States, Civilisations and the Reset of World Order 1032006501, 9781032006505

Table of contents :
Cover
Endorsement
Half Title
Series Information
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Figures
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction: States, Civilisations, Pandemics and Order
The Structure of the Book
Notes
Part I States, Civilisations and World Order
1 Making Sense of Liberal International Order: Concepts and Context
Conceptual Deck-Clearing: Order, Culture and Values
Liberal Order and Beyond: the Argument in Brief
A Little Bit of Economic Theory: Towards a New Mercantilism
Notes
2 International Order, the US–China Relationship and Europe
The Big Picture: Ideology Or Interest in the New Geopolitics?
The US, China and the New Economic Warfare
Coping With the Binary Divide: the EU and Its ‘Existential’ Crisis
Conclusion: From Rules-Based Order to ‘Fight Club’?
Notes
3 Civilisational States and Regions: Actors Beyond a Western Liberal Order
Impressions of Civilisational States
The Philosophical Roots of Chinese Thinking On International Order
China, Cultural Values and a Multilateral World
Putting Cultural Ideals Into Practice
Civilisational Discourse in Russian Geopolitical Thinking
Ideological Transformation in the 20th Century and Its Influence On Russian Foreign Policy
Russia in the 21st Century: Once Again Between West and East
Turkey: a Europe–Asia Pivot?
India: an Emerging Great Power?
Hierarchical Relations in Southeast Asia
Towards Eurasia?
Notes
4 Challenges for World Order: Development, Ecology and Pandemics
Development, Ecology and the Environment
COVID-19 and Beyond: Pandemics and Global Order
A Further Look at the US–China Relationship: the COVID-19 Factor
Notes
Part II A Post Pandemic World Order: Towards a Reset?
5 Civilisational Dialogue as a Vehicle for Reforming World Order: Can the Liberalism–nationalism Standoff Be Negotiated?
Core Questions for Our Age
Towards Ambiguous Tolerance in the US–China Relationship
Can We Create a Global Dialogue?
Civilisational Dialogue: Some Questions of Method
Time for a Rethink of Human Nature? The World According to Rutger Bregman
Notes
6 Relearning Multilateralism: The Principled Case for a Global Reset
Community and Moral Solidarity Matter
Shocks On Cooperation: Brake Or Accelerator?
Multilateral Institutions (Still) Matter
Networks and Hybridity Matter
Notes
7 From Principle to Practice in a Multilateral Reset
Towards Hard-Headed Internationalism
Multilateralism and the Search for Leadership
Multilateralism and the Search for Collective Institutional Governance
Notes
8 Ten Propositions and a Provocation On World Order
Proposition One: Liberalism Is in Crisis
Proposition Two: Sovereignty as an Organising Principle Is Under Challenge But Will Not Go Away
Proposition Three: US Leadership Is in Decline, in Both Hard Power and Soft Diplomatic Terms
Proposition Four: Managing Cultural Difference in an Era of Digitalisation Is Now as Important as Managing Economics and Security in International Relations
Proposition Five: Restraining Self-Interest Is Key to Taming and Reforming Globalisation
Proposition Six: New Approaches to International Governance Offer Some Cause for Hope
Proposition Seven: the US and China Are the Main Powers, But It Is Too Early to Write Off Europe
Proposition Eight: Chinese ‘Revisionism’ Needs to Be Engaged
Proposition Nine: Cooperative Dialogue Is Vital to Combatting Revived Zero-Sum Narratives
Proposition Ten: the Prospect of a New Cold War and the Limits to Dialogue Are Real
A Provocation: Can/will Asia Overtake the West?
Notes
Conclusion
Note
Bibliography
INDEX

Citation preview

“A sweeping and sophisticated analysis of world order, its complex interplay of culture, geopolitics, economics, and pandemic-induced anxieties, with an eye for key academic and policy debates. A book for the times.” Amitav Acharya, Distinguished Professor at the American University,Washington, DC, USA “As we move from a mono-civilization to a multi-civilizational world, from unipolarity to multipolarity, from unilateralism to multilateralism, it takes a complex encyclopaedia of a mind to grasp and explain these complex changes. Higgott provides it. This fascinating volume is a must-read for our times.” Kishore Mahbubani, Distinguished Fellow at the Asia Research Institute of the National University of Singapore, and author of Has China Won?

STATES, CIVILISATIONS AND THE RESET OF WORLD ORDER

This book evaluates the current state of world (dis)order at a time of growing populism, nationalism and pandemic panic. It distils the implications of the ‘civilisational state’ for world order. The retreat of US leadership is mirrored by the decline of both the material and normative liberal multilateral infrastructure it supported. Meanwhile, the rise of China as a challenger is accompanied in political, economic and cultural terms by other emerging powers no longer bound to the norms of 20th century world affairs, notably Turkey, India, China and Russia. By emphasising a cultural lens of analysis alongside robust political and economic analysis, the author offers a prescriptive agenda for the coming post-​pandemic age that recognises the changing powers of civilisational, state and hybrid non-​state actors. Without overestimating their probabilities, he outlines prospects and preconditions for effective inter-​ civilisational dialogue and proposes a series of minimal conditions for a multilateral ‘reset’. This book will appeal to public and private decision makers, the media, the educated lay public and civil society actors interested in the rise of civilisational politics and its possible consequences for world affairs. It will be of particular interest to students and researchers in the fields of politics, international relations, international political economy, geopolitics, strategic studies, foreign policy and social psychology. Richard Higgott, is Distinguished Professor of Diplomacy in the Brussels School of Governance at VUB, Belgium;Visiting Professor in the Department of Cognitive, Social and Political Science at the University of Siena, Italy and Emeritus Professor of International Political Economy at the University of Warwick, UK. He is a fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences of the UK.

INNOVATIONS IN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS Series Editor: Raffaele Marchetti, LUISS Guido Carli, Italy

Innovations in International Affairs aims to provide cutting-​edge analyses of controversial trends in international affairs with the intent to innovate our understanding of global politics. Hosting mainstream as well as alternative stances, the series promotes both the re-​assessment of traditional topics and the exploration of new aspects. The series invites both engaged scholars and reflective practitioners and is committed to bringing non-​western voices into current debates. Innovations in International Affairs is keen to consider new book proposals in the following key areas: • • •

Innovative topics: related to aspects that have remained marginal in scholarly and public debates International crises: related to the most urgent contemporary phenomena and how to interpret and tackle them World perspectives: related mostly to non-​western points of view

Titles in this series include: Pivot Cities in the Rise and Fall of Civilizations Ahmet Davutoğlu Translated from the Turkish edition by Andrew Boord Civilizations and World Order Edited by Elena Chebankova and Piotr Dutkiewicz For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/​ Innovations-​in-​International-​Affairs/​book-​series/​IIA

STATES, CIVILISATIONS AND THE RESET OF WORLD ORDER

Richard Higgott

First published 2022 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2022 Richard Higgott The right of Richard Higgott to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. This book was originally conceived in collaboration with the Dialogue of Civilizations Research Institute, a dialogue platform bringing together diverse perspectives in a non-​confrontational and constructive spirit. More about the DOC’s work can be found at doc-​research.org Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-​in-​Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data Names: Higgott, Richard A., author. Title: States, civilisations, and the reset of world order / Richard Higgott. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2022. | Series: Innovations in international affairs | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021013580 (print) | LCCN 2021013581 (ebook) | ISBN 9781032006611 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032006505 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003175087 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Geopolitics. Classification: LCC JC319 .H525 2022 (print) | LCC JC319 (ebook) | DDC 320.1/2–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021013580 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021013581 ISBN: 978-​1-​032-​00661-​1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-​1-​032-​00650-​5 (pbk) ISBN: 978-​1-​003-​17508-​7 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/​9781003175087 Typeset in Bembo by Newgen Publishing UK

CONTENTS

List of figures  Preface  Acknowledgements  Introduction: states, civilisations, pandemics and order 

x xi xviii 1

The structure of the book  10 PART I

States, civilisations and world order 

15

1 Making sense of liberal international order: concepts and context  17 Conceptual deck-​clearing: order, culture and values  17 Liberal order and beyond: the argument in brief  20 A little bit of economic theory: towards a new mercantilism  27

2 International order, the US–​China relationship and Europe 

30

The big picture: ideology or interest in the new geopolitics?  30 The US, China and the new economic warfare  35 Coping with the binary divide: The EU and its ‘existential’ crisis  40 Conclusion: from rules-​based order to ‘Fight Club’  44

3 Civilisational states and regions: actors beyond a Western liberal order  Impressions of civilisational states  48 The philosophical roots of Chinese thinking on international order  50

48

viii Contents

Civilisational discourse in Russian geopolitical thinking  55 Turkey: a Europe–​Asia pivot?  57 India: an emerging great power?  59 Hierarchical relations in Southeast Asia  59 Towards Eurasia?  61

4 Challenges for world order: development, ecology and pandemics  67 Development, ecology and the environment  68 COVID-​19 and beyond: pandemics and global order  72 A further look at the US–​China relationship: the COVID-​19 factor  74 PART II

A post pandemic world order: towards a reset? 

81

5 Civilisational dialogue as a vehicle for reforming world order: can the liberalism–​nationalism standoff be negotiated? 

83

Core questions for our age  83 Towards ambiguous tolerance in the US–​China relationship  84 Can we create a global dialogue?  87 Civilisational dialogue: some questions of method  90 Time for a rethink of human nature? The world according to Rutger Bregman  91

6 Relearning multilateralism: the principled case for a global reset  95 Community and moral solidarity matter  96 Shocks on cooperation: brake or accelerator?  97 Multilateral institutions (still) matter  101 Networks and hybridity matter  106

7 From principle to practice in a multilateral reset 

109

Towards hard-​headed internationalism  109 Multilateralism and the search for leadership  113 Multilateralism and the search for collective institutional governance  116

8 Ten propositions and a provocation on world order  Proposition one: liberalism is in crisis  120 Proposition two: sovereignty as an organising principle is under challenge but will not go away  122 Proposition three: US leadership is in decline, in both hard ​power and soft diplomatic terms  122

120

Contents  ix

Proposition four: managing cultural difference in an era of digitalisation is now as important as managing economics and security in international relations  123 Proposition five: restraining self-​interest is key to taming and reforming globalisation  124 Proposition six: new approaches to international governance offer some cause for hope  125 Proposition seven: the US and China are the main powers, but it is too early to write off Europe  126 Proposition eight: Chinese ‘revisionism’ needs to be engaged  127 Proposition nine: cooperative dialogue is vital to combatting revived zero-​sum narratives  128 Proposition ten: the prospect of a new Cold War and the limits to dialogue are real  129 A provocation: can/​will Asia overtake the West?  131

Conclusion  Bibliography  Index 

135 143 160

FIGURES

0 .1 3.1 3.2 6.1 7.1

Towards new world order or disorder  The civilisation state  The nation state versus the civilisation state  A post-​COVID-​19 order: the pessimistic scenario  A post-​COVID-​19 order: the optimistic scenario 

9 49 65 96 119

PREFACE

This book offers an evaluation of the current state of world (dis)order and the search for international cooperation in a time of populism, nationalism and growing pandemic awareness. Some 75 years after the creation of the United Nations (UN) and some three decades + after the fall of the Berlin Wall, meant to signal Francis Fukayama’s ‘end of history’ and cement liberal internationalism as the guiding principle of world order, we must look again at where we have come from and try to suggest where we are going. Liberal internationalism as a project is not what it was in the 20th century. The September 2020 UN General Assembly saw the adoption of a Declaration supported by UN member states acknowledging the lack of a current global commitment to collective action problem-​solving, the core argument of which was that today’s global challenges can only be successfully addressed via a ‘reinvigorated multilateralism’. This was an obvious and anticipated observation. Much contemporary analysis of the state of erstwhile liberal international order says the same thing and recognises that multilateralism, as a principle means of developing collective action problem-​solving for the key challenges facing the globe, is under major challenge. We face something of a crisis of order as the world transitions from a US-​led, partially liberal global order to one in which new and hybrid actors of both state and non-​state varieties juggle with each other to play a role in a manner distinct from the processes that dominated the period between the end of Second World War and the end of the first decade of the 21st century. The continuance of a cooperative multilateral world order is, at best, in the balance if the principal institutions of international decision-​making—​the UN and its agencies such as the WHO and the international economic institutions such as the WTO—​are left to languish in the face of an increasingly nationalist, transactional, combative, international diplomacy.

xii Preface

These trends were not created by, but have been exacerbated by, the global pandemic which began in early 2020. An early draft of the book was completed prior to the onset of the COVID-​19 pandemic. It has been rewritten in early 2021. COVID-​19 has done nothing to undermine the central, essentially pessimistic, thrust of the book as it was initially developed in the second half of 2019. Indeed, the trends I identified in 2019 (see DOC, 2019) have been reinforced in 2020. If these trends continue, globalisation will continue to turn in on itself, the world will become less economically open and less prosperous in the aggregate. Decreasing free trade and growing economic (and political) decoupling will be the order of the day (WTO, 2020). In a move not envisaged prior to COVID-​19, the world will also, ironically, likely be less ideologically economically neoliberal. Indeed, a major rethink on globalisation in its Hayekian guise has been taking place. Having been struck a major blow by COVID-​19, some even suggest in alarmist fashion that globalisation itself is ending (O’Sullivan, 2020). By contrast others, such as Joe Nye see a less dramatic impact of COVID-​19 on world order. He resists the suggestion that China will benefit dramatically from COVID-​19 and dismisses the idea that the US will cease to be the world’s dominant economic and political actor (Nye, 2020). Is Nye offering worldly insight or complacency? Whichever view—​the alarmist or the complacent—​turns out to be the most accurate, and unlike in previous times of recent crisis such as 2008, no multilateral, G20 style, cooperative crisis-​busting solutions have raced to the rescue. The lack of foresight and vision on the part of most—​although not all—​ international sociopolitical and economic observers is neither new nor surprising. Even by the normally dismal predictive success of policy ‘wonks’ (see Drezner, 2021) a failure by all but a few to anticipate the impact of a pandemic like COVID-​ 19 must rate as the largest collective analytical oversight since we failed to pick the end of the Cold War and the break-​up of the Soviet Union. But just as the end of the Cold War provoked retrospective soul searching, so too COVID-​19 has called forth a veritable torrent of analysis on the future of how we manage world order, global problems and the attendant implications for international institutional and multilateral decision-​making and other forms of international dialogue and cooperation. Contemporary analysis runs the gamut from the sensible to the moderate, through to the radical and outlandish, to the downright conspiratorial and ‘fake’. Yet one judgement can be drawn from this plethora of competing analyses. The structures and practices of international cooperation, and multilateralism as its principal agent, will not be the same once the initial challenges of COVID-​19 are contained. There can be no return to the status quo ante. This is not to suggest that globalisation is dead. Rather it continues to evolve. What is not clear, and what is an analytical theme of this book, is that we do not know what precisely will replace the hardcore Hayekian variant of economic globalisation. Resistance to globalisation from both the left and the right of the political spectrum has grown. A populist-​nationalist zeitgeist still infuses the politics

Preface  xiii

of many nations around the world. The departure of Donald Trump as President of the US has been a major blow to the zeitgeist. But while Trump may be gone, Trumpism is not. This book aspires to be not simply a discussion of the limits of our evolving thinking about world order, especially since 2016. It is also an applied and empirical investigation of the limitations on and policy options for how its major players might, if indeed they can, restructure the global political and economic institutional orders. Specifically, it asks if we are capable of resetting multilateralism. It questions whether (and how) a cooperative dialogue might assist, or indeed derail, any restructuring. Such a question is not unproblematic, especially given the additional pressures on civilisational dialogue engendered by COVID-​19. Major factors in any reading of COVID-​19 will reflect two linked questions: i Who will get to ‘write’ the ex-​post facto explanatory narrative of the pandemic and who will come out best from the ‘blame game’ that has accompanied it? ii Since COVID-​19 has made the state and government important again, what direction is a return to an enhanced role for the state likely to take? Which of the various models of government on offer are likely to prevail? In brief here, from either end of the policy spectrum, a greater role for the state is envisaged than has been the case in the previous 40 years of Hayekian ascendency. Contrary to assumption in the last quarter of the 20th century, Hayek did not deal Keynes a knockout punch. State driven fiscal stimuli in the face of global pandemic have returned with vigour.While the state remains an ‘unloved compromise’, we have seen it become more interventionist in a range of countries—​many not traditionally disposed towards it beyond its role in the preservation of territorial integrity. As Micklethwaite and Wooldridge (2020) note “… [w]‌hen it regulates something, we complain; when it stands pat and allows something to go wrong, we complain louder”. COVID-​19, or more precisely how to respond to the pandemic, has resurrected a discussion of the state’s role not seen since before the era of the Hayekian ascendency. But while Keynesianism, after nearly 50 years in the wilderness, is making something of a comeback, interventionist welfarism and enhanced government intervention do, and will, continue to meet with resistance, especially from the financial sector and the exponentially expanding power of the “digital oligopolists” (Gerbaudo, 2021). But if Keynesianism meets resistance so too does Hayekism, suffering from a weakened intellectual hegemony occasioned by global financial crisis in 2008 and the growth of de-​industralisation and inequality in countries like the US. Neither model in their pure form fit the requirements of the 2020s. Yet, alternative, non-​western forms of government also have their limitations. For example, while many Asian states, most notably China, may be notionally more meritocratic and efficiently governed, this efficiency is at the expense of what many see as an excessive authoritarianism accompanied by unacceptable limitations on individual liberty.

xiv Preface

The return of the state is of course a two-​edged sword. As also seems likely the world is becoming less politically free in an era of digitalisation. Increased digital surveillance will almost certainly remain after its utility in the battle against COVID-​ 19 has gone.1 The 2020—​capped off by Donald Trump’s naked attempt to subvert the US presidential election—​was a terrible year for democracy with it in retreat in some 70-​plus countries documented in the Economists, 2020 Democracy Index. So, what are the implications of any fundamental rethink of the role that the state beyond that occasioned by the emergence of COVID-​19? For this book the question is how does humanity address the limitations inherent in the management of world order, and especially how to deal with those transnational and trans sovereign policy problems, deemed existential by many countries but incapable of resolution on a country-​by-​country basis alone—​most notably here the impact of climate change? This question is made more confusing by the emerging debate that pits traditional politico-​strategic and economic understandings of globalisation and global order against an emerging understanding of the role of powers that have come to be known as ‘civilisational states’ or ‘state civilisations’. Such powers, most notably, but not only, China, Russia and India, were already seeking to reshape the contemporary international order in both ideational and material terms prior to COVID-​ 19. Their endeavours—​notably those of China, who has used the pandemic to advance its international agenda—​have grown stronger since. Notwithstanding its initial duplicity, China has outperformed the ‘West’ (a term widely used in Chinese political and policy discourse to describe Europe and the US) in the management of COVID-​19. But the conclusions to be drawn from this for the future of world order remain complex. It should not be thought of as axiomatic that autocracies work better than democracies in the 21st century. Not all democracies underperform as the Nordic states, Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan and South Korea have illustrated. But it is not unreasonable to assume that expanded government as a way to mitigate global pandemic, on the back of digitalisation, offers a rational future trajectory, for both authoritarian states and democracies alike. Put simply and crudely, and if COVID-​19 is to be our guide, then the states that handle technology innovatively and learn best practice from others will probably be the ones who can be expected to perform the best in the 21st century. One need not accept Kishore Mahbubani’s 2020 zero-​sum view of the alternating fortunes of the West and Asia in order to recognise that, on this score at least, recent history suggests that Asia’s future holds as much, if not more, promise than that of Western Europe and the US. It is in this context that the book’s empirical focus, unsurprisingly, builds its analysis of the future of world order, principally but not exclusively, determined by the positions and attitudes of the two major players: the US and China as they struggle for supremacy in a new order in general and a seemingly binary technological order in particular in a post pandemic age.

Preface  xv

These are not simply the concern of scholars. They cast massive policy shadows over our understanding of, and the practices of, international order.While the book brings together a set of increasingly evident observations across the key elements of international contest, it does so hopefully in an innovative collective manner. In point form, the following preliminary observations might be made to assist the reading of the book: i The erstwhile liberal world order is challenged by a rising populist-​nationalist zeitgeist and is under greater strain than at any time since the end of Second World War (Kaplan, 2020 and Walt, 2020). COVID-​19 has only augmented this challenge to liberalism. ii Economic globalisation is in trouble. It might have enhanced in unprecedented manner the integration of the global economy since the end of the Cold War. But equally, it has exacerbated domestic inequality in the developed world (especially the US) at the same time as it has failed to build sociopolitical cooperation across national boundaries. iii Signs of deglobalisation—​especially declines in the openness of global trade, the volumes of financial investment and the movement of peoples across tight borders—​are apparent and exacerbating. COVID-​19 has been particularly fierce on travel. As of April 2020, nine out of ten people globally lived in states that had complete or near complete restrictions on cross border travel.2 This trend has strengthened since then. iv The global order is moving away from short-​lived post-​Cold War unipolarity as the limits on US hegemonic power grow and become more apparent.This fact is seemingly better understood in Beijing, Brussels, Berlin, Paris, Moscow and Delhi than in Washington. Whether the next several decades are going to see a process of contest, adjustment and negotiation that will lead to accommodation and cooperation rather than conflict in the conversation over global order is yet to be determined; although the judgement expressed in this book is that the omens for a return to a more internationally cooperative era are not good. v Global governance, as we have known it—​collective action problem solving of trans-​sovereign policy issues in multilateral institutional settings, underwritten by a hegemon—​is massively challenged by a growing resistance to economic openness, a US preference for bilateral, transactional economic diplomacy (which will not simply disappear with the passing of Donald Trump), a decline in US desire to lead (Biden-​esque rhetoric notwithstanding) plus a growing resistance elsewhere to assertive assumptions of US leadership. vi These strains and challenges are not simply economic and politico-​strategic, they are now also culturally infused and exacerbated by the emergent polarising discourse of ‘states versus civilisations’ and fresh talk—​28 years on from Samuel Huntington’s first use of the expression—​of a ‘clash of civilisations’. vii  The prospects of a new Cold War are moving beyond rhetoric.They are driven by the US and China vying for primacy in the areas of technology, artificial

xvi Preface

intelligence and cyberspace. Growing during the Trump era this competition has gained further momentum in the pandemic era in which even established members of the US foreign policy community expect to see the role and the standing of the US further diminished (see Campbell and Doshi, 2020)?   While not yet a fait accompli, nor inevitably the precursor of a new Cold War, the evolution of binary bifurcated world order centred on the US and China is present for all to see. At the time of writing it is too early to do anything other than engage in hopefully educated speculation on the impact of a Biden Presidency on this state of affairs (see Higgott and Reich, 2021). viii The era of digitalisation is fully upon us. Social media and digital communication have changed and continue to change our understanding of the theory and practice of everyday politics in both modern national life and the modern international order. Global communicative interaction is increasingly networked, exhibiting a greater hybridity of both actors and practices than heretofore appreciated. ix If global health is challenged by COVID-​19 and the health of the global order is challenged by US–​China strategic competition then the future structure of international order, in the domain of health, as well as environment, climate, security, trade and finance is in a flux greater than at any time since Second World War. x Some green shoots of post-​hegemonic cooperative endeavour can, albeit spasmodically, be seen in certain policy domains and in settings other than the traditional multilateral institutional contexts. But if the overall prospects for the consensual reform of world order are not impossible, they are not guaranteed and, if a post COVID-​19 international compact cannot be secured then prospects for reform will diminish further still.   A major task will be to reassert the continued practical utility of multilateralism in the face of an increasingly bilateral and transactional approach to diplomacy and in an era in which even the EU, a traditional multilateral booster, proclaims the need to privilege geopolitics in its ‘Geopolitical Commission’. The book aims to be descriptive, informative and analytical but also provocative in our thinking of what might be done to address the current malaise in the international order.The book aims to speak to a wide range of interests across the scholarly community, the public and private policy-​making communities, the media, the educated lay public and civil society actors interested in the possible consequences of the relationship between competing problematics of world order and particularly the role of states, civilisations and pandemics in these relationships. Its endeavour can be captured in four questions: •

Can we, and if so, how do we ensure some kind of global order underwritten by some kind of collective action problem-​solving capable of addressing contemporary trans-​sovereign global policy issues?

Preface  xvii

•

•

•

Will we continue to see the growth of an increasingly combative international system as states seize the opportunity of the pandemic to enhance, or claw back, what they see as their diminished national sovereignty in this age of re-​emerging geopolitics? Assuming COVID-​19 is eventually contained, will we still continue towards a more China-​centric, but polarised, world in which the role and the standing of the US is further diminished? How do we, indeed can we, reassert the continued practical utility of multilateralism as an institution in the face of an increasingly bilateral and transactional approach to diplomacy nourished by a growing populist-​nationalist zeitgeist since at least 2008?

In such dark times, constructive global dialogue is difficult, but for the sake of humankind it should not be thought impossible. ‘Can multilateralism be saved?’ should not be a rhetorical question. Activities that support and enhance dialogue on cooperation across competing value systems should gain in salience; political leaders with a sense of international community and wellbeing should treat the issue more seriously than is presently the case. How can humankind (borrowing from Abraham Lincoln) appeal to the ‘better angels of our nature’.

Notes 1 https://​ o nezero.medium.com/​ t he-​ p andemic-​ i s-​ a - ​ t rojan- ​ h orse- ​ f or- ​ s urveillance-​ programs-​around-​the-​world-​887fa6f12ec9. 2 www.pewresearch.org/​ f act-​ t ank/​ 2 020/​ 0 4/​ 0 1/​ m ore- ​ t han- ​ n ine- ​ i n- ​ t en- ​ p eople- ​ worldwide-​live-​in-​countries-​with-​travel-​restrictions-​amid-​COVID-​19/​.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book is in large part the product of research and writing I undertook in 2019 and 2020 as a consultant to the then Berlin based Dialogue of Civilisations Research Institute (DOC). The book’s pre-​COVID arguments were initially articulated in the report I prepared for the 2019 Rhodes Forum1 and the subsequent Report prepared for the 2020 conference that, for a variety of reasons, never took place. The writing brief for DOC given to me by its then Director, my colleague and friend Jean Christophe Bas, was to look at the state of world order and ask in what ways appropriate reform of that order might be secured by paying greater attention to DOC’s mission to help nurture a dialogue of civilisations. This brief was not of course uncontentious for two reasons. The first, and most important reason, is intellectual and scholarly. It is the problematic and at times contradictory understandings of the idea of ‘civilisation’ and the civilisational state in the theory and practice of international relations that has driven my inquiry. Addressing this issue is a central aim of this book and needs no further elaboration at this stage. The second reason is the politically contentious origins of, rationale for, and role of DOC as a think tank. Founded in Moscow, DOC moved to Berlin and operated there between 2016 and the end of 2020 when the Berlin Office was closed. For the duration of its presence in Berlin—​notwithstanding its mission to generate a global dialogue among all states—​DOC never found an acceptance for its role in the wider think tank community and was the subject of considerable, often unsubstantiated, unfair hostility in the media (see Aris, 2020). But given the profile of its Board Chairman, Dr Vladimir Yakunin, and its Moscow origins the explicit assumption of the more unthinking Western media was that DOC must inevitably be a public front for Russian influence. This was a sadly crude view of its aspirations and misunderstood the intellectual breadth of many of its pluralist founders. For sure it wished to hear Russian voices in discussion of the

Acknowledgements  xix

nature of international dialogue, but not Russia’s alone, nor indeed even predominantly.The organisation, especially under the directorship of the impeccably ‘western credentialled’ Jean Christophe Bas, had a genuine and sincere aspiration to enhance global cross-​cultural dialogue on the key issues of international moment. Indeed, it was because of my knowledge of and respect for Jean Christophe’s integrity that I and many other so-​called ‘western’ scholars were happy to work with DOC. So, along with others I resist cheap assertions that those of us who interacted with DOC were in Lenin’s famous phrase merely ‘useful idiots’—​if I may use an allusion far too historically subtle for many of DOCs critics. On the basis of my experience of the organisation its driving leitmotif was indeed to enhance global conversation. Any reading of my published work for DOC will attest to its independence. My product contains considerable critical analysis of Russia and indeed President Putin. A ‘useful idiot’ working on Moscow’s behalf would not describe him in print as a ‘narcissistic sociopath’ as I did in the 2019 Report. And for the record, at no time was there ever any attempt to influence or censor my writing. I received nothing but politically disinterested support from colleagues. So, my biggest thanks go to DOC and its CEO, Jean Christophe Bas who shed considerable sweat and tears during his time with DOC to see if he could secure the organisation a niche in the contested and competitive commentary and policy space of the international affairs think tank world. Others at DOC supported me in my writing including Maya Janik, Berthold Kuhn and indeed Vladimir Yakunin himself. All at various stages offered insightful commentary on early drafts of the 2019 report. I thank them all. Above all Jonathan Grayson, DOC’s publication editor, helped me throughout in the production of this manuscript. While the book was written with the support of, and as part of my contribution to DOC, neither the organisation nor any of its staff carry any responsibility for matters of fact or interpretation presented in the book. Their willingness to let me use material produced initially for them is duly acknowledge. The manuscript, or portions of the manuscript, were read at various stages by a number of colleagues and friends who made invaluable comments but who are in time-​honoured fashion absolved of any responsibility for the final product. These include Teresa Cruz del Rosario of the National University of Singapore and NYU Abu Dhabi; Luk Van Langenhove and Luis Simon, colleagues at the Brussels School of Governance at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel; Caterina Carta then at Laval University, Canada and now also VUB; Toby Miller, then at the University of Loughborough. Parts of the book have been commented in other forms by some very old academic friends, notably, Kim Richard Nossal, Queens University Canada; Simon Reich, Rutgers University, USA; Simon Evenett, St Gallen University, Switzerland; Inge Kaul, the Herte School of Governance, Berlin; and Heloise and Martin Weber of the University of Queensland, Australia. Kishore Mahbubani of the National University of Singapore did me the kindness of reading the 2019 Report manuscript and provided kind words on it.

xx Acknowledgements

I owe specific debts of thanks to my old friends Amitav Acharya, American University, Washington DC; Anthony Milner, the Australian National University, Canberra and to Jaihong Chen, Peking University; Kira Preobrazhenskaya, Russian Academy of Humanities, St Petersburg; and Selin Senocak, Diplomatic and Strategic Studies Center, Istanbul. Respectively they provided short case studies of the civilisational elements of statehood of India, Southeast Asia, China, Russia and Turkey for the 2019 Report that I was able to draw on in the rewriting of Chapter 3 in order to give the chapter the necessary seamless continuity required for a book rather than the more truncated style of the report. Their insights have been invaluable. While I have expressed their ideas in my own words, I trust I have kept faith with the integrity of their arguments. A similar expression of thanks goes to my good friend and co-​author on numerous projects LukVan Langenhove of VUB for his case study on method in part 4 of the 2019 Report that is now discussed in Chapter 6 of the book. In all circumstances their work has been duly acknowledged and properly cited in appropriate scholarly manner. Similar thanks must also go to several scholars who prepared case studies for the 2020 report on whose work I have also in some small part drawn. Where their insights are used, they too of course receive the specific standard citations in the book’s notes. These include Inge Kaul of the Herte School of Governance; Henry Wang of the China Centre for Globalisation, Ian Goldin of the Martin Centre at Oxford University, Shada Islam, Friends of Europe in Brussels and Simon Reich and Amitav Acharya. I would also like to thank the students in my 2020 MA class in the Theory and Practice of Global Governance and Diplomacy at Vesalius College at the Vrije Universiteit Brussels who made interesting observations on the draft chapters inflicted on them. At some 75,000 words the book is more than double the size of the initial reports. It has been totally revised to take account of the fact that the initial manuscript was written prior to COVID-​19 making itself known to the world. While the impact of COVID-​19 has been significant for the manuscript I am saddened to say that the chapter on the impact of the pandemic on thinking about world order reinforces the pessimistic arguments advanced in the book. The book was completed in January and February 2021. It has been recrafted to take account of the fact that we are post Donald Trump as President of the US, if not post Trumpism as political force. If, at times, the book reflects too heavily on his period in office it is perhaps because I, like many scholars of international relations of a politically liberal persuasion, was at times both dumbstruck and incensed by the appalling nature of this man and his behaviour and the malign influence he has had on world order. I am not alone amongst scholars in suffering from what is commonly known as Trump Disorder Syndrome and from which I will not recover quickly. But completing this book has in some ways been a cathartic exercise. The book also benefits from a critical insight that was missing in the 2019 report. The focus of the initial report was solely on the three problematics of world order, the politico-​strategic, the economic and the civilisational. However, two good friends, Drs Heloise and Martin Weber of the University of Queensland pointed out, very

Acknowledgements  xxi

gently and diplomatically for them, that the Report was fine as far as it went but that there were two major silences in it: (i) the omission of any serious discussion of what we might call the ecological problematic and similarly (ii) the developmental problematic, both of which are essential ingredients in any understanding of the state of world order. Recognising the substance of their critique I cheerfully invited Heloise and Martin to write a rejoinder to the 2019 report, which they did.2 In this book, I have tried to address the lacunae that they identified. I do so by drawing in part on their critical insights and I thank them for it. I would like to thank Michael Reilly and Chun Yi Lee of the University of Nottingham and Jacob Dreyer of Palgrave Macmillan for allowing me to use extracts from my chapter ‘The USA–​East Asia and the Struggle to Reform World Order: What Role for the EU and the UK after Brexit’ from Michael Reilly and Chun Yi Lee (Eds.) A New Beginning of More of the Same: the European Union and East Asia After Brexit, Palgrave Macmillan, 2021. This is my first book as a recovering academic, detoxing after nearly 10 years of at times near soul-​destroying university administration at senior levels. Friends helped me through it. I also wish therefore to take the opportunity to acknowledge some long-​standing friends who have been significant in various stages of my life. In the UK these include Gail Arden, Michael Storey, David Swainston, Patrick Oakes, Linda Robertson and the late David Robertson, Roy May and Peter McKiernan. That I have not seen as much of them as I should have in the last several decades is a sadness for me but matters not one jot I think for the nature of our friendship. In Europe, which sadly we must now differentiate from the UK, Karin Bryce in Budapest; Heribert Deiter in Berlin and in Brussels Luk Van Langenhove, Joe Koops, Luis Simon and Caterina Carta have all been good friends in recent years. Special thanks to my drinking buddies in Brussels, Lina Kirjazovaite and Anber Evans. In Western Australia Dick Robison, Kevin Hewison, Garry Rodan, Kanishka Jayasuriya have been colleagues and friends for over 40 years. Collectively they are perhaps the most outstanding group of scholars of the international political economy of Southeast Asia who justly deserve having had a school of thought named after them. My interests in political economy are different to theirs but there is, I like to think, a common intellectual theme to all our work. In Melbourne Virginia Proud and Ann Capling have been supportive at times when it was much needed. Last but most definitely not least Barbara Evers in Perth has been a friend beyond duty. All listed will know how much, in their own inimical ways, they mean to me. Finally, as my old friend and mentor the late Susan Strange told me nearly 40 years ago “there are some books you cannot write until you get into your later years”. At that time we were drinking beer watching the sun set over the Indian Ocean in a bar just north of Fremantle in Western Australia. As she went on to say, in characteristically brutal fashion “… Richard there are somethings you don’t know you don’t know and you still have a career ahead of you, don’t blow it (polite rendition)”. She was right of course. Given the increasing professional and disciplinary rigidities that have developed in university life, the kind of ill-​disciplined

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xxii Acknowledgements

meanderings to be found in this work—​although I prefer to think of them as what Albert Hirschmann used to call “exercises in trespassing”—​would have been career death for a younger scholar. As Susan went on to say, there are some advantages to growing old. Bide your time. And again, she was right. Only when you are not looking for tenure, promotion or the next move does it become easy to say what you want, in the manner that you want, without fear of disciplinary rebuke or professional retribution.To the extent that this book is an exercise in trespassing, I hope it is one of which Susan would have approved. The manuscript was begun in Budapest in the first half of 2020 and finished in September 2020–​February 2021 from our COVID-​19 locked-​down apartments in Budapest and Florence. So above all, I am grateful to my wife Diane Stone—​the real academic in the family nowadays. She has been with me through good times and bad times and I am pleased to say—​though the temptations must have been strong—​resisted killing me during the lockdown!! As I dedicate this book to her I can see her rolling her eyes and asking why?! Richard Higgott, Florence, March 1, 2021

Notes 1 https://​doc-​research.org. 2 https://​doc-​research.org/​wp-​content/​uploads/​2020/​02/​Rejoinder-​In-​Dialogue-​with-​ Civilization-​Jan-​18-​2020-​HM-​Weber-​original.pdf.

INTRODUCTION States, civilisations, pandemics and order

Common sense tells us that neither global pandemics nor environmental crises can be solved by national responses alone. Sooner or later, if humanity is to survive, the cooperative urge will need to reassert itself. Practitioners, and most analysts, of international relations remain conservative in their thinking, and as we were long ago told (mis)perception is still perhaps the most significant driver of great power foreign policy on those issues that require collective, transnational responses (see Jervis, 1976). We still also possess a largely oligarchic state-​centric vision of the world (G2, G7, G8, through to the G20). But if this traditional mode of thinking—​quintessentially the political culture of 20th-​century, habit-​driven, realist geopolitics—​continues to prevail, we must at least ask ‘to what end?’ Hegemonic thinking by either rising or declining great powers takes insufficient account of the diversity of international actors and policy challenges and how they require different modes of thinking and proportional, practical responses. Of course, nothing is written in stone. Hard-​headed analysis accompanied by innovative normative thinking—​the two are normally discrete from one another—​ could, and should, force us to think beyond traditional positioning in international relations. After all, we are, albeit slowly, coming to terms with the realisation that global pandemics may well influence the future of international relations in as fundamental manner as politico-​security and economic tipping points of the past such as a world war or the great depression did. For example, can we not ask whether the need for a joined-​up global health policy—​in the face of a global pandemic requiring global policy responses—​might not help us reform the old, or better still, kick-​start a new attitude towards the management of global order in general and multilateralism in particular? If the current pandemic (like so many wise after the event, I expect there to be others in the future) can shock global leaders into recognising what is lost by DOI: 10.4324/​9781003175087-1

2 Introduction

the pursuit of great power competition and the failure to cooperate in multilateral decision-​making on global policy issues, then COVID-​19 would have served one purpose. If we are to mitigate current trends towards a further decoupled, increasingly nationalist world order, states will need a new internationalism. But this must be the ‘hard-​headed’ internationalism of the kind that characterised the initial post-​ Second World War era that rebuilt world order. There is no reason why it cannot happen again. But it will have to be made to happen. Exit strategies for COVID-​19 without global cooperation make no long-​term sense at all. In this context, this book aspires to inform of the current state of cooperation in the international order with all its trials and tribulations and to provoke consideration of what might be done to bring justice and stability to an increasingly fractious order in need of reform. This is no small task in the context of today’s feverish debates about emerging geopolitical rivalries, the growing salience of the asserted values and norms of “civilisational states” such as Russia, India, China and Turkey (see Rachman, 2019a) and assorted irresolvable contemporary global challenges. As Christopher Coker (2019, p. x) opines, we are “living in a world in which civilization is fast becoming the currency of international politics”. States no longer simply acquiesce in the oft-​assumed universalist aspirations of that state system widely known as the post-​Second World War liberal order. The liberal order assumed that the presence of nation states underwritten by Hobbesian and Lockean derived concepts of territorial sovereignty, common language and citizenry as the core of that order. By contrast, the civilisation state’s legitimacy is derived from the acknowledgement of a distinct historically and culturally driven understanding of civilisation often measured in millennia rather than centuries. A key element of contemporary civilisational politics is the resurgence of identities that have lain dormant, or simply been ignored, during the period of secular liberal hegemony following the Second World War. ‘Primordial identities’ have resurfaced and the concept of civilisational politics allows us to put into context much of what is happening in the world today.This includes the rise of a populist backlash against economic globalisation, the rise of Islamophobia, increased anti-​Semitism, nationalist-​identitarian politics and the widespread weakening of multiculturalism and growing opposition to multilateralism. The challenge today is not simply to recognise the impact of this resurgence but to structure a reformed world order in which individuals can enjoy their lives “endowed with meaning and dignity as part of a community”, without detriment to other individuals whose identities they do not share (Geertz, 1973).This element of the global puzzle I term the civilisational problematique. Coming to grips with it requires answers to a series of both philosophical and empirical questions addressed in this book: i  D  o the values that underlie the so-​called civilisation state and its implicit claims to cultural homogeneity (and supremacy) stand in direct contradiction to the liberal secular values, often assumed to be universalised principles, espoused by many of the world’s major ‘western’ nation states, especially the US?

Introduction  3

ii

How compatible is the rise of civilisational politics with multilateral cooperation as a vehicle for collective action problem-​solving for those trans-​sovereign challenges in the core global policy areas of the economy (trade and finance), peace, security, health, environment and development? iii Expressed differently, how compatible is the existing global architecture that developed in the post-​Second World War era—​notably the UN sociopolitical and security system and the Bretton Woods economic system—​with the rise of civilisational politics? iv Can a consensual convergence be reached between the ‘universal’ values and freedoms of the old (liberal) order and the cultural particularisms and civilisational values inserting themselves into the debate on any reconfiguration of a new order? v Can we rehabilitate a workable, as opposed to pietistic, cosmopolitanism ethos able to counter communitarian and populist–​nationalist relativism in international relations? If so, how? For example, can Tony Judt’s sense of a global “community of destiny” be develop from and beyond his “communities of origin” (Judt, 2011) or what Ben Anderson calls “imagined communities” (2016). vi Can existing structures and institutions accommodate civilisational and global political diversity? Even if institutions cannot neutralise the negative effects of diversity (as opposed to its many benefits) can they at least make diversity manageable? The global pandemic has magnified the importance of securing answers to these questions? They are no longer merely of a rhetorical nature primarily of interest to the scholar alone.They have major political and policy implications.The world order is beset by serious challenges and change as we enter the third decade of the 21st century and in which the institutional architecture is deemed by many, including some of its strongest supporters, as not ‘fit for purpose’ in an era driven inter alia by digitalisation, the growth of hybrid networks and now pandemics. Analysts identify these changes across a spectrum from a system in need of reform through to more apocalyptic visions of a system on the verge of collapse and with the prospect of a new Cold War between the US and China on the very near horizon. If, as much recent commentary would have it, the old order is undergoing a process of transformation, then the definitive contours of any new order have yet to establish themselves. Could COVID-​19 become the page break for the old US-​led order? In its place, and without international institutional reform, could we see an increasingly combative order of regional blocs centred on the US and China and within which multilateral collective action problem-​solving will play little part? We do not yet know the long-​term impact of COVID-​19. To what extent will it consolidate the drift towards a binary and bifurcated global order and greater nationalist intransigence? Or can it offer impetus for international reform? The former will be the case if we do not take the opportunity presented by such a profound crisis to rethink where we are going, both theoretically and practically with international

4 Introduction TABLE 0.1  Globalisation1

• Historical drivers: • 17th century: Westphalian sovereign state system • 18th century: European Enlightenment intellectual tradition • 19th century: Industrial Revolution, capitalism and the market • 20th century: Communications revolution—​from trains and boats to planes, and from the telegraph to digital communication • Elements: • Trade liberalization • Financial deregulation • Asset privatization • ‘Hollowing-​out’ of the state • Communications revolution and the unsettling power of digital knowledge • Westernisation

cooperation.The progress of humanity requires it and there are historical precedents and theoretical prospects discussed in the book. But if we are heading towards a new Cold War between the two major powers, then the implications of such a trend—​g iven the global challenges we face and the necessary role of these two states in solving them—​must be the key concern of humankind. What is clear, however, is that the processes of change, especially in technology, are speeding up. Digitalisation has grown exponentially over the last two decades and the coronavirus has ensured its emergence as a central explicit factor in global connectivity and decision-​making and an implicit factor in great power and wider multilateral politics. Time is pressing and this transition process poses a series of major conceptual, analytical and practical policy questions for both the scholar and practitioner of global affairs and public policy if we are to engage in a managed and peaceful reform of contemporary world order in this time of crisis. If a better theoretical understanding of the processes in train is the prior conceptual question, then the analytical-​cum-​applied policy question is ‘what will the structures and processes that will determine the shape of a post-​liberal order look like?’ The answers to both questions for much of the post-​Second World War era have traditionally been found in the theory and practice of two inter-​linked problematiques: (i) globalisation (Table 0.1) and the economic problematique; and (ii) war and the geopolitical security problematique found at the interface between the policy dynamics of the contemporary global economic and security orders overtime: first in the post-​Second World War, Cold War era, second in the short-​lived period of unipolar US hegemony up to the global financial crisis of 2007/​2008 and now in an era characterised by neither US hegemony on the one hand nor a multipolar or bipolar equilibrium on the other. The new era is conditioned by several factors notably: i The growing impact of ecological crisis and possible further pandemics. ii The search for a settled developmental problematic in the Global South.

