Paul
Goble
Staunton, March 3 – Recent developments
in the US, Great Britain, China and Russiaon show that the major powers are no
longer prepared to cede any significant part of their sovereign powers to multilateral
institutions. This calls the existing world order into question and must be the
basis for the formation of a new one, according to the editors of Nezavisimaya
gazeta.
In an unsigned lead article today,
the editors write that “the new international order must and will be formed
around a new paradigm – the impossibility of such countries as the US, China
and Russia to delegate significant amounts of their sovereignty to multilateral
agreements and organizations” (ng.ru/editorial/2020-03-03/3_7808_red.html).
And they continue: “If Donald Trump
will be reelected, then before 2024, ‘the big three’ – the US, China and Russia
– most likely will reach agreement on the foundations of a new architecture of
international relations in the world.” Before
presenting this conclusion, the editors lay out their case in the following
way.
“In recent decades,” Nezavisimaya
gazeta says, “after the disintegration of the USSR and the end of the Cold War,”
a new world order emerged as international relations moved from a bipolar world
to a multilateral one, a reflection above all of the growing economic might of
China and “the stormy growth of developing economies.”
But the editors say that “today, it
is becoming ever more obvious that the evolution of international relations is acquiring
new characteristics, the chief of which is the refusal from the automatic
recognition of the winners on the basis of the globalizing principles of
economic competition.”
Trump’s rise in the US and the
success of Brexit in the UK “clearly showed to the entire world that the
traditional elites of the Anglo-Saxon world are not ready to recognize themselves
losers in the economic competition with those coming from Asia,” the editors
say. And they are turning ever more sharply toward economic nationalism.
Over time, that will lead to the
weakening or even dismantling of the many international bodies like the WTO,
NAFTA or the Trans-Pacific Partnership, given that “the Americans have understood
that they can exert their power above all in the format of bilateral relations”
more effectively than in multilateral ones.
“The conversion of the domestic
political agenda into an apology for economic nationalism has led to the growth
of influence of political forces which are critical of the mantras of globalization,
liberalism, and tolerance on which the ideology of the world was constructed after
the cold war.
According to the independent Moscow
paper, “Vladimir Putin in a surprising way turned out to be attuned to politicians
who did not want to delegate part of their sovereignty to others.” And thus he has benefitted from and even is a
leader of this shift away from what many called “the Washington consensus.”
At the same time, “the
multi-regional nature of [Russia’s] national interests, as conditioned by
geography has created int eh world a false idea about the rebirth of Russia as
a great power of the Soviet time. This is unquestionably not so,” the editors
of Nezavisimaya gazeta say.
“Russia today lacks an internationalist
nucleus which lay at the foundation of the expansionist policy of the times of
the USSR. The idea of ‘a Russian world’ should have sent a signal to all that
there not only will not be any restoration of the former empire but that that
cannot be for fundamental conceptual principles.”
And that means that Putin is
increasingly in line with the leaders of the other major powers in stressing sovereignty,
national interests “and even national egoism as has occurred in relations with Belarus.”
As a result, he and they start with more in common than many may now think.
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