The Old New World Order
Posted: Fri Feb 25, 2022 10:04 pm
Since the end of the Cold War we've pretty much had a uni-polar (the US) world, and most of that time the liberal globalization order was ascendant. However, times, they are a changing. From all I've read and what we've all seen, that's obviously not what China and Russia want. They know they cannot defeat the West, and they don't want or desire that. But what they do want is international respect (of their power/rights) and recognition of their own spheres of influence, where they have the right to intervene and dictate to as necessary any nations within those spheres. For Russia, that would be any of the former Soviet Republics and/or Eastern Europe to some extent (though I'm not clear on how far Putin really wants to go because some of that would lead to war with NATO), while the Chinese obviously want Taiwan, the South China Sea and the ability to bully any neighbors (Vietnam, the Philippines, Japan/disputed islands, etc.). They want go back to the old idea of spheres of influence, similar to the carving up of the world into colonial fiefdoms where everyone recognized who owned what.
So the question becomes, it that where we are going? And do we have any choice? I mean, the West isn't going to go to war for any number of former Soviet Republics - Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Georgia, etc. And I honestly think it's highly likely that when China does attack Taiwan, they will be able to take it and defeat the US if we try to defend them So what's the solution? Sure we can register our outrage via diplomacy/sanctions but unfortunately, we're too embedded economically with both countries to really do anything truly effective. (As an aside I'd argue that bringing China into the world economy and the WTO before political liberalization was a strategic error of the first order). So would we be better off with realpolitik,realizing that there's little we can do, and some countries are just unfortunate to live near big bullying neighbors, and that's just the bad luck of geography? In a narrow sense would the West be better off just coming to some sort of accommodation with Russia and China, and at least avoid the specter of major power war between us?
I mean what we are doing now isn't working and isn't likely to work. Russia will continue to intervene in the former Soviet Republics and China will continue to oppress the Uyghurs, Tibetans, Hong Kong, and most likely Taiwanese at some point in the future. Do we just have to realize that we have some bad neighbors that make their neighborhood a bad place for everyone else in it, and the best we can do is do right by our own neighborhood and keep out the riffraff?
So the question becomes, it that where we are going? And do we have any choice? I mean, the West isn't going to go to war for any number of former Soviet Republics - Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Georgia, etc. And I honestly think it's highly likely that when China does attack Taiwan, they will be able to take it and defeat the US if we try to defend them So what's the solution? Sure we can register our outrage via diplomacy/sanctions but unfortunately, we're too embedded economically with both countries to really do anything truly effective. (As an aside I'd argue that bringing China into the world economy and the WTO before political liberalization was a strategic error of the first order). So would we be better off with realpolitik,realizing that there's little we can do, and some countries are just unfortunate to live near big bullying neighbors, and that's just the bad luck of geography? In a narrow sense would the West be better off just coming to some sort of accommodation with Russia and China, and at least avoid the specter of major power war between us?
I mean what we are doing now isn't working and isn't likely to work. Russia will continue to intervene in the former Soviet Republics and China will continue to oppress the Uyghurs, Tibetans, Hong Kong, and most likely Taiwanese at some point in the future. Do we just have to realize that we have some bad neighbors that make their neighborhood a bad place for everyone else in it, and the best we can do is do right by our own neighborhood and keep out the riffraff?