Introduction  5

iii A trend towards economic deglobalisation and economic decoupling. iv The ubiquitous presence of digitalisation. ‘Digital is the way forward in a post-​ COVID world’.2 v Attendant on factors i–​ iv, the new ‘Great Game’3 between the erstwhile hegemon, the rising great power (China), and to a lesser extent, India, the EU and the politically resilient, militarily equipped, but economically diminished, Russia. Unlike the first Cold War, a second one will not involve hard and fast blocs. China is not primarily seen as representing the existential threat of mutually assured destruction that drove strategy and diplomacy in the US–​Soviet Union bipolar era.Yet it is noteworthy that a growing consensus of Americans inside the Washington Beltway security establishment do worry that China poses a regional military challenge in the Indo-​Pacific that may then be used as a platform for future Chinese military aggression (see US Department of State, 2020). But China’s primary challenges to the US now arise in the domains of technology, economy and ideology. The 2021 change of administration in the US will not change that view of China’s motives, rather only how to best address them. Notwithstanding its focus on the growing US–​China bifurcation and notwithstanding the eclipsing of Russia as a global economic power, this book is sensitive to Russia’s residual nuclear capability, strategic location between Europe and Asia, and President Putin’s desire for a multipolar world in which Russia is a core pole. But China, not Russia, has been for some while now, the world’s number two major power and the evolution of a new order will turn primarily on the strategic competition between China and the US. Russia remains a revisionist power in the sense that it seeks to restructure the current order in a way that would accommodate its direct military strengths and interests. China’s global strategy, by contrast, suggests that its ambition goes beyond Russia’s, with the intent to challenge the US as the dominant actor across the policy spectrum in any revised order. It is also assumed, whoever sits in the White House, that the US and China are going to struggle to come to terms with each other over the shape of that global order. They bring different values to this debate. Russia, along with Europe, and to a lesser extent India and Japan (but probably not the UK in its post-​Brexit wilderness) can all be expected to play important, albeit secondary roles, in the working out of this relationship. Readers of this book will in all probability be familiar with liberal values and the domestic and historical traditions that underpin them (see Ikenberry, Feng and Wang, 2019). What we understand less well is the degree to which of these values would be deemed negotiable or non-​negotiable in any future dialogue between the major powers over the reform of world order. Where do minds meet over the importance of the role of international norms and institutions? Where are they irreconcilable? Understanding these issues tends to be something of a moving feast, given the quixotic nature of US policy under the Trump administration and the still evolving position of China under Xi Jinping.

6 Introduction

The crucial issue in the post-​Trump era will be the degree to which the contest will be one of values and ideological power—​a ‘civilisational clash’—​rather than simply one of economic interests and political behaviour. Interests and behaviour can be negotiated. Accommodating competing values within a changing balance of power is a proposition of a different order of magnitude. In simple terms the US, under President Trump, was of the view that the current order greatly disadvantaged it and allowed others, notably China, to freeride at US expense.The rhetoric changed under the Biden administration almost overnight. The degree to which practice will change we will only understand as it evolves over the early years of the administration. For China under President Xi Jinping, the issue is less the impact of economic globalisation, which he thinks has served China well, but more with the fact it constantly has to rub up against not only US economic resistance, but also increasingly strategic and political resistance to its global role. In the words of the Financial Times journalist Gideon Rachman (2019b), as if in a mirror “… Mr Xi wants to change the world’s strategic order, and to do that he needs to maintain its economic order. Mr Trump wanted to preserve the strategic order, and to do that which he needs to change the economic order”. Ironically, both China under Xi and the US under Trump have become both revisionist and status quo powers at one and the same time. The US is revisionist on trade and the international economy and status quo oriented on geopolitical security issues. China is geostrategically revisionist and largely in favour of the status quo on the international economy. Xi Jinping was, and is, a much greater supporter of economic globalisation than Donald Trump ever was. One important theoretical-​cum-​analytical implication of how we understand this paradoxical situation and the resurgence of a new Great Game is a diminution of the hegemony of economics, economic theory and geopolitics as the sole paradigms for understanding globalisation and international relations in the current era. The erstwhile stuff of globalisation, geopolitical security and wealth creation—​what Jacob Viner (1948) called the pursuit of “power and plenty”—​are necessary but not sufficient explanations of global order in their own right. Both the theory and practice of international relations—​especially since the 2008 global financial crisis, the rising era of populism, nationalism, and identity politics and now the impact of the COVID-​19 pandemic—​are much messier to cope with than any single economic or political paradigmatic or theoretical explanations can describe. Beyond the economic and political dimensions of a discussion of world order to be addressed in the first parts of the book, we need to add a third component to our analytical toolbox. We must now bring back disciplines marginalised in the heyday of neoliberalism and the unbridled market-​led view of the world that predominated. In addition to economics and geopolitics, analysis also needs to include insights from history, psychology, anthropology, sociology, law and the humanities in what I label the civilisational or cultural problematique. In addition, it is important that all three of our problematiques take account of the ecological and

Introduction  7

developmental dimensions of international order. These linkages are addressed in Chapter 4. At the level of ideas and philosophy on the one hand and policy and practice on the other, the 21st century’s new Great Game will now be contested across this much wider threefold paradigmatic domains of (i) economics, (ii) politics and security and (iii) culture and society. Empirically, the Great Game—​reflecting a renewed interest in geopolitics by the US and China and the emergence of a new Eurasia-​centred world—​is built on the recognition of Europe and China as what Bruno Maçães (2018, p. 9) calls a “supercontinent”. It will interact with the Atlantic world, that has predominated for the last three centuries under British and then American suzerainty, and the Asia Pacific, or now Indo-​Pacific, world contested by China and the US. Along with the US, the contemporary geopolitical game locks China, Russia, India, Japan and Europe into what is shaping up to be an epic contest. The US, in alliance for the time being with Europe, India and Japan remain the key player, notwithstanding the US’s transactional approach to foreign policy under President Trump and his acceleration of what many see as the US’s decline from hegemony (see, e.g. Reich and Lebow, 2014 and Cooley and Nexon, 2020). The US now embraced a ‘competitive strategic rivalry’ approach towards China under Donald Trump and this has carried through to the Biden administration. But this process is not simply a great power politico-​economic struggle. It is becoming increasingly complicated by how we see great powers. Put simply as a question, are some of the key new players states, civilisations or in the words of Gideon Rachman (2019a) “civilization-​states?” All this nomenclature is replete with semantic ambiguity but what can be said is that there are countries “… that claim to represent not just a historic territory, or a particular language or ethnic group but a distinctive civilization” (ibid.). Samuel Huntington defined a civilisation as “… the highest cultural grouping of people and the broadest cultural identity people have short of that which distinguishes humans from other species” (Huntington, 1993). Huntington saw civilisations as self-​ enclosed, contiguous, geographically confined spaces. He did not acknowledge that they have also been shaped (though unequally) by wider interactions such as cross-​connection and borrowing, colonial rule and/​or imperial influence. While civilisations have deep historical roots—​as in the case of China, India and Turkey discussed in Chapter 3—​they are also living political projects.They are as aspirational as they are real with a range of unarticulated implications for world order. To the extent possible, this book aspires to provide clarity to this conundrum. But in so doing it resists the re-​fashionable attempt to see a ‘Clash of Civilisations 2.0’ as largely a fait accompli. Rather, this book is predisposed to seeing civilisational interaction as a positive dialogue. But nevertheless recognises that it can also be, and often is, a contest rather than a dialogue. Successful dialogues around the concept of civilisation could be powerful instruments to bring peoples together. Conducted badly they can polarise, generate conflict and force peoples apart.

8 Introduction

The nature and lasting influence of language is important here.A current problem for us, as Coker (2019, p. 5) points out, is that once you have read Huntington the idea of the ‘clash’ sticks with you. It gives rise to what Kim Nossal (2019) calls the language of “clashism”, in which the discussion of civilisational dialogue is invariably “challenge oriented” and “survivalist” in tone and in which civilisations are depicted as enduring, incommensurable, non-​cooperative and competitive. Nossal’s point can be illustrated in the language of former President Trump. As he tweeted early in his term: The West will never be broken. Our values will prevail. Our people will thrive. And our civilisation will triumph. @realDonaldTrump, July 6, 2017 Further, Trump’s then Director of Policy Planning at the State Department, Kiron Skinner, described competition with China as “a fight with a really different civilisation and a different ideology”. This was contrasted with the Cold War struggle with the Soviet Union, which she characterised as a “fight within the Western Family”. Skinner said that with China it was the first time the US had faced a “great power competitor that is not Caucasian” (see Washington Post, May 4, 2019). The idea of civilisation is now more politically salient than at any time since Huntington wrote his Foreign Affairs article and book (1993 and 1996) and ‘clashism’ invariably makes culture the fault-​line between states and civilisations and also a driving force in world politics. The increasing use of Huntingtonian language—​or more precisely, that of the originator of the idea of civilisational ‘clashism’, Bernard Lewis—​is, of course, not unique to the US. Civilisational discourse has been advanced in other major countries such as India, Russia and China.Vladimir Putin articulated the idea of Russia as a ‘state-​civilisation’ under challenge from globalisation as early as 2012 and China has had a conception of itself as a civilisation for several millennia. More generally, it has been picked up and extensively used by right-​wing—​and even some left-​ wing—​populists across Europe and Asia. We need to distinguish between two understandings of civilisation. Civilisations (plural) as depicted in Figure 0.1 should be seen as both sites/​ locations of agency and civilisation (singular) as a generative force, which contributes to the development of institutional and normative frameworks of international society. Civilisation (singular) can also be seen as a set of cultural practices while civilisations (plural) can be seen as an empirical description of peoples with shared histories and traditions. But both meanings are increasingly political and ‘strategically deployed’ concepts in contemporary international relations. States appropriate the concept to flag their great power status—​or aspirations—​and resist the ubiquity of universal liberal values in the discussion of the structure of global order (see O’Hagan, 2018). While the contest between the US and China is an empirical focus of this book, we should not minimise the degree to

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up. It will never again tolerate being bullied by any nation. Xi Jinping

Demanding a revision of the current order

Using soft power instruments

Creating alternative forms and blocs of cooperation

CHALLENGING THE STATUS QUO CIVILIZATION STATES— REVISIONIST STATES?

never be broken. Our values will prevail. Our civilisation will triumph. Donald Trump

external drivers

Selective use of the current order’s rules and institutions Military buildup

International liberal order UNDER PRESSURE

Political discourse Reference to civilisational exceptionalism, claim to cultural supremacy

“The West will

CHALLENGING THE STATUS QUO

“China has stood

Challenging Western dominance and its claim to universality of liberal values

Constructive forces Demand more equality and justice Multilateralism in politics and trade

internal drivers

Trying to uphold the current order

FIGURE 0.1 Towards

Politicocultural battle Military buildup

new world order or disorder4 Source: Produced by Maja Janik, DOC

DEFENDING THE STATUS QUO WESTERN STATES— STATUS QUO STATES?

FORCES WITHIN THE WEST Populist movements; nationalist leaders; civil society; businesses

Destructive forces e.g. Trump ‘Illiberal’ governance Reversion to protectionism Unilateral practices

Introduction  9

Hedging against the rise of emerging states

Trade pressure

CHALLENGING THE STATUS QUO

10 Introduction

which wider Western articulations of civilisational identity are also to be found as central to its antagonistic relationship with Islam, where according to O’Hagan, “narratives of irreconcilability” prevail. While our priority in the era beyond 2020 clearly has to be new and innovative, it makes no sense to unlearn our institutional and multilateral history. Yes, reform is needed but that is not the same as suggesting that we need to start de novo. We need to refine earlier lessons and experiences—​not unlearn them—​and notably take account of the impact of factors as various as the newly energised roles of rising powers and the implications for communication of digitalisation (see Coyer and Higgott, 2020).

The structure of the book The book is both empirical and discursive. It is divided into two parts with eight substantive chapters. Chapter 1 provides a conceptual and contextual understanding of the history of the post-​Second World War liberal order. Chapter 2 looks at the challenges international order faces in the contemporary era, but rather than bog the reader down in the vast, and at times confusing, conceptual literature of international relations scholarship, the analysis is presented through an empirical discussion of the changing nature of the US–​China relationship up to the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. Chapter 3 examines what we might call the new actors, aspirations and pressures standing in opposition to traditional understandings of liberal order. It does so via short discussions of the history and underlying philosophies of what we are now commonly coming to call civilisational states, notably China, Russia, India and Turkey and the development of the concept of Eurasia. Chapter 4 examines the manner in which two further fundamental facets of the contemporary order must be taken into account in any understanding of its future; (i) what we might call the global ecological and developmental agendas; and (ii) the COVID-​19 pandemic and the manner in which it has added a further dimension of how we look at the prospects for world order in the present with additional speculation (being the only option available to us) about its aftermath.The book, in keeping with much other literature, argues that the pandemic may well come to be seen as the turning point between the old post-​Second World War order and the as yet to be determined direction any new order takes. Part II, building on the discussion of the three problematiques and the impact of COVID-​19 in driving the discussion of world order discussed in Part I, offers both a normative and applied defence of the principles of international cooperation in the face of the onslaught that has hit multilateralism as both principle and in practice in institutions such as the UN, the WTO, the WHO and the international financial institutions. All, to a greater or lesser extent, have come under considerable challenge in recent times. But the book is not simply a rehearsal of the notional benefits of long-​standing multilateral institutional cooperation, devoid of any sense of the tensions and contests present in the international environment. It is

Introduction  11

a hard-​headed look that recognises that the principal global institutions are in need of serious reform if they are to have a utility in a post-​COVID-​19 era. In this regard, the future of humanity requires us to think beyond traditional ordering principles still largely captured by the prevailing assumptions of the Westphalian sovereign state system. It requires a recognition that a one-​size-​fits-​all model of acceptable global values, let alone sovereignty, does not exist. We need to ask how we can underwrite some kind of global order which is also, in turn, underwritten by some kind of value-​based, collective action problem-​solving capability. We need to carry this conversation forward in a managed but positive manner. This quasi-​philosophical discussion that permeates the book is accompanied by a review of the context for new economic and political thinking on multilateralism emanating from the prevailing structural nature of the global political economy.The discussion of these structural changes will have three facets: i A recognition that the future direction of economic globalisation—​especially economic decoupling—​is not predetermined but rather undergoing fundamental change in both its negative and positive characteristics. ii A consideration of how we harness the growing importance of non-​traditional hybrid actors possessing ‘state-​like properties’ as key players in global decision-​ making such as cities, NGOs, civil society groups and large corporations—​ especially the digital giants and particularly their role in the changing distribution of political power and how to respond to it. iii While recognising the trend towards bifurcation, the book resists the idea that bipolarity is a fait accompli, notwithstanding the dangers of a new style of Cold War between the US and China emerging if their positions harden and other actors cannot cooperate to head it off. Thus, the core argument of Part II is that global cooperation is going nowhere without institutional reform and, by extension, some substantial reform in multilateral decision-​making. Of course, institutions at times get captured or compromised or become tired and bureaucratically sclerotic as with the WHO or UNESCO. Or events overtake their mission, as with some key elements of the WTO’s agenda. But that an institution might be functioning suboptimally is, in the first instance, a reason to see if reform is appropriate. It is not an automatic reason to get rid of it. While not all the post-​war institutions would be created today in their current form, many still have important functional roles which, if well implemented, we would want to have available to us, one way or another, as a global community. A further major issue in any reform process that often remains unaddressed is the question, ‘from whence cometh global leadership?’ This is perhaps the most discouraging element of the contemporary conversation. This is an issue of agency. Specifically, it is about people in power. It is an issue that is often dodged for fear of offending individual leaders. But we will get nowhere if we fail to recognise that many of the world’s major global leaders are by personal socio-​psychological disposition, ill-​suited, if not downright opposed, to the international cooperative

12 Introduction

endeavour. Until we start asking appropriate questions about leadership—​especially what we are looking for in the behaviour of world leaders—​we will get nowhere. Populist authoritarian leadership of either the right or the left is not conducive to multilateral cooperation. Chapter 5 addresses the limits of humanity’s ability to upscale its understanding of identity, community and solidarity to international cooperation. Though not without success over the millennia in giving substance to these ideas at the level of the state and below, a final push to secure community and solidarity beyond the level of the nation-​state is shown to remain elusive. Chapter 5 suggests that if we are to make progress re-​booting international cooperation we need to rethink the degree to which ‘universalism’ continues to have contemporary utility for understanding values beyond the level of the state. But humanity needs to practice the art of what Rutger Bregman (2019) calls possibilism in the application of these values if the liberalism-​civilisational standoff is to be peacefully negotiated. The chapter concludes that the prospects are daunting and exacerbated by recent events such as heightened US–​China competition and the COVID-​19 pandemic. Although philosophical in tone, the issues raised in Chapter 6 cast policy shadows over our ability to engage in cooperative decision-​making at the transnational level. It requires a more applied approach at the same time as it shows why the discussion of human behaviour still matters for multilateralism and international institutionalism as the basis for transnational collective decision-​making. Simply, Chapters 6 and 7 ask if we can, and if so how do we, reset multilateralism? They suggest that if we are to do so we must recognise the salience of four core factors: the importance of communal solidarity and internationalism and the role of multilateralism and networks. The chapters in Part II identify what we have learned about the utility of multilateral institutions and behaviour during the 20th century and the dangers implicit in the ‘unlearning’ of its core principles in the 21st century. It considers the dangers of ‘unlearning’ and ‘unravelling’, especially at the time of the 75th anniversary of the UN and identifies a series of propositions that need to be adopted if we are to secure a multilateral reset. The practicalities of any reset in an age beset by global challenges—​be they pandemics, increasing environmental damage or heightened political, security, economic and technological (AI, cyber) contests between the major players—​are neither obvious nor easy. Part II therefore focus precisely on the ‘how to’ question. Working with Bregman’s assumptions of possibilism the focus is not only on what should be done but also on what might or can be done. It identifies the core obstacles and what we need to do to overcome them if we are to reset the contemporary multilateral decision-​making order. Lessons to be taken on board from Part II include: i A need to recognise the ‘multiplex’ nature of contemporary global governance (Acharya, 2017a,b). ii A need to distinguish the practice of multilateralism from the ideology of globalism.

Introduction  13

iii A need to bridge the ‘compatibility gap’ between international collective action problem-​solving on the one hand and national policymaking sovereignty on the other—​the two are often not seen to be incompatible. iv The need to take account of perspectives from other major players; notably but not only the US and China, but also the EU, India, Russia and the regions of Africa, Latin America and East Asia beyond China. v The need to see leadership not only as a collective institutional process, but also to recognise it is people who make policy and take decisions. Thus personal (-​ ised) political leadership, the practice of leaders, also matters. Chapter 7 focuses on the need for ‘hard-​headed internationalism’ in pursuit of multilateral institutional reform. The chapter works with a premise that any reform will be driven by the predominantly realist philosophy of the state system in which dominant actors will satisfice in the name of preserving sovereign control over national policymaking rather than a liberal philosophy of collective action problem-​solving suggesting sovereignty pooling, no matter how small. The chapter examines the prospects of what Inge Kaul (2020) calls the search for a “dual compatibility” model that preserves the former and optimises the latter. Chapter 7 also investigates the increasing role of hybrid actors—​especially non-​state actors and networks—​and the practices that take us beyond traditional 20th-​century state-​ dominated understandings of multilateral diplomacy. Rounding out the arguments developed in the book, Chapter 8 tries to distil what it sees as ten core propositions for explaining the current state of world order. It also weighs the pros and cons of the principal provocation of our age—​articulated most unambiguously and powerfully by Kishore Mahbubani (2020)—​that China will replace the US as the world’s most influential power. By way of conclusion the book asks what global order might look like after the short-​lived unipolar moment of US hegemony. It asks if Hans Morganthau’s (1948) statist, monocultural and “nationalist universalism”—​which for nearly four centuries, determined the world’s plurality of morals and ethics, at the same time as it minimised cultural diversity—​makes any sense in the 21st-​century post-​pandemic world. International order is shown no longer to be, if it ever was, coterminous with American hegemony alone. As important as the concept of sovereignty has been, and continues to be in contemporary international relations, any future order will need to account for and accommodate a range of factors driven, somewhat contradictorily, by the (still) integrating tendencies of economic globalisation on the one hand and the disintegrative tendencies of increasingly assertive sociocultural ‘civilisational’ politics on the other.

Notes 1 Still one of the best definitions is Scholte, 2000, Source: Author. 2 www.livemint.com/​brand-​stories/​digital-​is-​the-​way-​forward-​in-​a-​post-​COVID-​world-​ 11608108884035.html.

14 Introduction

3 Evoking historical memory, the term originally refers to the political and diplomatic confrontation between British India and Russia over the domination of central Asia in the 19th century (see Hopkirk, 1990). 4 I would like to thank Maja Janik for the preparation of the graphics in this book.

PART I

States, civilisations and world order

1 MAKING SENSE OF LIBERAL INTERNATIONAL ORDER Concepts and context

Conceptual deck-​clearing: order, culture and values The scholarly community freely uses, often in contradictory fashion, a range of concepts and terms that are not settled in their understanding. Many of these terms are what social scientists call ‘essentially contested concepts’. Moreover, it is often assumed that the policy community, both public and private, will understand these concepts when they often do not; and indeed, when there is no good reason why they should. This is a lacuna that needs to be addressed. What follows is a clarification of some essentially contested concepts—​notably (i) ‘world order’ which, notwithstanding some semantic differences, is used interchangeably with ‘global order’ and ‘international order’; (ii) ‘civilisation’ and ‘civilisations’; (iii) ‘culture’, ‘cultural relations’ and ‘cultural dialogue’. The idea of ‘order’ is not without complication. Our starting point must be that any order, such as an international one, as exemplified in the writing of Hedley Bull (1977) is socially constructed. Construction usually implies, as it did for Bull, the creation of rules and norms that reflect stability rather than conflict. In the hands of US scholars of liberal institutionalism, the idea of international order developed beyond Bull’s simple idea of order to reflect an emerging, albeit thin, pluralistic solidarism of states. Through the work of scholars such as Robert Keohane an understanding of order gave much greater attention to the impact of economic interdependence and the increasingly complex nature of global governance. Throughout the latter quarter of the 20th century it came to include an enhanced role for actors other than simply states (regimes, international organisations and non-​state actors). Often used as a synonym for a liberal international order is the idea of a ‘rules-​based order’. The meld of liberalism and order glossed over history. Anyone who knows just a little about European colonialism, or indeed US involvement in Latin America DOI: 10.4324/​9781003175087-2

18  States, civilisations and world order

and the Philippines, understands that by no means all international rules (i.e. rules beyond the state) are axiomatically ‘liberal’. Nor can a liberal international order be thought of as synonymous with what is often also referred to (including in this book) as a ‘post Westphalian order’ that privileges, in theory if not always in practice, the territorial sovereignty of states, and the principle of non-​interference, as reflected in the UN charter above all else. While both concepts of order accept, again in theory rather than practice, the sovereign equality of states the theory, and in some core instances the practice, of liberal order went beyond the Westphalian core. It progressively incorporated principles of democracy, collective security reflected in the post-​Second World War US led alliance structure and the relatively (never absolute) free movement of goods, capital and people and cooperation in collective action problem solving organised via multilateral institutions. These were no small achievements. Simply by stating the core components to be found in the heyday of the liberal order in the final third of the 20th century we can see the degree to which it is coming unravelled in the first quarter of the 21st century. Core elements of the currently troubled liberal world order—​especially acceptable levels of economic openness and universal commitments to collective action problem solving, negotiated through multilateral institutional processes and practices—​must and will remain central to any new order. But for that to happen a way must be found to accommodate new demands for participation with non-​ universal civilisational/​cultural norms advanced by the other rising actors. The concept of culture always presents a problem for scholars and practitioners of international relations alike. The impact of cultural diversity on international politics is not well understood. In particular, the growing influences of non-​Western powers, ethno-​nationalism and religiously inspired violence give a lie to our traditional assumptions that cultures are tightly integrated, neatly bounded, clearly differentiated and causally powerful as explanatory factors in how civilisations work. The conclusion we now have to draw in the wake of events such as Brexit, ‘Making America Great Again’—​indeed culture wars in the US and Europe generally—​and the reassertion of Confucian nationalism in China and Hindu nationalism in India is that contest and conflict are often as omnipresent as order. The current debate about civilisational states is telling us that we need to recognise that shared ideas shape the interests and practices of states as much as material forces. It is often too little appreciated that this has been well understood and articulated in the development of constructivist academic scholarship of international relations of the last 25 years (see Wendt, 1999 and Reus-​Smit, 2019), but it is something relatively new for us to think about in the applied public policy domain of a post-​neoliberal era. The operating tool of cultural analysis is the idea of ‘shared meaning’ in the norms, values and principles that make action in international relations understandable, noting that norms, values and principles can never be perfectly defined or universally agreed. Identifying universal values has always been a problematic enterprise. One of the earliest, and failed, attempts came from US President Woodrow

Making sense of liberal international order  19

Wilson in his programme for the League of Nations. Some value propositions—​ notably the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, including a (limited) number of human, civil, social and economic rights—​were later to be adopted, albeit in a non-​legally binding way, by the UN in 1948. Then, between 1966 and 1976, they were incorporated into the International Bill of Rights built on the post-​colonial, pan-​African and pan-​Asian spirit of idealism of the time. But this was always a strained relationship given that rights were very much a European conception while order—​be it consensually generated or not—​was much the greater African and Asian priority. At the height of the Cold War, again reflected in Bull’s view of order, the themes of order and stability took precedence in the developing world over those of justice, liberty, rights and accountability (for a discussion see Higgott, 1983). The Bangkok Declaration of 1993 saw Asian states, led by Singapore and China, stress second and third generation rights of sovereign equality, fraternity and basic needs (see the discussion in Srinivasan, Mayall and Pulipaka, 2019). In the search for global order of the kind addressed in this book, there is always a tension between the pursuit of material economic and politico-​security goals on the one hand and moral and cultural-​normative values on the other. For much of the post-​Second World War era, liberal states implicitly—​and often explicitly—​ imposed a liberal values-​based conditionality on their relationships with the emerging (largely postcolonial) world. Alternative values, based on concepts such as Confucianism, Hinduism or other spiritual beliefs stressing societal obligations had invariably been assumed to be non-​universalist for the purposes of creating a Western understanding of world order. Values: If we are to bring about a reform of world order this asymmetric relationship between Western and non-​Western value systems has to be addressed (Acharya, n.d). Specifically, we need to identify how Western rights-​based order might satisfactorily deal with non-​Western notions of moral obligation, and conversely, how Asian values, which privilege such obligations, might address issues of rights—​notably political and human rights—​of a liberal variety. This is a fundamental task; indeed, a major challenge for humanity in the foreseeable future. Are there fundamental and irresolvable differences of values or is the difference merely an age-​old issue of power politics in international relations that could, with appropriate will and skill, be negotiated? This is a key question for the future. To make sense of the conversation over the relationship between states and civilisations we need to be clear on the distinctions that exist. If values are defined as principles or standards of behaviour, then by extension, they represent judgements about what is important in life. This implies, among other things, the existence of right and wrong. It also implies the existence of choice between them. Choosing right over wrong and good over bad are moral and ethical acts. As such, they contrast with what we understand by modern, post-​Westphalian, international relations as the practice of statecraft, where the essence of statecraft is making choices usually driven by realist thinking and expedience. Values, as ethical or moral principles,

20  States, civilisations and world order

seem less central to modern day Western foreign policy than was, rhetorically at least, the case in the past. Again, by contrast, collective self-​perceptions, enduring habits, precepts, and customary ways of doing business, derived from the history and culture of a people, as Chapter 3 will illustrate, offer us a clearer way of understanding the policy actions of countries such as China and India with long civilisational traditions. National character and tradition remain important in their foreign policy choices. Their organic roots are to be found in the very fibre of society. China’s oft touted ‘century of national humiliation’ infuses the national project over the long term, even in the face of questions of immediate material gain or loss. History, philosophy, culture and mythology—​the ingredients of our civilisational problematique—​are more significant in modern day international relations than much economistic materialist-​driven explanation of post-​Cold War globalisation assumes. At the risk of simplification, and as a heuristic device only, we can see Chinese and Indian international relations and diplomacy functioning within a framework drawn from their own unique philosophical and cultural traditions, while Western international relations and diplomacy can be said to operate within a framework provided by a mix of Greek philosophy, Roman classics, the New Testament and later Renaissance thinking.

Liberal order and beyond: the argument in brief We have come to recognise that the wisest and most effective way to protect our national interests is through international co-​operation—​that is to say, through united effort for the attainment of common goals. US Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr, closing address at the Bretton Woods Conference, July 22, 1944 We must protect our borders from the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our companies and destroying our jobs. Protection will lead to great prosperity and strength. Donald Trump, inaugural presidential address January 20, 2017; cited in Wolf, 2019 Diplomacy, diplomacy, diplomacy. President-​Elect Joe Biden, cited in The Financial Times, November 25, 20201 How times change. The post-​Second World War order, often referred to as a liberal international order, underwritten by the US acting as what Lisa Martin (2004) calls a ‘self-​binding hegemon’ is increasingly challenged. This order, so the popular argument tells us, is over. But to be clear, the liberal order was never as liberal nor indeed as global as many of its strongest boosters would have had us believe (see Ikenberry, 2011).

Making sense of liberal international order  21

If it is not over, more measured scholarly analysis identifies its difficulties (see e.g. Adler Nissen and Zarakol, 2020, Eilstrup-​Sangiovanni and Hofmann, 2020 and Copelovitch et al., 2020). Objections to the order come from without and within. While the US remains the major global power, objections to the liberal order, already in existence prior to the election of Donald Trump were exacerbated from day one of his administration and grew in the increasingly present populist political communities of other core member states of the order; hollowing out the order from within as Adler Nissen and Zarakol (2020) note. At the same time conversely, we have entered an era driven by the growing salience and interests of other great and rising powers that were not paid-​up members of the liberal order. This is leading to a situation in which combative global geopolitics and geo-​economics are reasserting themselves. Liberalism has, overtime, always been both a contested and evolving concept, especially in its international applications such as how liberal principles might be, or indeed should be, spread. As a political philosophy liberalism probably faces greater challenge than at any time in its history, I have distilled liberal political theory (inadequately for any bona fide political philosopher I am sure) down to those elements only directly relevant to the arguments presented in the book. In this regard, in a classical enlightenment approach and captured in the 1795 writings of Emmanuel Kant (1983, pp. 107-​143 passim) liberalism’s core component is a belief in individual human freedom and self-​determination which overtime has seen the development of democracy and the rule of law as the best way to guarantee these freedoms. The challenges to modern day liberalism as a political philosophy cannot be comprehensively addressed here. For a good, if pessimistic discussion of liberalism’s change over time and future, see Deneen (2018) and somewhat more optimistically, Garton Ash (2021). Each of them identifies liberalism’s challenges as both theoretical and empirical. Challenges come from across the political spectrum from left to right. Challenges are found at all levels of society from critiques of liberal pedagogy in the school system through issues of equality and opportunity within societies through to the area of concern for this book, the growing international contest between liberal values and the drift away from liberal world order. For much of the post-​Cold War era international liberalism suffered from a narrowing rationalist economic working definition. In a sentence it was a mono-​ dimensional neoliberal economic, market-​driven fundamentalism underpinning the globalisation of the economy with dramatic impact on humanity but without most of humanity having any deliberative input to its implementation. By any definition it was insufficiently attuned to a spectrum of injustice from material and socio-​economic inequality through to issues of cultural, gender and racial recognition and the application of power politics justified in liberal rhetoric. The inegalitarian outcomes of economic, or more precisely financial, globalisation has been a major contributor to liberalism’s growing crisis. By extension, the idea of a liberal world order was seen by many as simply the extension to international relations of centrist liberal western ‘white privilege’. An

22  States, civilisations and world order

awareness of the links between the maturation of liberalism in the age of imperial and colonial expansion is a significant factor contributing to the growing resistance to the idea of the universal nature of many liberal values. The core elements of liberalism were anything but universal in the colonial era. Europeans for much of the post-​colonial era have conveniently forgotten this. The historical legacies were further reinforced by “… the West’s liberal wars … [Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq] … justified by reference to liberal ends” (Garton Ash, 2021). Although the EU recently become more publicly sensitive to the issue of legacy. A shift is in train on western thought. Liberalism’s international contradictions have come into sharp relief since the end of the Cold War and perhaps especially since the global financial crisis (GFC) of 2008. Meritocratic universalist ideals are found not only wanting but also, at the extreme, containing their own racist and (post) colonialist dynamics. In 2019, the European Parliament even passed a resolution recognising the negative historical and continuing contemporary effects on their former African colonies and African people living in Europe (European Parliament, 2019). The assumption within liberal societies of the right of individuals to be equal and autonomous sits in sharp contrast to the dramatic and growing material inequality and dependence of the marginalised citizenry alienated from liberal power structures in the Anglo-​American heartland. These objections are genuinely articulated by a wide section of the traditionally marginalised and disempowered sections of the communities of the advanced western world. But these objections are also used for instrumental reasons by other actors, keen to see the dismantling of the institutions (cultural and political) of liberalism. For many, woke culture is an overdue collectivist successor to a longstanding individualist liberal ideology. For others it is a chance to undermine the protected hierarchy liberalism was seen to serve but which champions of liberalism often appear reluctant to defend. Although not couched in the contemporary ‘woke’ discourse objections to liberalism, captured in the critique of a liberal international order, reflect a similar dynamic. International liberalism is challenged for its universalist assumptions and its emphasis on the primacy of individualism—​what the distinguished realist scholar of international relations, John Mearsheimer (2019), calls the ‘great delusion of liberal dreams’ which he sees as at odds with the stronger politico-​ideological forces and international realities of nationalism and realism.This is the contradiction in the global context where liberalism is now confronted by competing views from both left and right, captured in the ubiquitous languages of anti-​globalism and nationalism and the rise of the great powers not traditionally thought of as being part of ‘the West’ such as China and India or, like Turkey, less keen nowadays to be thought of as western (see Senocak, 2019). To be sure liberalism is in part responsible for the critique mounted against it. For much of the last quarter of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st century it has demonstrated an insouciance towards powerful critiques. Liberalism’s failure to recognise dissatisfaction with it as a practical political theory of democracy has assisted in the evolution of both contemporary populism and nationalism

Making sense of liberal international order  23

in the trans-​Atlantic region in the second decade of the 20th century and China led developmental authoritarianism in Asia. Particularly, liberals have failed to provide a sufficiently robust defence of liberal democracy, individual human liberty, equality of all before the law and free speech. Most notably for this book, classical liberalism failed to put sufficient distance between itself and neoliberal globalisation. Neoliberalism with its negative distributional consequences is the antithesis of much earlier liberal thought on the centrality of freedom to guarantee self-​determination but also to provide for the sustainability of society writ large. In shorthand, first, classical political liberalism, with its commitment to the concept of equality under the rule of law for the weak as well as the strong, vacated the playing field to predatory Hayekian neoliberal economic globalisation. Neoliberalism rejected the classical societally supportive compensatory components of open economic liberalism captured in John Ruggie’s (1983) justifiably celebrated phrase of ‘embedded liberalism’—​a system which practiced Smith abroad but Keynes at home. Second, classical liberalism largely failed to acknowledge that universal values could exist without having to be defined solely as liberal values. There was little or no recognition that some communities can, and do, subscribe to values such as freedom and democracy without accepting the liberal credo (discussed in Chapter 3). Nor does liberalism easily acknowledge that some states for their own reasons—​with China being the most obvious case in point—​might subscribe to some of the cooperative multilateral practices of post-​Second World War liberal internationalism without subscribing to the central tenets of either economic liberalism (market, as opposed to state, capitalism) or political liberalism (democracy) per se. The contours of a liberal international order described in this chapter have been captured in a vast body of literature (e.g. Nye, 2017 and Luce, 2017) and especially the work of John Ikenberry (2011, 2017, 2018) and his most recent work, A World Safe for Democracy: Liberal Internationalism and the Crisis of Global Order (2020) in which he argues that the liberal order of the second half of the 20th century was built on substantial economic, legal and political underpinnings; especially a progressive opening of international (free) trade, the development of legal rules and norms and a political desire to avoid endless and repetitive conflict that accompanied the evolution of democracy in the major powers (the US and Europe). As perhaps the most articulate defender of a liberal international order, Ikenberry points out liberal internationalism has always been an historically contingent and much more ‘… pragmatic, opportunistic and reform minded’ (2020, pp. xii–​xiii) than is often assumed in some of the more critical literature. But, in contrast to some of his earlier work, Ikenberry now notes the late 20th century’s idealised view of a liberal order always begged a number of questions. There is now a strong revisionist literature—​of both a scholarly and political nature—​that identifies the limitations of liberal international order theorising (see inter alia Acharya, 2017a; Ferguson and Zakaria, 2017; Kagan, 2017a, 2017b and 2018; Flockhart, 2017). In shorthand here, the scholarly arguments demonstrate, as

24  States, civilisations and world order

Acharya would have it, that the liberal international order was in effect only ever an American world order (AWO) with add-​ons and spill-​overs. The political critiques of a liberal international order emanate from both left and right. From the left comes objections to the legacies of empire and imperialism and American hegemony. Perhaps ironically an even more forceful critique emanates from the populist nationalist right that sees a liberal order—​referred to pejoratively as ‘globalism’ as distinct from globalisation—​as but the principal vehicle for the material benefit of international global cosmopolitan elites at the expense of the growing immiseration of the traditional industrial middle classes of the developed world, especially in the US. The purpose here is not, as many are tempted to do, to write the premature obituary of the liberal order (see Patrick, 2020) rather than to suggest that any lingering assumption that it might be reinstated in its original form at some future date—​implicitly post-​Donald Trump—​is unlikely. The liberal order may have a future but not in its current form (see Nye, 2020b). A Biden Presidency cannot, and will not, undo all of Trump’s nationalist legacy. The early signs from a Biden administration suggest strongly that some Trumpian approaches, if not the rhetoric, towards China and indeed international trade more widely are clearly going to continue.2 The priorities of the erstwhile hegemon (the US) have changed and the (re) emergence of great powers (especially China) is leading to a contest in the international order unprecedented since the height of the Cold War between the US and the former Soviet Union.There is a literature on this subject too voluminous to cite (for a good review see Kynge, 2021). But this contest is reflected in the wider return of geopolitics and geo-​economics in the foreign policies of major powers. Modern day geo-​ economics goes beyond initial understandings of economic statecraft through to economic warfare (Blackwill and Harris, 2016 discussed in Chapter 2). Failure to take sufficient account of these factors has limited our ability to comprehend the complexity of modern world order that has seen the great powers ‘securitise’ (Buzan et al., 1998 and Higgott, 2004) their economic and cultural politics. This has been powerfully illustrated in recent years by Donald Trump’s discursive strategy of directly defining the need for economic protectionism, controlling immigration and the cultural dynamics of the China challenge as national security issues (see Higgott, 2019). In this context, over-​specialisation of knowledge can sometimes limit wider comprehension. Economic specialisation on the one hand and specialisation in security and strategic studies on the other too often reflect a lack of understanding of the relationship between them in modern international relations but also the impact of other factors, such as the cultural dimensions of international politics. Dramatically changing global political and economic imbalances emanate not only from the geo-​politico and geo-​economic problematiques but also the cultural-​ civilisational problematique nowadays. Thus, notwithstanding the virtues of elements of liberal internationalism if they are to survive even in a reformed manner, we will

Making sense of liberal international order  25

need new theory and practice for a new era that corrects for the historical delusions of the liberal internationalist narrative and the analytical specialisations (separations) that have accompanied these delusions. Much of this is now well understood, even in the economics community where it had long been traditionally thought—​based on an unwarranted assumption that economics is a pure science—​that economic policy and foreign policy should be discrete activities to prevent base considerations of geopolitics infecting economic policy.Traditionally dismissive of so-​called ‘exogenous variables’—​be they historical, cultural or political—​their salience has for so long been marginalised by economists given their lack of quantifiable explanatory precision, reasoning and measurement. For an economist’s critique of his own discipline see the writing of Skidelsky (2020). The remainder of this chapter briefly reviews earlier efforts to probe the relationship between security, economics and culture in the global order before examining how the interdependence between them matters if we are to understand the emerging post-​liberal global order. We must grapple with a transformations of the principles, norms and institutions that have sustained global order in the past, and how such transformation impact contemporary world order. Five linked questions are in need of consideration: i If the post-​Second World War international order, and indeed international politics in general, has been a consequence of the rise and decline of American hegemony how do we explain contemporary change? Is it the result of structural factors such as economic globalisation and the changing nature of international production, as seen in the shift from industrial manufacturing towards the technology and artificial intelligence (AI) industries and the impact on them of the development of global supply chains and China’s centrality to them? ii To what degree do the principles and norms that underpinned the post-​ Second World War economic and political orders have continued relevance today? They supported US power in the past. But they also assisted the maintenance of a modest global equilibrium during the Cold War at the same time as they provided space for the rise of China as an economic, and subsequently geopolitical, global actor. iii Are the extant liberal principles, norms and institutions capable of accommodating change in a time of the rise of actors such as China and other emerging powers? iv Are these principles, norms and institutions capable of supporting a dialogue, or at least a minimum peacefully contested negotiation between Western and non-​Western ‘civilisations’? v Is a conflict generating contest between liberal internationalism on the one hand and cultural or civilisational nationalism on the other inevitable? The answers to these questions are both historically contingent and contemporarily relevant. They are guides to how liberal principles, norms and institutions might play a continuing role in any new structures of world order. These are also

26  States, civilisations and world order

both theoretical as well as empirical questions. Chapter 2 treats them empirically by examining the evolving relationship through a case study of US–​Chinese relations. By way of background, recall that during the Cold War, America’s main great power competitor (the Soviet Union) was an outsider to both a liberal international political order and an international economic system which was primarily confined to the Atlantic world and parts of the East Asian rim. The Soviet Union did not constitute a serious economic competitor to the US, and the economic relevance of the Soviet bloc was dwarfed by comparison with that of the Western, US-​led bloc. There was a marked absence of economic interaction between the Soviet and American superpowers and their respective spheres of influence. We had what Joan Spero at the time succinctly described as a western system of interdependence, an east west system of independence and a north south system of dependence (Spero, 1978). Against this backdrop, the liberal international order, as its boosters noted, served the interests of the US (and its Western allies) well in competition with the Soviet outsider. The US global geopolitical and security interests, checking Soviet power, appeared to be in sync with an order that excluded the managed economies of the Soviet Union and its satellites while at the same time strengthening economic and political ties between the US and its key European and East Asian allies. There was, equally during this period, an absence of inter-​cultural or civilisational dialogue.The superiority of liberal values—​inter alia, a market economy, democracy, religious toleration, freedom of speech and artistic licence—​were simply assumed to be superior by their champions. With the end of the Cold War and collapse of the Soviet Union these assumptions were declared victorious, clearing the way for a progressive, if short-​lived, globalisation of a US-​led liberal market based economic order and a liberal politico-​cultural order. This was deemed to be as much the result of so-​called Western—​principally US—​soft power (Nye, 2004) as military hard power. Central and Eastern Europe, Central and South Asia, Southeast Asia, parts of the Middle East, and Russia and China were gradually integrated into the global economic order. Closer growth and integration of these regions, especially East Asia, into the global economy also brought with it, unsurprisingly and not unreasonably, a political interest on its states in securing a greater share in the control of that order. China and Russia especially have begun to reassert their spheres of influence and push back against the US (see Mead, 2014; Grygiel and Mitchell, 2017). In such a context, scholars and practitioners of international relations alike must now grapple with the (re)emergence of a tense relationship between great power geopolitical competition and the increasing global economic interdependence that has underpinned globalisation. Some influential analysts in the major powers see these twin processes—​increased geopolitical and strategic competition on the one hand and increased economic interdependence on the other—​as inevitably antithetical to one another in the current era. This was especially the case in the approach adopted towards China amongst senior US trade policy figures of the Trump era such as Peter Navarro in the White House and USTR Robert Ligthizer. Chapter 2 addresses this question

Making sense of liberal international order  27

empirically through an examination of the contemporary US–​China economic relationship. Prior to that, however, the last section of Chapter 1 links to Chapter 2 with a short, but necessary theoretical explanation the manner in which the international economic order, and particularly the international trade regime, has changed. Understanding the changing theory of international trade allows us to clarify why it became the touchstone of US policy towards China during the Trump administration.

