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By Shashi P.B.B. Malla

Wang Yi’s Initiatives

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi [who is also a State Counsellor] made a major push for international cooperation [and multilateralism] in separate addresses to the United Nations and an Asian forum. He strongly emphasized the urgent need for all countries of the world to work together in harmony on the basis of justice and fairness to prevent a New Cold War, and that major powers should be trailblazers.

At a UN Security Council (UNSC) ministerial meeting – held in the form of a video conference on the sidelines of the 75th General Assembly (UNGA) – Wang appealed to the world’s larger nations to “put down Cold War thinking and ideological bias” (South China Morning Post/SCMP, September 25).

Wang also stressed the need to maintain global order, and for countries to respect the principles of sovereignty, non-interference and peaceful settlement of disputes in accordance with international law.

He positioned the role of the major powers and the UN front and centre: “To strengthen and improve global governance, major powers must play an exemplary role, take the lead in implementing the UN Charter in providing global public goods and contributing to world peace and development.”

Foreign Minister Wang also made a major contribution to world politics by not mincing matters in referring directly to the multiple crises confronting Planet Earth, which require urgent answers and resolute actions – the planetary pandemic, the resultant loss of employment and the possibility of earning a decent living and the looming cataclysmic climate crisis. He succinctly encapsulated the primary goal of mankind: “At a time when the world is facing major risks and challenges, the major powers must make the future and destiny of mankind their priority.” No other statesman – whether of a small, medium or great power – has sketched out such a grand vision.

With his major foreign policy initiatives, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi  has established himself as a key player in moving the world – through word and action – to finally act decisively and confront head on the pressing problems, search for solutions and convert into action by taking timely decisions for the amelioration of the myriad crises. These initiatives have made him a role model among his peers in the leading nations of the world.

The United States is currently in the throes of the presidential elections, but still Trump and his henchmen find time for their country to act as a spoiler in international affairs. The Secretary of State (SoS) Mike Pompeo just parrots his boss and is not playing a positive role in the various crises.

The US ambassador to the UN Kelly Craft knew nothing better than to harp on the same theme of denigrating China and trying to shift blame from Trump’s own abject failures. She blatantly accused Beijing of concealing the origins of Covid-19 and said [falsely] its decisions in the early days of the epidemic had cost the world hundreds of thousands of lives. She had the effrontery to make such a concocted claim while at the same time suppressing the undeniable fact of Trump’s own colossal failures at home and missteps abroad on multiple fronts.

Wang Opposes ‘New Cold War’ at Asian Forum

Wang had previously underscored the compelling need for nations to be highly vigilant and resolutely oppose inciting and creating a so-called ‘New Cold War’ at the ‘Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia’ (CICA). But as the saying goes, ‘it takes two to tango’, and the U.S. is a very difficult proposition! The same can be said in assembling a ‘concert of powers’ and arranging a complicated society dance, like the minuet!

At a virtual meeting of foreign ministers from the member nations of CICA, Wang highlighted that the world was facing an array of new challenges: “Under the current international situation, tension and opposition have risen significantly.”

He reiterated eloquently: “We must be highly vigilant and resolutely oppose inciting and creating a so-called ‘new Cold War’”. This was surely an indirect reference to America as a clear and present danger to the world.

He offered a clear message of international cooperation – what the Trump administration has abjured. He reinforced and recapitulated China’s resolve to work with other Asian nations: “to forge a new type of international relations based on mutual respect, fairness, justice and mutually beneficial cooperation.”

Unwelcome Sideshow

Unfortunately, the CICA meeting’s message of Asian harmony was rudely disturbed by the unnecessary and heated exchange between India and Pakistan, the two participating countries which misused the forum to air their bilateral grievances and to present their respective viewpoints on the ‘eternal’ Kashmir conflict.

Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Mahmood Qureshi slammed the “atrocities by Indian occupation forces in the illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir.”

New Delhi responded with a statement saying Pakistan had abused the forum, and called it a “global epicenter of terrorism.”

Both were examples of vitriolic rhetoric, not very conducive to regional cooperation in South Asia. The unnecessary Indo-Pakistan verbal confrontation has been a bane for the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) to move forward, and presents an unsurmountable barrier for this regional organization.

Trump Again Misrepresents America at the UN

Trump revisited some of the themes of his disjointed America First foreign policy last week in an otherwise short and disoriented speech to the first UNGA.

Even the US Council on Foreign Relations noted: “President Trump’s virtual address to the UN General Assembly was shallow, unpersuasive, and exaggerated his domestic and international achievements” (Stewart M. Patrick/The Internationalist, September 22).

