before the 2005 World
Summit at the United Nations headquarters in New
York, which is expected to bring together more
than 170 heads of state and government. It should
inspire the leaders of the three sides of the
triangle.
David Gosset is
director of Academia Sinica Europaea, CEIBS,
Shanghai. You can contact him at
gdavid@ceibs.edu
(Copyright 2005 David
Gosset)
Speaking Freely is an Asia
Times Online feature that allows guest writers to
have their say. Please click hereif you are interested in
contributing.