A little bit of economic theory: towards a new mercantilism The period since the GFC of 2008 has seen a strengthening backlash against economic globalisation that is one of the major factors in the overall challenge to liberal international order.This has not happened in a theoretical vacuum. Particularly, we are seeing significant changes in the economic theory of international trade that have considerable policy implications. These need explanation. Historically, few areas of economics have traditionally secured as much agreement as the theory of comparative advantage developed by David Riccardo in his Principles of Political Economy and Taxation in 1817. He developed a positive-​ sum understanding of the gains from trade that overcame the prevailing mercantilist negative-​sum orthodoxy that had underwritten the trade policy of the post-​Westphalian states system in the 17th and 18th centuries. Put simply, Riccardo showed that while not all countries can have an absolute advantage, all countries by default must have a comparative advantage (see the recent essays in Evenett, 2017). Despite a large consensus on the core principles of comparative advantage, even to this day, the efforts of international organisations to halt protectionism and fight off economic nationalism have struggled as the backlash against globalisation has grown. Negative-​sum understandings of the economic theory of trade, especially for dispossessed workers in the US, have returned.The key question now is whether the principles of comparative advantage remain relevant for us today when trade in services—​at 70% of world trade—​exceed trade in goods and when ideas and data flow freely and digital services are provided remotely? Comparative advantage as a state-​based theory of trade has suffered from the denationalisation of trade and the de-​location (‘off-​shoring’) of manufacturing from the G7 countries—​especially the US to the fastest developing countries, notably China—​and the development of global value chains (see Deardoff, 2017 and Baldwin, 2016). Comparative advantage also becomes a more challenged theory for high wage developed countries in a world where large developing countries (notably but not exclusively China and India) can manufacture almost anything and offer almost any service (thanks to digitalisation) while still paying lower wages than the developed countries. This situation, as Paul Samuelson (2004) noted, becomes increasingly acute if these large developing countries are also able to capture an increasing share of the ‘advanced industries’, such as, IT and AI. These new consequences of international trade are not without political and strategic considerations which have

28  States, civilisations and world order

become as, if not more, important as the economist’s traditional concerns with the welfare benefits to be had from trade. These changes, and the accompanying poorly understood assumptions of international trade theory, have played into the hands of populist politicians (Lowrey, 2018). Blue-​collar working communities of developed countries—​most vocally in the US and France—​that have been displaced blame globalisation, and especially free trade, for their plight. And indeed, employment in manufacturing in the US has fallen by 25% since 2001 (see Kucik, 2019). The solution, it is argued in the new protectionist rhetoric, is increased tariffs, de-​coupling and re-​shoring. But what is ignored by the populist approach to international economics are five key consequences of such a policy: i Tariffs are a tax on imports. They usually raise prices for consumers not the exporting country (Amiti, Redding and Weinstein, 2019). ii Protecting a few narrow industries, such as steel, can have wider massive negative consequences in which those on limited incomes are affected disproportionately (see Rajan, 2019). It does so by putting jobs at risks in cognate industries and sectors that often have more employees than those in the protected industry itself (e.g. steel). iii It is not low tariffs that explain industry closures in the manufacturing sectors of mature economies. Manufacturing jobs are on the decline globally, first and foremost as a result of technological automation and productivity growth. iv Prior to COVID-​19, the global ability to produce was outpacing growth in demand. Negative assumptions about increasing decline in demand can be made but it is too early to tell what the potential relationship between production and consumption in the post pandemic era will look like. v Tariffs make it harder to do business abroad. They generate resentment and counter responses. States targeted by tariffs, especially powerful state such as China, targeted by the US, invariably retaliate. The costs of globalisation to politically significant local labour markets were largely ignored between 1980 and 2008. While free trade generated massive aggregate global welfare gains in this period it invariably did (and does) so with uneven distributional effects.This, as is now widely recognised, has provided the ammunition for advocates of the worst kinds of populist protectionism on both the left and right. The implications of this changed thinking about economic theory are politically profound. The political systems of the major democracies are now paying for this neglect. Advocates of an open liberal trading system have played into the hands of the populists, who have successfully politically weaponised anti-​free trade rhetoric. The failure by the principal economic beneficiaries of open liberalism to be honest about the often negative implications of free trade for other sections of the community—​especially the decline in compensation and receding welfare benefits for workers in the manufacturing and agricultural sectors from the time of Thatcher and Reagan through to Clinton and Blair—​has made it far too convenient for

Making sense of liberal international order  29

populist politicians to engage in the exogenous deflection of their own domestic policy failures to the international market and foreigners, frequently dressing up their protectionist and xenophobic urges as patriotism and the enhancement of national resilience and security (see Higgott, 2018). As a consequence, economic and trade policy discourse has changed and continues to change, especially in the US, with spill over effects in those countries caught in the crossfire of US protectionist strategy. The difficulty with this type of discourse is that it is not conducive to the development of cooperative dialogues over how we might engage in the reform of the world order. It is unlikely that this political discourse will change dramatically even with the passing of a Trump administration. In short, we have entered the era of “a new global mercantilism” (Hufner, 2018), the core elements of which are: (i) strong use of tariffs and other protectionist instruments; (ii) growing state interventionism in defence of inefficient industries and sectors; and (iii) the creation, as deliberate elements of national strategy, of an air of surprise and uncertainty towards competitors, and even partners as in US policy towards the EU under Trump, in the international economy. The new mercantilism carries with it both domestic and international political considerations. But if the theoretical economic argument of the anti-​free trade position is at times just plain wrong, its populist advocates understood something that many members of the cosmopolitan political elites of Western countries did not. Objections to an open international trade regime as a traditional element of liberal internationalism does not simply emanate from rising powers.There is also a profound dissatisfaction, and probably greater resistance, among large swathes of the populations of national communities in OECD countries.

Notes 1 www.ft.com/​video/​8fc25d9a-​830a-​47b1-​9fcf-​41bca7d869bc. 2 See www.reuters.com/​article/​us-​usa-​biden/​biden-​signs-​buy-​american-​order-​pledges-​to-​ renew-​u-​s-​manufacturing-​idUSKBN29U0Z3.

2 INTERNATIONAL ORDER, THE US–​CHINA RELATIONSHIP AND EUROPE

The paradox of our global situation … [is that] … the biggest threat to the liberal international order is not from a non-​liberal society like China but from a liberal society like the USA. Kishore Mahbubani,The Munk Debate, 2019 Is Kishore Mahbubani, writing before the storming of the US Capitol in January 2021, correct or merely being his provocative self? A close look at the relationship between the US and China tends to bear out his judgement. The change in the bilateral relationship between them offers us a crucial insight into the generic strains it places on the erstwhile global liberal order. But what is it about the changing nature of the relationship between these two superpowers that has put it at the core of the debate over future world order? And by extension, is a new, elongated Cold War to control the shape of any new order, as many pundits think, inevitable?

The big picture: ideology or interest in the new geopolitics? As a prior question we should ask to whom or what do we ascribe the rapid deterioration in the relationship between these two powers? For example, is the explanation structural? Is it the inevitable outcome of Graham Allison’s so-​called ‘Thucydides Trap’ theory of power transition (2017) in which a rising power will inevitably confront a declining hegemon in an anarchic, competitive and changing world order? Or should we look for socio-​psychological explanations in the behaviour of agents where the heightened competition is driven by aggressive political elites—​led by a strongman leader such as Xi Jinping keen to assert China’s return to global leadership on the one hand and a wannabe transactional strongman such as Donald Trump responding to what he saw as cheating on the part of the other? This chapter will examine both interpretations. DOI: 10.4324/​9781003175087-3

International order, the US–China & Europe  31

As with Trump, then so with Xi, the policy positions adopted were built on the back of trends that were in train prior to the accession to power of either of them. Both have been amplifiers rather than originators of their respective policies. Similarly, the unravelling of liberal order and the rise of great power competition also predates both of them, even though they have both in their own ways surely exacerbated it. Given their respective positions as hegemon and challenger, and China’s unprecedented dramatic growth, structuralists, not unreasonably, would have us understand that growing conflict between these two powers was, and is inevitable. If that is indeed the case, then the prospects for a reformed international order arising from a peaceful dialogue between these two powers becomes increasingly problematic. China unsurprisingly feels insecure in a system dominated by liberal values that put pressure on the Communist Party’s domestic political authority. Similarly, China’s resistance to such values will ensure that the US, in turn, is likely to resist any significant moves to accommodate China’s interests, even legitimate ones, in a post-​Trump era. With allusion to George Kennan’s famous Long Telegram on the Soviet Union, the Atlantic Council, several weeks into the Biden administration produced The Longer Telegram which sets out the need for an early and hawkish response to offset what it sees as China’s longstanding integrated strategy towards the US. The telegram suggests a US approach that focuses on (i) maintaining US economic and military political advantage and the primacy of the dollar as the global currency of choice; (ii) limiting China’s geographical expansion, especially vis-​a-​vis the territorial integrity of Taiwan; (iii) fostering divisions in the ruling CPP and the objections within it to Xi Jinping’s aggressive authoritarian style in particular; (iv) limiting the Chinese economic model to China and (v) persuading China to functioning within the existing, still largely liberal, order rather than attempting to build a new one. A joint responsible policy towards avoiding ecological disaster is seen as the one real common point of shared interest between the US and China around which to build cooperation (Atlantic Council, 2021). With the exception a recognised common interest in the environment, this is not much different to the vision of the relationship that existed towards the end of the Trump administration; albeit manifestly more articulate and nuanced than the inflammatory rhetoric practiced by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in his last months in office. Although initially about trade in the early days of his presidency, the relationship under Trump was never simply about trade imbalances and economic competition alone. It was always edging towards the issue of a wider geopolitical security and ideological contest increasingly bordering on an existential struggle for both parties. The US and China were not simply negotiating a set of behaviours and practices so much as their very positions in the global order. The atmospherics and discourse of the relations, even more so in the age of the COVID-​19 pandemic than prior to it, also suggested that neither side was, or indeed even under early Biden is, in any immediate hurry to secure a new equilibrium in the relationship. As the Financial Times notes, the approach may be more

32  States, civilisations and world order

structured, coherent and patient under Biden, but not necessarily softer in substance for the change in style.1 China as America’s main geopolitical competitor in the contemporary era engages vigorously with capitalism and market economics both at home and internationally in a way that the Soviet Union never did during the Cold War. China is a global economic power in the way that the Soviet Union never was. It has a far stronger economy and a more dynamic technology sector than the then Soviet Union (military and space technology notwithstanding) ever had. It has a far larger population and, while far from perfect, a stronger, at times ruthlessly efficient, government apparatus than the Soviet Union had at any stage in its history. China’s success is explained in large part by embracing—​albeit selectively—​the principles, norms and institutions that made up the liberal (market driven) economic order, in a way the Soviet Union did not, and Russia does not. Nowhere is this better captured than in Xi Jinping’s January 2017 Davos speech; the first of many espousing much of the rhetoric and some of the key practices of economic globalisation. But at the same time as it supports key elements of the current liberal order, China is also mounting a challenge to it. China’s strategy of selective economic engagement and integration has seen the creation of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), the development of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and its growing economic partnerships in Africa and Latin America, as well as taking the ideational challenge to the US via its economic model (the Beijing Consensus) and a forward leaning cultural diplomacy—​as in the global spread of Confucius Institutes, of which in 2019 there were some 400 in the US and over 1,000 worldwide. China’s aim is to not to dismantle the world order but rather to remake it to better reflect its own interests. Observing China’s policy towards globalisation and the liberal order helps us to put recent changes in US policy into perspective. It allows us to focus on a bigger question than simply the quixotic foreign policy behaviour of President Trump. His approach to international order—​resisting multilateral institutional collective action problem-​solving approaches to cooperation in favour of rhetorically nationalist and practically bilateral transactional approaches—​needs to be contextualised. The real historical question will be not ‘was Trump simply a destructive spoiler?’ He was. But a more important question to ask, given the rise of China, is to what degree did Trump actually foresee that the liberal order and US security interests were inevitably parting ways? To carry the question into the post-​Trump era we should ask if a liberal order that served the interests of the US so well in the second half of the 20th century now no longer do so? The instinctive answer is yes, but the devil, as they say, is in the details and if it no longer does so, how will this realisation condition the nature of US attitudes and behaviour towards international order? Much ink, but fortunately little blood—​to date at least—​has been spilt over the nature of the contemporary and increasingly fractious US–​China relationship. But what might have started as fairly traditional recourse to a protectionist trade agenda in the economic domain has steadily morphed into a wider battle between

International order, the US–China & Europe  33

the US and China across the whole spectrum of economic and politico-​strategic relations, and especially the battle for technological ascendency in the 21st century (Edel and Brands, 2019). We are witnessing not simply a rhetorical securitization of US economic policy discourse but a more intense economic and political response to economic globalisation in general, and the ascendency of China as a rival global economic and political power in particular. Throughout its life, the Trump administration increasingly utilised the discourse of ‘economic warfare’. For much of the post-​Second World War era trade policy in the US was seen as a quasi-​preserved specialist domain with its own epistemic community of trade policy specialists with their own specialist discourse. Wherever possible trade was held at a distance from geopolitics. This has changed in the current era, where expert knowledge, when not directly rejected or belittled, is both less valued and highly politicised (see Nicholls, 2017). As previously noted, we are now in an era in which international trade policy, for so long underpinned by the theory comparative advantage and a belief in the welfare-​enhancing nature of trade openness, is under challenge (see Irwin, 2017). The populist backlash against globalisation has seen a major policy shift in a number of countries, most importantly but not only in the US. An open liberal economic system as characterised by the Trump administration was seen as a license for others to cheat in their economic relationship with the US. US international economic policy should be interpreted through the discursive lenses of an aggressive and proactive—​as opposed to defensive and reactive—​set of activities and practices without constraint only short of war. International economic policy—​from the tariff to the increasing weaponisation of the US dollar (Fleming, 2019)—​has come to be a leading edge of US foreign relations. The US strategy in trade policy under the Trump administration developed a counter-​veiling argument to the notion that democracies will invariably prefer a soft power diplomatic approach. The preference from the outset in 2016 was to challenge longstanding commitments to multilateral collective action in the global trade regime articulated via the WTO. Preference was given to a strategy based as much on threat as reward in bilateral transactional contexts. Although he might not have been able to articulate it in theoretical terms, President Trump clearly had a longstanding mercantilist view of trade, with little or no commitment to multilateral institutionalism. Moreover, the communication and technological revolutions had an equally profound effect on the development of a securitised/​weaponised international economic policy under the Trump administration. The populist communicative skills of Donald Trump (for which he had no peer) armed with the weaponry of digital social media, made the discourse of economic warfare much easier to prosecute. Strategy and policy harnessed the discursive tools and practices short of war to secure the enhancement of national objectives: what Mahnken et al. call “… the coercive use of non-​military instruments to alter adversary behaviour” (2018, p. 3). This change in the use of language over the last decade made the prospect of a dialogue over world order more difficult than it already was.

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At its broadest, the language of geopolitics and economic statecraft (Blackwill and Harris, 2016) has seen a linguistic coincidence of US discourse with a post-​ Soviet discourse (that the US is usually keen to criticise) but that the US seemed equally keen to adapt to its own strategies. To illustrate, Mahnken et al. (2018, p. 10) identified what they saw as key themes in the ‘mother Russia’ narrative. Four of the six characteristics they identified: (i) ‘we are special’; (ii) ‘the country is threatened’; (iii) there is a ‘sacred mission’ and (iv) ‘victory is assured’—​found an almost identical resonance in the Trumpian MAGA international economic playbook, which stressed: i The residual myth of American ‘exceptionalism’ (‘we are special’). ii The US is disadvantaged by the cheating and free riding behaviour of its major trading partners (‘the country is threatened’). iii The presidential mission is to ‘Make America Great Again’ (MAGA as ‘a sacred mission’). iv In the economic domain, this has meant a turn to aggressive and unilateral protectionist measures addressed to competitors—​and indeed allies. In his own words, it was based on President Trump’s erroneous assumption that ‘trade wars are easy’ (‘victory is assured’). The analogy permits two further discursive comparisons. First, Vladimir Putin believes Russia was betrayed after the Cold War by the West’s support for the ‘colour’ revolutions in its regional neighbours and the eastward expansion of NATO. This sense of betrayal was mirrored by President Trump’s in his belief that European allies were free riders on US largesse in both the security domain (NATO) and the economic domain, as shown by negative US trade imbalances with Europe. If Trump’s resentments reflected core elements of his worldview, they also lent themselves to explaining his policy responses: bilateralism, transactionalism, aggressive competition, punishment and retaliation rather than cooperation and multilateralism. Why is this comparison important? If it is accurate, it suggests that the prospects of a cooperative discourse on the future of international order between the US, Russia and China remain slight.While Trump may be gone the leadership of China and Russia remain in place and President Biden has shown little inclination to tear up the Trumpian trade rule book. Moreover, the response his policy he has received in the early days of his administration is mixed. Some suggest he should ditch the Trumpian strategy (Alden, 2021) while others suggest he should see core elements of it through (Rashish, 2021). In addition, observation of President Trump’s attitudes towards the US’ European allies during the course of his administration similarly suggested a further willingness to sow international division. This was particularly the case in his position on Brexit and his suggestions to President Macron that France leave the EU, or his bizarre statement that: “European nations were set up to take advantage of the United States.They have worse trade barriers than China … Europe treats us worse than China”.2

International order, the US–China & Europe  35

Second, the MAGA discourse mirrored both Vladimir Putin’s and Xi Jinping’s emphasis on enhancing respect for Russia and China globally after years of humiliation. This theme—​that the US is not, but needs to be, respected—​was to be found in presidential rhetoric in all three countries. This kind of resentment, implicit where it is not explicit, militates against the prospects of a global dialogue.

The US, China and the new economic warfare3 Why was President Trump so convinced the US could live and prosper in a global trade regime without rules? His answer came via Twitter: trade wars are good, and easy to win. Example, when we are down $100 billion with a certain country and they get cute, don’t trade anymore –​we win big. It’s easy! @Donald Trump, March 2, 2018 Yet most economists will tell us that: i The US trade deficit with China exists for two main reasons: a. Because China exports four times more to the US than vice versa. Moreover, the deficits in 2018 were higher than at any time in the previous decade.4 b. Trade today—​unlike maybe 150 years ago—​clears globally not bilaterally. Declining transport and communication costs and complex global supply chains makes state-​ to-​ state measurements according to Pettis (2021) ‘largely useless’. ii But economists will also tell you that the US deficit on goods trade with China turns into a surplus when services are taken into account (see Tyson and Lund, 2019). iii The US deficit is largely home-​g rown on the back of tax cuts, low savings, and high spending (see Irwin, 2019). Data for the period of the Trump administration supports the view that its trade policy towards China affected the US negatively. Empirical evidence provided by the US China Business Council (USCB) shows that Donald Trump’s trade policies cost the US economy around a quarter of a million jobs over the life of the administration. Moreover, no change in US trade strategy during the Biden presidency to 2025, according to the USCB, will cost the US a further US$1.6 trillion in real GDP terms; equivalent to US$6.400 in real household income.5 To be fair to Trump, strategies of engagement pursued by previous administrations—​Bush, Clinton, Bush and Obama—​did not see China become the open political economy that such strategies were expected to lead to after China had been welcomed into the WTO. Previous administrations, as Campbell and Ratner (2018) note, had always overestimated a US ability to steer China in the direction it wanted. Indeed, it was always a brave assumption that the Chinese

36  States, civilisations and world order

economic model would converge on a Western one. But was the strategy adopted since President Trump came to office the right one? That is, to what extent was an aggressive nationalist and transactional bilateral strategy of securing adjustment—​ fuelling ill will and competitiveness between the two powers, with all the attendant negative consequences for the wider geostrategic relationship—​worth it? The jury is in. The answer is, on balance, not at all. The US strategy under President Trump—​to the extent that it was actually underpinned by strategic thinking—​was one of trying to disrupt China’s rise across the major policy domains, especially security, economy and technology—​ rather than to simply secure a deal that lowered the temperature in the economic domain.This strategy was well documented in a number of official and semi-​official documents. In the broadest geostrategic context, the US National Defense Strategy of January 2018 argued that the US no longer enjoyed unprecedented superiority and identified combating long-​term competition with China and Russia across the policy spectrum, by all means short of war, as its strategic priority. The discriminatory practices identified by the US as central to China’s economic model were not without foundation and include, inter alia: (i) Unfair foreign ownership restrictions; (ii) Non transparent and discriminatory licensing systems and review processes; (iii) The theft of intellectual property and (iv) restrictions on joint venture partners’ abilities to protect their intellectual property (USTR, 2018). In addition, China, as part of its strategy for technology transfer, gives targeted government support for its outward investment regime in key ‘encouraged’ industries (especially IT and AI) and investment acquisitions, to assist manufacturing capacity, power generation, high-​speed rail and the like. Objections by the US to these practices have been but one element in a process to secure a progressive de-​coupling of China from the global economic order. The real US targets are China’s unique model of capitalism and its extensive and deep global supply chains and, as per US attacks on Huawei, its influence over 5G digital technologies as means of communication and surveillance. China, because of its infrastructural and industrial base and the sheer size of its educated workforce, is central to most of the world’s major global manufacturing supply chains. No other country can match it. Nor indeed does the US match China’s economic ambition, reflected in the BRI and the AIIB, which the US has been keen to thwart, albeit unsuccessfully, either by pressuring would-​be participants to say no or confronting Chinese economic diplomacy in bodies such as the Asia-​Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, the IMF and the G20 (Aiyar, 2015). For all its problems and criticisms (see Dorsey, 2018), the BRI is a grand vision of economic diplomacy aimed at shifting the focus from the Asia-​Pacific to Eurasia; a process that could, China hopes, help it readjust the geopolitical balance. Taken together, these activities have three negative effects for the US: (i) they threaten the competitiveness of US industries in strategic sectors; (ii) they undermine US abilities to lead and sustain innovation and (iii) China also gains from cyber intrusions (USTR, 2018). China argues that US complaints are exaggerated

International order, the US–China & Europe  37

and that it is in compliance with both the norms and practices of the WTO, especially with regards to intellectual property. Its technology transfer policies, it argues, are a logical part of an industrial development strategy with a pedigree to be found in the history of the early industrialised countries. Furthermore, the Chinese government argues its direct involvement is diminishing overtime as it becomes more market focused. The battle for control of the new technologies—​especially digital communication, AI and robotisation—​is leading to the creation of two separate digital ecologies that will reinforce any trend towards a ‘new Cold War’ or at least a new global binary. Cold War may not be the appropriate metaphor yet, but the clash between the world’s two major powers could be even more damaging than the original Cold War. If the end of the first Cold War kick-​started a surge in global economic integration, any new Cold War between the world’s two largest economies could have the reverse effect. It could produce division and fragmentation in, and disrupt the operation of, the global economy. Both the global trade and financial system could unravel. Heighten geopolitical tensions—​of the kind generated by COVID-​ 19—​could also damage innovation as technology transfers and cooperation, hidden beneath the oft-​exaggerated justifications of ‘national security concerns’, decline. This is discussed in Chapter 4. The US battle to curb China’s dominance of global supply chains, a strategy geared not only towards bringing manufacturing back to the US but also towards weakening China as a competitive global economic actor in its own right, is a battle that the US will probably lose given the breadth, depth and level of integration of the global supply chain economy and China’s centrality to it. It is unlikely the US can damage China without damaging itself (Wolf, 2018). China has not reacted disproportionately to US trade policy, although signs prior to COVID-​19, that the economic war between the US and China was getting started, have been borne out. But trade war, using the traditional instrument of economic warfare—​ the tariff—​is not now the most important issue. The game has changed. The US now wants more than simply the balanced trade relationship that Trump was demanding at the beginning of his administration.The US wants to restrict Chinese acquisition of US technology, as well as see major changes in Chinese domestic policy, notably an end to domestic subsidies and other protective activities such as patent and technology acquisition from foreign partners in return for contracts. The US Chamber of Commerce and the American Chamber of Commerce in China, in a joint publication of Priority Recommendations for US–​China Trade Negotiations (2019), saw the systematic violation of intellectual property rights, forced technology transfer and direct state intervention into the economy as more important than trade imbalances. Other institutional actors are even more alarmed. The FBI argues that “… economic aggression is positioning China to supplant the United States as the world’s superpower” (cited in Wyne, 2019). Prudent analysis should treat such judgements with caution. Notwithstanding closing gaps, Washington’s advantages over China remain substantial. They range

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from the structural advantages of geography and demography through to current material superiority in the economic and security domains, growing energy self-​ sufficiency, a set of global, if fraying alliances and even still a residual technology lead. Some scholars argue that the US unipolar advantage remains intact (see Brooks and Wolforth, 2016). But, the days are over when both sides could insist that trade and investment was territory that could be kept separate from strategic rivalry and political contest. The bilateral contest between the US and China is becoming increasingly politically overt and ideological. Even the old Cold War anti-​Soviet Committee for the Present Danger was re-​launched in 2019 as the Committee for the Present Danger: China (CPDC). In its opening statement the CPDC noted: “… as with the Soviet Union in the past, communist China represents an existential and ideological threat to the United States—​one that requires a new American consensus regarding the policies and priorities required to defeat this threat”. The US, CPDC argues, if it is not to lose the ideas battle with China, it must create its ‘own informational war’.6 In more measured terms Gideon Rachman (2019b) argues that the US is now in an ideas battle with China because, under Donald Trump especially, it turned a blind eye to the growing abuse of traditionally understood universal Western values of freedom and democracy. As Daniel Drezner bleakly noted in Foreign Affairs in 2019 the Trump administration has unilaterally surrendered the set of ideals that guided U.S. policymakers for decades. … Although a future president might sound better on these issues, both allies and rivals will remember the current moment. The seeds of doubt have been planted. Drezner, 2019a But US policy no longer reflects a strategy underpinned by its ideals, rather than by a set of instrumental practices that have identified China as a ‘strategic competitor’. As Brands and Cooper (2019) argued, the approach of the Trump administration to China lacked clear strategic definition beyond its tough punitive discourse of competition and rivalry and an assumption of a non-​benign accommodation on the part of China. The Trump administration posture was not aimed at a renewed accommodation between the US and China in the short-​to-​medium term future. Indeed, the US rhetoric of economic warfare from Trump and his spokespersons suggested the opposite—​a new and ongoing struggle. If it had a virtue, then US policy under Trump was no longer ambiguous and had a consensus around an adversarial approach towards China that throughout the course of his administration gained support among the wider US populace. Indeed, aggressive approaches to contain China’s technological advance were, and indeed still are, one of the few policy areas that secured a strong bipartisan consensus in Washington (Wike and Devlin, 2018). It finds a substantial continuity of thought and practice under a Biden administration.

International order, the US–China & Europe  39

In short, Trump’s initial tariff war against China was not an end in and of itself. It was the beginning of a new age of wider strategic competition, much of it hidden in the cyber domain. The rift in the relationship is way past the time when it might have been resolved simply by the Chinese purchasing increased amounts of US agricultural exports. Attitudes on both sides of the Pacific have hardened and Trump’s China policy was one of the few things to secure him some bilateral approval across the US. Moreover, while aggressive bilateralism did not lower the US trade deficit it had some wider symbolic political payoffs for President Trump, who made it clear that he did not want the US to anchor the multilateral trade regime, or indeed the international order more generally. The abandonment of the Trans-​Pacific Partnership (TPP) on day one of his administration was a significant sign of that, as was his withdrawal of the US from the Paris Climate Agreement and subsequent acts such as the withdrawal from UNESCO, the denunciation of the ICC, the slow strangulation of the WTO appellate arrangements in dispute settlement and in the wake of COVID-​19 at the tail end of his administration, the withdrawal from the WHO. But the benefits gained from these policies, where they have not been counter-​ productive, were always more superficial than real. The limits of an aggressive bilateral transactional strategy have been spelled out again and again; especially the strategy’s assumptions that retaliation from the economically smaller counterparty is unlikely and holds little or no consequence for the US. This was not always so. As we saw with the carefully structured Chinese retaliation to the initial US tariff hike, the Chinese were able to hit directly at Trump’s own supporters, rather than indiscriminately at other sectors of the US economy. The ‘containment’ of China, to use the lexicon of the Cold War, was always unlikely. A change of administration in Washington is unlikely to make much difference. More moderate policies of cooperative competition in the economic and technology domains between the US and China post Trump will remain elusive while China resists all but minimal future domestic economic reform. What we did not see between 2016 and 2020 was a Chinese response to the Trump administration that went beyond trying to resolve the current dispute by trade concessions. Wider reforms and concessions beyond trade were not forthcoming. But the issue will not go away in the post-​Trump era. Even if the Chinese buy more from the US, open more sectors of their economy to US investment, and improve their laws on intellectual property, it is unlikely that the US trade balance will improve (see Pettis, 2021). Nor will it impede the drive by China for dominance in the technology industries. We are left with the question of how the US might be able to respond in the future. During the Cold War era the US planned both strategically and tactically for dealing with the Soviet Union.Washington nurtured its allies, and other third-​party states more generally, within the context of creating a Washington driven liberal rules-​based governance order. For whatever reason—​on a spectrum from complacency to arrogance—​the US in the post-​Cold War era eschewed the task of updating

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the international governance order to cope with a rising China. It preferred instead to engage in ad hoc unilateral responses on an issue-​by-​issue basis in keeping with an assumption of its unipolar hegemonic position. Most evidently in its reluctance to support the role of the Bretton Woods institutions Congress (regularly denying the IMF and the WB capital increases) assisted their weakening as instruments of international policymaking. This, along with its strategy of stonewalling China’s opportunity to play a role commensurate with its growing economic heft created an unfortunate political atmosphere in these and other international economic institutions. Long term Chinese policy responses to this state of affairs—​especially the creation of the AIIB and the BRI that in their own way shadow the Bretton Woods institutions—​are well understood. To date the US policy response has been to see this as a new great game in which consistent complaining about China’s unfair play has been accompanied by a suboptimal transactional bilateral strategy. As discussed below, it has not sort to make the best use if its allies, especially Europe and Japan.

Coping with the binary divide: the EU and its ‘existential’ crisis The growing global binary divide is not simply a matter of US–​China relations. It has massive implications for important third-​party actors, especially US allies such as the EU and Japan. China has not been the only country, or group of countries, in the sights of the Trump administration’s international economic policy. Nationalist, anti-​globalist and anti-​institutionalist sentiments were also extended to allies. Europe is something of an outlier in the current debate over world order when contrasted with the centrality of the US, China and, to a lesser extent, Russia. For some considerable time, predating the Trump presidency, there has been a sharp divergence of EU thinking with that of the US on issues of global order and especially relationships with China and Russia. It has been the Trump years that have brought these differences fully into the daylight. The EU, while cognisant of the downsides of Chinese international policy—​especially its penchant for intellectual property theft is more pragmatic than the US and strives hard for a stronger relationship with East Asia and a realistic accommodation with China; especially as the transatlantic relationship continues to deteriorate. The more Donald Trump saved some of his choicest critiques of trade policy for European allies—​even to the extent of describing Europe as “… almost as bad as China” (Politi, 2018)—​the more nervous the EU became. Classic here was the Trumpian absurdity that European (read German) auto imports represented a threat to American national security, thus offering the opportunity for the US to respond with tariffs on the EU. Increased tariffs in the wake of the adverse October 2019 WTO finding on excessive EU Airbus subsidies further exacerbated tensions in the relationship. Notwithstanding the size and depth of the economic and politico-​security partnership (Hamilton and Quinlan, 2019) and people-​to-​people links and in 2021 the return of a democratic administration, the long-​term impact of Trump’s rhetoric

International order, the US–China & Europe  41

and practice on transatlantic relations should not be underestimated (see Bond, 2018). Positive European views of the US dipped dramatically as the EU found itself—​keeping in mind that Europe does €400 billion trade with China a year—​ caught in the middle of the US–​China standoff. At the 2019 Munich Security Conference, Angela Merkel noted, If we’re serious about the transatlantic partnership, it’s not very easy for me as German Chancellor to read … that the American Department of Commerce apparently considers German and European cars to be a threat to the national security of the United States of America. Merkel, 2019 She tartly noted, “The biggest BMW factory is in South Carolina, not in Bavaria”. She failed to see why BMWs from Bavaria are a greater security risk than those from South Carolina! Europe has also traditionally explicitly rejected, Trumpian attitudes to multilateralism. Indeed, in 2019 France and Germany launched The Alliance to Support Multilateralism (Democracy Without Borders, 2019). But in contrast to the old Cold War, few states want to pick sides between the US and China. The effect of President Trump’s anti-​European rhetoric has been different to that of the anti-​ China campaign. The latter has generated a growing bipartisanship on China competition. The former has undermined traditional US bipartisanship on Europe. As of 2018, only 47% of Republicans, as opposed to 78% of Democrats, still favour the NATO alliance (Pew, 2018). The wider question for the EU is to what degree it might successfully combat what it has called its existential crisis (EU, 2016) and the role that it might play in helping reform the international institutional order, especially to mitigate the standoff between the US and China (see Simon, 2019). There are five elements to its existential crisis of the last decade: the Greek debt crisis; irregular arrivals of migrants and asylum seekers from wars in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq; heightened terrorism in major European cities; Brexit; and the growth of populist identitarian politics throughout large parts of Europe that have rocked the European project over the last few years. This is well recognised (see European Political Strategy Centre, 2019). What is less well understood is the effect that this existential crisis has had on the EU’s ability to play a positive role in the stabilisation of international order. The EU should be a major player but currently engages in little more than what we might call the politics of ‘muddling through’ in the face of US policy, over which it has little or no impact. The classic recent example of EU vulnerability to external pressure is the impotence it showed in the face of Trump’s unilateral withdrawal from the Iran agreement and the pressure that the US put on the EU to conform to its sanctions policy. This has characterised not only the EU response to its own crises but also to the worsening state of the international order over the last five years. Moreover, this could be simply the first act in which the US, even post

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Trump, puts pressure on Europe to come into line with its policies towards China and Russia. The EU currently lacks a strategy and risks becoming a pawn in the new ‘Great Game’, or as the European Council on Foreign Relations suggests, the “chessboard on which great powers compete” (ECFR, 2019). The EU does not think like the other geopolitical powers and currently has an underdeveloped voice in the debate over world order. The new leadership of the European Commission following the May 2019 elections offered an opportunity to reaffirm its traditionally strong commitment to multilateralism and collective action problem-​solving. Sadly, it seems to have exhibited a series of ambivalent and mixed messages that have been even further confused by the COVID-​19 pandemic. These messages can be captured in the desires of the EU President and the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy to see their commission as a ‘Geopolitical Commission’. But if it is to be consistent, it cannot go down the road of adopting a forward leaning geopolitical strategy, while at the same time wishing to maintain its wider commitment to collective action problem-​solving. In today’s unravelling of the post-​Second World War world order the EU’s longstanding instinct to resist geopolitical imperatives in favour of a commitment to collective action in multilateral institutional contexts probably remains the best strategy in the current climate. Its priority should be to remove ambiguity from its external policy by focusing precisely on those topics and regions that matter to its citizens directly: security, migration, climate, but also on other things that might seem one step removed from everyday life yet actually have a considerable impact on citizens, such as the defence of multilateralism. If the EU really believes in its internationalist values, it should stick to them and make it clear that it is driven by the pursuit of geo-​sustainability through multilateral cooperation, not by geopolitics and related nationalist assumptions of closure to the wider world (see Higgott and Van Langenhove, 2020). Scope for US cooperation with Europe—​and Japan—​to bring about change in China’s policies, such as its forced technology transfer, should exist. The difficulty of securing joined-​up cooperation stemmed not from the unwillingness of its allies to cooperate with the US but from the US insistence on pursuing its own bilateral and transactional approach. Under the Trump administration Europe and Japan were effectively given a ‘take it or leave it’ approach to cooperation rather than the opportunity to develop a collective strategy. For example, the EU–​Japan–​US initiative developed by Japan in 2017 to coordinate legal action against China at the WTO on things like technology transfer took second place to US direct bilateral action against China and never really got off the ground under Donald Trump. Europe and Japan worked hard in the 2016–​2018 period to coordinate their trade strategy, but they have remained concerned not to get caught in the crossfire of a protracted, wide and deep US–​China conflict about more than just trade imbalances. In what amounts to a sign of the times, both appear as concerned not to alienate China as the US. As a strategy to avoid choosing sides, calls for a Europe–​ Pacific partnership in the face of US policy will continue to grow irrespective

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the administration in Washington. Tensions across the Atlantic will not dissipate simply because of a change of administration in Washington. The decision by the EU in December 2020 to sign an ill-​fated investment agreement with China was seen in establishment Washington foreign policy circles as a major snub to the Biden administration’s intentions to bring collective allied pressure to force China to reform its trade practices.7 Resetting trans-​Atlantic relations will not occur easily over-​night. There has been a change of heart in Europe that it needs to stand more on its own feet. Europe is struggling to develop a coherent position towards the emerging binary. While it profoundly, and genuinely, welcomed the return of Joe Biden, it remains nonetheless wary of a full-​blown recommitment to the trans-​Atlantic relationship in the wake of four years of Donald Trump in which the US established itself as an untrustworthy ally. As a YouGov survey of 15,000 Europeans for the European Council on Foreign Relations noted: Europeans’ attitudes towards the United States have undergone a massive change. Majorities in key member states now think the US political system is broken, and that Europe cannot just rely on the US to defend it. They evaluate the EU and/​or their own countries’ systems much more positively than that of the US –​and look to Berlin rather than Washington as the most important partner. Krastev and Leonard, 2021 As one senior German diplomat said on an assumption of anonymity, “America will forever be the country that elected Trump” (cited in Higgott and Reich, 2021) and as Jonathan Kirshner noted in Foreign Affairs, Trump’s long shadow is not going away anytime soon. “The world cannot unsee the Trump Presidency … and his norm shattering approach to foreign policy … [which was] … different: short-​ sighted, transactional, mercurial, untrustworthy, boorish, personalist, and profoundly illiberal in rhetoric, disposition, and creed” (Kirshner, 2021). This untrustworthy and self-​serving view of the US will linger in the calculations of allies long after he has gone. Concerns about US stability and the direction of its foreign policy will persist. While Trump may be gone Trumpism, as 74 million voters attested, is not. That Biden might be an old-​fashioned internationalist does not mean that old fashioned internationalism will return with him. American long-​term purpose after Donald Trump will be measured differently than prior to his presidency. And who is to say the US might not elect an illiberal nationalist leader prepared to play fast and loose with democracy. As Hal Brands puts it the Trump’s presidency is the bell that cannot be unrung … For the United States to remain a credible leader of the free world, the world must see that American democracy, which today looks neither efficient nor stable, is once again capable of renewing itself. This may be difficult. Brands, 2021

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But Europe is also cognizant of the frequently ruthless nature of a growingly influential China, and evidence of its increased bullying—​reflected in the use of its increasing economic and financial power and its ‘wolf diplomacy’ during 2020 (Wong and Deng, 2020). And as EU skepticism towards a strong relationship with China as a global actor grows it is yet to formulate a joined-​up strategy for dealing with them both (see Biscop, 2021). Pew recently found European (especially German) distrust of China at an all-​time high (Silver et al., 2020). Lack of trust in Xi Jinping in Europe mirrored a lack of trust in Donald Trump and uncertainty about Joe Biden. Indeed, trust of both US and Chinese leaderships is low. According to Gallup’s 2020 analysis, only 17% and 19% of Europeans respectively approved of Chinese and US leadership. The views of the EU’s leadership that accompany this popular opinion reflects a complex, if not a little contradictory, rhetoric and behaviour implying that the EU can simultaneously act as a genuine good liberal internationalist and multilateral citizen at one end of the spectrum and a realist geopolitical strategic actor at the other. But this is not a viable long-​term strategy for assisting in the reform of world order. Certainly, if the character of a future world order is an as-​yet-​to-​be-​determined work-​in-​progress then the EU is correct to keep its options open. But the issue for the EU in 2021 and beyond is clarifying how it seeks to manage its relationship with these two superpowers as they prospectively bifurcate the world order. Early signs are that this emerging version of two ‘spheres of influence’—​a second Cold War—​will be very different in form from that which dominated the first Cold War. The EU needs to look beyond the US and China. On close inspection, the foundations for a common approach by Europe and Asia in support of a sound, rules-​based multilateral trade regime exists in the surprisingly strong similarities of philosophy and practical policy approaches towards trade regulation found in the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for the Trans-​Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) on the one hand and Europe’s recent agreement with Canada (CETA) on the other (see Wang, 2019). Rather than be passive recipients of either US or Chinese bullying, the two regions of the world that represent 31% of global GDP and 40% of global trade note, could still send out an important message in support of multilateral principles (Laidi, 2019).

Conclusion: from rules-​based order to ‘Fight Club’? The notion of a rules-​based order has become something of a cliché. By definition every order has some rules, otherwise it is an anarchy not an order. But the idea of a rules-​based order has become a synonym for the liberal international order. The destabilisation of this order is in large part because the understanding of, or more precisely the acceptance of, the rules of a liberal order are not as widely accepted as was often assumed to be the case. The acceptance of these rules has always been situational and conditional. A rules-​based order is also used in some quarters as code to allude to China’s derogation from this order, notwithstanding that China actually

International order, the US–China & Europe  45

accepts, in spirit if not always in practice, the core elements of the international economic order. But even instrumental/​tactical acceptance is acceptance of a sort. A rules-​based order might now be better called ‘Fight Club’ (Hartcher, 2019). As former Australian PM Kevin Rudd pointed out, “Trump’s tough trade rhetoric play(ed) to Chinese nationalism” (Rudd, 2019). It bolstered Xi Jinping’s hand at a time of difficulty for the Chinese economy and allowed him to make patriotic, nationalist appeals to resist US pressure with the attendant effect of hardening negotiating positions rather than encouraging dialogue. Some Chinese leaders regularly ask, ‘why bother?’ As Rudd notes, The Trump Administration has made it clear that it has embarked on a more adversarial position toward China. Perhaps it’s better, in China’s view, to cut its losses now and get ready for the next Cold War. … The bottom line is that nationalism is not just a factor in Trump’s America. It’s now a big factor in Xi Jinping’s China as well, reinforced through the prism of Chinese history. In most of its dealings with America over the last 100 years, China has seen itself as weak. Today, in Beijing’s view, China is weak no longer. Rudd, 2019 The depth, breadth and difficulty inherent in the contemporary US–​China relationship, and to a lesser extent China’s relationship with other partners such as Europe, do not lend themselves to the prospect of a more far-​reaching dialogue on how to fix the global order any time soon. As we shall see in Chapter 4 this argument is substantially reinforced by an analysis of the relationships since the outbreak of COVID-​19. Expectations of Cold War are rising. Some argue both sides are increasingly “… looking for a fight” (see Hartcher, 2019). One major problem has been the short-​termism of US policy under Donald Trump. Driven by recognition that it can do China real economic damage in the short term (1–​5 years), the US seemed less concerned with the long-​term implications. But the idea that things could be resolved with the US coming out on top is by no means certain, given that in the longer run at least three things are likely to happen: i China will, later if not sooner, replace its markets and suppliers that were lost in the US between 2016 and 2019. ii Trust in the US, as both an economic and political partner has declined.This is as much the case for allies and long-​standing partners as adversaries. As opinion surveys attest, trust will not be restored overnight even with the passing of a Trump administration. iii The Chinese were surprised that they suddenly became an enemy, made them unnerved by US policy. The effects were twofold: a. China raised the rhetorical offensive to match that of the US.This began in 2019 as Xi Jinping made increasingly regular public reference to China not

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succumbing to US ‘bullying’ (Zhou, 2019). This offensive has burgeoned since COVID-​19 and the rise of China’s ‘wolf-​warrior’ diplomacy. b. We should expect to see Russia and China continue to draw closer together and consolidate the geo-​economic and geopolitical concept of Eurasia. Greater China–​Russia closeness will be on the basis of instrumental strategic pragmatism not, as in the past, ideology. The level of economic integration between them has not been great to date, but US pressure has proved to be an important external catalyst for closer economic cooperation. Practically, this could take place by enhanced cooperation between the Chinese BRI and Russia’s Greater Eurasian partnership. Again, it is also not impossible that in the longer term the two powers will move away from the use of the US Dollar for their trade transactions. Initial steps to bypass the US Dollar in their trade relationships have been taken with the introduction of a mechanism for mutual settlements.8 The effect of US policy has been to ensure that the politics of international economic policy have become more important for both the US and China than at any time since China was admitted to the WTO. It is now a core component of the wider geopolitical strategy of both countries.This approach may lead back to a style of international politics reflective of the great power rivalry of the 19th century, with the potential to create a bifurcated and mega-​regionalised global order built on the equally long-​standing concept of spheres of influence (see Heath, 2018). America’s and China’s leadership are increasingly signalling a trend towards a bifurcated, if novel, world order. Biden’s early comments speak to the hope of a resuscitated liberal order. But many of his proposed policies suggest a countervailing trend. For example, his proposal for a union of democracies that tries to counteract China’s growing influence in select policy areas such as trade, infrastructure, technology, digitalization and indeed ideas, is just as likely to further the binary divide. At the same time, China—​ via the pursuit of an aggressive diplomacy—​ increasingly offers itself as a countervailing economic and political model in which financial muscle and public health capacities can attract states, which as the World Bank notes, will need trade and investment to overcome the effects of the COVID-​ 19 pandemic for at least the next decade.9 Europe if not actually torn between the American and Chinese orbits—​it is still one half of the trans-​Atlantic alliance—​exhibits an uncomfortable degree of policy vacillation in a number of key areas. But some smaller member states have become as reliant on Chinese funding of its investment bonds as they have on the construction and functioning of their ports. And, as in Hungary and Italy, China has successfully pursued a strategy designed to divide European individual countries, undermining the very notion of a comprehensive EU strategically autonomous capacity. It is not a situation that lends itself to the EU playing a major mitigating role in this rapidly evolving context. The European Commission must decide what is going to be its strategic message to the US and China. As Chapter 3 demonstrates this is not simply an issue of geopolitics and geo-​economic but also—​perhaps in equal measure—​an issue of culture.

