In all this, China, through one of its Vice Presidents, reiterated the niceties that had helped turn it into an economic superpower and went on as if nothing had happened. To it, no order was under any threat. It was business as usual. Russia wasn’t visible or prominent at the Forum. The only voice one heard from Russia was that of Vladimir Putin, who had opined that Trump was within his rights in seeking control of Greenland, which wasn’t worth anything greater than 250 million USD. It was a backhanded support to reinforce Trump’s ambitious agenda and deepen the cracks in NATO which had only just begun to appear. It would also give him the reason to stay the course on Ukraine. And then, there were cheerleaders in the Global South, who warmed the gallery by riding the moral high horse.
When one looks at China and Europe, their hope that the old order can sustain lies more in the fact that Trump’s cavalierism has only three more years to go. If somehow the world can hold out through this disruption, there may be better days ahead. Trump also has just these three years to cast all the disruption that he believes is important for the US to retain its primacy. He knows that China’s path to economic exceptionalism has been based on a global trade order underwritten by the WTO and the certainty of supply chains that have bonded the world together into interdependence. He wants to unravel this structure. His first attack is on the world order as we have known, the second on the WTO by defying and disrespecting what were largely accepted rules of business among nations, and the third is the strategy of denial to China of its most essential fuel for its economy, oil and energy — and discouraging others from pursuing wind and solar to retain the eminence of oil energy, and live with fossils. Trump’s takeover of Venezuela and the threatened attack on Iran are both meant to squeeze shut the oil and gas supply line to China from its two major suppliers. Iran thus continues to be precariously vulnerable unless it can close a deal with Trump on oil exports of the kind that Venezuela has made.
China controls ninety per cent of rare earth metals and processes seventy per cent of the total global supply. The US has control of the microprocessor supply chain which it can deny to China which needs these for continued growth. That’s a Faustian bargain which neither can do without. Hence, the efficiency with which both the US and China rush to resolve their differences on trade, especially. The US wants to control China’s economic rise but not contain it geographically, in a remarkable change of strategy. At most, the US will want to be the single-shop supply chain for China from which to buy its oil. At a price and inalienable dependence, of course. Whether Trump’s gamble works needs to be seen. In the meantime, Trump and his well-contemplated assault on structure and convention go on.
For long, the cheerleaders in the Global South have hoped for an alternate system to the Bretton Woods order to emerge. This may have been the de-dollarisation of global trade and finance, or a separate trade and security order to what the US had underwritten since WWII. The BRI gave it some hope, as indeed regional groupings such as the SCO or BRICS. But none came. Gaza was razed, Venezuela occupied, Greenland is under notional siege, and Iran is under an impending threat of direct attack, but impunity has reigned without check. That check could have emerged from China, the proclaimed superpower, and Russia, the military equivalent, but both have chosen to watch the show from the sidelines. There is a reason for such easy acquiescence.
Russia is a military superpower but remains a dependent economy. Its natural zone of influence is the relatively more prosperous Europe, but that happens to be in the opposing camp, presently led by the USA. They will not let Russia, despite its connectivity, colocation and immense military heft, find any comfort among its near-abroad. It then results in Russia’s adventurism in Crimea and Ukraine. When a G-8 is confined to a G-7 by dumping Russia, the proverbial Bear does not take that lightly. Russia, though, remains hamstrung because of its dependence on energy exports, which Europe needs desperately but will not because of the renewed baggage of the Cold War construct. There is a renewed thinking within Europe to dispense with American parenting and find its own soul. At least that is what Canada’s Carney suggests. If so, Russia could regain its European moorings in the new order.
China, because of how the US now envisages its future strategic posture and a different strategy of competing than containing China, will find a much greater liberty of action to go its own, slow, and assured way of economic progress and geopolitical influence through global and regional presence. So conscious is it of its need to not be disrupted by any adversarial currents in that path that she sheds confrontation or conflict. Pakistan’s sterling performance in the short war with India using Chinese tools may have established Chinese credentials of its evolving military strength but it remains a subdued military force, forsaking any notions of extra-territorial aggression. This mindset is unlikely to change till the US continues to be the world’s most exceptional and pervasive military power of unparalleled capacity.
To those who think the US is a declining power and China the ascending power, the news is that the two trajectories haven’t yet crossed. Vali Nasr said it well recently: The arc of history is long, and these presumptive trajectories are unlikely to intersect in our lifetimes. Let middling powers be just that, focusing on getting their act together. Or they will be perennially relegated to playing the cheerleaders only. I paraphrase. The US will know how to deal with Trump and his aftermath. We must know we exist in China’s sphere, and that is where our focus should be, not in the spectacle of seeing America go down. Hegemons are never good, but it is always good to know the ones with which we can live.