Trump promised his administration would usher in “a new era of unprecedented prosperity, cooperation and peace.” Unfortunately, his domestic and foreign policies contradict this unreservedly. His time is also up. If he has not achieved anything substantial until now, it is unlikely that he will do so now. In fact, he has been the principal sabotager and vandal of multilateralism and international cooperation.

Trump’s rosy scenario is anything but. Thus, the U.S. has boycotted COVAX, a path-breaking consortium of more than 170 countries working not only to develop a vaccine, but to ensure that when one finally is approved by WHO, it is shared equitably by all humanity rather than hoarded by individual countries for their own citizens [as Trump is expected to do for the U.S.].

And as Patrick rightfully points out, it is a major mystery how his transactional foreign policy grounded in (negative) nationalism, nativism, protectionism, and unilateralism can achieve this. Trump is surely living in his own fool’s paradise.

For the Coronavirus pandemic, he held China accountable for the lack of transparency and blamed WHO for its early missteps, but fatally ignored the catastrophic effects of his own subsequent inaction and misinformation – dreadful flaws which still continue to this very day. He failed abjectly and unconditionally to mobilize the federal government. The U.S. has 4 percent of the world’s population, but 20 percent of the deaths to the virus – currently 202,000 in absolute terms and still counting! This is sharp contrast to the developed and emerging economies.

It was also most bizarre that Trump chose to attack China’s global environmental record, while underplaying America’s own dismal performance. And this from a so-called US leader who continues to dispute the reality of climate change and whose administration has done the utmost to dismantle domestic environmental regulations!

It was more than ludicrous when Trump demanded that the UN focus on the ‘real’ problems of the world. Strangely, his agenda of priorities did not include halting the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), conducting peace operations, advancing sustainable development, mitigating and adapting to climate change, and ameliorating the plight of refugees and the internally displaced.

Trump’s critique of the UN – originally articulated in his first address to the world body three years back – is misplaced, and attacking the concept of the centrality of sovereignty in international cooperation a dichotomy: “For decades, the same tired voices proposed the same failed solutions, pursuing global ambitions at the expense of their own

Unwittingly, Trump had proposed a false choice. The UN is an intergovernmental body rather than a supranational one. It is premisedon the political independence of its members, i.e. it doesn’t stand above them. Their “decision to cooperate is an embodiment and an expression of their respective sovereignties” (Patrick). The globalist threat to popular sovereignty only exists in Trump’s fevered imagination. There is, in fact, no collision between multilateralism and sovereignty, because the former is premised on the latter.

Scholarly Viewpoint on Sino-American Rivalry

The neo-realist international relations Chicago professor John Mearsheimer has predicted for years that China’s rise will bring it into conflict with the U.S. [above all in his book: “The Tragedy of Great Power Politics”].

His theory of offensive realism propounds that the current international system is anarchic and that no state can know the intention of another with certainty. This uncertainty drives states to maximize their power and security and achieve dominance to preempt challenges from other states, especially major rivals.

The U.S. began to contain China regionally with the announcement by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2011 of the pivot to Asia [from Europe]. This created a spiral mechanism that is now in play. The Americans and their Asian allies [plus Australia] are pushing back against China, and China is responding with its own strategy.

During the Obama administration not much was done, but under Trump the U.S. is pursuing an aggressive foreign policy/national security strategy that goes beyond containment. The U.S. is in a most bellicose/antagonistic/confrontational manner trying to roll back China’s economy and targeting China’s technology sector. The U.S. clearly does not tolerate peer competitors [see interview in Deutsche Welle/DW, September 23].

Standpoint of a Professional-cum-Analyst of World Politics

There is no doubt that the global multilateral system is facing some major challenges.

Kevin Rudd, former Australian prime minister is one of the most astute analysts of world politics today. According to Rudd, the multilateral system is being undermined by two major factors. One is the emerging split on most multilateral bodies between the U.S. on the one hand, and China and Russia on the other.

The multilateral system is also undermined by the unilateral withdrawal of the U.S. from institutions like the WHO and the UNHRC in Geneva (DW/September 24).

Rudd insists that it is of the utmost importance for a coalition of democratic states to triage the global multilateral system.

Thus, for the future, it is vitally necessary – until a new equilibrium between China and the U.S. is achieved [hopefully under a Democratic Joe Biden presidency] – for other major democracies, including Germany, to become major institutional, financial and policy supporters of the UN multilateral system. They have to collectively apply their will through an integrated strategy to support the functioning of the multilateral system. Otherwise there is acute danger that our common multilateral system will collapse on itself.

 The writer can be reached at: shashipbmalla@hotmail.com

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