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Notes 1 www.ft.com/​ c ontent/​ 1 f5b1cde-​ 2 164-​ 4 06c-​ 8 535- ​ 3 68a624cca62?desktop=true &segmentId=7c8f09b9-​9b61-​4fbb-​9430-​9208a9e233c8. 2 www.politico.eu/​article/​trump-​europe-​treats-​us-​worse-​than-​china/​. 3 This section draws in part on Higgott (2019). 4 www.washingtonpost.com/​politics/​2019/​03/​06/​not-​only-​did-​trade-​deficit-​increase-​it-​ increased-​exactly-​where-​trump-​said-​it-​wouldnt/​. 5 www.uschina.org/​reports/​us-​china-​economic-​relationship. 6 See presentdangerchina.org. 7 www.ft.com/​content/​e8e5cf90-​7448-​459e-​8b9f-​6f34f03ab77a. 8 See defenseworld.net. 9 www.worldbank.org/​en/​news/​press-​release/​2021/​01/​05/​global-​economy-​to-​expand-​ by-​4-​percent-​in-​2021-​vaccine-​deployment-​and-​investment-​key-​to-​sustaining-​the-​ recovery.

3 CIVILISATIONAL STATES AND REGIONS Actors beyond a Western liberal order

Impressions of civilisational states The civilisational state or state civilisation is a somewhat confusing idea and for simplicity the concepts are used interchangeably. What is important is the distinction between a system built on states and a system that includes states that see themselves also as civilisations. The essence of the distinction is to be found in how we treat the role of human values, beliefs and practices built on those beliefs—​an area of investigation that elicits a low commonality of thinking; especially as we depart an era where the ideational hegemony of liberalism is increasingly challenged as other thinking has come to the fore. While all theorists, and indeed most practitioners, would in principle accept that morality, ethics and values should play an important part in international relations, the principle is more often acknowledged in theory than implemented in practice. Part of the problem is the confused relationship between values, norms and culture and how to make a distinction between values and norms on the one hand and the impact of cultural difference on how states practice their values on the other. The distinction is replete with striking socio-​political variations with attendant implications for how we might reconstruct world order. The notion of a civilisation, by implication, rejects an understanding of universal values and especially the liberal truths and principles of the kind that have underpinned the understanding of world order of the major Western democracies, at least for the 70 years following the end of Second World War—​freedom, toleration, individualism, secularism, pluralism, democracy, equality and the like. For civilisation states there are no universal political truths, only particularistic civilisational truths; usually based on history, race, identity and culture (see Figure 3.1). An ability to make sense of the contradictory, and in some instances directly competitive, nature of the relationship between states and civilisations, and the degree DOI: 10.4324/​9781003175087-4

Civilisational states and regions  49

Specific form of economic, social and ideological organisation

Civilisational

I

cations for pli m

Concentrated and popular power

DOMESTIC POLITICS

Big historical legacy

heritage

NATIONAL IDENTITY constructed on the basis of civilisational heritage

for Implication s

ac Char teristic s

Shared culture: unique, ancient civilisational values, practices and social norms

FOREIGN POLICY

Political unity Emphasis on national sovereignty

cteristics ara Ch

ac Char teristic s

THE CIVILISATION STATE

Narrative of civilisational identity at the centre of demands for world order reconstruction

Mechanisms to reconstruct the world order

Rejection of Western liberal values

Independent foreign policy

Aim to regain status and role in the international arena and build a more equal world

FIGURE 3.1 The

civilisation state Source: Produced by Maja Janik, DOC

to which these players can secure an accommodation, will determine the future of any new world order. The task is both conceptual and analytical, but it will amount to little without firm empirical foundations.While it cannot be comprehensive, the case studies in this chapter look at some minimal empirical considerations hence its focus on the several crucial players in the civilisational debate: China, India, Russia, Turkey and the region of Southeast Asia to provide us with additional sets of lenses

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through which to look at the problem of world order and to inject a degree of variation into the conversation, for so long contained by what we might call ‘orthodox’ liberal thinking. Coming to terms with this variance is what makes the prospect of a dialogue of civilisations so difficult but so important.

The philosophical roots of Chinese thinking on international order1 For a good while now China has been engaged in a strategy of selective economic engagement and integration with globalisation. It aims not to dismantle the world order but rather remake it to reflect its own interests. Indeed, some would argue China has no need to bring about the downfall of the current order since it benefits so well from it. By any recognised criteria—​demography, economy, military, political and ideational presence and impact—​China is clearly a global power. The question is does it, as some would suggest (see Ghokale, 2020) want to be the global power? Would it like to replace the US as the dominant actor in the global order? More importantly for this book, how does it want to revise the current rules for the management of global order? History tells us that all great powers sooner or later want to do this. The story for the future will be how China tries to do this and how others respond. Can its legitimate interests be accommodated without exacerbating, to the point of open conflict, the responses of others, especially the US. For China, culture is an important element in this process. China’s has for many decades now seen culture as an engine to initiate, lead and balance political and economic development as it shakes off the semi-​feudal and semi-​colonial structures from the 19th and first half of the 20th century. Speaking at a ceremony to acknowledge 40 years from the beginning of Deng Xiaoping’s open-​door policy President Xi acknowledged an all-​embracing approach to development.2 In purchasing power parity (PPP) terms China is the largest economy in the world and its per capita gross domestic product (GDP) in PPP terms is nearly ten times what it was at the time of Deng’s open-​door policy. It is central to the world’s largest manufacturing supply chains. Its share of global economic output rose from 2% in 1978 to 15% in 2015. As Martin Wolf notes, even if it does not manage its economy well, given its population size, China is still moving rapidly towards becoming the world’s largest economy in market terms. Output per head at half of that of the US would mean its economy was larger than that of the US and the EU combined by 2050 (Wolf, 2020). China’s economic success can be attributed to a blend of the exploitation of free market principles and Chinese style practices, especially its culturally enshrined entrepreneurial spirit. But success has not been without its downsides. Its unique model of capitalism and its predominance in global manufacturing supply chains, a source of both vulnerability and influence, have made it an increased target of suspicion and resentment, particularly for the US and especially since the election of

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Donald Trump. This suspicion has been exacerbated with the onset of COVID-​19 and it’s at times far from successful pandemic diplomacy. But China’s economy has been less harmed by US tariff attacks than anticipated. And notwithstanding the acknowledged economic traumas of COVID-​ 19 its growth in the second half of 2020 was 5% and a forecast of +/​− 8% for has been signalled for 2021.3 And as The Economist documents, President Xi has been reinventing state capitalism for the 21st century. China now has a hybrid strategy to blend a reformed and more efficient state authoritarianism and technological innovation that seeks to blur the relationship between the state and the private sector to provide greater control of the economic cycle. There is no reason to assume, unlike much thinking in the US, that this strategy will not prove successful in continuing China’s strong growth.4 But any description of China’s domestic political economy needs to be embedded in a wider international context. What might China’s strong continued economic performance mean for a multilateral world order, and how and in what ways might China contribute to or seek the reform of that order? Is there a philosophical essence beyond the political economy that underwrites a Chinese approach to thinking about world order? To what degree does China’s ‘civilisational approach’ imply (in theory if not in practice at this stage) a less instrumental and more humanistic way of global living? Does it really offer an alternative to the dominant neoliberal agenda of the previous 40 years?

China, cultural values and a multilateral world The Enlightenment and subsequent Weberian beliefs have asserted that an upward trajectory of human progress is to be found in a combination of rational, politico-​ bureaucratic, economic and technological progress (see Buber, 2006). By contrast, from a Chinese perspective—​captured in the Ren and all-​under-​heaven theory—​ cultural values are the essential drivers behind humanity’s progress. Ren’s personal, social and cosmological traits constitute the essence of Chinese culture. Over forty years ago, the Confucian scholar, Weiming Tu (1979, p. 9) in a powerful critique of what he saw as the Enlightenment’s aggressively individualistic, anthropocentric, rational instrumentalism—​suggested that Confucian core values could offer a persuasive alternative to Western modernism. Western values such as liberty, rationality, the rule of law, human rights and the dignity of the individual, he says were not, as is often conventionally assumed, purely ‘universal’ values, just as righteousness, sympathy, civility, responsibility, reciprocity, public-​spiritedness, social solidarity and communality are not merely ‘Asian’ values. This juxtaposition is seen in modern Chinese thinking as a false binary. Chinese philosophy and modern political practice, resist the superiority of Western values implicit in this juxtaposition in favour of a view that has emerged since the end of the Cold War that argues that different cultures can develop their own path to modernity via a common destiny with accompanying economic

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models, as opposed to presuming a single and universally dominant development model. This position is reflected in the current Chinese proposal to build a community of common destiny, introduced by President Xi in November 2012 which morphed in 2013 into his view of international order as a “Shared Community for Mankind” (see Chen, 2019). The cultural origins of Xi’s proposals emanate from Ren and all-​under-​heaven theory. In addition, an ancient ‘all-​under-​heaven’ (tianxia) world theory proposes investigating human issues in a holistic manner (Zhao, ND). This approach is in turn built on two longstanding Chinese theoretical approaches for the regulation of human society: (i) a moral approach beginning with Confucius’ emphasis on humanity’s ethical subjectivity, extending from the individual through to society; and (ii) a cosmopolitan approach with its roots in Daoism and emphasising a cosmopolitan objectivity found in social ethics and individual morality. The Chinese micro and macro ideal type concepts of Ren and the all-​under-​heaven theory are intended to take us beyond a simply material existence and contribute to a discourse of community of common destiny. Support for a ‘community of common destiny’ or ‘community of a shared future’ is found in many of Ji Xinping’s recent speeches (see Zhang, 2018) including that to the 2020 75th UNGA. It effectively represents a Chinese riposte to recent populist/​ nationalist trends and Xi Jinping’s positive attitude towards globalisation and, if he is to be taken at his word in his February 2021 Davos opening address, a renewed interest in multilateralism (Jessop, 2021). China’s views on international community and solidarity are becoming increasingly and rapidly understood too in the wider international community.The philosophical spine of China’s views can be found in its advancement of the concept of tianxia (see DOC Research Institute, 2019, pp. 61–​66) as the basis for global community. Politically, this becomes a central element in China’s soft power diplomacy, offering up the bones of an alternative world order to a liberal order. The practical aim of the idea of ‘shared community’ for China is to enhance its voice in the conversation over the nature of the international system. It aspires to usher in the ‘era of the global community’ as ‘Globalisation 2.0’; that is, a version in which globalisation’s bullish, essentially Hayekian economic form and its transactional political characteristics are watered down by a global community approach that is more empathetic to things non-​Western—​again, in theory at least. The claims made for tianxia are not trivial. One of its principal boosters, Zhao Tingyang, wants to offer it as “… a concept for a world system: a commonwealth shared by all nations, of all civilizations and for all peoples”. Tianxia is not offered as a promise of a perfect world, nor the universalisation of Chinese values. Nor is it another Fukayama-​esque reading of the ‘end of history’. Rather, it is seen by Tingyang Zhao as, a vision of a world politically remade to optimize the chance of enduring stability and security for all. Philosophically speaking, it suggests an ontological

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solution to the political problem of the clash of civilizations, as the American political scientist Samuel Huntington put it. Zhao, n.d. Its principal juxtaposition to previously hegemonic liberal thinking is that it resists the individualist, utility-​ maximising rationality of Western economic thought. Rather, it focuses, again rhetorically at least, on collective prosperity that should replace the international hegemony of liberal internationalism as the dominant discourse of globalisation.

Putting cultural ideals into practice Clearly, the ideas of ‘all under heaven/​tianxia’ and global community, pitched at such an abstract and general level, are very difficult to take exception to. The two broad components—​(i) global inclusion and belonging; (ii) a bounded or relational rationality rather than the Pareto optimality that dominates Western thinking—​are attractive, and one suspects will grow in global attraction if the liberal model continues in its failure to address its own problems. Whether they do or not will be an applied policy question as much as a discursive philosophical one. The answer will be determined by the extent to which the concepts of tianxia and a ‘community of common destiny’ can ever become operable.The difficulty of operationalising them should not be underestimated. In some ways, they are postmodern ideas in both their vagueness and their rejection of universal values. But, if nothing else, they give pause to the invariably assumed superiority of Western views. In the words of Regis Debray, Westerners should no longer see themselves as: omnipotent judges and arbiters of the universal good, but rather as among many options for humanity. One is not superior to others. This is a lesson of humility and lucidity—​we in the West are indeed no longer the center of the universe. Debray and Zhao, 2020 In Chinese philosophy putting cultural ideals into practice is seen to be the fundamental task of humanity. Classical liberal theory led to the initially classical liberal economic model, which in turn gave way to the more aggressive neoliberal ideology and the neoliberal economic paradigm. A paradigm which of late has been found increasingly wanting. From a Chinese perspective, an inter-​ civilisational dialogue towards a community of common destiny offers an alternative and/​or an additional theoretical framework. However, it needs a platform to be realised. If we take a non-​US, non-​cynical view of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)—​ one that minimises the geostrategic and diplomatic instrumentalism of the initiative—​then, building on Xi’s economic strategy, the BRI represents such a

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platform, where culture and economics can form a positive cycle for sustainable development. The BRI is broader in intent than is often appreciated. In addition to the four dimensions of economics, trade, infrastructure and policy it also includes culture. The Chinese government argues it has striven to look beyond material benefits and enhance the importance of a ‘civilisational identity’ that integrates societies into its broader community of common destiny. Without it, the argument proceeds, human civilisation will lose its equilibrium. Cross national civilisational solutions will be required to avoid a ‘clash’ between material (western) civilisation and spiritual (eastern) civilisations. Implicit in Chinese thinking is that the root cause of this imbalance between civilisations is modern liberal theory’s constrained view of human rationality and freedom which is to be contrasted with a more expansive civilisational approach reflecting a higher level of humanism in the pursuit of life and its meaning. By extension, a dialogue of civilisations implies a more expansive discussion not only in economic and political spheres but also in the sphere of human culture. The Chinese would argue that their value system pursues developments in balance, between freedom and responsibility, rights and obligations, individuality and community. To identify these ideas doesn’t mean they have been perfectly realised or that they only belong to China. Instead, as Chen (2019) sees them, they are unfinished ideals that call for common effort from the whole of humanity. To transform instrumental rationality into all round rationality will help balance human civilisation such that hearts and minds finally meet. But we need a reality check on the Chinese language of community. The idea of shared community does not imply shared or pooled sovereignty. In the words of Bill Hayton in his recent book, The Invention of China, China’s vision of a world order is one in which countries stand on their own and make their way in an international system as individuals. This is clearly a vision in which big countries matter more than small or middle-​size ones. It fits neatly with the idea of a regional, or even global, hierarchy—​one in which Beijing sits at the top. It is a hierarchy open to all, so long as each knows its place. see Hayton, 2020 This reading—​perhaps an overly harsh reading—​is very much the contemporary US and the UK view. They see the gap between China’s rhetoric and practice as simply too great to take the discourse seriously. They see the project as nothing but an attempt to replace a pax Americana with a pax Sinica. This view is not, however, shared by all states, some of whom can expect to become part of the discussion about the reform of international order. For many, including many continental European states, the jury will remain out on China’s views and the verdict will be determined by the success or otherwise of China’s soft power diplomacy over the next few years; that is how deftly and sympathetically

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the ideas are insinuated into the global conversation and the degree to which China’s behaviour and practice will be seen to reflect its rhetorical commitment to tianxia. In sum, China’s view of itself as a civilisation, rather than simply a state, is indeed rooted in several millennia of Chinese history. But it also has contemporary urges that underpin its attitudes and approaches to the question of international order and its place in it. Always implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, Chinese views are juxtaposed against what we might see as the standard reading of a US-​led liberal order. At its core, China argues for a global order inhabited by a plurality of culturally diverse states operating on the basis of sovereign equality where sovereign equality is in part code for the multilateral institutions of that order not being under US hegemonic control. It has a limited view of global governance conducive to the maximisation of its interests in collective decision-​making on the one hand and freedom of movement allowing it to operate differently in different policy domains on the other and uncluttered by any Cartesian legal formal ideas of sovereignty pooling.

Civilisational discourse in Russian geopolitical thinking5 Ideological transformation in the 20th century and its influence on Russian foreign policy In his Ballad of East and West, Rudyard Kipling famously remarked: “East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet”. Many Russian thinkers who articulated cultural–​historical theories of society have over the centuries thought of Russia in this way.The West has always been a reference point for self-​identification while Russia perceives itself as a Eurasian civilisation that has become a buffer between West and East that has, as Lev Gumilyov noted, traditionally “guarded the rear of Europe” and as Fyodor Dostoevsky has noted, “… in Europe we were Tatars and in Asia we were Europeans” (both citations from Preobrazhenskaya, 2019). Russia has always occupied an inter-​civilisational location between the Judeo-​ Christian west, China to the east and the Muslim south. Historically, Russia has shown a fairly relaxed process of incorporation into the greater Russian orbit of the complex array of linguistically different nations and regions that came to make up the Soviet Union. But, after 1917 things changed. The USSR came rapidly to reflect a different and ideologically much stronger proposition. Subnational aspirations were subsumed to the wider social and political cause of Marxist–​Leninist revolutionary goals which, rhetorically at least remained, largely unchanged for 60 years. If we are looking for the next page break, then the change in the USSR’s geopolitical strategy can be marked by the ‘common interests’ of humanity speech by Mikhail Gorbachev at the 1988 UN General Assembly and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Much Russian political thought and action was unable

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to comprehend, or at least come to terms with, the collapse. The period from that time reflected deep social trauma for many elements of the Russian political elite as it struggled to come to terms with the end of the Soviet empire.

Russia in the 21st century: once again between West and East The trauma of the fall was not helped by the triumphalist response of the US (e.g. Zuckerman, 1998) as NATO, urged on by the US, moved progressively eastward. Not until Vladimir Putin’s speech at the 2007 Munich Security Conference did Russia appear to regain a sense of geopolitical purpose. Putin became an advocate for a multipolar geopolitical model as NATO’s eastward movement pressured Russia to strengthen its armed forces. Putin’s post-​Cold War ruthless geopolitical acumen, alas for Russia, was not mirrored in the economic domain. As noted elsewhere in the book, unlike China and many of the states of East Asia, Russia was not to take advantage of the era of economic hyper-​globalisation. But we can identify a clear convergence of interest of Russia’s existing cultural experience with its geopolitical interests reflected in the concept of the ‘Russian World’ articulated in the same year as the Munich conference. In this context, what it means to be ‘Russian’ has become “… supra-​ethnic and in a certain sense ‘civilisational’.The Russian world is poly-​ethnic, multi-​religious and poly-​semantic. This is a global phenomenon …” (Nikonov, n.d.) in which the Russian language has a strategic importance in both economic and intercultural settings in what Alexey Gromyko calls a ‘poly chrome’ world view in which a civilisational discourse both feeds on, and responds to this world view: interest in this new categorisation increased as the popularity of Eurocentrism and Western centrism as a whole declined, recognising the value (if not equivalence) of different cultures, value systems, and stories as the concept of a polycentric world was asserted in the discourse and in practice. Gromyko, n.d. In a ‘back to the future’ moment Russian civilisational identity seems to have turned on itself. Again, in Gromyko’s words “… after completing the experiment to create a new Soviet civilisation, we returned (or rolled back?) to the algorithm of the confrontation between Westernisers and Slavophiles of a century ago”. In what amounted to a revival of the discourse of nation-​states, social identity was identified once more as ethnic uniqueness, and ‘civilisational’ self-​awareness was juxtaposed to the presence of another. In the Russian context this self-​awareness lies, in almost Kiplingesque terms, somewhere between Atlanticism and Eurasianism. The ‘us-​them’ dichotomy has re-​emerged as an essential component of what we might call Russia’s ‘civilisational architecture’ as it struggles to maintain its identity. Historical analogies notwithstanding, things change. Russia is not the intellectual actor that the Soviet Union was. It now has only 3% of the global economy (in contrast to 16% for the US and 10% for China). And while it is the world’s second

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largest oil producer, a world order based on oil is changing as cleaner sources of energy to underwrite electrification become more readily available and cheaper. A transition is taking places in the world’s energy strategies, as the number of states shifting away from fossil fuels to renewable energy and developing decarbonisation strategies grows dramatically. This will be bad news for a state like Russia that relies on the export of oil and gas for both revenue and influence. These changes will cause the need for a dramatic rethink for Russia. Its current strategy is one of resistance to change and of playing a disruptive role in climate change diplomacy. But this will only take it so far as a wide global consensus on the need for decarbonised fuel systems and net-​zero goals grow and indeed become enshrined in law in many countries. In this context, the departure of Donald Trump with his similarly intransigent attitude to energy reform, was particularly bad news for Russia. On current projections, the EU, China and the US are well ahead of Russia in the energy reform process and they are likely to continue this process in a more efficient and profitable manner than Russia (Hook and Sanderson, 2021). All this said, however, Russia’s weakness in the global order should not be overstated. The declining importance of fossil fuel and the use of GDP and population data alone causes us to underestimate Russia’s potential global disruptive power. Let us not forget that Russia still has nuclear parity with the US and far outstrips China. In 2021 it was the world’s largest exporter of wheat and a dominant controller of pipeline infrastructure in Eurasia which—​for the indeterminate time being at least—​will continue to bring it influence. In Russia Resurrected: Its Power and Purpose in a New Global Order, Kathryn Stoner demonstrates the degree to which, and the manner in which, Russia, under Vladimir Putin, has in fact enhanced its capabilities to disrupt global order (Stoner, 2021). The annexation of Crimea in 2014, sundry targeted assassinations, the continued interference in US, and to a lesser extent some European, domestic electoral politics since 2016, and its other sources of international influence such as its state-​controlled media outlets (RT and Sputnik) all demonstrate greater elements of international influence than is often assumed.When taken collectively, they represent a powerful set of Russian assets for intervention into the stability of world order. Indeed, support for the Assad regime in Iraq, for example, has changed the very balance of power in the Middle East. It remains a player in the reform of world order.

Turkey: a Europe–​Asia pivot?6 Turkish nationalism and state ideology have traditionally been located somewhere along the civilisation-​culture spectrum and this duality remains a key to Turkey’s changing sociopolitical construction and geopolitical orientation today. As one acute observer notes of a crucial moment in Turkish history: the main reasons for the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and the formation of independence movements among minorities were culture-​civilisation discordance and cultural awakening. The attempt to create an Ottoman

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identity (Ottoman cosmopolitanism) among different nations was a grave error, and the Islamist endeavour to form a Muslim nation was fruitless because of cultural differences among Muslim groups. See Gokalp, 1959, cited in Senocak, 2019 While the Turkish population has undergone several mutations over the centuries, it has nevertheless preserved a well-​defined core cultural identity throughout the process of their evolution until Mustaf Kemel Atatürk, imbued with European values, established the secular Turkish Republic that embraced all religions and ethnicities (see Bruneau, 2015). Both cultural identity and geopolitical locations as a Muslim but secular state, made it inevitable that Turkey saw itself as a bridge state between European and Muslim countries. Like Russia, the new Turkey, unsurprisingly, exhibited an inter-​civilisation ambiguity in its attitude towards Europe. Frequent cultural misunderstanding between Turkey and the EU notwithstanding, the last several decades of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st century saw it aspire to membership of the European Union only to abandon its application as Europe’s Turco-​scepticism grew, especially after the coup and the draconian responses to it in 2016 (see Senocak, 2017 and 2018). The failed coup marked a fundamental turning point in Turkish attitudes toward the international order, specifically moving it away from its traditional Western liberal focussed approach towards a much more nationalistic one with attendant implications for how it sees itself as an international actor. As Senocak notes, Islam has become the fundamental identity “… while being Ottoman,Turkish or Circassian are ‘subordinate identities’ ”. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the move by President Erdogan to reclaim the Hague Sophia as a Mosque in 2020. The new Turkish foreign policy should therefore not be seen as “ ‘Neo-​Ottomanism’ … but rather a new ‘Pan-​Islamism’ ” (see Senocak, 2019). Senocak further suggests that this shift in priorities is not simply cultural or civilisational but also has longer-​term economic, political and international externalities allowing Turkey to pursue a multidimensional foreign policy offering increasing economic ties with different regions of the world. At its most ambitious it offers, or could offer, the prospect for Turkey to play a major leadership role in the Muslim world, especially in its Middle East and African hinterlands. The second major dimension of a contemporary Turkish attitude to world order that is gaining institutional and political depth is one that assumes an inexorable eastward shift in the global power balance giving rise to the increasing importance of Eurasia in the evolution of that order (see Gurcan, 2017). While Eurasianism is not an entirely new view in Turkish thinking it has—​along with a growing anti-​ Westernism—​gathered a considerable momentum since 2016 (Senocak, 2019). This shift in international thinking has given rise to strategic partnerships with Russia, other Eurasian states, China and the other members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. Eurasia is now seen to offer a more receptive response to Turkish values than Europe. Indeed, influential Turkish opinion around President Erdogan believes Western civilisation, embodied in the rhetoric of the European

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Union, is suffering an existential crisis of its value system. In this context, “Eurasia can offer a meaningful strategic alternative to Turkey as a crossroad of the civilisations and arbiter of a new global order” (Senocak, 2019, p. 77). This view has only been enhanced by the departure of Donald Trump; one of President Erdogan’s few (and dwindling) like-​minded international allies.

India: an emerging great power?7 Is India set to become a world power? On the verge of becoming the world’s most populous country, a top three world economy, a significant actor in international organisation and a significant Indo Pacific maritime power, ‘yes’, says Amitav Acharya. And like China, it mobilises the country’s traditional principles and civilisational achievements to advance its position as a global power (Acharya, 2019). One of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s great tasks of the last few years has been to remind the world that India is not only one of the world’s oldest—​with its origins dating back at least to the 3rd millennium bc—​but also continuous and most sophisticated cultures. At the same time, however, Modi is using this culture narrative to reinforce a privileged—​indeed progressively dominant—​position for Hindus in the Indian socio-​ political system (see Rupam and Lasseter, 2018). In terms of historical character, as Acharya (2019) illustrates in some detail:“The Indian world order, like that of Greece, Rome and China, was fundamentally eclectic, combining rationalism–​spiritualism, realism–​idealism, republicanism–​monarchy and anarchic and hierarchic orders”. In keeping with other civilisations, India also has a complex and at times contradictory internal homogeneity that conditions both its domestic political institutions and its international perspectives and practices. Again in Acharya’s words, “India provides ample evidence that civilizations are not singular, but emerge, exist and progress within a complex of civilizations that generate internal diversity within them and interconnectedness among them” (Acharya, 2019). Modi’s civilisational assertions mirror similar statements by Presidents Erdogan and Xi Jinping to both bolster their domestic political positions and enhance national influence in the international order. But these assertions by Chinese, Indian and Islamic civilisations do not mean that they are ignorant of, nor immune to, values that Western democracies describe as liberal and universal, notably humane and representative justice and openness. Indeed, they fully understand that core elements of Western values of modernity—​ both positive and negative—​owe a greater debt, via borrowing and expropriation, to the classical non-​Western civilisations than is often recognised, and certainly acknowledged.

Hierarchical relations in Southeast Asia8 Civilisational perspectives on the states of Southeast Asia have not received the same degree of treatment as those of the largest states of Asia such as China and

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India, yet civilisational perspectives may have a greater salience in explaining and shaping Southeast Asian visions of the evolving world order than has been traditionally understood. Milner (2019) looks at how specific civilisational and historical dynamics of the region have much greater relevance than the attempts to generalise the postcolonial development process captured in modernisations theory based on Western, largely Weberian, economic and sociological intellectual models would have us accept. For too long, non-​Western dynamics were subsumed by the imposition of ‘Western’ categories (see Higgott, 1983). But as Milner notes, Southeast Asian societies were far from passive actors in the face of postcolonial modernisation theories of development. States of the region, vulnerable and economically dependent as they were in the early postcolonial period, were nevertheless innovative in resisting and adapting, or ‘localising’, foreign influences, be they Western theoretical values or religious cultural systems such Hinduism, Buddism, Islam and Confucianism (see Higgott and Robison, 1985). This evolving approach of adaptation and resistance to purely ‘western’ development finds parallels in our understanding of the theory and practice of the international relations of the region. It was importance to resist western intellectual dominance said Wang Gungwu, the doyen of Southeast Asian international history. He opined that ‘the whole language’ of international relations leads “anybody in Asia … to … an Anglo-​American world view” (cited Kee Beng, 2015). The early study of the international relations of Southeast Asia did not encourage a curiosity of non-​Western traditions (see Bilgin, 2007, p. 11). The international relations of Southeast Asia, indeed Asia generally, did not conform to ‘western theory’. This became increasingly obvious in the second decade of the 21st century (see Acharya and Buzan, 2010). In countries like Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei,Western analysts once predicted religion would reside primarily in the private sphere. But this has not happened. Islam has been growing in influence, claiming authority over legal, political and social organisation. Political liberalism has been widely resisted. European political institutions as legacies from the colonial period were always going to be tested overtime as the colonial period receded into the distance and as states rediscovered key elements of their precolonial institutional past and its cultural traditions. Independence saw key elements in a liberal individualist ideology in the socio-​ political domain rejected; sometimes citing Confucian thinking on the balance between community, family, the individual and government. And as Milner notes in some detail (2019: 86), it should not be assumed that the state structures of Southeast Asia will axiomatically resist ethnic or separatist challenges; particularly if reinforced by religious commitment. But perhaps the most salient civilisational driver of the international relations of the region in the contemporary era is the emerging structure of China’s role in Southeast Asia. Southeast Asian states have not in a uniform fashion across the region, simply thrown in their lot with the US against China as the provider of national security. Most of the ASEAN states have sought to avoid major power confrontation or taking sides in the increasing contest between the two great powers.

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Southeast Asian leaders appear not to favour push-​back but rather a smart and patient accommodation with China (Milner, 2017). Despite the fact that Westphalian international relations concepts—​‘sovereignty’, ‘power’, ‘nation’, ‘balancing’, ‘hedging’ and ‘band-​waggoning’—​have entered the regional international relations discourse, the dangers of analysing the Southeast Asian order in an alternative civilisational vacuum are self-​evident. Traditional understandings amongst regional actors, both large and small, of the importance of embracing moral balances as well as power balances should not be minimised. Standard realist assumptions of state behaviour emanating from the western tradition should not simply be assumed in Southeast Asia, as its history suggests: The Southeast Asian experience is that China, when it possessed enormous military power in the 15th century, sent great armadas to the region without establishing an empire. Also, the propagation of Indian culture across the whole of Southeast Asia was not based on political power. It was European imperialism that understood prestige in terms of political domination. Milner, 2019, p. 87 For sure, in the current era China challenges liberal democracy in Southeast Asia and while Southeast Asia as a region is a meeting place for civilisations it is not a single civilisation in its own right, as its massive religious and ethnic diversity attests. It can claim to be more than a meeting place for world civilisations. It also has a loose form of rhetorical unity which is not without significance when it comes to promoting regional unity.

Towards Eurasia? What can we make of these ‘civilisational tropes’ of China, Russia,Turkey, India and Southeast Asia? Given that they reflect both unique and common experiences how do they inform the wider themes of the book? A first insight we can draw is that China’s aim is to not to dismantle the world order but to remake it to better reflect its own interests, in which culture is an engine to initiate, encourage, balance and lead political and economic development. This is clearly the message to be found in Chinese domestic economic and political changes from 2020.9 The brief perspective on Chinese philosophical thinking also suggests one element of how we should understand the issue of reforming international order. The Chinese view, in contrast to the liberal view, argues that a civilisational approach insists on a macro focus on humanity as a whole. In empirical terms this is reflected in a strategy of economic engagement and integration, as per the development of the BRI, but also taking the cultural/​ideational challenge to the US via a forward-​leaning cultural and economic diplomacy accompanied by assertions of the uniqueness of China’s civilisational stature. China’s strategy offers an alternative to what it sees as perceived flaws in Western liberalism, especially its emphasis on rationality at the expense of ‘humanity’ as a

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paradigm of order and a cause of modern-​day crises. Xi Jinping has repeatedly stressed China’s unique history and civilisation. His view has been promoted by influential intellectuals such as Zhang Weiwei (2012), author of The China Wave: Rise of a Civilizational State, who argues China owes its rise to the rejection of Western political ideas and the adoption of a model that traces its roots to Confucianism and exam-​based meritocratic traditions that gives Beijing a way to draw other countries into its orbit, and away from the US. Insights from Russia offer a historical-​cum-​philosophical insight into why it, rather than China, constitutes today’s major revisionist power towards the international order. As De Tocqueville noted as long ago as 1830, Russia, along with the US, was destined to become the other global power. He mused that they would each control half the globe. While that is not the case, Russia is and will remain a significant state in determining the future; especially close to its borders, where it is a continental power whose interests inform its policy. It has both legitimate and expansionist geostrategic interests but is, at least according to President Putin, not afforded the respect and standing it deserves. Historical resentment at the collapse of the Soviet Union along with its political culture inform Russia’s, or perhaps more precisely Vladimir Putin’s, modern day geostrategic practices. He seemingly will be happy with nothing less than: (i) keeping and regaining strong, if not formal, control over most of the countries of the former Soviet Empire—​which are seen to be in Russia’s rightful historical sphere of influence as recognised by the US at Yalta in 1945; (ii) the recognition of Russia as a power of equal international standing to the US and China. For this to happen, Putin is keen to revise the rules of the current liberal international order that place more weight on military geopolitical power rather than geo-​economics plenty. Putin’s idea of revision is couched in essentially zero-​sum politico-​strategic terms vis-​a-​vis the role of the US. For Russia to succeed, the US’ politico-​strategic role and influence must be diminished. And Russia’s influence under Putin has, as demonstrated above, undoubtedly grown, supported by a range of hybrid activities including re-​annexations short of formal wars. But the degree to which this is the view in the wider reaches of the Russian elite and population more generally is unclear. According to semi-​official US thinking, current Russian strategy is driven by a sense of insecurity accompanied by a deep-​seated philosophical belief in the values, indeed superiority, of Russia as a civilisation (see Pentagon, 2019). It is the combination of these factors that makes Russia, not China, the major revisionist, and potentially more destabilising, power when it comes to the reform of the international order. The discussion of Turkey demonstrated how Eurasianism as a historical concept borrows elements of Kemalism, Turkish nationalism and radical secularism. In its modern form, the Turkish variant of Eurasianism is opposed to liberal capitalism and globalisation in their pure forms and possesses a somewhat paranoid belief that Western powers want to carve up Turkey. As a consequence, Turkey’s future has moved away from Europe and would appear to be moving into closer alignment

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with that of Russia, Central Asia and China. Turkish international relations and its view of the international order have moved over time from being strongly pro-​ European to now being strongly Eurasian. Turkey’s embrace of the Eurasian idea takes on added significance in an environment in which it, like other players in the Great Game, increasingly has infrastructure-​driven continental designs of its own. While these are potentially complementary with the Chinese BRI, they are also competitive with segments of it. For example, Turkey envisages a railroad-​powered Middle Corridor that would stretch from its European border across Anatolia into the Caucasus and Central Asia. India under Modi appears to harbour an understanding of the post-​Westphalian nation-​state system and Western dominance as but an aberration of history that pays insufficient attention to the civilisational state in historical context. In the contemporary era, intellectual supporters of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party projects India as a Hindu-​based civilisation rather than a multicultural nation state. Modi’s minister of civil aviation, Jayant Sinha, suggests that at independence, India should have embraced its own culture instead of colonial legacies. Talking to the Financial Times, Sinha preached cultural particularism. “In our view, heritage precedes the state … People feel their heritage is under siege. We have a faith-​based view of the world versus the rational-​scientific view” (cited in Rachman, 2019b). Beyond Modi’s rhetoric on Hindu fundamentalism, we can also see an Indian vision of a much wider role, found in its incursions into Central Asia as part of its Connect Central Asia strategy announced in 2012. This initiative came a year prior to Xi Jinping’s first articulation of the BRI. Both leaders, significantly, announced their policies in Central Asia, Xi Jinping in the Kazakh capital of Astana and then Indian minister Shri E. Ahamed in Kyrgyzstan’s Bishkek. Prime Minister Modi became the first Indian leader to visit all five former Soviet Central Asian republics since Jawaharlal Nehru in the 1960s. Our Southeast Asian trope identifies the centrality of both religion and culture, and especially ethnicity, in any understanding of the international relations of the moment in the region. This is a reality that makes much Western theorising—​and both liberal and realist practices of international relations and diplomacy in that region—​largely irrelevant. Religion, ethnicity and culture are stronger drivers of Southeast Asia’s views of world order than has often been assumed in both the scholarly literature and practical analysis. If we eschew the civilisational dynamics (plural) at work in Southeast Asia, we fail to notice its role in the growing opposition to the practice of liberalism in the region. In so doing we (dis)miss the enduring salience of Southeast Asian civilisational identities (plural).This enduring salience should be not be confused with the altogether more fragile salience of the statist notion of “ASEAN centrality” (see Acharya, n.d) as a diplomatic device to bolster the region. Perhaps more important than these individual experiences are the commonalities that we can draw from the respective behaviours identified in these small case studies. The first and most obvious common theme is that all of them, both implicitly and explicitly, do in fact see the current world order through different lenses to

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those ‘liberal lenses’ through which the idea of world order has been predominantly viewed and projected for the last 70 years. Second, they demonstrate that to assume that only liberal values are universal values is misleading. It is quite clear that some of the long-​standing values, especially of China and India, have a historical universality of application not recognised in many liberal readings of them. Third, they are all also of the view that the old (i.e. post–​Second World War liberal) order cannot stand without substantial reform. This is the case philosophically, geopolitically and, by extension, institutionally. The case studies suggest that civilisational states are not anti-​universalism per se but rather that they are resistant to some of the core, especially rationalist driven, elements of universalism assumed by liberals for much of the post-​Second World War era. Fourth, they all give credence to the idea that the geo-​regional structure of global order is not written in stone. The idea of a multipolar world built on the Americas, Europe and Asia that was thought to be emerging in the post-​Cold War era must come to terms with the emergence of further geo-​regional constructions that take the idea of Eurasia more seriously than was the case for most of the post-​ Second World War era. In their own different ways, they each assume the inevitability of the increasing importance of Eurasia as a geographical construct every bit as significant as other geopolitical constructs such as ‘the Pacific’, ‘Asia-​Pacific’, the ‘transatlantic’ or the increasingly fashionable ‘Indo-​Pacific’. Of course, the idea of Eurasia is not new. It was first articulated by Halford Mackinder at the British Royal Geographical Society in 1904. At that time, 9,200 kilometres of Trans-​Siberian Railway were being built from Moscow to Vladivostok, intended to unite Europe and Asia as what Mackinder called ‘the world island’. Describing Eurasia as “the continuous landmass of Euro-​Asia … [that] … between the ocean and the desert measures 21,000,000 square miles, or half of all of the land on the globe.” He went on to say that “the real divide between east and west is to be found in the Atlantic Ocean” (Mackinder, 1904). A hundred and sixteen years later, Mackinder’s words seem prophetic. In his two works on the Silk Road, Peter Frankopan (2015 and 2018), in the footsteps of Mackinder, has advanced what is now becoming an intellectual argument du jour that the spine of Eurasia from China through to East and Central Europe is developing in such a way that it will, over time, rival and even surpass the power and influence of a Europe and the West generally beset by crises and challenges. Wracked by internal political and economic problems, Europe’s states, he argues, may not have the wherewithal for geopolitical battle. His books make no mention of the further internal degeneration of the American political system wrought by the era of Donald Trump. At a more practical level, both Russia and China, for their own different reasons, are engaged in practices geared to strengthening the concept of Eurasia. These emerging Eurasian imperatives will have implications for how global order is shaped and how other actors will need to accommodate to these developments (see Emerson, 2014 and Dorsey, 2019). From a Chinese perspective it is implicitly assumed that Eurasia will become an extension of its own orbit rather than separate

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from it and thus enhance its position in the continuing development of a global binary between it and the US. The potential of this development was a subtext in a report titled Toward a Greater Eurasia: How to Build a Common Future (Astana Club (2018) which warns that the Eurasian supercontinent needs to anticipate the Great Game’s risks. These include not only the mounting tensions between the US and China but also: global trade wars and arms races more generally; escalating conflict in the greater Middle East; deteriorating relations between Russia and the West; rising chances of separatism and ethnic/​religious conflict; and environmental degradation. These risks are enhanced by the fragility of a global system, with the weakening of multilateral institutions, escalating trade and cyber wars, and not least ecological

Nation state

Civilisation state

Idea

17th–19th–century European phenomenon

21th–century global phenomenon

Origins

Established following the demise of the Holy Roman Empire

Rejection of the 20th–century liberal order and Western values; resurgence of primordial identities that had laid dormant

Foundations

Territorial integrity, citizenship, common language

Collective memories of ancient civilisations; claiming unique historical legacies

Mission

Creating community with shared values

Correcting historical errors; demand a bigger role in the international system

Longevity

Relatively short history; dates back to peace of Westphalia of 1648

Dates back several millennia to ancient history

Power

Separation of powers; checks and balances

Power is highly centralised

Sovereignty

State sovereignty, but part of wider international community of shared values

State sovereignty and self-determination

Values

Liberal, secular, purportedly universal values

Cultural particularism

Inclusion and exclusion

High level of inclusion, e.g. granting rights to minorities

Exclusive, cultural, identitarian and ideological cohesion

FIGURE 3.2 The

nation state versus the civilisation state Source: Produced by Maja Janik, DOC

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challenges. They are risks that while perhaps not of the same magnitude as the escalating US–​China standoff, carry with them every bit as much danger for the future fragmenting of world order. The reconciliation of the differing interests of civilisational state actors with the wider international community (captured in Figure 3.2) are essential in any reset of world order. These issues are elaborated in Chapters 5 and 6.

Notes 1 This section draws in part on Chen (2019). 2 www.chinadaily.com.cn/​a/​201812/​18/​WS5c183f7fa3107d4c3a00153c.html. 3 www.statista.com/​statistics/​1102691/​china-​estimated-​coronavirus-​COVID-​19-​impact-​ on-​gdp-​growth/​. 4 www.economist.com/​weeklyedition/​2020-​08-​15. 5 The section draws in part on Preobrazhenskaya (2019). 6 This section draws in part on Senocak (2019). 7 This section draws in part on Acharya (2019). 8 This section draws in part on Milner (2019) and Higgott (2018). 9 www.economist.com/​ b riefing/​ 2 020/​ 0 8/​ 1 5/​ x i- ​ j inping- ​ i s- ​ t rying- ​ t o- ​ remake- ​ t he-​ chinese-​economy.

4 CHALLENGES FOR WORLD ORDER Development, ecology and pandemics

The political, economic and civilizational problematics developed in Chapters 1–​3 do not operate in a vacuum as individual and discrete analytical categories.They are clearly part of a wider complex set of interconnected relationships. Moreover, it is increasingly clear that they are also not independent of two other cross cutting and real elements of what we might call the ‘new’ globalisation: (i) the challenges emanating from the ecological/​environmental change and (ii) the final recognition, on the back of COVID-​19, of the permanent arrival on the global policy agenda of an age of pandemics. Deglobalisation, decoupling and reshoring might be a populist response to the ‘old’ globalisation in the economic and political domains as states try to enhance their sovereignty and resilience. The coming environmental crisis and the realisation of the global effects of the COVID-​19 pandemic are two further factors that condition what the ‘new globalisation’ looks like and the effect it has on international relations. It is going to be harder to withdraw from, or control for, the contingencies of the new globalisation raised by short-​to-​medium-​to-​long term environmental challenges and the immediate global health challenges than it is for a state like the US to attempt to decouple economically from China. Climate change, global warming and pandemics are not so easily amenable to state control. Hurricanes, heatwaves and viruses do not need passports, nor do they respect border controls. It is not possible for states to introduce tariffs, or indeed non-​tariff barriers to control either of them. This chapter looks at the way in which both factors—​the global environmental debate and the debate over how we handle pandemics in the future—​are interwoven with the economic, political and cultural problematics and DOI: 10.4324/​9781003175087-5

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will condition the prospects and the limits of the reform of world order in the near to medium term future.

Development, ecology and the environment Thinking and practice about development, especially understandings captured in the concept of ‘modernisation’ and modernisation theory have been at the core of US dominated liberal order thinking from the end of Second World War more or less to the present day. In essence, successful development in liberal thinking was predicated on the diffusion of knowledge, capital, technology and the cultural and civilizational mores of Western society to the developing world (see for example Apter, 1965 and Pye and Verba, 1965). These processes were captured in three scholarly clichés: (i) in the words of Max Weber the shift from ‘particularism to universalism’ in the socio cultural domain, (ii) from ‘traditional or patrimonial’ forms of authority to modern ‘bureaucratic forms of authority’ in the political domain and (iii) in the economic domain, to use W. W. Rostow’s metaphor, states sitting at the end of a runway waiting to ‘take off into self-​sustained growth’ (Rostow, 1971). This early orthodoxy was of course progressively challenged in the postcolonial era on the back of an evolving understanding of the empirical limits of modernization theory reflected in different trajectories of development in Asia, Africa and Latin America (see Higgott, 1983). This changed understanding reflected the growing assertiveness of developing country political elites that saw themselves on the wrong end of an asymmetrical postcolonial deal with the former European colonial powers, the US and the international financial institutions and GATT (IFTIs) that effectively determined what constituted development orthodoxy in the early decades of the postcolonial era. As the second half of the 20th century progressed the mission of the IFTIs was transformed from their initial post-​Second World War agenda of creating global financial stability and providing for post war reconstruction, mainly in Europe, to becoming the agencies for overseeing developing country fiscal rectitude (on the role of the IMF, see Higgott and Hodder, 2014) and ‘educating’ the developing world in neoclassical economic orthodoxy (on the World Bank, see Stone, 2000). The countries of the developing world’s response overtime was to advance a series of arguments for reforming world order in ways intended to secure a greater influence in the governance of that order, notably via demands for a New International Economic Order (NIEO) in the 1970s (see Cox, 1979) and the growing critique of the IMF’s attempt in the 1980s and 1990s—​captured in the language of the ‘Washington Consensus’ (see Williamson, 2004)—​to create a one size fits all orthodox formula for developing countries (for a critique Higgott and Phillips, 2000). In the presence of deep-​seated identities and strategies that enhanced inequalities in the developing world the Washington Consensus never secured legitimacy; especially after the Asian Financial Crisis of the late 1990s (see Higgott, 1998).

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This failure to secure a western, essentially neoliberal developmental consensus has now been further undermined by growing ecological crisis conditions. As a consequence, the development process should be seen as an integral element of that set of entangled contemporary processes still premised on the essence of a state-​ centric economic growth model that might not now be viable in the way it was thought to be when these models were developed in the 1950s and 1960s absent of any understanding of pending ecological constraints. State-​centred accounts, and their practices, remain underpinned by an ideology of national development and until recently, neoliberal economic growth with the accompanying baggage of austerity policies reinforcing conditions of socioeconomic deprivation with attendant destabilising political consequences in the Global South. While the shift of production to the South in the context of trade-​led globalisation and the development of a complex web of global supply chains has clearly generated increased aggregate wealth in countries of the South, this has not been without negative externalities for countries and their workers. Supply chains are seen in some literature now not as ‘value chains’ but as ‘poverty chains’ (Selwyn, 2019). Yet opposition to an open international economy and a liberal trade regime in the Global South, it should be noted, is different to the anti-​globalisation rhetoric espoused by the populist protectionist communities in the US and some other developed countries discussed in Chapter 2. The principal concern in the US has been with the unequal distributive consequences of globalisation on its own declining manufacturing sectors and the wider implications for its relative wealth and power vis-​a-​vis rising economic powers, especially China. In the developing world while growing inegalitarian distributive consequences are not welcomed they nevertheless attract less opposition because of the absolute increase in aggregate wealth generation globalisation has brought to many countries. A further concern of developing countries, ironically perhaps considering that many of them often complain about their inability to have influence over global policy processes, is that the decline of multilateralism leaves them increasingly exposed to the vicissitudes of asymmetrical and transactional predatory economic behaviour from stronger states in the international economy. For example, the WTO offers less protection to developing country development strategies, especially the protection of nascent industries, than many countries had hoped for. Attempts to defend their strategies via industrial policy is strongly resisted by the developed countries, notwithstanding industrial policy’s central strategic role in the history of the now developed world’s own development (see Chang, 2002). Attempts by the WTO to enhance support for developing country trade policy in the face global corporate power collapsed with the failure of the Doha development round of multilateral trade negotiations. Moreover, some overly optimistic assumptions (e.g. Amin, 2016) that China, and maybe even Russia, would come to the assistance of the Global South in a post-​hegemonic polycentric world—​China’s Belt and Road Initiative notwithstanding—​have not come to fruition in any major sense. Any attempts to assume what a reformed post liberal world order will and should look like must take account of these key considerations of the Global South.

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Equally, if not more salient even than the developmental dilemmas on prospects for reforming world order is, following Weber and Weber (2020), the growing importance of the ecological problematic. This problematic is inseparable from the developmental problematic. Both are globally systemic. But the ecological problematic is not reducible simply to global warming. In addition to the impact of carbon dioxide emissions it requires a fundamental reconceptualisation of factors such as agricultural and animal husbandry practices and land management and biodiversity maintenance; all of which will have implications for the development problematic and crucially for this book, what shape a revised world order will take. As with the development problematic, Weber and Weber argue, not without foundation, that current models of world order do not have a plausible answer to the effects on global order of the ecological problematic. Political, social and economic responses to the ecological problematic will have to be much greater than was assumed for much of the late 20th and early 21st century. While our sensitivity to the need to address this problematic as a priority, especially since the Paris 2015 meetings on the global environment, has grown and will continue to grow, we have still to factor this into any reform process applied to the institutional collective multilateral order. Future global leadership will depend on the capacity of the great powers to provide sufficient support for, and incentive to, the developing world by way of the provision of (global) public goods of a sufficient magnitude for them at least to acquiesce in global collective or bipolar rule. The ecological question is unprecedented. The institutional architecture developed in patchwork fashion to support the organisation of international order and indeed the development agenda since 1945 were not designed to deal with the ecological consequences of the second half of the 20th century. We must now learn how to design our polities and economies to minimise or reverse the ecologically detrimental impacts of development, and on development as we know it. Efforts to date, captured in the notion of ‘global environmental governance’, usually look for an economic rather than institutional solution to the ecological problem; for example, creating a market for global carbon trading. As Peter Dauvergne (2016) notes, distributive consequences are invariably ignored in (neo) classical market options. This is in fact frequently the case in neoliberal and, more recently populist views on the matter, both of which tend to be strongly anti-​environmental. Anti-​environmentalism, with a couple of exceptions, is a particularly popular populist sentiment; from Trump’s US, through the German AFD and Brexit leaning Tories in the UK to contemporary conservative leaders in Australia, Brazil, Italy and Turkey. This anti-​environmentalism—​and especially international collaborative approaches to environmental problem solving—​ is a dimension of the overall politics of fear that is embedded in the populist-​nationalist zeitgeist of recent years. This has obvious implications for the nature of world order reform we are likely to see in the coming years. Designing a new order that addresses the environmental question, as Nobel Prize winning Elinor Orstrom told us three decades ago, will

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not work if it privileges competition. Normal market rules, she said, are unlikely to apply, and a greater attention should be focused on outcomes and the sustainable use of the global commons (see Ostrom, 1990). Prospects for the adoption of Orstrom’s approach to building cooperative environmental institutions were not strong when she introduced them and are not much stronger in the current era. Indeed, ‘greening’ existing institutional designs without addressing the increasing social calamities entailed in maldistribution, exclusion, and domination is likely to fail … neither the theory or practice of global governance, as expressed for instance in the form of the SDG initiative, nor new or re-​ constituted hegemonic leadership, whether existing or emerging, would appear to be able to provide plausible answers at present. Weber and Weber, 2020 Nor, as the UN’s Blueprint for a Sustainable Future tells us can we expect to create and sustain material lifestyles that approximate the levels of affluence exhibited in the developed world since the last quarter of the 20th century.1 Fortunately, for all but the most dogmatic climate deniers, the debate has moved on from what causes climate change to who carries the responsibility to act, what are the best approaches to decarbonisation and what organisational structure is likely to be the most effective, and politically realistic given the hybridity of overlapping governance mechanisms, interests and actors—​be they governmental, non-​governmental, corporate and other private actors. We should not expect anytime soon the development of a World Environmental Organization comparable to the World Trade Organisation. Nor perhaps indeed should we wish for one if it were to reflect the state-​led institutional structure of a 20th century multilateral organisation. The organisational infrastructure that has developed overtime around the global discussion on the environment and climate change—​from the UN Framework Convention of Climate Change through to Paris Summit and the subsequent Conference of Parties (COP) and Agreement of 2015/​2016 and beyond—​has been much looser, flexible and reflects the hybridity of interests and actors with a stake in the issue. While the Paris Agreement as of 2019 had secured 184 ratifications from its 195 signatories, all countries remain free to set their own non-​binding contributions (NDCs) for controlling their greenhouse gas emissions by specific dates. Ratification is not synonymous with implementation and compliance. The agreement develops a transparent tracking process and unlike a traditional multilateral agreement it places great importance on substate stakeholders—​such as cities and subnational regions such as the states in a federal US—​playing important roles. This approach marks a sharp departure from the traditional role of the multilateral institutions developed in the mid-​20th century. Chapter 7 picks up on this theme in its discussion of potential changes to and reform of multilateralism.

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COVID-​19 and beyond: pandemics and global order The second issue imposing on the more traditional economic and political problematics is COVID-​19 and the new global agenda item of pandemic control (i.e. both management and mitigation). This will be a key issue for the future theory and practice of world order. Contrary to much recent journalistic analysis, COVID-​ 19 should not be thought of as a ‘black swan’ event.2 As closer inspection tells us, epidemiologists had been predicting a major global pandemic of some variety for well over a decade prior to coronavirus. Not to foreshadow an event like COVID-​ 19 must rate as the largest collective analytical failure since we failed to notice the end of the Cold War and the break-​up of the Soviet Union. This section speculates how and in what ways a global pandemic exacerbates the relationship between states and the international system in an era of heightened contest between the forces of nationalism and global cooperation. A global pandemic brings about shifts in economic and political power in ways that we can only accurately describe with the benefit of hindsight. But what we can say is that trends that were in train prior to COVID-​19 identified earlier in this book—​trends towards deglobalisation, international economic and political decoupling and away from greater economic and political interconnectedness and multilateral cooperation—​are firming rather than weakening. Similarly, just as the end of the Cold War provoked massive retrospective soul searching so too, it is clear, that COVID-​19 has already, and will continue to generate a veritable torrent of analysis on the future of world order and all the attendant implications for international cooperation and the management of global problems captured by our metaphoric language on order (see e.g. Perthes, 2021 and Kevany, 2021). In effect what we are witnessing is the beginning of an analytical and ideological-​ cum-​political battle to see which, or rather who’s, narrative explanation of the pandemic and its aftermath will prevail. While many scenarios might be identified perhaps three broad views capture the spectrum of thinking: (i) the analytically complacent plus ça change position; (ii) an apocalyptic view of chronic global breakdown as bad as or in all probability worse than the depression of the 1930s; (iii) a range of views of the ‘what is to be done?’ variety, if there is to be some kind of post pandemic reset. Views (i) and (ii) are discussed below. Prospects for a multilateral reset (view iii) is discussed in Chapter 7. Joseph Nye tells us that “big causes do not necessarily lead to big effects”. Similar views are also expressed by the President of the US Council on Foreign Relations Richard Haass (2020) who argues “that not every crisis is a turning point”. For them, it is not inevitable that coronavirus will lead to major structural changes in world order. Nye reverts to his theory of soft power to argue that China will not benefit as much as many have argued will be the case from COVID-​19. Long-​term soft power rests on attraction not propaganda and much of China’s coronavirus policy response has simply been short-​term propaganda (see Wischer, 2020) that will not displace deeper US soft power primacy. “The US will remain preeminent” says Nye, (2020). Notwithstanding China’s growing advance in recent years, the

Challenges for world order  73

US still holds a geopolitical (as in both geographical and political) advantage over China. And, notwithstanding the at times paranoid rhetoric of some Washington analysts, the US still holds leads over China in bio and nanotechnology, AI, cyber and digital technology. The role of agency—​policy choice on the part of decision makers (be they elected or non-​elected—​remains important or more important for Nye than systemic and structural factors. Implicit here is a view that there is life after Donald Trump, whose legacy can be mitigated by better policy choice. Moreover, Nye suggests “… it is still much too early to predict a geopolitical turning point that would fundamentally alter the power relationship between the United States and China” (Nye, 2020). Nye’s views are largely shared by other liberal internationalist thinkers discussed in Chapter 2 and by analysts who welcomed the election of Joe Biden. While, in this view, we should expect a less liberal order than that which we knew in the 20th century, we should not expect the end of that order in and of itself.The liberal international view has been engaged, in a perennial tussle with long-​standing realist views of international order in the 75 or so years since the end of Second World War. But liberal internationalism is now no longer the dominant view amongst most contemporary analysts of international relations. To the extent that a liberal order existed in anything other than a partial form prior to COVID-​19 it now looks increasingly problematic for a post-​COVID-​19 era. There is a much more influential and darker view of general breakdown in global economic and political order, not to mention a more generalised negative view of the international reliability of the US and a confirmation of a return to geopolitics and geo-​economics in the foreign policies of the world’s major powers. It coexists with an expectation of a growing regionalisation of world order built around US–​China bipolarity identified in this book. Although globalisation was not the cause of COVID-​19 much of the aftermath has been attributed to it. The COVID-​19 crisis has further exacerbated the challenges to liberal economic and political order in addition to those already in train.The supply chains that enhanced globalisation are now seen, especially through populist lenses, to carry deleterious economic risks for the sovereign autonomy of states. As a consequence, the search for self-​reliance, in the provision of health and medical equipment has become, and will continue to become, an increasing watchword for nationalistically minded governments. But their policy responses must be appropriate, practical and proportional responses. Proportionality in decision-​making has not always been a strongpoint of governments face by crises as seen in the US after the bombing of New York’s twin towers. From 9/​11 to 2020 the US spent US$180 billion a year on counter-​terror but only US$2 billion in total on pandemic prospects and planning. Health and economic considerations can also exacerbate opportunities for geo-​ strategic and geopolitical disruption and greater non-​cooperative behaviour. States, the consultancy firm Deloittes (2020) suggests, will become ‘Lone Wolves’ that in the name of resilience/​security will become increasingly isolationist, instigate strict

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controls on foreigners and migration and enhance the use of digital surveillance systems, initially developed to assist in the containment of coronavirus, to monitor people and their movements once the worst elements of the pandemic are over (see McGee, Murphy and Bradshaw, 2020). Leading US realists, such as Mearsheimer (2019), Kaplan (2020) and Walt (2020), further assume the continued decline of any vestiges of a liberal order and the growth of an increasingly nationalist, combative geopolitical system of states turning inwards and seizing the opportunity to re-​instantiate that mythical beast, sovereignty. COVID-​19 has brought into even starker relief than the years preceding it the clash between liberalism and nationalism and the challenges to the international multilateral institutional architecture of the second half of the 20th and the first decade of the 21st centuries. To the extent that COVID-​19 has anything to do with this process, it is as an accelerator, not a cause, of the trends identified in Chapters 1–​3 and as in the further facilitation of the authoritarian politics of ‘strong men leaders’ now using the pandemic to expand their powers in a fashion that sees their societies acquiesce in greater infringements on the liberty of their peoples in the name of pandemic containment (see Rachmann, 2020). Authoritarian politicians—​large and small and across the political spectrum from Donald Trump, Xi Jinping through to Victor Orban—​have sought to externalise the blame for COVID-​19.Their targets include inter alia refugees, migrants, globalisation and China.The blame game has been used, and will continue to be used, to enhance nationalist, protectionist and digital surveillance policies. Incorporating new-​found COVID-​19 powers into existing law to curb civil liberties and political freedoms, especially those facilitated by digital surveillance, is growing (Coyer and Higgott, 2020.)

A further look at the US–​China relationship: the COVID-​19 factor The deteriorating relationship between the US and China up to 2019, detailed in Chapter 2, has been further exacerbated by COVID-​19. Prior to developments in India, the US and Europe have been the major victims of COVID-​19 in empirical terms. The data are a moving feast but at the time of completion of this manuscript (February 2021) in real terms the US and Europe accounted for 80% of the reported cases and 90% of all the deaths from the virus. The US, Spain, Italy, Belgium and the UK accounted for 75% of all casualties.The US with 4% of global population accounts for +/​− 25% of the casualties. This has to be contrasted with successful East Asian and Pacific responses to the epidemic, especially in Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand. The negative elements of the US–​ China relationship, upto the change of Administration in the US in January 2021, were dramatically enhanced by the pandemic as both countries searched for their COVID-​19 scapegoat and the ideological high ground (see Glaser, 2020). Post-​Trump China has continued to press what it sees as its advantage; especially in the wake of the inadequate actions of

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the Trump administration to contain the pandemic that so badly diminished the US’s global reputation (see Campbell and Doshi, 2020). Some rebuilding under President Biden notwithstanding, Joseph Nye’s too comfortable assumptions of continuing US soft power supremacy should not be taken for granted. As Stephen Walt (2020) has noted, the key long-​standing attribute of US soft power has been a global admiration of US innovation, support for its underwriting of (some) key global public goods, expertise and policy competence, especially at the leading edges of technology. An assumption that the rest of the world still thinks this way should not be made. The Trump administration’s international policy behaviour—​at best lack lustre and incompetent and at worst simply wrong, duplicitous and possibly criminal—​ diminished perceptions of both US competence and innovation. This was the case before and throughout the COVID-​19 crisis but also across a number of other issue areas from trade to its North Korean and Middle East diplomacy, attitudes to climate change and regional economic cooperation in East Asia. The US failure to take a lead in international recovery has assisted a further shift towards Beijing. As noted in Foreign Affairs, the in-​house magazine of the US foreign policy establishment: If the US remains absent without leave, China may take the crisis as an opportunity to start setting new rules according to its own global governance vision, displacing Washington from future ordering efforts. Lissner and Rapp Hopper, 2020 Moreover, COVID-​19 has diminished trust in America as a global leader in other sectors; notably in that one area where the US has hitherto maintained absolute hegemony since Second World War—​the global financial system. The absolute primacy of the dollar as the principal medium of exchange has always given the US its ‘exorbitant privilege’ (see Eichengreen, 2011). The pre-​eminence of the dollar as the safest store of financial value, especially in times of crisis, still exists. But this privilege may not remain unassailable forever. Dollar dominance will be challenged by China’s rise and the changing nature of technology supporting an alternative set of financial principles and practices. Indeed, the prospect of the Chinese development of a digital currency weakening US economic and geopolitical power by its ability to unseat the US$ as the world’s principal payment platform has been envisaged (see Kumar and Rosenbach, 2020). China is also advanced in the development of ‘super-​apps’, substituting mobile phones for credit cards as a means of spending money. Developed initially for the home market these apps are now widely used in developing countries that are becoming increasingly embedded in the Chinese digital orbit as the world bifurcates into two (US and Chinese) digital ecologies. In this context, we should not underestimate growing global resentment at the US tendency to use dollar hegemony as a weapon of foreign policy statecraft—​via, for example, primary and secondary sanctions against nuclear proliferators, Russian oligarchs, and Chinese companies, but more lately even the banks of its European

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allies. And COVID-​19, by making it more difficult for developing countries to service their debts, is exacerbating their desire to escape dollar control, thus giving China more leverage in its new spheres of interest.3 Indeed, China’s general keenness to develop an alternative global infrastructure to rival that established by the US after Second World War has picked up a notch since the global spread of COVID-​19. Its investments in the AIIB, the Belt and Road initiative, the BDS satellite navigation systems and 5G wireless networks have all gathered increased salience post pandemic.4 This is the context in which its less than successful COVID ‘mask diplomacy’ of 2020 and its ‘vaccine diplomacy’ of 2021 needs to be located. In diplomatic terms China, regardless of occasional setbacks, appears to have secured greater mileage from the pandemic than the US (on vaccine diplomacy generally see Jennings, 2021). But China’s path to global primacy is not without obstacles. Its progress is plausible only if five factors are ignored or overcome. (i) Xi Jinping’s and the CCP’s standing from its handling of the pandemic appears to have not played well within China where domestic political distrust in his leadership has grown. The need to create both greater domestic military and ideological control demonstrated by President Xi gives substance to this point (see Thayer and Han, 2020). (ii) Neither China nor the US can afford further economic destabilisation beyond that which has occurred already as a result of COVID-​19.The breakdown in the wider economic relationship is accelerating. Among a growing body of opinion Wang Jisi, distinguished economic commentator at Peking University, is convinced further decoupling of their economic and technological relations is irreversible.5 (iii) Chinese relationships with other major players, notably the EU, UK, Australia, India and Japan are also at a critical juncture. All are talking about the need to both loosen supply chain relations and rethink FDI relations to limit China’s takeover agenda in some of their key economic sectors, especially digital technology.The prevailing sentiment in Europe is at best suspended skepticism and at worst outright mistrust of China’s intentions and behaviour. Calls for the ‘punishment’ of China grew following COVID-​19 and the negative impact of its ‘mask diplomacy’. The dispatching of aid to 89 countries was seen as an exercise in image manipulation (see Daisley, 2020). At the same time, China has upped both economic and political pressure on states such as Australia, with which for several decades it has had close relationships. This is clearly a deliberate strategy pour encourager les autres who have the temerity to criticise China. (iv) The trend ignores the fact that even in an increasingly politically divided US domestic polity the one area of substantial bipartisan agreement is opposition towards China’s role and influence. There is, of course, no guarantee that China’s muscular diplomatic initiatives are going to pay off in the long term. The more aggressive the diplomacy becomes,

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the more it might well be resisted; especially in Western Europe (as opposed to the 17+1 groups of Eastern and Central Europe). If European cooperation in the face of COVID-​19 improves then China’s ability to take advantage of internal divisions will decline (see Brattberg and Le Corre, 2020). Short term Chinese wins will not easily, and certainly not immediately, overturn long standing suspicion. Yet notwithstanding China’s behaviour—​notably its lack of transparency, diplomatic bullying, manipulation of the media and the WHO, the less-​than-​optimal utility of some of its COVID-​19 aid to European states and a dramatically higher number of deaths than officially reported—​the pandemic could turn out to its advantage. Coronavirus could signal a further break between the old post–​Second World War US led liberal order and the new, increasingly bipolar order with two major regional blocs centred on the US and China. Other regions, notably Europe and the Russian-​led (for the time being) Eurasia are likely to play secondary roles. China may, and East Asia certainly will, emerge from this process stronger than they went into it. The US response to the pandemic has not won it many international admirers. Indeed, the Trump administration’s inadequate policy responses generated not only substantial domestic concern but also international ridicule on the back of some of the President more bizarre commentary and medical suggestions; especially when US responses are contrasted with the proficient responses of governments in countries such as South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Israel, Australia and New Zealand. Should it turn out that the US does prevail in the diplomatic war with China it will be more to do with third country suspicions of China than any positive views of recent US behaviour. No matter how the blame game with China plays out and how calming the replacement of Donald Trump by Joe Biden might be, COVID-​ 19 has been a global reputational disaster for the US. Kurt Campbell (a former US Assistant Secretary of State in the Obama administration and now in the Biden administration) noted that the role and the standing of the US has been diminished dramatically by its handling of COVID-​19 (Campbell and Doshi, 2020). The US, for so long ‘loved, envied and feared’—​in the words of prominent Irish American author, Finton O’Toole (2020)—​has for some become a figure of ‘international pity’. For George Packer (2020) in the Atlantic Monthly the pandemic did not break the US as an efficient policy actor (especially in the health sector), it was broken prior to COVID-​19’s arrival and the US is in effect ‘a failing state’ (Packer, 2020). And for Edward Luce (2020) in the Financial Times: “COVID-​ 19 has crystallised Washington’s descent into patrimonialism … where … [t]‌he words of the ruling family hold more weight than science”. Such gloomy views of the US, from across the political spectrum, have given strength to the argument that a shift in political power from the West to the East, and specifically from the US to China—​ captured quintessentially by Kishore Mahbubani’s book, The Chinese Challenge to American Primacy: Has China Won? (2020)—​cannot be lightly dismissed, even with the passing of Donald Trump. In sum, both the US and China have suffered blows to their international standing and prestige arising from COVID-​19; the US for its incompetence in

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handling the virus and China for its initial lack of openness and aggressive diplomacy (see Traub, 2020). They have both made, and continue to make, what to the outside observer, looked like mistakes. China has practiced the sins of overreach and cover up.The US has practiced the sins of abdication and under-​commitment. The future battle between them in a post COVID-​19 containment era, will be different to those of the pre-​COVID-​19 contests. Conflict will be less about traditional sources of conflict in the domains of security and deterrence (although traditional security contests do exist and are likely to endure, and even grow, in the Indo-​Pacific). Rather, future contest will be about securing primacy in the principal global systems of exchange: especially who will control the networks, standards and communications platforms (see Doshi et al., 2020) Both see it as a zero-​sum competition in which they are battling to establish suzerainty over global digital, cyber and AI technology, but in which neither is likely to secure absolute primacy. We may well finish up with a bifurcated digital ecology. Beijing’s emphasis on the domestic consolidation of its economy and technology on the one hand and Washington’s emphasis on reshoring and shortening its supply chains and sequestering technology on the other suggest that the future will see a strong geo-​ political and techno-​nationalist struggle that will continue to escalate. Indeed, COVID-​ 19, had Donald Trump secured re-​ election, would have strengthened the inward looking ‘America First’ agenda (see Acharya, 2020a, b). That Trump was forced out of power is some, but not total, comfort for the international order. In addition to enhancing geopolitical instability, the restriction in technical exchanges that can still come about with decoupling could impede innovation and potentially beneficial world-​changing basic research, including how we deal with future pandemics. Containing increased tension emanating from the ‘civilizational dimension’ of international relations will also become increasingly difficult notwithstanding the replacement of Donald Trump by a more beneficent Biden. The COVID-​19 crisis has reminded us that the core function of the state is the one that Hobbes defined in the Leviathan: it is there to offer protection to its citizens. In the 21st century, and in sharp contrast to the 16th when Hobbes was writing, this is about more than physical security from invasion and war. Now it also includes the provision of basic welfare and, in an age of pandemic, the provision of public health. In a pandemic, the health of the richest is more dependent on the health of the least privileged than at any time in the past. Controlling pandemics requires, in theory at least, collective action problem-​solving. States have traditionally done this better than individual private actors. The question for the future, and for which we do not yet have answers, is to what degree COVID-​19 can and will act as a spur to an enhancement of state propelled collective action problem-​solving as a response to global policy problems such as pandemics and environmental welfare. Part II of the book attempts to offer some insight into how humankind might think about this issue.

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Notes 1 www.un.org/​sustainabledevelopment/​sustainable-​development-​goals/​. 2 As someone who has lived a good deal of his life in Western Australia surrounded by black swans, the notion of a black swan event always seems something of a misnomer. 3 www.economist.com/​special-​report/​2020/​05/​07/​geopolitics-​and-​technology-​threaten-​ americas-​financial-​dominance. 4 For a review, see www.nippon.com/​en/​in-​depth/​d00554/​china’s-​global-​infrastructure-​ laying-​the-​foundations-​for-​a-​new-​world-​order.html. 5 www.ft.com/​content/​8d7842fa-​8082-​11ea-​82f6-​150830b3b99a.

PART II

A post pandemic world order Towards a reset?

5 CIVILISATIONAL DIALOGUE AS A VEHICLE FOR REFORMING WORLD ORDER Can the liberalism–​nationalism standoff be negotiated?

Core questions for our age The discussion in the first part of the book worked from the assumption that there is no going back to an American-​led world order. To say this does not mean the end of all things liberal. Rather, it implies the need for a serious conversation—​or negotiation—​as to the future of world order. Depending on perspective, such a conversation has maybe four ‘reformist’ questions. The four questions are, i Can the core attributes of the currently struggling order—​certain liberal values and a certain level of commitment to multilateral collective decision-​making in some core areas of global policy—​survive? ii Can a more regionalised, pluralist, decentred world order offering a modicum of stability and cooperation—​if that is indeed the direction of travel—​work? iii How would we, could we, should we, manage a more fluid, less institutionalised more hybrid world order? iv Can a dialogue of civilisations help us address these questions? For liberals, and indeed non-​liberals alike, these should be the key questions of our age. But the answers to these questions are no longer simply ones of mere reform. The caravan moves on quickly. Pabst, for example, in keeping with one of the themes of this book, argues that the world is already moving into a ‘post universalist liberal’ era in which soft authoritarianism and “a new global culture war is pitting conservative nationalists against liberal cosmopolitans … [and where] … the new pivot of geo-​politics is civilization” (Pabst, 2019, p. 24). Pabst makes a strong point but, as suggested, we can and should resist the inevitability of a ‘clash of civilizations 2.0’ reading of the current order, lest we assist it to become a self-​fulfilling prophecy.

DOI: 10.4324/​9781003175087-6

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To see contemporary geopolitics, especially the growing US–​China contest, as a battle between civilisations is to overstate the case; much of the contest is simply an instrumental struggle of power politics. That said, the Trump administration did develop a strand of thinking that saw Western civilisation, in the words of Kiron Skinner cited earlier, pitting the US against China as the ‘non-​Caucasian’ civilisation. However, how we go about resolving this fundamental clash is the correct meta-​theoretical-​cum-​philosophical question to ask. Its resolution must nevertheless be a practical matter as much as a philosophical one. In this context, the four reformist questions posed above remain the key ones to be addressed. Unlike ‘liberal’ historical readings of the past order, new readings of global politics and policy must take account of the fact that other states are not simply passive actors. Other states, and indeed critical social movements, non-​state and private actors (especially the major digital corporations in both the US and China) do and will play important roles in the future development of international and regional cooperation. We already see a greater hybridity of actors than at any time in the past.

Towards ambiguous tolerance in the US–​China relationship Key elements of the liberal order can and will survive but that they must be reformed. They will survive for pragmatic reasons rather than ideological ones. They will survive because they are useful and necessary, irrespective of the label that might attach to them. They will also survive—​irrespective of the behaviour of a Washington administration that between 2016 and 2020 did its best to undermine a cooperative order—​because other actors are keen to see them survive with or without the US. Practical evidence of this position comes in different shapes and sizes. The resilience of the Trans-​Pacific Partnership (TPP now the CPTPP) and the Paris Accords are, even in the face of the Trump administration’s disavowal, testament to this point. Liberal elements of the order will also survive because China—​and indeed other so-​styled civilisational states such as India and Turkey—​are not implacable enemies external to the international order. The rhetoric of the Chinese president is replete with support for the institutional architecture of globalisation and even multilateralism as a practice. Yes, China—​and Russia and India—​exhibit characteristics of revisionist powers within that order, but certainly China and India want to change it, not bring it crashing down. Rather, they want an order that accommodates their interests as much as those of Western powers. Rapprochement between China and Russia is explained by “… the inability to construct an inclusive world order that accommodates all major players after the Cold War” (Trenin, 2019). The implications of the rise of the civilisational powers for traditional Western liberalism are not trivial. Competition among great powers has returned with gusto. Great power rivalries are unlikely to ameliorate until a new order that reflects wider global interests emerges than those which prevailed under the so-​called liberal order. For this to happen, it may well mean traditional liberal states prioritising

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lower order practical goals such as the preservation and enhancement of international openness rather than the aggressive propagation of a wider range of universal values. The crusade for liberal universalism is seriously curtailed. From a Western perspective the minimalist maintenance of global openness might be a best-​case strategy. This might suit the traditional US foreign policy establishment that has come back into power on the coat tails of Joe Biden. But even the achievement of the goal of openness is no simple matter. Regional hegemonies will need to be resisted, be it Russia in Eastern and Central Europe or China in Asia. The US might not yet be reconciled to it, but it will have to live with an international order in which other major powers have a significant role in setting the rules—​especially in the newer policy domains of AI, digitalisation, biotechnology and cyberspace. But preserving openness can at least be expected to maintain some key elements of international liberalism while at the same time allowing for the assertion of a world where sovereignty is privileged (see Rapp Hooper and Lissner, 2019, pp. 18ff). China too has an interest in openness; especially international economic openness but absent those hegemonic features that the US is keen to retain. China, along with Russia and India, is also intent on securing a more equal political order (see Xinbho, 2018) But securing openness will still require cooperation in some core multilateral forums. The US transactional and bilateral approaches to international relations, as in US policy towards the global trade regime under Trump, were not geared to safeguarding openness in the shape of the global commons and public goods on land, sea or in the air. In a reformist scenario, the current, largely Western dominance of global structures such as the UN Security Council, World Bank and IMF that have for so long predominated will have to show at least a modicum of willingness to undergo reform to be in line with changing global power structures that include the new economic and political players. Leadership needs to be shared more widely now. This might prove possible under a Biden administration in Washington. As Joseph Nye argued (2019), it is now time for the US to share the provision of the public goods it created after Second World War. Similarly, in the newer (digital) domains where few widely agreed accepted legal arrangements currently exist, multilateral arrangements must be secured if we are not to witness a ‘digital Westphalianism’ (see BBC, 2019). Most states want to exert controls over their own citizens, contravening the open spirit of the internet as a borderless space free from the dictates of any individual government. Russia, North Korea, Iran and China in particular, although they are not the only states, are averse to a US-​led, Western controlled coalition that has from the get-​go held sway over internet governance. Moves to establish state control over the internet are already well advanced in China (see Coyer and Higgott, 2020). These changes will inevitably transcend the late 20th-​century era of US unipolar hegemony and the period of unbridled Trumpian transactional foreign policy. Uncontested US primacy will not be reattained in the second quarter of the 21st

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century. The US has to get beyond what Stephen Walt (2019a) calls its ‘hegemonic hubris’. In this context, the key question will be the balance struck in the relationship between the competing values of global liberalism on the one hand and nationalist values and alternative cultural dispositions on the other; noting that challenges to liberal values are playing themselves out increasingly through the discourse and lenses of ‘civilisational states’. Where great power accommodation with each other proves difficult, the US and China will need to learn an ambiguous tolerance to some aspects of each other’s behaviour. A Biden administration will, with no certainty but in all probability, be better at this than the previous Trump administration. Other powers, most notably China individually and the BRICS collectively, have a view of what they think world order should look like. But this does not mean that these alternative views are axiomatically destabilising or always incapable of accommodation with liberal values. The predominance of bilateralism in the last US administration notwithstanding, the multilateral cooperative endeavour is not dead. Neither are the core elements of international institutional and collective approaches to policymaking and transnational administration at the global level. Indeed, they are deeper and more substantive in a range of crucial policy areas than we often assume (see Stone and Maloney, 2019). In addition, some second-​ tier emerging powers are making their mark as regional leaders. Just as the larger G20—​rather than the G7/​G8—​was drafted in to act as the crisis-​buster in the 2008 financial crisis, other institutions are likely to face unstoppable demands for reform and widening in response to future crises. In principle—​as sharply distinct from practice—​President Trump’s desire to extend membership of the G7 was sensible. The US remains vital to global civility and cooperation, notwithstanding the contradictory approaches adopted by the Trump administration. But it is not a US responsibility or duty alone to secure them. If this may have been the US’ privileged position in the past, it is no longer their exclusive role now. The last few years have seen a considerable growth of activity from a range of non-​traditional quarters. These include the extensive diplomacy of China, as per the development of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), with India and Pakistan admitted in 2017, and a new agenda developed at its May 2019 meeting. Similarly, we have seen the development of the Regional Cooperative Economic Partnership (RCEP) formalised in late 2020, the Belt and Road Initiative, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), and the Europe-​focused 17+1 dialogue, but also the rescue of the TPP and the continuance of the Paris environmental agreements boosted by the decision of the Biden administration to bring the US back into it. A newish brand of multilateralism can also be seen to be deepening in some quarters, notably with regard to sustainable development and climate policy.The UN has made substantial and largely successful efforts to engage with many non-​state stakeholders, including multinational corporations and civil society organisations, resulting in global conferences such as the G20 transforming themselves into wider global platform with a large number of side events and initiatives relating to the

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summit, with a lot of follow-​up work. Multilateral activity is also growing at the substate/​subnational level in activities such as the climate activities of the C40 city alliances and the 2018 San Francisco Climate Action Summit. Further, prospective reform and action can also draw on the development of strategies of ‘like-​minded’ countries engaged in issue-​specific coalition building around key global public policy sectors such as trade, security and the environment. This can include key players, such as the EU, China, Russia and the BRICS, but also long-​standing ‘middle powers’ such as Canada, Australia and some of the Nordic states with a long history of “good international citizenship” (see Cooper, Higgott and Nossal, 1993) and newly designated middle powers such as South Korea and Indonesia. We should also not write off influential members in the wider domestic US foreign policy community; especially the liberal think tanks such as Brookings and the Council on Foreign Relations and others that did not succumb to the Trumpian view of world order between 2016 and 2020 coming back into consideration in the global policy process.

Can we create a global dialogue? Civilisations have developed over several millennia. It is thus not surprising that the development of a global view of civilisation in the modern era will not take place overnight. The present does not offer us a holistic framework. Globally, competing groups are not easily going to establish stable and organised social relations in that larger generic space that we call humanity.To fix the current imperfect world order would mean rebuilding the balance of civilisation as a whole, not just in parts. The enhancement of social cooperation as a basis of political cooperation requires the creation of an appropriate moral narrative. Earlier human experience in the development of moral narratives suggests how difficult it is for them to guide public policy and civic activity. To succeed in the modern era a successful narrative would need to be supplemented by multilevel governance structures that could be operationalised in tackling macro challenges. This might be the grand global aspiration implicitly present in some strands of liberal thought. But liberalism’s principal proponents have tended to forget it is an ideology, and a primarily elite-​driven ideology at that. It is not the end state of human political evolution (see Deneen, 2018) nor even, per early Fukayama, the end of history. As an ideology, it is also currently proving a failing political match for nationalism and realism (see Mearsheimer, 2018). Moreover, from the positions of say China and India with several thousand years of non-​liberal civilisation, liberalism as a paradigmatic road map and the foundation of Pax Americana has come to look severely tested. The bases for change in world order are usually found in grand historical sweeps over time; indeed, a much greater time span than the current impasse we have identified between the major powers since the end of the Cold War. Western history has developed over a series of stages in a 2,000-​years-​plus trajectory that initially privileged theology and metaphysics and then science, moving on to an era where

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the motivating agents have been economic and are now increasingly technological and digital. Each stage has changed the way we organise ourselves and the way we ‘do’ politics. In short, the basis for organising the world order and its relationships has changed from theological belief systems through to science and technology for advanced living, and material satisfaction and the increasing digital organisation of the modern secularised world. We have progressively assumed that a well-​organised society will be built upon human rationality and a modern moral code. In other words, rational codes organise the social order, and meaningful human relationships are prescribed in these codes. But perhaps it is time to consider whether we are working with a failing paradigm? Some would argue that we are at one of those watershed moments where the practices of politics are once again changing fundamentally. These practices are changing on the back of the new communicative digital technologies. Politics as traditionally understood is essentially a group activity, involving inter alia tribes, religious groups, nations, political parties, pressure groups, civil society organisations, etc. Change has traditionally been relatively slow and more or less predictable. But this traditional style of politics is becoming less salient as individuals grow in importance through access to the worldwide web, giving rise to what Armen Sarkissian (Thornhill, 2019), the President of Armenia, calls the arrival of ‘quantum politics’. In quantum politics “the individual person becomes powerful because they have a … [personal] … tool of connectivity”. In the quantum political world, politics is faster, increasingly unpredictable, and in many instances seemingly random. Individuals can, rather like atoms, have an impact by expressing an opinion—​or faking it—​on the web. Specifically, social media has disrupted politics in a manner that favours the disruptors rather than traditional actors; especially in the US and Europe (see Sunstein, 2017; Higgott and Proud, 2017). Politics, Sarkissian says, exhibits quantum behaviour: giving rise to a social equivalent of Heisenberg’s ‘uncertainty principle’. In quantum politics, the virtual world is overwhelming the traditional institutions of politics and government. The challenges at hand—​and especially the paradox of enhanced organisation on one end of the policy spectrum and enhanced atomisation on the other—​limits humanity’s capacity for cooperation. The levels at which humanity cooperates are insufficient to build a global civilisation. The evolution of humanity’s culture and morality has not kept pace with technological innovation in communication and has yet to prepare us for cooperation at the global level. The current political rivalries and maldistribution of material rewards from globalisation are also unlikely to advance the cause here. Clearly, these are challenging tasks and how we deal with them is not straightforward. The realms of philosophy and practical politics do not interact easily and certainly not as much as they should do. But if the nature of our metaphysical thinking is changing then so too is how we explain international relations in which the roles of networks, coalitions and other hybrid non-​traditional actors and modes of digital communication have become increasingly important over the last decade

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(see Slaughter, 2017).They will become more so, not less so, in the coming decades. A greater understanding of them and an ability to negotiate them through multiple dialogues must become central to our analytical toolkit if we are not to lapse into a new Cold War. While the US and China are the principal players in this drama, it should not and cannot be left to them alone to address the issue. There is poverty of imagination in our thinking about world order. Institutional reform will not occur if we succumb to the inertia of the present. We need some new thinking in international relations. What is needed is some unconstrained, out of the box, innovative and forward-​ looking thinking and analysis of the type not normally found in international relations—​a discipline so dominated by historical rear-​mirror thinking that it still leads to analysis based on 2000-​year-​old thinking about the relationship between Athens and Sparta of the kind that informs Graham Allison’s recent Thucydides Trap (2017). To say this is not to deny the insights of history. It is rather to suggest that alternative thought experiments in international relations are essential. ‘Innovation’ does not ignore history, but its intellectual motor is more forward than backward-​ looking. There is insufficient forward-​looking thinking, as opposed to backward-​ looking thinking, going on at the moment on the question of international order. All too often in everyday speech, ‘innovation’ is dismissed as a management cliché, yet it has significant theoretical and applied meaning and utility in the study of organisation. Paths to innovative thought can be identified. Innovation, for example, is recognised as one of the core explanations for whether organisations can successfully adapt and reform rather than fade away, be it gradually or suddenly. Sadly, innovation as a workable concept gets little or no attention among those studying and practicing international relations and diplomacy in the current world order.Yet if we are to advance a dialogue of civilisations, this lacuna in our thinking needs to be challenged. Specifically, we need innovative ways to challenge the normalisation of the antagonistic populist and extreme nationalist discourse that has taken hold in this time of stress and change in the international order. This is neither to deny the reality of power politics nor the legitimate influences of identity and nationalism. Rather, it is to suggest that a minimal task of the applied scholar and practitioner of international relations in a time such as this should be to seek ways in which to mitigate the worst excesses of those competitive, antagonistic discourses of civilisations that unfortunately lend credence to the development of a ‘clash of civilisations 2.0’ style thinking. We need a rationale for how a ‘dialogue of civilisations’ might facilitate a framework for a reformed order in a world of recognised tensions between religious and humanistic logics on the one hand and secular (some time liberal some time not) rationality and technological revolution on the other. Can we, and if so, how might we develop an accommodation of these alternative forces driving the direction of the current world order? In short, how can an inter-​civilisational dialogue as a framework, methodology and set of practices be helpful for rebuilding a workable world order?

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We must think practically but also innovatively about how we do dialogue. We cannot just assume we know what we are doing when we talk about it. A central component for understanding the prospects for a dialogue of civilisations must concern itself with the relationship between individuals (people) and collectives (civilisations). A dialogue of civilisations has, after all, to be an interaction between people—​in effect, civilisations don’t do dialogue, people do! As a consequence, we can identify the all too often overly determining roles of the important authoritarian individual leaders for whom meaningful dialogue might not be uppermost in their priorities. This factor needs to be kept in mind.

Civilisational dialogue: some questions of method1 Creating a dialogue between civilisations is of course easier said than done. Pleas for it to happen are all too often absent any practical or applied ideas how it might be achieved. The assumption is simply that dialogue is axiomatically a good thing, whereas conflict is not, and all right-​thinking people should work towards dialogue without saying how. Psychologist Luk Van Langenhove (2019) asks what the humanities and social sciences might usefully say about how civilisation(s) actually dialogue? As noted, the notion of civilisation as a meaningful analytical category is what social scientists would call an ‘essentially contested concept’ that acts as a signifier of public and collective social representation allowing communities to distinguish between ‘us’ and ‘them’. At its most basic, dialogue is a conversation. It is people—​ social science’s ‘primary subjects’—​not civilisations, who dialogue. But dialogue is more than simply a one-​on-​one conversation. It is both a collective and public speech act. According to Van Langenhove, ‘conversation’ can refer to all dialogic verbal interactions. But dialogue is also more than that: “… it is a ritualized form of conversation where certain rules apply … people will deploy what we might call civilization-​speak as a tool” (Van Langenhove, 2019, p. 108.) They use this form of communication as tool to explain their beliefs and practices in the realm of international politics. Part I identified powerful articulations of civilisation-​speak that, as in the words of a Samuel Huntingon, can create discourses—​such as a clash of civilisations, or ‘Brexit’ even—​that become significant storylines and ideological instruments of politics. As Van Langenhove makes clear, in a way that the loose language of civilisations sometimes obscures, it is not civilisations that dialogue with each other. Only people engage in conversations with each other. What do these insights mean in practical terms for the wider arguments about world order developed in this book? The current world order is clearly imperfect. Disorder is generated from the disjuncture of the ethical and the material domains and the alienated relationships of humans with nature and society. We are doing little collectively to address either of these disconnects. Problems are not going to be solved in some meta-​theoretical debate. But language still remains important here. It is a both a normative and

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discursive endeavour that is needed to privilege the ‘storyline of dialogue’ over that of ‘clashism’. Rather than envisage a civilisational clash with its implicitly violent connotations we should perhaps talk instead of a civilisational imbalance or disequilibrium. Such an approach allows us to shift the focus from conflict to balance and the prospects for rebalancing over time. Moreover, since our current challenges are mostly global—​from superpower rivalry to securing the SDGs, rolling back climate change and mitigating the impact of pandemics, both current and future—​and require transnational as opposed to simply national problem-​ solving capabilities, we should aspire to establish an understanding of civilisation as global rather than as geospatially defined or nationally constrained. This is clearly a long call, but it would allow us to see the current polarisation between liberal universalism and state civilisations as part of a conversation within a wider whole requiring accommodation, not as a zero-​sum contest in which the winner takes all, cooperation simply collapses and actors polarise. It allows us to analyse how a dialogue of civilisations could open the door for a much wider group of states to engage in constructing a new order. For a dialogue on the future of world order to develop it is necessary to start by taking off the Western, liberal tinted glasses through which the concept of world order is traditionally viewed and practiced, as demonstrated in Part I above. We need to look through lenses of a different hue that reflect the interests and agendas of other influential actors in contemporary international relations similar to the civilizational tropes presented in Chapter 3. This exercise is both empirical and normative. It is clearly an exercise, explained in Chapter 4 that has been made more urgent by the less-​than-​optimal externalities of the COVID-​19 pandemic and their negative influences on international development and wider cooperation. At the empirical level it is important to see the civilisational state not simply as a concept or idea but as a set of political-​economic and cultural practices. The civilisational state—​with men like China’s Xi Jinping, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and India’s Narendra Modi (and America’s former president Donald Trump) embracing the concept de facto—​is likely to be at the core of the shaping the debate over, and the potential practices of, a new world order. The conclusion we should draw from this is not a positive one. Ego-​driven individuals with authoritarian, and/​or narcissistic personality traits are not likely to engage in cooperative dialogue unless it confirms to their own global understandings and interests.

Time for a rethink of human nature? The world according to Rutger Bregman our grim view of humanity is due for a radical revision. Bregman, 2019, p. 19 In his recent book, Humankind: A Hopeful History, Rutger Bregman argues we need an alternate reading of humankind and its global leadership if a global civilisational dialogue is to develop. Although an historian, his is a reading that also draws on

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psychology. It is necessary, he argues and provides evidence to support his argument, to assume the best not the worst in human beings in the face of much contemporary pessimism. If we give salience to the historical perspective of Bregman (2019), and the perspective of psychologists like Stephen Pinker (2011), we should be able to temper prevailing selfish and self-​interested perspectives of Hobbesian political theory and neoclassical economics. Rather we should privilege a view that stresses real, and Bergman argues, empirically observable, cooperative and altruistic tendencies in human beings that can appeal to what Pinker, borrowing from Abraham Lincoln, calls the ‘better angels’ of our nature. Scholarship in international relations, with the exception of the strongly held, albeit evidence free, pessimistic views of human nature held by classical realists, tend not to pay too much attention to human nature. This has particularly been the case in thinking of the kind epitomised in the writing of Kenneth Waltz (1979) and the neo-​realist school in the last quarter of 20th and early 21 centuries that saw the study of international relations become increasingly economistic. This approach of course infused the study of international cooperation in which states in international institutions would operate on rationalist principles.This view is epitomised in the work of Robert Keohane and the liberal institutionalists (Keohane, 1984). Both realists and institutionalists shared and applied rationalist principles to state behaviour that found little role for explanations of human behaviour other than those emanating from economism and self-​interested egoism. International dialogue and cooperation, an essence of international relations and world politics, are unlikely to develop if we assume human behaviour is innately selfish and simply driven by rational, egotistical exploitation. Assumptions of innate human selfishness can be traced back to Thucydides on through Machiavelli, Hobbes and Nietzsche to the modern-​day scientific, and negatively self-​fulfilling, pretensions of economics. Bregman alludes to the work of one economics professor who has demonstrated that the more people study economics “… the more selfish they’d become. We become what we teach”. When this view of human nature is accompanied by the prevalence of narcissistic and authoritarian tendencies amongst many of the world’s major leaders the prospects of dialogue look bleak. Returning to the words of Machiavelli “All men would be tyrants if they could” (see Bregman, 2019, pp. 16–​18). These dark views of human behaviour are too often simply accepted rather than questioned. They are assumed to reflect the ‘realistic’ view of human behaviour and they find their way into the realist scholarship of international relations and politics. These negative understandings of human nature are further consolidated by the manner in which knowledge is compounded by the effects of herd instinct; people often adhere to positions they think are necessary for group acceptance rather than appear as outliers to a given group. If the prospects for cooperation are to be enhanced, then equally strong counter arguments must be advanced. To do so, of course, goes against the tide of centuries of much socio-​political theory. At a practical level it is, and will be, resisted by those who are the major beneficiaries of attendant power structures at both state and

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global levels. It is of course ‘out of the box’ and revolutionary thinking Bregman proposes. And he warns that ridicule may be an outcome of advancing any such arguments. But the last 30 years, however, have seen major advances in cognitive psychology and neuroscience that are, or at least should be, of direct concern to students of international politics (see Garlick, 2020). But let us, not unreasonably for one moment, assume that homo economicus, the driver of much contemporary economic thought, might not exist, or even if he does (and it is mostly men that economists talk about) he might not be as nakedly egoistic and opportunistic as much theory assumes. Bregman provides evidence there is a growing body of knowledge that suggests this might be the case. He identifies a range of iterative sustainable psychological experiments, notably the ‘Pygmalion experiment’ that show how holding positive expectations can lead to improvements in human behaviour (see Bregman, 2019, pp. 256–​259). Other research in psychology has shown that humans do not always prioritise selfish interests. As Nobel Prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman has demonstrated, the drivers of human behaviour are far more complex than is portrayed in the rationalist assumptions of homo economicus (Kahneman, 2011). Human cooperation is much more present than realist theorising credits. Assumptions of anarchy and rationality that drive much international relations are necessarily nuanced, or again should be. When viewed through the lenses of modern psychology and human social behaviour both peace and violence can be explained by socialisation rather than, as Garlick notes “… solely as an assumed inherent property of the international system of states” (Garlick, 2020, p. 4). This more positive reading of human nature’s relationship to international relations must be at the essence of any attempt to build cooperation.We are limited in our ability to enhance the cooperative agenda until we can move away from the current cynicism and polarisation towards a trend that privileges increasing engagement and global trust. Dialogue can only be built on trust. In simple terms, this requires making the policy process less exclusive/​more inclusive. But this is unlikely—​but let us assume not impossible—​in a time of populist nationalist politics. We need to find a way of creating a wider global feel for ownership and citizenship in our crisis prone world order. This requires greater transparency than is currently exhibited in the international order. Transparency must exhibit a greater commitment to the sentiments of solidarity and human dignity. For this to happen, several changes are required. First, for trust to develop we need to engage the younger generations and prepare them for global citizenship in the face of a prevailing, and yes complacent, realist hierarchical view of international decision-​making and cooperation. It is only with the early input of the younger generation that we will enhance international transparency and secure wider community buy-​in. Indeed, as shown in a major Columbia University study of Youth in a Changing World, there is a growing youth awareness that they are the future. And that they need to be able to helps shape its direction. The Columbia study shows that there is particular youth frustration with “… established institutions that do not reflect the demands of a changing world”.2

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Second, it requires a rigorous and forceful call for a more equitable world and especially one in which there is a greater gender balance in global decision making. And third, Bregman suggests, we need to reinforce, indeed maybe even reinvent, the idea of the global commons. The idea is dismissed by Garrett Harding in his influential paper “The Tragedy of the Commons” (1968) as hippie idealism and buried under the market driven arguments of neoliberal hegemony until the global financial crisis of 2008. The concept was only partially rescued by Elinor Orstrom, the academic champion of the global commons winning—​much to the surprise of many, and the outright ire of some, in the economics profession (she was a political scientist)—​the Nobel Prize for economics in 2009. But if we are to draw on Orstrom (1990) in order to resuscitate and reinvent international cooperation, we need to identify a new set of what she called ‘design principles’ for the current age.The question that cannot yet be answered is whether the aftermath of the COVID-​19 pandemic might roll back, or at least halt, further constraints on multilateral institutional cooperation. Will an age of pandemic assist its comeback? This is a big challenge. But there are historical precedents for institutional development to occur in the aftermath of a major international crisis. The UN and the Bretton Woods institutions were created in a moment of enlightened self-​interest after Second World War. Chapter 6 picks up these issues in a more empirical and applied policy manner. A core issue it argues is less the creation of new institutions and structures and more the reform of the existing ones. This requires a recognition of the changes required to these institutions 75 years after their inception. It requires an acknowledgement of the different modus operandi of global communication in an era of digitalisation, the increased diversity of actors with a legitimate right to voice in these institutions and the growing diversity of policy issues when contrasted with the immediate post-​Second World War origins of international institutionalism. Where dominant global challenges 75 years ago were seen almost exclusively in terms of security and economics the contemporary era is now also beset by what we might call the other trans-​sovereign challenges such as climate change, infectious diseases, access to clean water and attendant global health issues such as growing anti-​microbial resistance and mental health problems. As with pandemics and the search for vaccines, such problems transcend borders. They make everyone vulnerable. They are only ever likely to be permanently and globally controlled by international cooperation.

Notes 1 This section draws on Luk Van Langenhove’s discussion of a methodology for civilizational dialogue prepared for the 2019 Rhodes Forum Report, pp. 108–​111. I thank my friend for his permission to draw on it. 2 https://​cgt.columbia.edu/​projects/​youth-​changing-​world/​.

6 RELEARNING MULTILATERALISM The principled case for a global reset

Chapters 4 and 5 outlined what we might call a pessimistic scenario for world order and especially the implications for a post-​coronavirus future. An attempt to capture this pessimistic perspective is presented in schematic form in Figure 6.1. It is the aim of this chapter to temper this scenario.The chapter aims to be reform-​ minded rather than airily complacent on the one hand or gloomily apocalyptic on the other. That is, using the distinction made in Chapter 5, it aspires to be realistic, as opposed realist as traditionally understood by the scholar and practitioner of international relations. This requires a leap of faith in our understanding of humankind identified in Chapter 5 and beyond a realist view of human nature reflected in much international relations scholarship. One major problem we have in advancing international cooperation is that international competitors think the worst of each other, not the best of each other. This is clearly the case in the current US–​China relationship. The cooperative endeavour for realists is invariably driven by an acceptance of a zero-​sum competition aimed at securing relative gains vis-​à-​vis one’s competitor.The problem with the realism is that it allows little prospect of change and cooperation in which positive-​sum arguments can lead to absolute gains for both parties.1 Being realistic as opposed to realist means developing a mindset that eschews cynicism and pessimism.This does not mean being naively idealist as is some excessively optimistic cosmopolitan literature on international relations and governance epitomised, for example, in the work of the late David Held (2004 and 2010). Rather, it means recognising the importance of what Bregman calls “possibilism”; a position that keeps the best of what we have identified, but which at the same time recognises a need for reform in the face of the current challenges to human potential. If we do not address positively the future needs emanating from the generic tribulations of trying to manage world order and the immediate impact of a globally traumatic event as the COVID-​19 pandemic, then the new normal will fully approximate the scenario identified in the lower right-​hand quadrant of Figure 6.1; DOI: 10.4324/​9781003175087-7

96  A post pandemic world order Economics • • • •

• • • • •

Decline of neoliberal ideology; Return of the state; Surveillance capitalism; Economic populism.

Politics • Surveillance state; • Hardened imagined communities; • Communities of origin; • Identitarian politics; • Nativism.

FIGURE 6.1  A

Economic nationalism; Deglobalisation; Protectionism; De-coupling US–China bipolarity.

Digitalisation

International Relations • • • •

Society and Culture

End of the liberal order; New Cold War; Clash of civilisations; No community of common destiny.

post-​COVID-​19 order: the pessimistic scenario

Source: Author

one that sees the continued progression of de-​coupling and economic deglobalisation and increasing geopolitical and civilisational instability, competition and ultimately, conflict. The following discussion identifies a series of propositions that can act as food for thought about what we should be doing in the post-​COVID-​19 era to avoid the respective scenarios captured in Figure 6.1, noting that the idea of ‘global pandemic’ as a future fact of life is now permanently inscribed onto the international policy agenda. The chapter considers to what degree we might reset the global order in such a way that privileges humanity’s cooperative instincts at the expense of its selfish instincts. This is a big picture perspective in both the short term and long term. It is also a normative approach built on some large assumptions as well as a series of short-​term practical, applied policy questions.While assuming that the normative and the applied are not for separation, the chapter, following a quick discussion of essential elements of humanity’s moral metanarrative, addresses a series of practical questions about the management for world order. It finishes with a cautionary note on the importance of identity.

Community and moral solidarity matter In a world of seemingly growing competing identities, can an aspiration towards something more universal ever be a reality or is it merely an aspiration? Is it possible for states and the institutions they create to give shape to, or kick-​start, collective solidarity? This is not a new question for humanity, but it is becoming an increasingly pressing one. The development of moral narratives seeking to enhance solidarity as a means to underwrite community behaviour is ever-​present. They have, over several millennia, progressively enabled humanity to extend their cooperative units from the family to the tribe, village and the city-​state through to the nation state. All such communities are in Benedict Anderson’s (2016) evocative phrase “imagined communities” or, similarly, what Tony Judt (2011) calls “communities of origin”. Most states are communities of origin.

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But what humanity lacks is a metanarrative that extends our social and political boundaries to encompass a trans-​sovereign global community; what we might, following Judt, call a “community of destiny”2, that is an imagined community beyond the level of the state dealing with humankind’s trans-​sovereign problems, be they pandemics, climate change or economic development.These are problems that cannot be solved by communities of origin. They need transnational cooperation. But as Dennis Snower (2019) notes: “Our genetic and cultural evolutionary past has not yet given us the mental resources … [as opposed to sometime instrumental instincts] … to strive for global cooperation”. While the moral metanarrative of cooperation might not be as strong as Snower would wish, it does exist. Humanity has not been totally bereft of an ability to engage in practical cooperation beyond the level of the local and the national community. Indeed, 75 years ago an international architecture of sorts was created to rebuild the post-​Second World War era (the UN system, the Bretton Woods System, GATT, the Marshall Plan, the Colombo Plan, etc.). The question for a post-​COVID-​19 era is to what extent change can be steered in the direction of a moral narrative of wider, trans-​sovereign cooperation? To what extent can it be done again with a post-​COVID-​19 agenda? Identity should not be seen in crudely either/​or terms.To develop a metanarrative of global cooperation, we should resist the intellectual inference underpinning Theresa May’s dictum that “… a citizen of the world is a citizen of nowhere”. Thinking in global terms should not be a cosmopolitan fantasy. While legal citizenship is clearly country defined, there is no reason, or at least there should not be a reason why individuals cannot hold subnational, national, transnational and supranational identities and attachments at one and the same time as states continue to exist.

Shocks on cooperation: brake or accelerator? In theory, crises or existential shocks should enhance the prospect of cooperation. But in practice the reverse can be the case and existing trends can be accelerated. The metanarrative of the community of origin, especially in the hands of populist politicians reinforced by sentiments of uniqueness, ethnicity and faith, is invariably a much stronger motivating idea than a less tangible narrative of a community of destiny. As a consequence, moral solidarity is to be found principally at the level of the state and below. Current experience would suggest that it is growing rather than diminishing at this level. Moreover, rhetorical arguments aside, inequalities exist and grow within most communities of origin. Indeed, as Amartya Sen notes, equity has been largely absent from endeavours to contain the COVID-​19 pandemic.3 For many, solidarity in a community of destiny beyond the level of the state would appear to be a chimera. Evidence, at the time of writing, is that COVID-​ 19 is enhancing existing trends away from cooperation and towards nationalism, nativism and anti-​globalisation.

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Either way, COVID-​19 will likely both define and redefine the contemporary era.4 It raises a number of serious questions of a global nature that need to be addressed if humankind is going to move in the direction of a more socially just and ecologically sustainable future. If a global pandemic cannot confirm the interconnectedness of humanity then what can? Could not, should not, such a crisis help build something more humane if it engaged in developing a narrative of a community of destiny? Or is a community of destiny simply a bridge too far for humankind? At the very least, COVID-​19 should cause us to think about these questions. The issue is addressed in the Conclusion. Solutions to socioeconomic, political and international problems, and their resolution if we are to reverse current trends, are very much predicated on a series of actions that at first sight appear contradictory. At the level of the nation, it is clear that the roll back of the state—​after four decades of neglect of the public sector and efforts to cut back its role in modern developed societies—​would appear to be in check. As Foreign Policy notes, in a theme already alluded to: “We are all statists now”.5 After decades of market fundamentalist certitude, the language of Keynes is returning to the policy lexicon. Public spending and borrowing, as even the Financial Times notes (see Stephens, 2021), are no longer forbidden in the policy discourse. Indeed, even governments of long-​standing Hayekian persuasion have intervened—​in ways even Keynes would have found difficult to conceive—​to secure and mobilise medical and health resources to contain the pandemic. But more significantly, they have also—​as in the US and the UK and other countries that have traditionally eschewed fiscal expansion measures such as Germany through to Malaysia and Singapore—​allocated previously unimaginably large amounts of money (multiple trillions not billions) to bailout businesses and introduce wage and other support schemes for workers. So, if in this changing context, COVID-​19 cannot generate a new transformation in how humanity cooperates can it, at the very least, enable us to set the terms for the forthcoming debate? The answer to this question must be normative. As Wendy Carlin (2020) suggests, recent events will, at the very least, bring about a change in our language, specifically, in the way we talk about the state-​market relationship and, we might add, the discourse of (international) cooperation. Larger government and increased state capacity have accompanied state desires to enhance the post-​COVID-​19 pandemic management. But this has been accompanied by declining international institutional cooperation in faltering bodies like the WTO and a narrowing of the international trade regime accompanying the return of industrial policy, tax breaks, state subsidies to support de-​coupling, ‘reshoring’ and greater government intervention in markets more generally. Much of this Keynesian style economic policy is cloaked as enhancing national security and resilience. The containment of COVID-​19, at its simplest, requires good science. But addressing its aftermath will require an understanding of human behaviour in its wider economic and socio-​political contexts. It will require new ideas, based on equality, more universalist public services, greater equity of access, greater

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sufficiency and ecological sustainability. COVID-​19 should and could—​if the political will was there—​act as an incentive to do things better. Reform needs to build on the wisdom learned in the pandemic. This wisdom must find voice in, and be embedded in, scholarly and applied policy work and institutional frameworks. Even if we assume that the current crisis will eventually pass, there will be others. An eventual containment of the COVID-​19 pandemic is no automatic guarantee of durable reform. This is humanity’s collective post-​crisis challenge. The core policy question, to which we will not know the answer for several years, is have lessons been learned during the crisis in relation to healthcare and equity as necessities of life? i

ii

Can humankind begin to privilege a sense of solidarity and the collective interest at the expense of individual interest that prevailed during the heyday of neoliberal globalisation? If nothing else, can COVID-​19 highlight for us the case for a new eco-​social political economy providing universal basic services to protect us in the future?

Is any of this possible in an era of de-​coupling? Post-​COVID-​19 de-​coupling amounts to nothing less than an attempt to dismantle the economic architecture of world order. If it is not checked, de-​coupling will become increasingly prevalent and the shortening of supply chains will continue to grow. Worldwide production and long supply chains will be less connected. A more fragmented world will come into being. But completing this task will be easier said than done. A global population of some 7.5+ billion people is too big to exist via national self-​sufficiency alone. Moreover, most of humankind, contrary to some vocal minority voices, do not wish to return to small, closed communities. While the role of the post-​Donald Trump US will be crucial, shortening supply lines, de-​coupling and the search for self-​reliance, are not simply US obsessions. As other states become increasingly self-​focused, their instincts may also be to de-​ couple and look inward. This approach is built on a misguided 19th-​century absolutist understanding of sovereignty located in a 21st-​century setting. The golden age of absolute sovereignty that modern-​day populist leaders appeal to is at best political posturing and at worst a political fiction.We need to recognise how fragile and how fungible the concept of sovereignty articulated in the Westphalian model is in the 21st century.The idea of states as unitary, rational and self-​contained policy actors has always been a fiction. Sovereignty is frequently compromised, even for the most powerful of states (see Krasner, 1995–​1996, pp. 116 and 123–​139). In short, the perennial debate about the privilege one gives to the state viz-​à-​viz the market is seeing the pendulum shift in the direction of the state after 40 years of neoliberal hegemony. Even in the US, the move away from a minimalist role for the state is being challenged, and the initial spending response by the Biden administration to COVID-​19 after the election in 2021 represents a commitment of state funding unprecedented in the post-​Second World War era. Of course, this is predicated as much on saving capitalism from another crisis. It is not a strategy

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to create a welfare state let alone socialism. And no one is suggesting that Marx is replacing Hayek! Rather, many are looking to the state for the pragmatic resolution of the traumatic problems (epidemiological and economic) generated by COVID-​ 19. For the first time since the end of the Cold War, rather than living under a Hayekian neoliberal hegemony, we are seeing the emergence of strongly competing narratives, of how society and the market, both domestically and internationally, should be governed. Logically, the persistence of COVID-​19, no respecter of borders, negates the idea of trying to wall it off. National exit strategies will require international coordination and cooperation to be effective. Thus, an eventual long-​term exit strategy must be available to all countries if COVID-​19 is not to be a permanent global threat. States will not be able to totally control the virus in their own country if it is not controlled elsewhere. Absent strengthened global cooperation our ability to prevent future outbreaks will always be limited. Thinking in nationalist terms will only prolong the crisis. If COVID-​19 persists anywhere, it will remain an incipient threat everywhere, regardless of efforts to wall it off.To triumph, the positive narrative will need to recognise not only the renewed importance of governance but also the need for public trust and civic input to make progress if COVID is not to kill both truth and trust (Kassam, 2020). But the message from COVID-​19 is not all bad. Combatting the pandemic has seen altruism challenge self-​interest. Front line workers have taken and continue to take great risk and act with considerable bravery in support of community good. In keeping with Bregman style argumentation, this challenges that tenet of economic theory stressing the primacy of an amoral, self-​centred rational actor operating purely for individual interest. Some prominent economists such as Skidelsky (2019 and 2020) suggest it undermines the economist’s project more generally, especially its hypothesis and measurement-​driven desires to mathematise human behaviour.Things that cannot be measured are for most economists merely opinion. But adopting such a position, often at the expense of common sense observation, axiomatically limits our ability to understand the moral and philosophical dimensions of human behaviour. If we acknowledge this—​or more precisely if we can get a majority of professional economists to acknowledge this—​it opens the possibility of introducing a greater moral ethic into socio-​economic discourse. Ironically, Skidelsky (2019), seeing economics as a faith-​based discipline rather than a hard science, argues that the universalisation of Western economic thinking has come at the very time when the global reach of Western hegemony appears to be coming unravelled in both thought and practice. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the context of the challenges facing globalisation discussed at several stages in this book. As Nobel Prize Winner Joseph Stiglitz notes: The economic system we construct after this pandemic will have to be less short sighted, more resilient, and more sensitive to the fact that economic globalization has far outpaced political globalization … [C]‌ountries will have

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to strive for a better balance between taking advantage of globalization and a necessary degree of self-​reliance. 2020 Globalisation, or at least the hyper-​globalisation of the neoliberal era, has imploded and somethings will never be entirely the same.Almost inevitably, international trade will become less open, international travel and tourism (two different things) will change, international higher education has changed and will continue to change, borders will become tighter, economic growth will be lower and the world will be less well off. But globalisation will not completely unravel. Much international activity, especially in the trade domain, is too deep-​rooted to unravel entirely, supply chains are too complex and economic and commercial logic remains powerful. Globalisation, let us not forget, has lifted more than a billion people out of poverty. Globalisation should be able to survive self-​isolation by a single country, even the largest. The rest of the world—​and notably China—​shows less signs of inwardness than the US. But growing protectionism as a trend can be expected to continue, and global trade will continue to fragment as the desire to shorten supply chains continues. Moreover, moves towards greater national self-​sufficiency will not eradicate the need for a global problem-​solving for those issues that cannot be controlled within national domestic policymaking communities—​especially pandemics and climate issues. Reinvestment in global institutions will have to come later if not sooner. But any future post-​COVID-​19 reform should not be, and indeed cannot be, simply a national(ist) agenda in the developed world.The crisis may have caught us unaware, but the international community is not without assets.The ability to cooperate and practice multilateral problem-​solving has long been one of them. Shocks of the kind visited on us by coronavirus are often catalysts to reform. But reform needs political will and good policymaking. Solidarity must be global if we are to avoid an even more overwhelming, permanent healthcare crisis and the prospect of an attendant economic collapse in the Global South, and sub-​Saharan Africa in particular.6 The COVID-​19 pandemic needs to be fought with the same vigour in the South as it has been in the developed countries. This will require support from the North. Contrary to the aspirations of nationalist politicians in the North, geographical containment—​the walling off of the Global South—​is not, indeed cannot be, the proposed remedy.

Multilateral institutions (still) matter Multilateralism, at best, is at an impasse. The last successfully concluded ‘big exercise” ’ was the completion of the Uruguay Round in 1994 that gave us the WTO. But attempts to take the WTO to the next stage in the Doha Development Round ended in failure. We are unlikely to see another ‘globally’ negotiated agreement of the kind we saw in the Uruguay Round. The WTO and other arrangements now appear to be unravelling. Future solutions to collective action problem-​solving are

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unlikely to be on such a global scale and will require enhanced attempts to rebuild a more differentiated, more pluralist, international architecture, and reverse policy fragmentation and institutional damage that has beset the multilateral organisations in recent years. This process will require normative as well as analytical thinking. One challenge is to understand the impact of economic and technological advance on multilateralism. Specifically, both globalisation and the digitalisation of communication have overtime impacted our 20th-​ century understanding of multilateralism in ways that are not always clear. In an interplay between domestic and international politics, populist resistance to economic openness and state resistance to what is seen as sovereignty-​reducing developments in global governance—​unconvinced by the democratic rhetorical pretensions of multilateral organisations—​have brought a halt to what only several decades ago seemed to be an inexorable growth of multilateral decision-​making. Both principles and practices have undergone, and continue to undergo, change. Countries appear to be honouring less and less their international commitments and powerful states especially are prone to use the rhetorical fig leaf of multilateralism to do what they may have done bilaterally or unilaterally anyway. More immediately, a second but equally pressing challenge is to understand how coronavirus, as the newest global hazard, has exposed flaws in our current models of international institutional decision-​making. At the very least it has told us that we will need to exhibit more participatory and multifaceted approaches to governance with due consideration for those requiring social protection and for those at risk in a manner that was not the case in the pre-​COVID-​19 era. For this to happen a number of factors must apply. First, and foremost, it requires that great power rivalry is kept in check.The great powers need to be facilitators, not spoilers. Second, for those liberal internationalists committed to multilateralism, democracies must struggle for a new type of “pragmatic internationalism” (John Ikenberry in the The Guardian, March 28, 2020) to buttress international institutional cooperation and international organisations such as the UN. An onslaught has hit at the practices of, and more importantly, the principles of international institutional cooperation in general and multilateral collective action problem-​solving in particular, in recent years. This is especially the case in institutions such as the WTO and the UN and some of its ancillary organisations such as the WHO, UNCTAD, UNESCO and others. Though not on its own, the Trump administration was at the forefront of this charge. Other institutional set ups, such as the Bretton Woods institutions (IMF and WB), have been under more or less permanent criticism from both the left and right since the Asian financial crisis nearly three decades ago (see Higgott, 1998). Third, both destructive and predatory practices towards the international institutions need to be resisted. This is the case whether we talk of the destructive tendencies of the Trump administration towards many international organisations or the predatory expansionist tendencies of China with its desires to gain greater control of UN agencies, as in recent bids to chair the World Intellectual Property Organisaton (WIPO) and the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO).

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These practices, by both major powers, need to be resisted as do the temptations by other states to further politicise international organisations.This does not mean that international organisations are not by their very nature spaces of political activity. As places of deliberation they are inevitably political decision-​making arenas. But if the world has no appetite for building new international institutions the existing ones need to be made to work better. We need to learn de novo the lessons we have unlearned in recent years. This is not simply a naïve reassertion of the notional benefits of multilateral institutional cooperation devoid of any sense of institutional failings or the current inhospitable international environment for international organisations. Rather it is a recognition of contemporary circumstance. The core pillars of institutional architecture were mostly established in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. We live in a dramatically different era now. When the post-​Second World War institutions were established, it was not an era of globalisation, it was not an era of increasing environmental damage, it was not an era when the Global South was capable of exercising voice, nor was it an era of digitalisation. The post-​Second World War institutions were unaware of, let alone designed to address, these factors. As a consequence, much 20th-​century international architecture is not fit for practical purpose when dealing with the problems of the 21st century. The 20th-​ century institutional consensus, such as it was, has passed. It is for these combined reasons that the global cooperative endeavour needs to be reformed and—​to use a word that did not exist in 1945 when the institutions were born—​‘rebooted’. Prior to COVID-​ 19 the prospects of international institutional reform were drifting in the face of both active undermining and passive neglect. Acting on the cliché of ‘never waste a crisis’, the coronavirus pandemic should be the perfect catalyst to kick start a serious reform process. If that is to be the case, it is yet to happen. It requires not only vision but also international leadership that is sorely missing in this age of the nationalist–​populist strongman leaders for who enhancing authoritarian power at home appears more attractive than supporting international cooperation abroad. We would therefore be well served by recalling some first principles of international institutionalisation if we are not to completely forget why multilateral institutions developed in the second half of the 20th century (on these principles, see Keohane, 1989). Let us remind ourselves what multilateral institutions do, in theory at least, when they are working well. In point form: • • • • • • • •

They create and broker norms, ideas and expectations. They lower transactions costs by the provision and sharing of information. They reduce uncertainty. They help make promises credible. They facilitate deal-​making. They enhance enforcement and compliance of agreed norms and rules. They set limits and define choices of and for members. They provide for dispute resolution.

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Set in historical context this powerful list of benefits became the norms that, to a greater or lesser extent, drove multilateral activity promoting particular causes or collective programmes of decision-​making often formalised in the development of institutionalised and physically located international organisations for much of the second half of the 20th century (see Lavalle, 2020). We must not unlearn these lessons further than we have done already in the first two decades of the 21st century. For sure, multilateral institutions do not always work optimally and from time to time, as now, they need major reform, or in some instances maybe even mothballing. So, we need to reform those international agencies which have underpinned globalisation but are increasingly out of step with current principled thinking or practical performance. Many of the norms, rules and practices of international cooperation are still based on common sense and mutual benefit and are likely to remain, even without the US providing the role of hegemonic leader. Also, beyond the statist institutions, they are norms and principles that have found their way into the modus operandi of many international non-​state organisations. At the state level, China, and all the other states that have done well out of globalisation have no vested interest in seeing the system collapse. China’s rise over the last decade of the 20th century and the first two decades of the 21st century was—​notwithstanding US frequent attempts to head it off—​inevitably going to lead, not unreasonably, to China wanting a greater voice in international organisation. Notwithstanding the current critique of many multilateral international organisations, if they did not exist we would probably need to invent them. To take the obvious example, we need the WHO in the post-​COVID-​19 era. Reform and specifically the re-​establishment of its scientific impartiality and credibility, not its abolition, is what is required. Its credibility may be damaged in the eyes of some, but no other organisation exists to coordinate health policies across borders. The flow of shared credible, scientifically sound and neutrally arbitrated medical information will remain as, if not more, important in the future. But the tribulations of the WHO merely reflect a deeper malaise for the multilateral institutions. COVID-​19 may have crystallised what we have intuitively known for several decades: that the politicisation and absence of independent leadership within many international organisations has weakened their legitimacy. To be long-​term credible they must be neutral and impartial, not pawns in the political games of their major members.This argument applies across the board, from the UN and its ancillary organisations through the Bretton Woods institutions to the newer institutions including the China-​led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). Some argue this malaise can only be addressed by a new Bretton Woods (Rohinton and Owen, 2020). The original Bretton Woods and GATT were geared to providing an international architecture to govern trade in agriculture, raw materials, manufactures and later services and all of which were amenable, to a greater or lesser extent, to control at the border. By contrast, the new architecture—​especially for digital technologies and global pandemics—​must reflect new priorities in an era

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of an undermanaged, globalised world in which neither digital technologies nor pandemics respect borders. COVID-​19 has demonstrated why digital industry self-​regulation and health industry national regulation would be totally inadequate and indeed inappropriate (see Coyer and Higgott, 2020). COVID-​19 as a pandemic has become a key driver of digitalisation; both pandemics and digitalisation are global. In addition to its role in pandemic monitoring, the growth of digital trade—​digitalised supply chains of the kind developed by software companies like Route4Me, at a time when manufacturing supply chains are receding—​could, indeed are increasingly likely to, make e-​commerce the norm.The major beneficiaries are the US and China, which account for 90% of all this trade (see Hilbig, 2020). The pandemic, and subsequent recovery from it, will continue the acceleration of digitalisation for which an architecture of global governance does not yet exist and which needs to be invented. This is a core domain where the demand for an international institutional architecture far exceeds supply. Any new Bretton Woods system would need to assist the Global South to participate in this process if it is not simply to be a US–​China binary contest that transcends any of the existing global governance norms and institutions. If the Global South is not to fall farther behind, at the very least it must be helped to develop public data infrastructures independent of the big tech transnational communications companies. Put simply: A system dominated by a handful of firms in just two countries could never be trusted to protect the global public good. Addressing a structural vulnerability demands governance, not good will. Given the challenges posed by the new digital infrastructure, it is clear that our only option is to create new global governance institutions. Rohinton and Owen, 2020 Beyond digitalisation, support for the Global South more generally is a core concern in any rebooting of the multilateral system. This has to be, and indeed is, at the core of any rethink of the future of the UN system, which is not adequately delivering on the provision of its core global public goods: public health, climate action and sustainable development. This has been recognised by the UN Director General’s 75th-​anniversary call for a “New Social Contract for the New Era”7 and more generally, support for the new initiatives such as the Alliance for Multilateralism.8 Percolating since late 2018 the Alliance for Multilateralism was launched during General Assembly week in September 2019 by France and Germany supported by initially Canada, Mexico, Chile, Singapore, Ghana and other like-​minded countries as an informal network of countries “… united in their conviction that a rules-​ based multilateral order is the only reliable guarantee for international stability and peace and that our common challenges can only be solved through cooperation”.

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Its principle aim is to “… renew the global commitment to stabilise the rules-​based international order, uphold its principles and adapt it, where necessary”. It aims to: • • •

•

Protect and preserve international norms, agreements and institutions that are under pressure or in peril. Pursue a more proactive agenda in policy areas that lack effective governance and where new challenges require collective action. Advance reforms, without compromising on key principles and values, in order to make multilateral institutions and the global political and economic order more inclusive and effective in delivering tangible results to citizens around the world. Reach out to non-​state actors as key stakeholders and partners for the challenges we are facing, from peace and security to climate, from human rights to development to digital transformation.9

Open to all states it is committed to a rules-​based international order as enshrined in the UN Charter and international law. Importantly it recognises the importance of being practical as much as rhetorical and is developing reform agendas in key international policy areas such as humanitarian action, climate security, cybersecurity, women’s rights and gender equality and measures to secure and enhance pluralistic democracy in the context of global digitalisation.10 The degree to which it is likely to have an impact in re-​booting multilateral cooperation in these areas is too early to tell but interestingly it was conceived prior to COVID-​19 as a reflection of the growing malaise of multilateralism and the recognition that any discussion might need to take place without the participation of the US. Should it prove durable and relevant, this kind of innovative thinking on the part of non-​great powers is not without long-​term significance. It is not to be confused with the US-​driven proposal for an Alliance of Democracies focused on building support for the US contra China. While this may be multilateral in that its intention is to engage two or more participants it is not, in contrast to the Alliance for Multilateralism, an exercise geared to re-​enforcing the multilateral institutional fabric of global problem-​solving. As Biscop (2021) notes, the Alliance of Democracies is an alliance for the US rather than an alliance with the US.

Networks and hybridity matter While we need to bring a semblance of restoration back to the multilateralism of the traditional variety discussed above, traditional multilateralism alone is not sufficient for the organisation of modern-​day global cooperation, either before or after COVID-​19. Other actors are important in a world of networks and increasingly hybrid organisational interaction that has been in evolution for several decades now (see Slaughter, 2017). Much global policymaking, research innovation and capacity building actually transpire through the interaction of modern networks—​both public and private. Networks, increasingly facilitated by digitalisation, change the nature of state power, international relations and diplomatic practice.

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Digital, networked communication changes our approach to international interaction, bargaining and strategy from the pre-​digital age. It moves us beyond the traditional state-​centric multilateral governance structure in the direction of issue-​ specific or sector-​specific governance with the additional engagement of hybrid multisector stakeholders (i.e. other than states) in the policy process. So, if decision-​ makers are thinking about the changing nature of the autonomy of states in a post-​ COVID-​19 age, then a more precisely defined, but more inclusive, set of minimal conditions for multilateral cooperation must recognise: i that digitalised network activity and centralised corporate power change the nature of connections in global governance and global decision-​making, ii that networks do not require government sanction. Indeed networks—​unlike the more traditional institutional hierarchies of the second half of the 20th century—​encourage self-​organisation and iii that the major governance dilemma is no longer simply one of democracy versus autocracy, although that dilemma is becoming more pertinent in an age of pandemic. It is also a question of open governance versus closed governance and, we should add, open versus closed digital spaces in competing centralised systems (for a discussion see Slaughter, 2017). Maintaining the openness of networks requires cooperation amongst a wider range of actors including not only states and international organisations (the traditional stuff of multilateralism) but also non-​state participants from the world of the corporations and civil society. In a digital context these include the major providers—​ Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Google in the US and Tencent, Huawei, Baidoo, Alibaba and Weibo in China. But it must also include internet users and digital rights defenders all of whom are stakeholders in global governance decision-​making and will become, along with traditional governmental actors and international organisations, increasingly so in the post-​pandemic era. To a committed multilateralist the ideas advanced in this chapter reek of common sense. But that is not the case for everybody, especially those who would describe multilateralism as pietistic globalist cosmopolitanism from a bygone liberal age. If it were simply a question of common sense, then our ability to advance the cooperative dialogue would be easy. But, as we have detailed, it is not and too often the international institutional approach ignores fundamental issues of identity, nationalism and sovereignty. As Chapter 7 demonstrates, if we really want to secure the re-​booting of multilateralism then we need to try not simply to counter nationalism but recognise the significance of its voice and its principal arguments.

Notes 1 The theory of absolute versus relative gains is a long-​standing issue in international relations that need not be rehearsed her. For a discussion see Powell (1971) and Snidal (1991).

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2 Judt’s understanding is not to be confused with that of Ji Xinping’s “Community of Common Destiny”. For a discussion see Zhang (2018). 3 The Financial Times, www.ft.com/​content/​5b41ffc2-​7e5e-​11ea-​b0fb-​13524ae1056b. 4 www.socialeurope.eu/​the-​corona-​crisis-​will-​define-​our-​era. 5 https:// ​ f oreignpolicy.com/ ​ 2 020/ ​ 0 5/ ​ 1 6/ ​ f uture- ​ g overnment- ​ p owers- ​ c oronavirus-​ pandemic/​. 6 www.newstatesman.com/​world/​south-​america/​2020/​04/​coronavirus-​hits-​global-​south. 7 www.un.org/​sg/​en/​content/​sg/​statement/​2020-​07-​18/​secretary-​generals-​nelson-​ mandela-​lecture-​“tackling-​the-​inequality-​pandemic-​new-​social-​contract-​for-​new-​ era”-​delivered. 8 https://​multilateralism.org/​the-​alliance/​. 9 https://​multilateralism.org/​the-​alliance/​. 10 For discussions of each, see https://​multilateralism.org/​initiatives/​.

7 FROM PRINCIPLE TO PRACTICE IN A MULTILATERAL RESET

Towards hard-​headed internationalism This book has so far worked with unstated distinction between what is an optimal and desired outcome for resetting multilateral order on the one hand and what is a satisficing and potentially achievable outcome on the other. Normatively we must aspire to the optimal but realistically even if we could simply satisfice this would be an advance on the suboptimal present. A spirited but hard-​headed internationalism—​ or what Hal Brands (2020) calls “modest multilateralism”—​ will need to be recreated. It must be an internationalism for the times. Its core components—​principles perhaps—​are twofold. First, hard-​headed internationalism would need to recommit to saving globalisation from itself. Reform is overdue but needed if it is to continue as the principle, most successful, motor of growth and wealth generation the world has known. Deglobalisation will likely continue.Trade as a share of global GDP peaked in 2008 and has steadily but clearly declined since then.1 For sure, states are keen to be less reliant on other states, but this is not the end of globalisation. It is not unreasonable for a state to wish to secure essential medical supplies, pharmaceuticals and antibiotics other than from one country (be it China or whoever). Production in these and other sensitive areas will sensibly be brought back on shore to the extent possible. But resilience, not absolute self-​sufficiency, should be the order of the day. Autarky is neither possible nor desirable in a globally interconnected world. But to survive, globalisation must at the same time become more ethical and fairer if it is not to unravel in a catastrophic way for the global economy. Globalisation’s inegalitarian distributive consequences for communities dispossessed by it need to be addressed. It is time for more Keynes and less Hayek in the policy diet for state activity after COVID-​19. A balance must be struck between national security, market efficiency and social justice. There will be, indeed there is already, DOI: 10.4324/​9781003175087-8

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an intellectual and political battle between the proponents of protectionism and the proponents of openness taking place. Globalisation needs major reform but its core attributes, those that facilitate economic openness and exchange, must be preserved against the worst exigencies of protectionism to be found in the discourse of populist nationalism. Second, hard-​ headed internationalism must address the conceptual-​ cum-​ organisational challenge implicit in reforming international order, and more precisely bringing about some institutional reset of multilateralism. At both the conceptual and organisational level we lack a theory of change to which the actors—​not just states but our hybridity of actors—​can sign on. As suggested in Chapter 6 the effectiveness of institutional actors comes down to the role of people. It is people that are the agents of institutional/​organisational change. The problem that we have, if we extend the theatrical metaphor beyond simply the actors, is that we lack an agreed script. Actors cannot instigate change without a script to work against (for a discussion of the “theatre metaphor” see Englebert, 2021). In the theatre metaphor, organizational change would be the equivalent of a theatre company moving from an existing play to a new one, requiring the transition of company roles, costumes and sets. “In the theatre, change mastery is critical because no play lasts forever. Change is the rule”. Englebert, 2021 The metaphor is apt for understanding the limits to the reform of multilateral institutions. The question, to push the metaphor to its limits, thus becomes how is the script authored? And who will be the director? These are the questions pertaining to the future of a multilateral word order in need of resolution in 2021. Third, hard-​headed internationalism must address the contradiction between two things that often seem incompatible: (i) the desire and ability of states to exercise sovereign control over their policymaking process on the one hand and (ii) the need for collective international cooperation in the face of mounting global challenges on the other. In an important intervention, Inge Kaul (2020)—​working on an assumption of the interdependence rather than incompatibility of these two positions—​offers a practical approach to how we might make multilateral cooperation more compatible with states’ sovereign policymaking capabilities. Kaul makes a plea for the development of the principle of dual compatibility of sovereign decision-​making with cooperative international cooperation as a way to reinvigorate multilateralism. She sees it as exercise in both “ambition and realism”. Her call for equal treatment for individual state inputs into policy deliberations insists on an accompanying realistic respect for individual state positions. Multilateralism will always remain underdeveloped if states cannot convince themselves that they are engaged in acts of self-​determination in multilateral decision-​making. The concept of sovereignty-​pooling, developed in the context of the evolution of the EU, still rings alarm bells for most states.The way beyond this impasse is ironically captured in another related concept emanating from the EU—​the subsidiarity

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principle; that is a process whereby decision-​making takes place at that lowest level which allows for the retention of as much decision-​making autonomy as possible. Only those issues that cannot be solved at the lower level are appropriate for escalation to a higher level. Practitioners of multilateralism have been slow to recognise the importance and sensitivity of the subsidiarity principle’s need to respect the sovereignty of other states. A combination of Kaul’s dual compatibility hypothesis and a recognition of the subsidiarity principle needs to be at the core of the new multilateralism. Of course, as realism attests, some states are axiomatically going to have more influence over this process than others; notably, although not only, China. But the US is no longer the only voices in a multilateral game. But turning principle into practice is always the major problem. India believes in multilateralism in theory but in practice places a high priority on reflecting the geopolitical reality and geo-​ economic necessities of the contemporary era. “Geopolitical reality” is basically code for the kind of incompatibility between sovereign policymaking and international cooperation identified by Inge Kaul. India is basically no different to many other states. This kind of thinking is very much in the traditional realist paradigmatic mould that is unlikely to help drive forward multilateral cooperation. China consistently exhibits a comparable view to that of India. Huiyao Wang, Director of the influential Centre for China and Globalisation, identifies a principled, but practically constrained, commitment to multilateralism that if it is to survive must change to reflect more the interests of the new major players such as India and China. Institutional reform of the mechanisms of global governance to enhance multilateralism at both government and public levels are needed. But for Wang, these will need to have specifically Chinese characteristics. Capturing the essence of the contemporary Chinese view he goes on to argue that the universal norms of the preceding millennia are no longer appropriate. The US created post-​war consensus which reflected a hierarchical structure offering a more-​or-​less stable bipolar balance of power until the disintegration of the Soviet Union is for states such as China, outdated. “Current mechanisms of global governance are unable to address 21st-​century problems and are thus in need of change and reform” (Wang, 2020). His proposals for reform, reflecting the discussion of China in Chapter 3, argues for a Community of Shared Future for Mankind only workable with Kaul’s “dual responsibility” which stresses the importance of multilateralism but within a sovereign multipolar framework. Sovereign countries should interact and communicate equally through official channels and play crucial roles in building substantive frameworks of cooperation, i.e., reform of the UN Security Council and reconfiguration of voting rights in the IMF. It is unlikely that we will be able to complete the reform of global governance in a short time, since the path we choose is gradual reform rather than radical reconstruction. But our present moment presents a rare opportunity for reform. The ongoing structural change in the

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international power structure has left a vacuum to fill. The rise and fall of great powers may reverse earlier trends towards unipolarity in favour of a new balance of powers and a multipolar world. Wang, 2020 Wang is quoted at length to ensure no ambiguity in our understanding of China’s position on multilateralism. It poses for us the interesting question of how it might differ from that of its principal counterpart, the US after Donald Trump.The change to a Biden administration has not resolved all questions about a US commitment to multilateralism. Trump’s willingness to undermine multilateralism has been well documented earlier in this book as has the already more empathetic approach to international cooperation of the Biden administration. But its commitment to multilateral reform at the time of competing this book has still to be determined. That commitment might not be as full blooded as many would like. As Brand, without irony, suggests it is difficult to know whether this is the opportunity for the US to gather a second wind or its last gasp (Brands, 2021). Simon Reich (2020) identifies several crucial factors that will be determinant in making this judgement. First, there will be little or no change in US security posture in a post-​Trump era. A narrow military definition of security threats is not going to share equal billing with non-​military or human security threats—​pandemics notwithstanding. The consensus of the threats presented to the US by China, on every front, is too strongly bipartisan for that to change and, if anything, has been enhanced by COVID-​19. Second, US fear of exposure to Chinese dominated supply chains in the economic and technological domains is likely to limit the degree to which the US is willing to acquiesce in a greater role for China, and indeed other states in their multilateral governance.The future US commitment to the re-​empowering of the WTO is not automatic. The Trumpian desire to obliterate the WTO Appellate system might not be mirrored by the Biden administration but there is a view that it has over reached itself and needs to be more tightly monitored. As Reich and others note, Biden’s language can look to the past as much as the future. Biden’s message may be tilted toward the future, but its overarching theme will be the reclamation of past glories squandered by the present president: the reassertion of America’s global leadership, the rehabilitation of America’s reputation, the renewal of American credibility. Friedman and Mike, 2019 Perhaps nowhere is this better illustrated than in Biden’s desire to secure a new alliance of liberal democracies via a Summit for Democracy similarly risks the danger of overreach following four years of Trump’s wrecking ball diplomacy. Such a summit, clearly an expression of Biden’s views (see Biden, 2020), risks appearing to be an attempt to put the genie back in the bottle—​simply rehashing a G7 style view of world order. Furthermore, the insurrection at the Congressional Capitol in early

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January 2021 undermined any American claims to democratic exceptionalism and superiority (see Ashford, 2021). Like it or not, allusions to American leadership of the ‘free world’ no longer carry the moral authority they may have done when Joe Biden first entered the US Senate four decades ago. Adding several other countries to this summit—​say Australia, South Korea and India (thus creating a ‘D10’)—​ makes it no less elitist, exclusionary or potentially divisive. While a more thoughtful American foreign policy will be welcomed in most capitals of the world, portents of a reassertive American leadership may indeed be counterproductive for the resetting of multilateralism. The system changed under Donald Trump. As Reich notes “Realistically, the recovery of American credibility will certainly have to precede any claims to leadership. … a Biden administration will have to reinvent American foreign policy as a precondition for effective multilateral reform” (Reich, 2020).

Multilateralism and the search for leadership Leadership is one of the clichéd terms of modern politics. The word is often used generically and imprecisely to try to explain all manner of activity. It is one of the essentially contested analytical concepts of the modern social and human sciences, with massive implications for how public policy is made. And it is, or should be, the subject of research and analysis not only by historians, economists, political scientists and legal scholars but also by a second category of scholars in the behavioural sciences: notably sociologists, psychologists and management specialists. In this section, I distinguish between what I would call collective leadership and personal leadership. Both are important to our understanding of the study of multilateralism which traditionally focuses on the collective and all too rarely on the individual nature of leadership. In principle, multilateralism is cooperation, and agreements between sovereign states. But in practice, states are always represented by leaders (people) who have the power to talk on behalf of and take decisions for states. When we talk of states we anthropomorphise them—​that is endowing them with human properties. But as Luk Van Langenhove (2020) notes: “states never speak, nor do they cooperate or feel angry. Only people representing a state can. … States can only interact with each other via persons that speak on behalf of states, the dynamics of conversations are applicable to state-​to-​state interactions. … Multilateralism is … [not] … something that happens outside of the realm of human interactions.” So, extending Van Langenhove’s discussion this short section looks at the issue of leadership not as an institutional issue, but as a question of agency and particularly the role of people as leaders. Personal leadership is of more interest to the second category of analysts identified above, especially those within psychology and management studies. But they more usually deal with personal leadership in corporate or national organisational settings, especially corporations. Psychology and management studies rarely deal with the question of leadership in an international relations context. When it is

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not ignored completely, it is invariably tackled obliquely. This is a major analytical mistake. Important in any endeavour to reboot multilateralism must be observation of the role of the individual leaders, especially national political leaders operating beyond the confines of the state. We cannot talk about global leadership without talking about the people responsible for it. It is leaders who are both the impediment to and the agents of international multilateral cooperation. By people, I stress leaders rather than ordinary members of any given national community. Multilateralism is not something that attracts the interests of most sections of any given national population. As Van Langenhove demonstrates, people are not by instinct anti-​cooperation. A simple lack of knowledge of the complex practice on multilateralism—​invariably cloaked in an epistemic language not easily accessible to the average lay member of a national citizenry—​can be sufficient. Multilateralism is unlikely to gain support if it is not explained; or if it is explained as a negative practice, as has been the case in the demonising discourse of the increasingly predominant and increasingly vociferous populist leaders of the last decade. To put it succinctly, but perhaps not very diplomatically, many major global leaders are, by personal socio-​psychological disposition, ill-​suited, if not downright opposed, to the international cooperative endeavour. Like it or not, this needs to be discussed.To avoid it is analytically and ethically improper, sociopolitically weak, and it misses what is perhaps one of the major obstacles to international reform. Until we start asking appropriate questions about leadership, especially what we have got and more importantly what we are looking for in the behaviour of world leaders, we will get nowhere. This is not merely a scholarly concern. According to The Economist data team’s analysis of ‘What the World Worries About’, over 60% of the world’s population in 2016 believed that their leaders were the reason their countries were on the wrong track. Populist authoritarianism, of either the right or the left, tend to produce what is commonly (and often uncritically) referred to as ‘strongman leaders’, and they are mostly male. Indeed, international political leadership is so masculine that most people struggle to name more than one or two female leaders beyond Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi and Angela Merkel. ‘Strongman leadership’ is often identified with what the scholarly psychological and management literature sees as a series of destructive personality traits—​narcissism, self-​absorption, self-​admiration, overconfidence and a high but fragile sense of self-​ esteem—​ in which arrogance, power, and loudness, rather than humility, wisdom and calmness seem to predominate. Such traits are visibly more prevalent amongst leaders than rank and file members of the population. Also, clinical narcissism is 40% higher in men than women (see Chamorro-​Premuzic, 2019, pp. 42–​48). This strongman personality invariably lacks an affinity for multilateral cooperation. Cooperation requires personality traits such as an ability to listen and compromise. Unless cooperation is transactionally and instrumentally beneficial and occurs on their own terms, strongman leaders are

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usually disinterested.They prefer the pursuit of self-​aggrandising, self-​interested, but often harmful and sometimes corrupt, agendas. There is substantial evidence from COVID-​ 19 management that populist leaders, such as Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro and Boris Johnson, have handled the pandemic much worse than more consensual female leaders, such as Angela Merkel, Tsai Ing-​ wen and Jacinda Ardern. In simple terms, as increasingly demonstrated in behavioural and leadership management studies literature but ignored in international relations, women leaders are empirically associated with better crisis management and few deaths than states with “strongman leaders” (see Sergent and Stajkovic, 2020, Zenger and Folkman, 2020 and Garikipati and Khambhampati, 2021). So, if most populist-​authoritarian leaders are male and not good managers, does it follow that bad leadership would decrease if there were less men and more women in charge? If the answer is yes, then by extension it would suggest that the chances of international cooperation would, in all probability, also be enhanced if the proportion of women in international leadership positions increased. To bring about such change is vital to international cooperation but is easier said than done, since it requires counterfactual reasoning at the basis of leader selection. As Chamorro-​ Premuzic’s (2019) research has demonstrated, the under-​ representation of women in leadership roles has less to do with the absence of competence and motivation in women and more to do with our inability to control for the incompetence and lack of actual talent of some male leaders. In this context, the problem is less the barriers to entry for women, which of course do exist. More significant is the lack of career obstacles for incompetent men. This is a problem given that the evidence from the world of business, that women generally outperform men in leadership roles, is substantial and reliable (Chamorro-​ Premuzic, 2019, pp. 85–​102), and the characteristics they bring to their roles as leaders—​ especially creativity, flexibility, self-​ control, fairness, communication and empathy—​are clearly attributes required for international dialogue and are more likely to enhance international cooperation rather than those exhibited by strongmen leaders. But an initial problem is that the leadership skills that women exhibit are not those that get you into leadership positions in the first instance. The personality traits to be chosen as a leader are more those exhibited by ‘strongmen’—​especially self-​centredness, self-​promotion, overconfidence and a sense of entitlement to high office, which conform to the usually unspoken stereotype of leaders and which are entirely the opposite of what is required for international dialogue and the development of international cooperation. Things have to change. Women have to play a greater role in international decision-​making if we are to enhance the prospects for multilateral cooperation on key global challenges. But maybe things are changing slightly. Digitalisation, especially through the internet and social media, has become an important element of women’s empowerment via its potential to connect women across geographical

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and social divides and to build online communities without having to go through structures of high-​level institutional influence to become greater players in the hybrid nature of global decision-​making (see Levenstein, 2020).

Multilateralism and the search for collective institutional governance The theme of this chapter is the pursuit of hard-​headed internationalism of a managed not speculative variety. That requires us not to idealise multilateral governance at the international level. Rather we must recognise that multilateralism as practice, notwithstanding the supposed universalist and neutral principles that became enshrined overtime in its discursive norms—​what John Ruggie, in a quasi-​ rationalist manner, famously described as general principles of appropriate conduct that constrain “… particularist interests … [and] … strategic exigencies” (1992, p. 571)—​never fully pertained. This was certainly the case throughout the second half of the 20th century. Multilateral institutions have always been sites of political action reflecting the interests and values of the most powerful states—​principally the US in the post-​Second World War era. So, unsurprisingly, changing realities in the global balances of power across the policy spectrum will inevitably call forth changes in the modus operandi of the international institutions. There is no one way for change to come about. Declining power-​r ising power induced change of the kind envisage by Grahame Allison in his study of the Thucydides Trap is, fortunately, far too blunt an analytical instrument. As Erik Voeten (2021) notes in an important book on Ideology and International Institutions, interstate bargaining driven by ideological interests and power has nearly always, unsurprisingly we might add, been at the core of most major multilateral agreements. The creation of the WTO at the end of the Uruguay Round being a prime example. Despite so-​called consensus-​based decision-​making, the creation of the WTO reflected the economic and political interests of the major players. This meant the US and the EU, at the end of albeit protracted negotiations, quite easily prevailed over the interest of powerful, like-​minded, multi-​member coalitions of countries such as Canada, Australia and a dozen others and the interests of most developing countries (see Higgott and Cooper, 1990). But that was the 20th century. Maybe things have changed. Large-​scale international institutionalism, and all too often elusive large-​scale consensus-​based decision-​making, need not be necessary in all circumstances. Nor indeed should it be if decisions are to be taken. We should not conflate the idea of global governance with global government with all the attendant implications present with the use of the word government. Be it pandemics, computer viruses, climate calamities or financial contagion—​core elements of the 21st-​century global policy agenda—​all are networked problems that require networked solutions from a plurality of actors: cities, companies, NGOS and other networks as well as states.

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In an increasingly hybrid context, collaboration between a subset of core actors that predominate in a given policy area can be sufficient. Four examples are: (i) 12 countries account for 72% of global CO2 emissions; (ii) 9 countries have nuclear weapons; and (iii) the US and Russia produce 50% of total world armaments (SIPRI, 2019a, 2019b). (iv) large parts of the world, given their limited IT infrastructure and development capability, pose little cybersecurity threat. Such challenges can in large part be addressed by securing agreement amongst the major players (for a discussion see Goldin, 2020). Conversely, the absence of what we might call critical mass decision-​making in crucial areas can be hampered by assumptions of the need for a unanimous consensus, negotiated and arbitrated within an international institutional setting—​the prime example being intellectual property in the WTO (for a discussion see the Warwick Commission, 2008). Unreachable unanimity amongst states as opposed to critical mass agreement of key players (state and non-​state alike) can hinder much good progress in collective action problem-​solving. The success in producing multiple COVID-​19 vaccines demonstrates the functionality of this kind of hybrid state–​ private sector interaction. Across the policy spectrum—​from environmental protection through intellectual property theft, cybercrime to bioterrorism—​the building of critical mass plurilateral coalitions offer routes to collective decision-​making. Other forms of hybrid cooperation can also be more effective than traditional modes of multilateral problem-​solving; perhaps nowhere better illustrated than in the tackling of climate change issues. If cities consume two-​thirds of the world’s energy and produce 70%+ of global CO2 emissions then a coalition of the largest countries, companies and cities to fight climate change, as the Oxford Martin Commission (2013) proposed, could be one important way to address this particular challenge. But, as we have discussed, the role of network activity be it built on epistemic knowledge communities, regulatory agencies or advocacy organisations and serviced by digital technology, can act as platforms and frameworks for decision-​making without requiring the ceding of national sovereignty. Networked decision-​making and problem-​solving offer the modern world perhaps the greatest opportunity to solve Kaul’s dual capability problem at both regional and global levels without traducing the formal sovereign rights of states. Networks offer us more collective decision-​making at both regional and global levels (Woods and Martinez-​Diaz, 2009). As Amitav Acharya (2017b) argues, movement in this direction offers the possibility of an alternative, or post-​hegemonic, global order. This order is not for Acharya a multipolar world in which three or more poles use their material power to shape global events but rather what he calls a “multiplex world” which has a more fragmented and pluralised architecture of global governance, including the growing role of non-​state groups, private foundations, public–​private partnerships and regionalised structures that are nonetheless interconnected. For Acharya this does not mean a return to great power spheres of influence but rather regional

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worlds that are relatively ‘open’ and interactive with each other. Leadership ceases to be simply the preserve of the G7(8) or G20, but also includes a range of issuespecific G-​plus hybrid configurations. In sum, Acharya’s view is essentially an optimistic one: A world of multiple modernities, rather than an ‘end of history’ marked by the alleged triumph of liberal democracy and capitalism over other ideas. A Multiplex World is a multi-​civilisational world but one which nonetheless manages to avoid a clash of civilisations through interdependence and dialogue. Acharya, 2020 Acharya’s optimism and the more positive tone offered in this chapter is built on a number of assumptions. First, the US will behave responsibly and ethically and with a modicum of commitment to the wider international global good under the Biden administration. Second, the same proviso applies to the other major players, especially China, India, Russia, the EU and influential middle powers, such as Australia, Canada, South Korea and the Nordics. All will need to act multilaterally in the absence of the leadership, or even the support, of the US. Indeed, multilateral action absent the US under Trump could still be seen at the WTO notwithstanding the endeavours of the Trump administration to emasculate it. The EU, Australia, Canada, Singapore and 12 other members established a Multiparty Interim Appeal Arrangement to substitute for the Arbitration Dispute Mechanism rendered inquorate by the refusal of the US to ratify the appointment of judges to the Appellate Body.2 While the flowering of such non-​hegemonic leadership is to be welcomed, even if the EU and the principal middle powers were to continue to lift their game as cooperative international actors, long-​term international cooperation and joined up global decisions-​making are not going to occur absent the positive input of both the US and China. But, as noted, US leadership credibility has been substantially diminished. And China, notwithstanding its endeavours to paint itself in the most favourable light, has not covered itself in glory in its response to COVID-​19. At the same time it continues to challenge the rules-​based order “from within” (see Jorgensen, 2020). States, beyond the US, will surely look to become less reliant on it in the future. How long can the world wait for the US to regain its equilibrium and China a sense of global responsibility? Liberals (as opposed to neoliberals) need to speak out for a reformed globalisation; for sure, they must recognise its flaws and that there has to date been an inequitable imbalance in the relationship between winners and losers. But it must also be recognised that we are not going to see a recovery of the global economy from its most severe crisis since the depression of the 1930s if it becomes less open, less free and more nationalist and protectionist and if we wait for leadership from either of the world’s two major powers. Fortunately it appears that policymakers across the political spectrum are coming to the view that fiscal

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• • • •

End of neoliberalism; Re-boot of liberal welfarism; Mitigation of inequality; Containment of the digital oligopolists.

Politics

Economics

Digitalisation

• Digitalisation in support of a new democracy; • Open imagined communities; • Mitigation of cultural wars; • Rollback of populism. Society and Culture

FIGURE 7.1  A

• Reformed globalisation; • Open international economy; • Reformed international economic institutions; • Restored cooperation; • Managed polycentricity.

International Relations • Towards a global ‘Community of Destiny’; • Salvaged, but reformed liberal order; • Human rights shape a managed migrationregime.

post-​COVID-​19 order: the optimistic scenario

Source: Author

stimulus must be central to any state’s post-​pandemic recovery plans. Standing in ctrast to ­figure 6.1, ­figure 7.1 above captures the characteristics of a potentially more optimistic view of world order reform after COVID-​19.

Notes 1 https://​data.worldbank.org/​indicator/​ne.trd.gnfs.zs. 2 See www.mfa.gov.sg/​Overseas-​Mission/​Geneva/​Mission-​Updates/​2020/​04/​Multiparty-​ Interim-​Appeal-​Arbitration-​Arrangement.

8 TEN PROPOSITIONS AND A PROVOCATION ON WORLD ORDER

This final chapter offers a series of propositions that capture the essence of the arguments advanced in this book. Currently, global governance, to the extent that we can identify it, might be fragmented, but it is a more interconnected order than many of the major populist protagonists for greater national autonomy assume. It is neither a bipolar order nor a conventional multipolar order. Nor are broad blocs or spheres of interest that exist in any way autarkic, although we are witnessing the progression towards a more strongly bifurcated order.There is porosity to the current world. All states have both vulnerabilities and opportunities in an increasingly pluralistic and decentred order reflecting both conflict and, in some domains, creative and decentralised cooperation. Major multilateral activities operate differently in different domains. For example, the domains of climate change and sustainable development—​evinced by Paris and the Conference of Parties—​operate differently from in the domain of trade (the WTO). And, as this book has argued, there is much more to world order than simply the distribution of power.The role of ideas, relationships and norms are more important than credited in realist traditional readings of world order.The key driver of this complexity is technological innovation, especially in the sphere of digital communication, bringing about a power shift in the relationship between states and networks that weakens autonomous governmental policymaking in key issue areas ranging from financial stability, climate change, terrorism, cyber security and now pandemics. What follows is a series of propositions that reflect the characteristics of the contemporary order. The chapter finishes with a provocation.

Proposition one: liberalism is in crisis The liberal world order, and liberalism as a philosophy, is in crisis. This is a crisis that has been exacerbated by COVID-​19.The empirical symptoms of this crisis are clear and, as has been extensively discussed, include inter alia: DOI: 10.4324/​9781003175087-9

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i A growing disillusionment with liberal democracy as an instrument for political voice in the face of the rising populist political agenda. ii A growing critique of capitalism reflected in the backlash against globalisation and especially an open trade system. Rising protectionism is not simply a US–​ China phenomenon.The introduction of trade-​distorting measures among the G20 continues to rise (see Evenett and Fritz, 2019). iii A growing rejection of the norms and principles of a multilateral system as a means of problem-​solving at the collective level. But, as the book has also noted, liberalism is not an easily and narrowly defined philosophy. Nor will it be easily dismissed if its advocates are prepared to fight for it. It is not only the political philosophies of self-​styled civilisational states that are interested in higher human values. This becomes clear when liberalism is understood as much as an attitude of mind or as a persuasion—​rather than simply as an ideology—​with a central focus on human agency, operating with economic and political rights underpinned by markets, liberal democracy and the rule of law. Elements of liberalism have made major inroads into authoritarian systems. China, for example, is an authoritarian state, not a liberal democracy. Yet while it resists liberal politics and a non-​ political legal system, it accepts, and has indeed flourished through the utility of markets—​especially when they can be nudged. By contrast, Russia, under President Putin, believes in none of them (see Aslund, 2019). Two recent examples make the liberal dilemma crystal clear. First, the 2019 Osaka G20 summit showed the intensifying global battle between two political philosophies of international order: (i) a Western-​led liberal world order of largely free market economies on the one hand, and (ii) on the other hand, an alternative set of capitalist but state-​directed economies led by China plus a loose, increasingly disparate but powerful collection of (semi) authoritarian-​minded regimes that see the weakening of US power and the US-​led global order as a good thing. This view was captured in Vladimir Putin’s interview with the Financial Times in which he pronounced “liberalism obsolete” (Barber and Foy, 2019). Putin also noted that, rhetorical flourishes notwithstanding, in some quarters there is a seeming reluctance to defend liberalism; most notably by President Trump, who clearly never understood liberalism, the role of the US in supporting the liberal order and the benefits that order in turn provided to the US. Second, the liberalism–​authoritarianism battle has been made implicit, in the respective approaches to dealing with the COVID-​19 pandemic. This is not a straight battle between liberalism and authoritarianism. But those Asian countries with stronger, more centrally organised, less individualist ideological and governmental systems—​prime examples, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan—​seem to have fared better in combatting coronavirus than, for example, the US and the UK. Third, COVID-​19 is sorely testing open economic interdependence, as supply chain vulnerability exacerbates the demand for national self-​reliance and tighter national borders. At the metalevel, these strains, along with growing alarm over the

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environmental health of the globe, reflect disconnects between the human, material, political and sociocultural dynamics currently in train in the world order and captured in the three problematiques—​economic, geopolitical and civilisational—​ identified in this book. For an enhanced dialogue to carry meaning, it will require a closer alignment of understanding and practice across all three domains at a time when their alignment is becoming increasingly more difficult.

Proposition two: sovereignty as an organising principle is under challenge but will not go away The modern state drew together several key functions under the principles and institutions of sovereignty. If the purpose of the sovereignty was to stabilise the social bond between the state and the citizen, this was achieved by resolving the structures and practices of governance in terms of the direct correspondence between authority, territory, community and economy. These parsimonious and elegant assumptions have dominated this Westphalian understanding of sovereignty. But as Stephen Krasner (1995–​1996) has noted, this understanding has always underestimated how basic principles were invariably transgressed or mitigated in one form or another. The past golden era of supposed absolute sovereignty to which many 21st-​century leaders now make longing and tortuous appeals is in many ways a political fiction. All states are not the same and one actor’s ideal type of sovereignty can be diluted by the behaviour of other actors. Moreover, sovereignty has always been a Eurocentric/​Western discourse (see Hobson, 2012). And the legacy of colonialism enacted by Europe in Asia and Africa has informed the development and practice of sovereignty. The international system does not consist of identical state actors enjoying comparable levels of autonomous authority within state boundaries. Nor is it new to suggest that sovereignty is in a state of atrophy. We need to recognise how fragile and how fungible the concept of sovereignty articulated in the Westphalian model really is. Change has been a permanent feature of our understanding of sovereignty for more than 350 years. It is in these theoretical and historical contexts that we must locate the, often hysterical, modern-​day discussion of sovereignty.

Proposition three: US leadership is in decline, in both hard power and soft diplomatic terms We are entering a post-​unipolar world in which the limits on US power are becoming more visible. In the words of Stephen Walt writing in 2019, if the era of unilateralism is over, then “Washington is the last to realize it” (2019a). This depiction is not fundamentally altered by the passing of the Trump administration for that of Joe Biden. The US would still appear to think it can (more or less) run its international policy, in both the economic and security domains, by force majeure; and that acquiescence from ally and competitor alike will continue to be forthcoming.

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Biden’s slogan that “The US is Back”, literally forced down the throats of its major European allies at the February 2021 Munich Security Conference, is likely to be an irritant to the international community that has become progressively dismissive of the US as the automatic global leader (by either example or design) in times of crisis; nowhere is this better illustrated than in the disaster of US coronavirus management. Indeed, European desires, led by Emmanuel Macron, to secure its strategic autonomy reflected precisely this irritation at the Munich Conference.1 For sure, no state will easily or willingly turn its back on genuine US leadership, nor needlessly court and endure US hostility; but this is turning out to be less so the case (see Walt, 2019b). To assert a decline in US hegemony is not to deny the residual nature of US power when compared to even the most powerful actors, including China. Rather, it is to suggest that things are changing. Moreover, it appears that US bullying under Trump has had diminishing returns. China is not the only state to resist what it saw (sees) as the most unreasonable elements of US pressure. Even smaller states have responded badly to it and, even beyond European desires for strategic autonomy, we are seeing counter tendencies as states engage in coalition-​building and work out ways to offset US policy. The prime example is the development of closer China–​Russian relations. Given disparities in material size and wealth—​Russia has an economy slightly bigger than Spain’s—​the relationship is heavily asymmetric. But it is also delicately balanced. While both states have comparable if differing global self-​images, on core issues of international policy, they demonstrate a proximity of views, especially towards the US. As Trenin notes, Moscow and Beijing will continue to have their differences, and they are not entirely free from reciprocal phobias, but the chances of a China–​Russia collision over those differences are being minimised by the US policy of dual containment. This policy, ironically, also relieves both countries’ elites of lingering suspicions that the United States might build a bond with either China or Russia at the expense of the other. Trenin, 2019

Proposition four: managing cultural difference in an era of digitalisation is now as important as managing economics and security in international relations Social media and digital communication are changing the politics of the modern order. Thanks to digitalisation, international order is no longer purely the plaything of global cosmopolitan elites. Populists have views and these are played backwards and forwards between states and their populations, facilitated by social media, in a way that was not the case in the past. This has helped sow doubt about the steadfastness of American leadership in the contemporary international order when juxtaposed against the rise of other prominent actors with a stake in the management of the system. This, in turn, is creating a trade-​off in the inherent tensions

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between consent and coercion and between cooperation and conflict in international relations. Beyond economics and security, any successful international global dialogue will also be about mitigating tensions provoked by civilisational/​cultural differences. Putative containment measures must be crafted and implemented with utmost sensitivity, skill and political savvy reflective of the delicate nature of the contemporary civilisational discourse on order. The nationalist genie cannot be put back in the bottle. Blindly trying to do so is not a useful strategy. Nationalist sentiment and identity politics are increasingly central to the foreign policy of most states, be they large (the US and China), not so small (Italy, France, the Philippines) or small but regionally influential (Hungary). In an environment of increasing polarisation, the question arises as to what kind of leadership skills—​skills that might transcend national interests—​are required. But the rise of populist nationalism led by authoritarian ‘strong men’ is a major constraint on enhancing international dialogue. Moreover, the enhanced digital surveillance capabilities developed by authoritarian leaders to mitigate the COVID-​19 pandemic have further reinforced the position of the smarter and ruthless authoritarian leaders, and indeed some democratic governments have also shown a willingness to exploit these capabilities.

Proposition five: restraining self-​interest is key to taming and reforming globalisation The era of globalisation might have enhanced the integration of the global economy and fostered the growth of overall aggregate global welfare, but it has singularly failed either to enhance distributive welfare in the developed world or to advance sociopolitical cooperation across national boundaries. Identifying how to enhance the sociopolitical, as opposed to the simply economic, management of globalisation is a signal task of any multilateral reset. We must identify those narratives that can help form even a modicum of global identity. Those partial narratives we have are worthy—​for example, various declarations on human rights, sustainability and development and the enhancement of norms and attitudes through soft power activities such as international cultural relations and cultural diplomacy—​but they are honoured selectively and at times cynically. Ideational and practical trends towards deglobalisation appear to be growing. The road to success will be to develop systems of thought that inculcate multilevel identities in citizens, from the local and national through to the global. But the prospects of this have been greatly challenged by the rapid advances in digital media and social media. Getting individuals to control self-​interests and think outside of their immediate, self-​selected group on social media and to engage with the ideas of a wider community is becoming increasingly difficult. As discussed in Chapter 5 and captured in the words of Denis Snower: Extending our circles of affiliation –​through encompassing narratives, social norms, education, laws and institutions –​is now our central challenge as

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human beings, made salient through the proliferation of our ‘problems without borders’. … The integration of the global economy and our ever more oppressive footprint on the global environment calls for the development of moral narratives that induce us to cooperate at unprecedentedly large scales, while maintaining our sense of belonging at the small scales necessary to tackle our small-​scale challenges. Snower, 2019

Proposition six: new approaches to international governance offer some cause for hope As noted in the discussion of a multilateral reset in Chapter 7, the devil is in the detail. Pathogens, AI systems, climate deterioration, computer viruses or radiation are shared global risks. They are not amenable to national containment by the erection of fences or tariffs. They can only be addressed by the collective development and acceptance of shared reporting systems, common contingency plans and ultimately treaties or treaty like agreements. Without overstating the case, some green shoots of alternative approaches to international governance are arising from the decline of the traditional, state led, institutional multilateralism of the old order. To a degree, the post-​Paris discussion on caring for the environment demonstrates this, especially at regional and subregional levels in actions such as the Climate Action Summit. For example, and notwithstanding Donald Trump’s disavowal of the Paris Agreement, environmental reform did not stop in the US during his administration. Sub-​federal governing bodies, states and local governments became increasingly committed to containing the negative effects of global warming. So, even if we accept of the salience of propositions one through five we must still acknowledge the hybridity of ideas, actors and processes in international relations if we are going to incorporate and accommodate the best elements of the core universalist values and norms (of liberalism) with the values of reasserted cultural particularisms. Leaving it simply to states is not sufficient. Hybridity can be seen in the proliferation of both top-​down and bottom-​up organisations and initiatives operating at the meso-​level in international relations. Some of the better-​known hybrid agents crossing the boundaries between public and civil society at the international level include, inter alia and for illustrative purposes only: Amnesty International, Transparency International, the Global Environment Facility, the GAVI Vaccine Alliance, the International Organization for Migration, the Bank for International Settlements, regional organisations and regional development banks through to the Mayors Roundtables and Cities C40 movements. To the extent that these hybrid agents have an input into the decision-​making process, they move us beyond the simple exclusivity of a world of sovereign states or state-​led international organisations. They also bolster the new multilateralism as practice at a time when it is challenged at the institutional state level.

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Similarly, despite the assault on economic globalisation by the populists, economic openness and multilateral economic agreements are not without their supporters. The US may have withdrawn from agreements such as the TPP, but others did not. The EU, Japan and the major middle powers with large economies are very active here. Keeping the global economy open received strong support at the 2019 Osaka G20 meeting, especially from Japan, which, along with Australia and others, has ensured the viability of the renamed TPP (CPTPP) after US exit and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership was signed in late 2020.2 The EU in 2019 signed major Free Trade Agreements (FTA) with Mercosur and Vietnam and is in negotiations with India, Australia and New Zealand. At the same time, the prospects of a deal between the EU and the US have declined (see Johnson, 2019). Whether a change of administration in the US will reverse this last discussion is yet to be seen. But as the book has been at pains to argue, if we are to engage in a global reset, four factors independent of the major powers matter: i Morality and solidarity matter and a sense of international community must be developed. ii Multilateralism matters and a recommitment to reforming the exiting major international institutions are needed. iii Networks matter, now probably more so than the post-​world two international institutions.This is especially the case with those driven by digital communication technologies. These are global not only in their presence but also in their policymaking and governance consequences. They hold the key to the future of new approaches to collective global decision-​making. iv The principle of internationalism matters. But it must be ‘hard-​headed’ internationalism capable of adapting to the changing role of the principal international agents (the Great Powers) in the current age.

Proposition seven: the US and China are the main powers, but it is too early to write off Europe While the US and China are clearly the principals in this game, it is too early to write off Europe as a significant player in the reform of global order. For all its self-​identified existential and practical problems of the last decade, Europe is not about to collapse into terminal incapacity. The EU may be less important in dollar terms, but it is far more important in terms of international trade. It trades much more with China than either it or China do with the US. Further, and notwithstanding the gains made by the populist extremes of European politics in the May 2019 elections, the pro-​Europe centre did in fact hold and it is clear that Brexit has not been but the first nail in the coffin of the EU. Rather it may well have had the long-​term effect of strengthening rather than weakening the European ideal. It is a speculation for sure, but it is a short move from the creation of common debt to

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the creation of common taxes to secure debt. The search for a greater EU is not over yet. Moreover, notwithstanding some contradictory comments from EU President Van der Leyen and the High Representative for External Relations and Security Josep Borell in early 2020 about the need for a “geo-​political Commission”, the EU’s commitment to a rules-​based system and the principal international institutions remains as strong as that of the US has been faltering and China’s is ambiguous (see Higgott and Van Langenhove, 2020).This is especially the case with its commitment to the UN where, lest we forget, the EU collectively is the largest contributor, providing 30% of the UN’s total income and accounting for 31% of its peacekeeping activities. It is also one of the strongest supporters of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).The EU also has the potential and clout to be an international leader in climate change reform and internet regulation. The problem that remains for the EU is the degree to which it can ensure that the dialogue over world order is a multilateral one rather than simply a bilateral one between the US and China and in which the EU’s hedging strategy may well complicate and weaken its relationships with both major players (see Higgott and Reich, 2021). The idea of a stronger EU, working constructively with a Biden administration in the post-​hegemonic US era, makes sense on both sides of the Atlantic and both sides have recognised it. But, as evinced in the speeches of Joe Biden, Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel at the 2021 Munich Security Conference both sides have also recognised that there is no going back to the pre-​Trump days. European leaders seemed reluctant to fall in with Biden’s entreaties to mobilise against China.3

Proposition eight: Chinese ‘revisionism’ needs to be engaged Economic convergence between great powers as China catches up with the US and growing military strength of the kind that exists between the US and both China and Russia need not inevitably lead to Graeme Allison’s Thucydides Trap (2017). But economic convergence can lead to increased demands for revisions in the international order to reflect the legitimate interests of the rising powers. But while revisionism is complex, it is not always dangerous if a new modus vivendi can be secured. There is a difference between a desire to overthrow an existing order and a desire to alter it. Schweller (2015) identifies two elements to revisionism that allows us to make the necessary judgement: (i) the nature and extent of the power’s revisionist aims and (ii) the risks and methods it is prepared to take to secure a revised order. Using Schweller’s criteria allow us to distinguish between China and Russia as revisionist powers. On the basis of recent history and practice, Russia is a more aggressively revisionist and potentially more reckless power than China. It has been losing international standing while China has been gaining it. Hence, China’s approach is more complex. We now appreciate that China, as had been hoped and

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assumed following Nixon’s 1972 meeting with Mao, was not going to “be turned Western” (see Schuman, 2019 for a discussion).That has not happened and in retrospect it was perhaps naive to assume it ever would. But nor does China want to dismantle the global economic order rather than transform it into its own vision from within (see Jorgensen, 2020). But gradual pro-​market reforms in China over the last several decades have not diminished a Chinese wariness towards the West rooted in the history of the relationship. Domestically, the reinforcement of traditional Chinese culture has been forcefully used by Xi Jinping to inhibit the developments of unwanted ideas such as democracy. Globally, attempts to force China into a liberal mould have not succeeded. President Xi continues to push for a reformed order through the development of institutions such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, programmes such as the Belt and Road Initiative, and the development of a Eurasian infrastructure network and, it should also be said a more aggressive economic diplomacy since the latter days of the Trump administration. But he has not, and is not pushing, for the collapse of the current order. That the Americans do not like Chinese approaches does not make them illegitimate or incompatible with a reformed global order. These approaches are there to be negotiated. This is the ultimate test for both the Chinese and the Americans. Russia, by contrast, seems not to have grasped the opportunities presented by globalisation in the last 35 years in the manner that China did. Chinese capitalism may be authoritarian capitalism, but it is recognisable as capitalism that has nevertheless benefitted from globalisation. Russia has not undergone a similar economic revolution to China. It seems less concerned with reforming the system or making the global economy work for itself than with reasserting old truths and consolidating geostrategic spheres of influence and control that suit its response to the break-​up of the Soviet Union and the development of globalisation captured in what Anders Aslund (2019) has called a combination of “crony capitalism” and “kleptocratic governance”. The Russian political elite, more so than the Chinese Communist Party elite, seems more dissatisfied with the current norms and international institutions. China wants a greater role in the structure of international regimes whereas Russia seems more inclined towards securing the retirement of many elements of that order. The kind of reform China is looking for can be addressed by engagement, negotiation and a recognition of what it sees as its legitimate demands for more equal treatment from the US on the one hand, and its own closer adherence to existing international norms and practices in bodies like the WTO on the other. But for a dialogue to take place, Washington has to learn to deal with China as it is, rather than as it would like China to be.

Proposition nine: cooperative dialogue is vital to combatting revived zero-​sum narratives Committed global stakeholders should continue to tackle, with rigour, the essential question of what a future world order might look like, while at the same

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time pursuing accessibility, accountability and dialogue for all. This is particularly important at a time when the direction of international discourse is moving more towards competition and clash of civilisation style arguments and away from cooperation and dialogue. The language of conflict and cooperation has come to dominate in an era of rising populist and nationalist zero-​sum politics. This language is aggressive and exhibits a strong distaste for compromise. Populist politicians seem averse to negotiating settlements that reflect compromise. Looking at this language through Chinese lenses then Xi Jinping, with a combination of history and his own position in Chinese domestic politics uppermost in his thoughts, is determined that China will never acquiesce in any course of action that smacks of humiliation. China’s collective memory from the time of the opium wars remains too strong. A one-​time editor of the Singapore Strait Times noted that the US under Donald Trump failed to appreciate how important this was for the Chinese leadership. In a clear allusion to Donald Trump, he noted that “… politicians who think of relations between nations only in terms of transactions and deal-​making just do not understand the power of national self-​esteem that underpins China’s resilience” (Fong, 2019). Of course, some issues do not lend themselves to compromise. For example, splitting the difference between Brexiteers and Remainers in the UK, and now in post-​Brexit between the UK and the EU, was and is always going to prove more difficult than early champions of the break-​up imagined. But trade deals are always about negotiations, and a mutually advantageous outcome should always be on the cards. “Getting to Yes” as Fisher and Ury (1981) famously noted should always be possible. The key is to focus on the problem, not personalities. But this is increasingly difficult in the era of narcissistic ‘strongman leaders’; especially leaders who see themselves and their regimes under duress and challenge.

Proposition ten: the prospect of a new Cold War and the limits to dialogue are real The next decade is going to see a process of contest, adjustment, negotiation and hopefully more accommodation than conflict in the conversation over global order. But there is no guarantee. A move in the direction of a new Cold War will make the prospects of a dialogue over how to reset multilateralism increasingly difficult and unlikely; hence, the importance of challenging the emergence of a new Cold War before it embeds itself in the international policy discourse. For many years China has challenged the US-​led order only indirectly; there has been no full-​frontal challenge. But signs of change as China, or specifically, Xi Jinping, are clearly afoot. China under Xi has begun to more aggressively articulate an alternative ideological and normative vision that contrasts with the contours of a traditional US-​led order. Any future dialogue will be attendant on the manner in which China articulates this vision and the degree to which Joe Biden’s administration shows a willingness, ability and diplomacy to engage in a conversation that might incorporate legitimate Chinese interests into any process of reform.

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Accommodation on the part of the US should not be assumed. The Biden administration has shown early signs of pursuing an approach as combative as that of his predecessor (for a discussion see Milanovic, 2021). If we assume that what we are seeing is actually less a quarrel amongst civilisations rather than a contest between political systems and economic models, this at least offers the prospect of a negotiated settlement in a way that enhanced feelings of a civilisational clash do not. And, if we take Xi Jinping at his word, rather than reflect, for example, purely on his actions in the South China Sea, civilisations are not inevitably destined to clash. At the 2019 Conference on Dialogue of Asian Civilisations, the Chinese President, in a rebuke of Kiron Skinner’s comment noted earlier in the book, said, “It is stupid to believe that one’s race and civilisation are superior to others, and it is disastrous to wilfully reshape or even replace other civilisations” (Zhen, 2019). The US–​China relationship might not (yet) represent a clash of civilisations, but it does represent an increasingly vituperative clash of political cultures. Both are at the stage where zero-​sum views of the relationship infused with a retaliatory logic appear to predominate over a positive-​sum view.The upper hand in a political rivalry, especially for President Trump, but perhaps only less so for President Xi, was seemingly more important than economic welfare. Only time will tell if this view will prevail in the post-​Trumpian era. The major challenge to US hegemony will come not only from any decline in its own role in the global economy—​or more accurately accepting the fact of that decline—​but also from the growing power and political designs on the international order of the two major revisionist states (see Drezner, 2019a). Here, the difference between the first Cold War discourse and any new one is significant.The discourse of the first Cold War was driven by the prospect of nuclear confrontation, Armageddon even. The frontlines of the new Cold War are to be found in the domains of the economy, digital technology, AI and cyber. The language of the economic cold war, discussed in Chapter 2, is that of securitisation and weaponisation of tariffs, US dollar, sanctions and technology as the US looks for what Gary Hufbauer (2018) called a “commercial divorce” from China. The question that will condition the nature of dialogue is the degree to which China’s revisionist agenda and the US’ status quo agenda can be jointly managed. Excessive aims will not secure a managed negotiation and compromise. But more modest, constrained aims cognisant of the other side’s interests might. The prospect for a more modest approach does however seem diminished by the raise in temperature of the dialogue in the pandemic era and especially as a combat weary President Trump in late 2020 looked to use what we might call the “China blame game” as part of his failed bid to secure re-​election. Post-​Trump domestic politics in the US will continue to limit the prospects for how to reset multilateralism. It would be dangerous to assume that sufficient domestic political will might suddenly become available without any accompanying dramatic change in Chinese rhetoric and practice. In these days of greater digital communication and information overload, opposition to government cannot only

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be articulated but also be ‘manufactured’. Domestic institutions, especially if they have been undermined from within, like the US State Department, can find themselves diminished in their ability to drive policy in a consistent manner. Political parties and indeed other political actors in democratic societies can undermine proposed strategies of international order from within; especially in the US, where the period of the Trump administration saw a near total breakdown of bipartisanship and the dramatic growth of on-​line conspiratorial groups with bizarre views on foreign policy and international relations that represent a legacy with which the Biden administration will need to deal.

A provocation: can/​will Asia overtake the West? Never formally articulated, but implicit throughout this book, has been a massive provocation. Put as a question, Can/​will Asia overtake the West? This is, of course, hardly an original suggestion. Both Kishore Mahbubani (2018) and Parag Khanna (discussed in Pettener, 2019) in their own ways have suggested we ready ourselves for a multipolar and multi-​civilisational order in which, as an accompaniment to the relative decline of the West, Asia becomes the major global actor. Khanna provides a compelling litany of rising indices: GDP, service sector growth, inter-​ and intra-​regional trade and investment growth, food and energy consumption and production, urbanisation, smart cities and growing inter-​ connectivity to support his case. China, as the world’s largest economy, will become the centre of this activity. Rather surprisingly he argues, while China will cast a major shadow over the evolution of both its own East Asian regional order and the global order it will do so without wishing to be hegemonic. In a less restrained fashion, Kishore Mahbubani (2020) actually asks if China—​Asia’s dominant state—​has not already won? Maybe not yet. For sure China’s model of developmental authoritarianism is as much a systemic rival to liberalism in the 21st century as fascism and communism were in various periods of the 20th century. The inroad of its ideas into large parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America are greater than have been detailed in this book. And rather awkwardly for proponents of a liberal view of world order, both the strength and appeal of China’s economic model appear to be growing at the very time that the influence of the US as a soft power cultural/​civilisational actor is also under severe challenge (see French, 2019). But not all characteristics of the Chinese model have wide appeal. The so-​called Beijing Consensus, a model built on dirigisme and a politically closed system with the omnipresent, all-​pervasive power of the Communist Party, can seem hollow at times. ASEAN, for example, prefers and provides a quasi-​alternative experiment in a semi-​rules-​based order that combines elements of a Chinese model at the same time as it practices a regional institutional process of integration with a light variety of legal formalism. The ASEAN mantra is that peer pressure of the very gentle sort, without infringing on national sovereignties, is a better enforcement mechanism than the more formal EU-​style Cartesian-​liberal institutional dispute

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resolution mechanisms on the one hand or the stronger authoritarian style of China on the other. As one acute Asian observer noted, success must be the most attractive story, and this has been China’s story of late. This story stands in contrast to the demonstrative effect of European and especially American models over the last decade. But for Asia to lead, it needs more than just economic success. While it must continue to show its economic prowess, “Asia must also provide a story of attraction”. Asia, and especially China, says Danny Quah, Dean of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, needs a better “soft-​power story” if it is to have major influence on the reform of the international order (2017). This point carries even greater weight in the post-​COVID-​19 era than it did at the time Quah asserted it. COVID-​19 has demonstrated both domestic and international shortcomings in how China addressed it and the accompanying negative perceptions of others to China’s early diplomatic responses to it. A positive input into the constructive reform of the liberal order on the part of China would enhance its soft power. It is not beyond imagination to see China support the expansion of some of the liberal elements of international economic order, especially in the trade and investment regimes. Further integration into, and influence over, an expanded and reformed order seems to be China’s preferred strategy to that of creating a parallel order with the primary objective of confronting liberal norms with all the aggravation such confrontation entails. Moreover, China’s preference for a looser, culturally and politically diverse sovereignty-​based approach to international cooperation fits the views of many key players more comfortably than elements of a Biden-​esque “forward to the past approach”. The key question will be the as yet unknown manner in which China articulates its vision of world order reform and its ability to carry others with it. As with the role of Western intellectuals in the development of the theoretical underpinnings of the liberal order in the 20th century, we must recognise the role Asian intellectuals are having and will need to have in the development of innovative future thinking in the 21st century. Their role will be to forge the theoretical and intellectual support for a vision of order in which arguments for institutional multilateral agreements could, for example, be supplemented, replaced even, by less formalised networks. And similarly, a duties-​based social understanding could be offered as a substitute for, or a complement to a formal Cartesian rights-​based logic of liberalism. For this to happen, any dialogue over international cooperation must be a two-​ way street with China and the US leading that dialogue but with others having non-​ trivial input be they European, Asian and other (e.g. African and Latin American) interests. Similarly, and in contrast to a Western liberal view, an Asian vision could also be expected to suggest that pluralism beats universalism; noting, not a little ironically, that pluralism is a central tenet of liberal theory. The Western discourse of universalism, more than the existence of some universal values per se, is the bigger problem in international dialogue. Such arguments are, and will be, at the core of

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the debate between modern Western nation-​states and civilisational states. Can they be mutually accommodated? Donald Trump was not the architect of the geopolitical shifts that are leading to a redesign of the globalised economic and political orders. These trends run longer and deeper than his administration. Similarly, the seeds of the contest with China pre-​date Trumpian mercantilist economic strategy. Indeed, the struggle between the ideology and practice of competing economic models goes back to the 19th century and traditional geopolitical sites of contest have re-​emerged to be joined by new ones—​especially in the competition for technological leadership and control over digital connectivity. But for Donald Trump, the weaponisation of international economic policy was a logical outcome of an instrumental, transactional worldview in which any weapon was legitimate when it came to securing a deal. But his mercantilist actions offered an important wake-​up call to both analysts and practitioners. His behaviour exposed the frailty and limits of the international institutional economic architecture that the US built after the Second World War. Will the rise of the new mercantilism, and geopolitics, inevitably contribute to the decline, or collapse even, of the post-​Second World War liberal rules-​based system? The answer is in the balance.The conflict between the US and China, contrary to structural realist theory, is not inevitable. Agency matters and the change of regime in the US has clearly mattered. Policy decisions, good or bad, taken by both parties will be the principal determining factor. But for conflict not to grow something has to give on both sides. Mutual self-​restraint is required. Restraint is not going to come without understanding and dialogue, and that must be a dialogue that extends beyond simply the two major protagonists. The purpose of dialogue is, or should be, to challenge and reform conduct and behaviour, hopefully leading to greater understanding and cooperation. Sadly, this is not what the two major protagonists, and especially their leaders, appeared to have been looking for up to 2021. The US under Trump, bridling at what it saw as a loss of hegemony by being overly soft on friend and foe alike, was seeking to bolster what it saw as a declining favourable balance of power. China, warming to its emerging great power status but convinced it was not receiving the necessary international acceptance and prestige of a great power, wants change. In this regard, the significance of international prestige to China—​what Xi Jinping sees as a “reputation for power”—​should not be underestimated (Khong, 2019). However, we are in a situation where the rise of China, and some other emerging powers, has benefitted from the current order. Thus, and not a little ironically, it has been more solicitous of the international order’s welfare than the erstwhile hegemonic leader of that order between 2016 and 2020. It should also be noted that prestige costs. While China has been able to support a broad global reach in the last decade, what strengths it has in reach are often missing in their depth. China’s impact in some areas is more superficial than it might at first blush appear. In all fields, the US is still basically stronger than China.

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Time might be on China’s side, and it prides itself on playing the long game, but that does not mean that patience is always exercised. It has at times been reluctant to take on a deeper global role commensurate with its growing power. For sure, China is engaged in widespread collaborative initiatives through the BRI and its Africa strategy, but unlike the US, it does so without having any deep reserves of friendship and trust. That said, the Trump administration has done its short-​term best to deplete the US’s long standing reserves of trust in its global leadership, especially when contrasted with the growth of the leadership approval ratings of China in many countries. How both states deal with this situation will be an important factor shaping the conversation between them over the next few years. Prestige for China, or more precisely the absence of any scent of humiliation in its relationship with the US, will be crucial. Conceding that others have interest and status needs was not something the Trump administration did well. With a different administration in Washington this might prove easier. Intentional or accidental, this is a reflection of the strategy that has been pursued by the US under President Trump. Indeed, as Henry Kissinger noted, Trump’s arrival in the White House, perhaps more by accident than design saw him simply as “… one of those figures in history who appears from time to time to mark the end of an era and to force it to give up its old pretences” (cited in Luce, 2018). It helps explain, in this time of heightened nationalist foreign policy tension, why the Trump US administration tried to address what it saw as a gap between the liberal order and US economic and security interests, with all the attendant implications for its views of stability in the global order. It also explains why China grew increasingly resistant to Trumpian strategy. Liberalism will not alone determine the future of the human condition. Those liberal principles that might work well within a country are increasingly challenged in the international system. We are indeed, to use Kissinger’s expression, at the “end of an era”. Whether this will lead to a reversal in the respective standing of the West (read the US) and Asia (read China) is indeed the question that the creative provocateur Kishore Mahbubani would want it to be. But it is a provocation that brooks no nuance. It does not envisage the emergence of an equilibrium settling somewhere to the middle of a great power linear spectrum rather than at one end or the other. The conclusion asks whether this binary reading is the correct interpretation of the way things are heading.

Notes 1 See www.nytimes.com/​live/​2021/​02/​19/​world/​g7-​meeting-​munich-​security-​conference. 2 https://​rcepsec.org. 3 www.nytimes.com/​live/​2021/​02/​19/​world/​g7-​meeting-​munich-​security-​conference.

CONCLUSION

Resisting the US-​China binary provocation of Chapter 8 I would suggest that we cannot yet know with certainty what the future will look like. Prudence, therefore, requires us to offer a mix of alternative routes to it. One route would see a partially revived semi-​liberal, but post-​hegemonic, order of the kind envisioned by US (and European) liberals (see, e.g. Deudney and Ikenberry, 2018, Luce, 2018 and Ikenberry, 2018). This order would keep much of the diplomatic and institutional infrastructure of the old multilateralism, but with a greater role for other major states. In this order, negotiable reform would be possible provided some accommodation can be found for Chinese and the other emerging big power interests and aspiration. No system is viable if the major powers do not feel some ownership of it. Not dissimilar, but more nuanced than this first scenario is what Amitav Acharya (2017b) has called a “multiplex” world order in which reform is negotiable but increasingly limited to dialogue between consolidating but manageable regional structures like the transatlantic, East Asia and Eurasia. It will be a global order of regions. Like the first scenario, this one will be reliant on the growing hybridity of international relations and especially the input of those non-​state actors that substitute for the increasingly limited influence of international institutions. We might call both of these first two views reformist. A less reformist trajectory would see an increasingly nationalist order in which antagonistic, great power contests, especially between the US and China, are at its core. It is a trajectory captured in the language of the dominant realist sectors of the foreign policy communities in the Trump and post-​Trump era in both the US and China. Prospects for negotiated reform in this scenario are more limited than in the first two scenarios; especially as long as we are in the era where hyperrealist ‘strongman’ like Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin holds way over their country’s roles in international politics. In a fourth, more subtle version of this binary scenario Asian-​based thinkers such as Kishore Mahbubani, Parag Khanna, Huiyao Wang and DOI: 10.4324/​9781003175087-10

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Danny Quah have suggested that a more likely scenario is a global order in which China, possibly by mid-​century, becomes ‘number one’: that is hegemonic in Asia and as, if not more, influential than the US globally. All scenarios are plausible. But this book has also suggested that a final scenario is inserting itself into the mix in an increasingly complicated manner; that is a view of international politics as a growing multi-​civilisational contest. Not unlike the nationalist model, this is exacerbating an ideological stand off and polarisation amongst the major competing ‘civilisations’ (including the US here). It is too early to say if the principal ideas, actors and ensuing practices exhibited in this stand off will prove irreconcilable. But this added dimension of polarisation, beyond security and economy, makes the prospect of a negotiated reform of world order highly improbable. International cooperation has been drifting for several decades and the drift accelerated between 2015 and 2020 as the US turned its back on its traditional leadership role in international community building. But a new order built on the ideas of civilisational states (be they Chinese, Russian or say Indian) absent the US (and with Europe playing a secondary role) will always be an incomplete, unrepresentative and an unlikely representation of world order. Grand notions of civilisational states with holistic approaches to the organisation of humanity of the type reflected in Xi Jinping’s increasingly forcefully advanced theoretical views on world affairs—​quintessentially captured in his advocacy of a Shared Community of Future for Mankind—​are at best works in progress. Throw in a pandemic that has tested cooperation even further and the long-​term implications and future prospects are not encouraging. While such civilisational views, especially those reflecting growing Chinese confidence and alternative views of order, should be taken seriously, they should also be viewed with caution as to their actual meaning and potential implications; implications predicated on China’s continued domestic and international economic well-​being and political stability. “More weight should probably be attached to how China legitimates its international practices”; especially its economic statecraft via instruments such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the Belt and Road Initiative and its so-​called ‘soft power’ diplomacy; although under Xi this has taken on a less soft, more forceful, often bullying, style. As John Grey opines, this crisis (COVID-​19) “… cannot be solved by an unprecedented outbreak of international cooperation … [this] … is magical thinking in its purest form” (Grey, 2020). Taking Grey at his word we should not expect politicians to suddenly recover, as if by revelation, a belief in multilateralism (always a pretty weak religion even among true believers such as the EU and many of the world’s middle powers.) We should not expect a return to ‘normalcy’. International life is not going to return to the heyday of liberal internationalism. For Ivan Krastev (2020), a most insightful observer of modern-​day politics, any such assumptions are simply a misplaced romantic exercise in nostalgia. Echoing Krastev’s views most practitioners and analysts of international relations remain very cautious in their thinking about the prospects of change. Coming to

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terms with the realisation that events like a pandemic should be harnessed to influence the future of international relations in a positive direction—​in either agency (that is the policy behaviour of the principal actors) or structure (that is the nature of the international system)—​does not appear to be taking place. As noted at the outset of this book, most policymakers live with an oligarchic state-​centric, but loosely connected vision of the world and one in which most states exhibit non-​reflexive realist geopolitical habits. In contrast to the 2008 global financial crisis in which the G20 played the role of crisis buster neither it nor the G7 have proved capable of making anything other than minor contributions to the problems presented to us by COVID-​19. Indeed, no effective G+ formula for a collective response to COVID-​19, at the completion of this manuscript appears imminent. Responses to economic stabilisation and assistance have been, at best, ad hoc. In 2020 the IMF contribution amounted to providing a small amount of debt relief to its 25 poorest members. 2020 did not see much positive action worthy of note from the UN nor from the US, In the last months of the Trump administration, the US directly intervened against the WHO, cutting back funding, blocking the communiqué from G20 health ministers at its April 2020 meeting supporting the WHO and later in the year announcing its withdrawal from the organisation. In the new age of health pandemics, COVID-​19 has become something of turning point in the relationship between the old post-​Second World War US-​led order and a new, increasingly binary order with two major regional blocs centred on the US and China. The progress of humankind requires us to take advantage of this crisis to reboot international cooperation. But this seems unlikely. Rather than cooperate, as they did at the time of the global financial and Ebola crises, both the US and China have engaged in a non-​cooperative blame game over COVID-​19.. Hegemonic posturing, by both the rising and declining great power, takes insufficient account of three key factors identified in this book. First, global economic interdependence is not dead. For all its stresses and strains we still have a global market in goods and finance increasingly underwritten by digital technology. Second, the US and China are not the only global actors. We have a diversity of international actors; not just states but also major corporations, civil society actors and networks—​both for good and for ill—​in play. Third, challenges in contemporary international relations require that we develop different modes of thinking for the pandemic and post-​pandemic era. The book has tried to avoid over dramatising the parlous state of world order. While major states appear to be making headway in the fight against coronavirus at home as vaccines come to be seen as effective and widely acceptable to use, we have not controlled COVID-​19 globally. Similarly, the use of nuclear weapons is still not seen as unthinkable and technology, especially in AI, is becoming more innovative in weapons development. Poverty and under-​development persist. The earth continues to get warmer. The politics of solving these problems—​all of which tend to exacerbate each other—​gets harder as action in one domain, say climate management, has negative effects in another, such as poverty eradication.

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Without dramatic reductions in carbon consumption warming will not be stopped. This cannot happen without a dramatic impact on the lifestyles of the inhabitants of the world’s bigger better off countries. The attendant negative implications for future generations across the globe are increasingly understood; especially if we cannot contain global warming below 2°C above pre-​industrial levels and, moreover, do it without traducing the liberty of individuals? Blaming the dispossessed is not the answer. Migration—​be it politically or economically driven, from Latin America to the US or from Africa and the Middle East to Europe—​is a symptom, not a cause of the current malaise. Stopping migration, or at best managing it, will not solve the wider problems. These dilemmas will be clear to those who have made it to the end of this book and need no more detail here. What should be equally clear is the question it poses for humanity. How does humanity secure the necessary sacrifices to address the issue? The question is existential and philosophical, but the answers must be found in applied (global) public policy. A neoliberal globalised international order, driven by the rationalist imperatives of market fundamentalism, was never going to address these problems. A liberal order might have more hope, but it too will be constrained by a lack of wider global legitimacy in the contemporary era. Its essentials—​especially the rule of law, the preservation of basic human rights and freedoms (speech and religion) and some semblance of working democratic politics (not of the plutocratic oligarchic variety that prevails in the US today on the one hand or authoritarianism Chinese style on the other)—​must remain. While hard-​headed internationalism would try to maintain the central pillars of liberalism it must do so sensitive to the changing global context in which it finds itself. Space must be found for other traditions and philosophies. Sociocultural elements of international order are now every bit as salient as the strongly rationalist elements of economic and political liberalism. A recognition of their salience will be essential if we are to develop a new narrative of cooperation in which a collective action problem-​solving approach to the globe’s major challenges can be enhanced. Can hard-​headed analysis accompanied by innovative normative thinking (activities all too often discrete from one another) force us to think beyond traditional positioning in international relations? What would it take for governments to ask whether the need for a joined-​up global health policy, for example, might not help us reform the old, or better still kick start a new, multilateralism? Global pandemics logically require global policy responses. A lasting exit strategy for COVID-​19 without global cooperation makes no sense at all. Immunising the world is not only a moral position but also a massive practical necessity. To go even part of the way requires a major logistical effort beyond that possible by individual state action. The G7’s late 2020 commitment to provide US$7.5 billion for immunisation will make it possible to vaccinate only 20% of the world’s lowest income population. If the pandemic—​especially the tawdry sight of rich countries practicing vaccine nationalism—​can shock the major global leaders into recognising what is lost by the failure to cooperate in multilateral

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decision-​making on global policy issues, then COVID-​19 would have served at least one useful purpose. If we are to halt current trends towards a further decoupled, closed, nationalist world order, states will need a new, reaffirmed, and to repeat, ‘hard-​headed’ internationalism supportive of the reform of multilateralism. Manageable medium-​term reform of the institutions and mechanisms of international cooperation will be a necessary, if only partial, defence against future global threats. A body like the WHO, if its decision-​making procedures could be reformed, could be more effective with an added enforcement capability (see Gonzalez, 2020).What happens to the WHO over the short to near term future will be something of a test of the ability of the international order to function for the greater collective social good. For this to happen the WHO needs to be strengthened financially and in terms of personnel. How to do this is a normative as well as an empirical question. Normatively, is the WHO, and other like institutions, such as the WTO, deemed important enough to save? Empirically do they lend themselves to potential reform rather than redundancy? Can they be pulled back from a slide into permanent post-​liberal order internal competition and decay? That we were not ready for a very predictable pandemic should have been a wake-​up call for the cooperative endeavour. A return to business as usual is only inviting the next disaster. Now is the time to recognise that pandemics can happen again and to start developing necessary frameworks for global coordination to address further tragedies. Only by jettisoning nationalist rhetoric and practice, and embracing stronger international cooperation, can governments protect their citizens. One possible, but difficult way to start will be to fix those existing international institutions that remain relevant. Our global future must be a shared future and problems such as pandemics and climate erosion will only be addressed by enhanced global cooperation. By their inaction on these fronts, the major players are only putting off the day of reckoning. For nearly four centuries, what Hans Morganthau (1948) called Westphalia’s “nationalist universalism” has been superimposed on the world’s plurality of morals and ethics. The Westphalian system had a monocultural essence that does not fit 21st-​ century reality. Nationalist universalism minimised cultural diversity in a manner that makes no sense in today’s increasingly digitalised networked world that enhances a diversity of ideas and identities across the sociopolitical-​cultural spectrum. A future post-​pandemic world order will need to account for, and accommodate to, this multi-​perspectival reasserted ‘civilisational’ diversity. For sure the US is still in the words of Robert Kagan (2021) “a superpower like it or not” and the US must accept its global role. But that global role is changing at a heretofore accelerated pace. What Daniel Larison, writing in the American Conservative (2020) calls the “… empty glory of the ‘unipolar moment’ with bromides of American exceptionalism” has passed. International order is no longer coterminous or synonymous with American hegemony. Any future order cannot be underwritten by the US alone. International order in the 21st century is more complex and hybrid than in the previous century. Other major factors, not only states—​and not only China

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among states—​count. China, and other revisionist states such as Russia, need to learn the habit of real, as opposed to symbolic and rhetorical, cooperation. At the same time, the US needs to rediscover the habit of cooperation. Even Henry Kissinger, that quintessential exponent of superpower realpolitik, recognised this. As he stated in the Wall Street Journal: No country, not even the U.S., can in a purely national effort overcome the virus. The necessities of the moment must ultimately be coupled with a global collaborative vision and program.1 The contours of a new multilateralism—​surely a cornerstone of a Kissinger-​esque global collaborative vision—​must exhibit some characteristics of the old order but with significant new refinements and additions. It is easier to say what this does not mean rather than what it does. It does not mean a continuance of the neoliberalism of the last 35 years.While neoliberalism made the global top 1% extremely rich and lifted close to a billion out of poverty in the developing world, it also generated financial instability, greater inequality in some core developed countries (notably the US) and enhanced global climate deterioration. Alternatively, neither does it mean more of the authoritarian capitalism of the kind that has developed in China and other states over the last several decades. As weak as it sounds, we need some form of managed globalisation. Goldilocks comes to mind—​“not too hot, not too cold but rather a just right”. Globalisation needs what we might call “reasoned regulation”. Managed globalisation would reflect a liberal, as opposed to neoliberal, capitalism and a rules-​based system in which Keynesians and Hayekians engage in dialogue not conflict (see Wapshott, 2011. It would take account of Chinese conceptions of the organisation of humanity. It would recognise that while global trade and finance not only generate aggregate global welfare overall it is equally important at the same time to work towards an accompanying shared prosperity and a commitment to a just society geared towards closing income gaps, mitigating the worst maldistributional consequences of globalisation and supporting environmental sustainability. It would, as a consequence, also recognise the important role of the state in securing these conditions through reasoned regulation. All in it would require major compromises on the part of the world’s core political economies without which a stable equilibrium in global order will not be reached. This goal will not be achieved unless political systems can (i) claw back control from those narrow increasingly oligarchic interest groups that directed, and benefitted almost exclusively from, globalisation in the period from the end of the Cold War to the present day and (ii) contain the spread of the nationalist authoritarianism that has gathered momentum across all continents in recent years. Can the world’s former hegemon—​g iven its current state of domestic political dysfunctionality—​rethink its approach to its own theories and practices of government and governance in a manner necessary for the 21st century. As we have seen in this book, some say maybe not, liberal democracy’s day is past, and China simply

Conclusion  141

needs to bide its time to claim global leadership if the US cannot undergo a process of regeneration. But it is too early to write off the US. It has regenerated in the past. It did so in the early 20th-​century Progressive Era of Theodore Roosevelt, then with Franklin Roosevelt’s rapid creation of a national welfare system in the 1930s and then again with Lyndon Johnson’s poverty fighting programmes of the mid-​1960s. The challenges the US faces now are every bit as great, if not greater, than those of the past. It would still be a mistake—​even at what seems like the eleventh hour for American democracy—​to say it cannot do it again. But in a global context this kind of reform is not simply a task for the US. It is indeed the challenge for all of modern humankind. When taken one at a time, the lessons of this book are by no means original. But what I hope is useful is the systematic manner in which the book identifies and presents in a joined-​up manner the connections and linkages of the contemporary dilemmas of world order. They cannot be isolated and treated as discrete domains for policy intervention on a state-​by-​state basis. Also hopefully useful is the book’s attempt to provide a guide to what processes of change and/​or reform are required to reset core elements of the global cooperative endeavour or at least begin to understand how to mitigate challenges to it. While we might talk of a post-​pandemic era as unique, many of the problems discussed in the book predate COVID-​19 and the long-​term implications for global order are not clear. Does a realisation of the impact of COVID-​19 represent a ‘game changer’ or is it, like fuel on a fire, merely an accelerant for ongoing trends? In addition to COVID-​19, other critical situations—​especially, the intellectual crisis of liberal values, norms and practices (especially multilateralism), the toxic and deteriorating nature of US–​China relations and the inertia of the transatlantic relationship—​would force us to the pessimistic end of the spectrum. But the book has also alluded to the possibilities present in the long-​term dynamic nature of human innovation in the face of crisis—​Bregman’s possibilism. Innovation needs to be philosophical and ethical as well as practically attuned to the harshness of economic and political reality. What is needed in the face of mounting global challenges, I have suggested, is ‘hard-​headed internationalism’ and a dramatic makeover that accepts need for (i) a reform of what we have and (ii) the introduction of new thinking and practice. A constant theme of the book is that, in the face of evidence to the contrary, many traditional supporters of liberal internationalism are in denial. It is not simply a question of waiting for President Biden to undo Donald Trump’s unfortunate legacy and, by tinkering at the margins of liberal philosophy and practice, to secure a return to pre-​Trumpian normalcy. It is too late for that. The book identified the declining appeal of liberalism as a universal political philosophy. And a political philosophy seemingly not willing to defend itself at that. But the book has also been at pains to suggest that much of what developed in the so-​called era of a liberal international order should be and would be salvaged in the resetting of a new world order. Many of the challenges to the rules-​based

142 Conclusion

order have in fact been self-​generated and self-​inflicted. Inept US post-​Cold War statecraft and diplomacy that failed to practice what it was preaching about the principles of liberalism and major misjudgements at crucial times in key areas such as policy towards the Middle East, East Asia, notably China, Russia and the transatlantic relationship all enhanced liberalism’s crisis. As the book also notes, President Trump was a symptom of the growing malaise, not the cause of, a collapsing world order. Many of liberal persuasion like to think that the nadir was reached during his administration. This last point is made with hope rather than certainty in mind. The critique of the US developed in the book is not, and was not, implying that other major actors—​notably Russia and China—​have not through both word and deed made their own contributions to destabilising and disrupting the post-​Cold War global equilibrium. Both have threatened neighbours, persecuted populations and suborned democratic processes in their regions. But both would also argue, and it is difficult not to agree with them, that a fundamental rethinking of how we govern globally is required. An untrammelled hegemonic role for the US is no longer acceptable, even if it were indeed possible. A return to dominant US leadership is not the way forward, but neither is great power geopolitical competition. Given the global challenges outlined in the book, the only way forward, not in the short term maybe, but certainly in the longer term must be a more flexible, collective and inclusive approach to addressing these challenges. Things are not clear cut. We are at a stage of both transformation and adaptation. The current order is a broader, more multifaceted system than that which prevailed in the second half of the 20th century. It is in need of considered structural reform if we are not to simply slide towards a binary US–​China global order. Robert Kagan (2018) tells us, “… jungles can grow back”. But so too can they be contained. The prospects, admittedly somewhat prosaically put, of a managed ‘Goldilocks’ order are by no means guaranteed, but neither are they, with will and application, impossible.

Note 1 https://​wsj.com/​articles/​the-​coronavirus-​pandemic-​will-​forever-​alter-​the-​world-​order-​ 11585953005.

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INDEX

Acharya, Amitav 23‒4, 59, 117‒18, 135 Adler Nissen, Rebecca 21 Ahamed, Shri E. 63 Alliance for Multilateralism 41, 106 Allison, G. 30, 89, 116, 127 alternative futures 135‒6 ‘America First’ agenda 78 American Chamber of Commerce 37 American world order (AWO) 24 Anderson, Benedict 3, 96 anthropomorphism 113 anti-​environmentalism 70 Ardern, Jacinda 115 Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) 32, 40, 86, 104, 128, 136 Asian intellectuals 132 Asian states xi Asian values 19 Aslund, Anders 128 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) 131 Atatürk, Mustaf Kemel 58 Australia 87, 113 autarky 109 authoritarianism 23, 31, 74, 114, 121, 131‒2, 140 Bangkok Declaration (1993) 19 Beijing Consensus 131 Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) 32, 40, 53‒4, 63, 69, 86, 128, 134‒6 best practice xii

Biden, Joe xiii, xv, 6, 20, 24, 31‒5, 38, 43‒6, 72, 74, 77‒8, 85‒6, 99, 112‒13, 118, 122‒3, 127‒32, 141 Biscop, Sven 106 Blair, Tony 28 BMW (company) 41 Bolsonaro, Jair 115 Borell, Josep 127 Brands, Hal 38, 43, 109, 112 Bregman, Rutger 12, 91‒5, 100, 141 Bretton Woods institutions 40, 94, 97, 102, 104 Brexit 18, 34, 126, 129 ‘BRIC’ countries 86‒7 Brunei 60 Bull, Hedley 17, 19 Campbell, Kurt 35, 77 Canada 87 capitalism, critique of 121 Capitol building, Washington, insurrection at (January 2021) 112‒13 carbon consumption 138 Carlin, Wendy 98 Chamorro-​Premuzic, Tomas 115 Chen, Jaihong 54 China x‒xii, xv, 5‒13; cultural values and ideas in 51‒5; economic success of 50‒1, 132‒3; obstacles to be overcome 76‒7; primacy of 136; relations with Europe 44, 46; relations with Russia 46; relations with the US 30‒1, 40‒2, 45‒6, 50, 74‒8,

Index  161

84‒9, 95, 104, 106, 130, 133‒4, 141; unfair practices 40 Chinese Communist Party (CCP) 31, 76, 128 ‘civilisation-​speak’ 87, 90 civilisational issues xii, 2, 7, 10, 13, 19, 26, 78, 136 civilisational states 18, 54‒61, 64‒6, 84, 86, 91, 121, 124, 132‒3, 136; impressions of 48‒50 civilisations: competition between 136; definition of 7‒8 ‘clash of civilisations’ xiii, 6‒8, 83‒4, 89‒91, 118, 129‒30 ‘clashism’ 8, 91 climate change xii, 56‒7, 71, 86, 91, 94, 101, 117, 120, 125, 137‒40 Clinton, Bill 28, 34 cognitive psychology 93 Coker, Christopher 2 Cold War: aftermath of 34, 142; ending of x, 22, 26, 72; era of 8, 19, 25‒6, 32, 37‒41, 64, 130; new form of xiii‒xiv, 3‒5, 11, 37, 44, 89, 129‒30 collective action problem-​solving 3, 11, 18, 32, 42, 78, 102, 117, 138 Committee for the Present Danger: China (CPDC) 38 communities of origin and of destiny 96‒8 comparative advantage, theory of 27, 33 competition between great powers 84 Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for the Trans-​Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) 44 compromise 129 Conference on Dialogue of Asian Civilisations (2019) 130 Confucius and Confucian thinking 52, 60 Confucius Institutes 32 constructivist scholarship 18 convergence, economic 127 Cooper, Zach 38 cooperation, international xi, xiii, xv, 1‒2, 10, 12, 94, 102, 110, 113‒15, 118, 136‒40; building of 93 cooperative dialogue 128‒9 cooperative tendencies in human nature 92, 96, 98 COVID-​19 pandemic x‒xi, 1‒6, 10‒12, 19, 31, 37, 42, 45‒6, 51, 67, 72‒4, 77‒8, 95‒109, 112, 115‒21, 124, 132, 137‒41; mistakes made with 77‒8; questions arising from 99‒100 ‘crony capitalism’ 128

cultural difference, management of 123‒4 culture, concept of 18 Daoism 52 Dauvergne, Peter 70 De Tocqueville, Alexis 62 Debray, Regis 53 decision-​making 110‒11, 125; critical mass 117; networked 117 deglobalisation xiii, 67, 96, 109, 124 Deloittes (consultancy firm) 73‒4 democratic processes 21, 128, 142 Deneen, Patrick J. 21 Deng Xiaoping 50 developing countries 69, 116 developmental agendas 10, 68‒70 dialogue 89‒92, 133 digital currency 74 digitalisation xii, xv, 4, 10, 94, 102, 105‒6, 123‒6 discriminatory practice 36 distributive welfare 124 dollar (US) dominance 46, 74 Dostoevsky, Fyodor 55 Drezner, Daniel 38 ‘dual compatibility’ principle 110‒11 Ebola crisis 137 ecological questions 10, 70 e-​commerce 105 economic policy 24 The Economist 114 energy policy 56‒7 Englebert, Sydney 110 Enlightenment beliefs 51 environmental issues 67‒8, 121‒2 Eurasia 58‒66, 128 European Commission 46, 127 European Council on Foreign Relations 42‒3 European Parliament 22 European Union (EU) xv, 5, 13, 22, 42‒3, 116, 126‒7; relations with the US 40 exogenous variables 25 Financial Times 31‒2, 98, 121 fiscal stimulus 118‒19 Fisher, Roger 129 foreign policy 24, 33, 85, 87, 113, 131, 134 Frankopan, Peter 64 free movement of goods, capital and people 18 free riding 34 free trade x, 28; opposition to 29

162 Index

free trade agreements (FTAs) 126 Friedman, Urid 112 Fukuyama, Francis ix, 87 gains from trade 27‒8 Gandhi, Indira 114 Garlick, Jeremy 93 Garton-​Ash, Timothy 21‒2 geopolitics 1‒2, 6‒7, 21, 24‒5, 31‒6, 42, 55‒7, 83, 111, 133, 137, 142 Germany 40‒1, 44, 98 Giglio, Mike 112 global commons 94 global cooperation 88, 97, 103 global culture 83 global financial crisis (GFC) (2008) xi, 4, 6, 22, 27, 86, 94, 137 global governance 17, 107, 117, 120 global institutional order xi global leadership 114 Global South, help for 105 globalisation x, xiii, 4‒8, 11‒13, 21‒8, 32, 50‒3, 67, 84, 88, 93, 100‒2, 109‒10, 118, 128, 138, 140; costs of 28; new form of 67; opposition to 126 globalism 12, 24 Gorbachev, Mikhail 55 government: models of v; non-​western forms of xi government intervention xi‒xii, 78, 98‒9, 140 Great Game, the 7, 42, 63, 65 Grey, John 136 Gromyko, Alexey 56 G7 and G20 groups of countries 86, 121, 126, 137‒8 Gumilyov, Lev 55 Haass, Richard 72 ‘hard-​headed’ internationalism 13, 109‒10, 126, 138‒41 Harding, Garrett 94 Hayekian theory x‒xi, 23, 52, 98, 100, 109, 140 Hayton, Bill 54 health issues 94 hegemony 1, 7, 31, 104, 131, 136‒7; loss of 133; neoliberal 99‒100; of the US xiii, 7, 13, 24‒5, 40, 85, 123, 130, 139‒42 Heisenberg, Werner Karl 88 Held, David 95 Higgott, Richard (author) 68 Hobbes, Thomas 78, 92 Huawei (company) 36

Hufbauer, Gary 130 human nature 91‒5 human rights 19, 138 Hungary 46 Huntington, Samuel xiii, 7‒8, 90 hybrid organisational interactions 106‒7, 125, 135 ianxia concept 52 identities: from subnational to supranational 97; multilevel 124 ideological differences 38 Ikenberry, John 23, 102 ‘imagined communities’ 3, 96‒7 India xii, 5, 7, 13, 18, 22, 59, 63, 84‒6, 111, 113 individualism 22, 121 Indonesia 60, 87 inequality 22 information overload 130‒1 Ing-​wen, Tsai 115 institutional reform 11, 103 intellectual property 40 interest groups 140 International Bill of Rights 19 International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) 102 international community 101, 123, 126 international governance, new approaches to 125‒6 international institutions ix, 10, 68 international law 106 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 40, 68, 85, 111 international organisations 102‒5; modus operandi of 104 international relations 6, 8, 20 internationalism, principle of 126; see also ‘hard-​headed’ internationalism internet regulation 85, 127 Iran 41 Islam 10 Italy 46 Japan 42, 126 Johnson, Boris 115 Johnson, Lyndon 141 Judt, Tony 3, 96‒7 Kagan, Robert 139, 142 Kahneman, Daniel 93 Kant, Immanuel 21 Kaplan, Robert 74 Kaul, Inge 13, 110‒11, 117

Index  163

Kennan, George 31 Keohane, Robert 17, 92 Keynes, J.M. (and Keynesianism) xi, 98, 109, 140 Khanna, Parag 131, 135‒6 Kipling, Rudyard 55‒6 Kirshner, Jonathan 43 Kissinger, Henry 134, 140 Krasner, Stephen 122 Krastev, Ivan 136 language, importance of 8, 90‒1 Larison, Daniel 139 leadership 11‒13, 113; American, in decline 122‒3; skills of 124 League of Nations 19 Lewis, Bernard 8 liberal democracy, disillusionment with 121 liberal institutionalism 92 liberal internationalism ix, 17‒27, 24‒5, 44, 72, 141; objections to 21 liberalism 2, 8, 10, 18‒19, 26, 32, 46, 53‒5, 61‒4, 68, 73‒4, 77, 86‒7, 118‒22, 132‒4, 138, 141‒2; classical 23; concept 21; crisis for 120‒2; definition of 21, 121; institutions of 22; maturation of 22; opposition to xiii, 10, 21‒2, 48, 131; survival of 84 Ligthizer, Robert 26 Lincoln, Abraham xv, 92 literature 23‒4 long-​term change 43‒6, 133‒4, 141‒2 Luce, Edward 77 Maçães, Bruno 7 Machiavelli, Nicolò 92 Mackinder, Halford 64 Macron, Emmanuel 34, 123, 127 Mahbubani, Kishore xii, 13, 30, 77, 131, 134‒6 Mahnken, Thomas 33‒4 ‘Make America Great Again’ (MAGA) mission 34‒5 Malaysia 60, 98 male incompetence 115 Mao Zedong 127‒8 market fundamentalism 138 Martin, Lisa 20 May, Theresa 97 Mearsheimer, John 22, 74 mercantilism 27, 29, 33, 133 Merkel, Angela 41, 114‒15, 127 Micklethwaite, John xi middle classes 24

migration 138 Milner, Anthony 60‒1 modernisation theory 68 ‘modest multilateralism’ 109 Modi, Narendra 59, 63, 91 moral dimensions of human behaviour 100 Morganthau, Hans 13, 139 Morgenthau, Henry Jr 20 multilateralism ix‒xv, 1‒4, 10‒13, 18, 33, 41‒4, 69‒70, 84‒6, 101‒7, 109‒21, 125‒6, 129‒30, 135‒41; malaise of 106; minimum conditions for cooperation 107; rebooting of 12, 105, 107, 110, 138; rejection of 121; and search for collective governance 116‒19; and search for leadership 113 Multiparty Interim Appeal Arrangement 118 ‘multliplex’ structures 12, 117‒18, 135 Munich Security Conference (2021) 123, 127 narcissism 92, 114, 129 nationalism x‒xi, xv, 6, 22, 24, 87, 124, 139‒40; opposition to 107 Navarro, Peter 26 neoliberalism 6, 23, 53, 70, 99, 138, 140 networks 106, 126 New International Economic Order (NIEO) 68 Nietzsche, Friedrich 92 Nikonov,V. 56 Nixon, Richard 127‒8 norms, international 5 North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) 41, 56 Nossal, Kim 8 Nye, Joseph x, 72‒4, 84 O’Hagan, Jacinta 10 ‘on shore’ production 109 openness, economic xiii, 18, 28‒9, 85, 102, 109‒10, 126 Orban,Victor 74 order, concept of 17 Orstrom, Elinor 70‒1, 94 Osaka summit (2019) 121, 126 O’Toole, Finton 77 Owen, Taylor 105 ‘ownership’ of world order 135 Oxford Martin Commission 117 Pabst, Adrian 83 Packer, George 77

164 Index

Pakistan 86 pandemics in future 67‒8, 72, 74, 78, 91, 94, 96‒101, 136‒9 Pareto optimality 53 Paris Accords on climate change 39, 70‒1, 84, 86, 120, 125 personality traits 91, 114‒15 personality traits 91 Pettis, Michael 35 Pew Research 44 Philippines, the 17‒18 Pinker, Stephen 92 Pompeo, Mike 31 populism x‒xi, xv, 8, 12, 22, 28‒9, 33, 69‒70, 102, 114‒15, 120, 123‒6, 129 ‘possibilism’ (Bregman) 95‒6 ‘pragmatic internationalism’ (Ikenberry) 102 problem-​solving capability 3, 11 pro-​market reforms 128 protectionism 27‒9, 32, 69, 101, 109‒10, 121 public goods 105 Putin,Vladimir 5, 8, 34‒5, 56‒7, 62, 91, 121, 135 ‘Pygmalion’ experiment 93 Quah, Danny 132, 135‒6 ‘quantum politics’ 88 Rachman, Gideon 6‒7, 38 Ratner, Ely 35 Reagan, Ronald 28 ‘realistic’ as distinct from ‘realism’ 95 Regional Cooperative Economic Partnership (RCEP) 86, 126 regional leaders from second-​tier powers 86 regulation xi; of the internet 85, 127 Reich, Simon 112‒13 Ren and all-​under-​heaven theory 51‒2 resilience 109 respect for other countries 35 revisionism 6, 62, 84, 127 Riccardo, David 27 rivalry between great powers 102 Rohinton, Mehdora 105 Roosevelt, Franklin 141 Roosevelt, Theodore 141 Rostow, W.W. 68 Route4Me (company) 105 Rudd, Kevin 45 Ruggie, John 23, 116 rule of law 21, 121, 138

rules-​based systems 17, 39, 44‒5, 105‒6, 127, 133, 140‒2 Russia xii, 5‒8, 13, 32‒5, 40, 46, 55‒7, 62, 84‒5, 121, 123, 128, 140, 142; see also Soviet Union Samuelson, Paul 27 San Francisco Climate Action Summit (2018) 87 Sarkissian, Armen 88 Schweller, Randall 127 self-​interest 124‒5 self-​regulation 105 self-​sufficiency 109 Sen, Amartya 97 Senocak, N. Selin 58‒9 Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) 86 ‘shared community’ concept 52, 54, 136 Singapore 98 Sinha, Jayant 63 Skidelsky, Robert 25, 100 Skinner, Kiron 8, 84, 130 Snower, D. 97, 124‒5 social construction 17 social media xv, 33, 88, 123‒4 soft authoritarianism 83 soft power 26, 33, 52‒5, 72, 74, 124, 131‒2, 136 solidarity: global 101; moral 96‒7 South Korea 87, 113 Southeast Asia 59‒63 sovereignty xv, 122‒3; absolute 99; pooling of 13, 110‒11; of states 18, 117 Soviet Union 26, 32, 39, 56, 58; see also Russia specialised knowledge 24 Spero, Joan 26 spheres of influence 46, 128 state civilisations see civilisational states statecraft 19, 24, 74 Stiglitz, Joseph 100‒1 Stoner, Kathryn 57 ‘strongman’ leaders 103, 114‒15, 124, 129, 135 structural realist theory 133 subsidiarity principle 111 subsidies 40 surveillance capabilities 124 sustainable development 86, 120, 140 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 91 Taiwan 31 tariffs 37, 39

Index  165

technological innovation 88‒9, 120 technology transfer 37 Thatcher, Margaret 28, 114 ‘theater’ metaphor 110 theory of international trade 27 Thucydides Trap 30, 89, 92, 116, 127 trade policy 23, 29, 35‒40, 69 trade regime 27, 85 transactional worldview 133 Trans-​Pacific Partnership (TPP) 39, 44, 84, 86, 126 transparency 93 Trenin, Dimitri 84, 123 Trump, Donald xi‒xiv, 5‒8, 20‒1, 24, 27, 29, 30‒45, 51, 57, 59, 64, 70, 73‒4, 77‒8, 84‒7, 91, 102, 112‒13, 118, 121‒5, 129‒34, 137, 141‒2; adversarial approach to China 38‒9 trust 74, 93, 100, 134 Turkey 7, 22, 57‒9, 62‒3, 84 United Kingdom 5 United Nations: Blueprint for a Sustainable Future 71; Charter 18, 106; creation of 94, 97; Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) 11, 39; Framework Convention on Climate Change 71; funding of 127; General Assembly ix; institutions of ix, 102‒5; Security Council 85, 111 United States: challenges currently faced by 141; Chamber of Commerce of 37; State Department 131; technological lead over China 37‒8, 133; US China Business Council (USBC) 35 Universal Declaration of Human Rights 19 universalism 85, 132 Uruguay Round (1994) 101 Ury, William 129 vaccines and ‘vaccine diplomacy’ 74, 94, 117, 137‒8 values and value systems 8, 23, 26, 86; Western and non-​Western 19 Van Langenhove, Luk 90, 113‒14 Van der Leyen, Ursula 127

Viner, Jacob 6 Voeten, Erik 116 Walt, Stephen 74, 86, 122 Waltz, Kenneth 92 Wang, Huiyao 111‒12, 135‒6 Washington Consensus 68 Weber, Heloise 70‒1 Weber, Martin 70‒1 Weber, Max 68 Weiming Tu 51 welfarism xi Westphalian state system 11, 18, 61, 63, 99, 122, 139 Wilson, Woodrow 18‒19 woke culture 22 Wolf, Martin 50 women leaders 115‒16 Wooldridge, Adrian xi World Bank 40, 46, 85 World Health Organisation (WHO) 11, 104, 137, 139 World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) 102 world order xii‒xv, 2‒10, 17‒21, 25, 36, 40‒1, 44‒5, 87‒91, 95, 99, 120, 126‒9, 132, 137‒42; American-​led 83; challenges for 67‒77; Chinese thinking on 50‒5; collapse of 142; connections in 141; explanation of 13; future prospects for 83; reconstruction of 48‒51, 66, 111, 128, 132, 136 World Trade Organisation (WTO) ix, 11, 19, 33, 35, 40, 42, 69, 98, 101‒2, 112, 116, 128, 139 xenophobia 29 Xi Jinpeng 5‒6, 30, 32, 35, 44‒5, 50‒2, 59, 62‒3, 74, 76, 91, 128‒30, 133, 135‒6 young people 93 Zarakol, Aysę 21 zero-​sum politics 129‒30, 91, 95 Zhang, Weiwei 62 Zhao, Tingyang 52‒3