Other Countries, Including Russia, Needn’t Take Part in US-Chinese Conflict, Diplomatic Academy Head Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 8 – Many Russian and Western analysts are talking about “a new bipolarity” in international affairs and suggesting that all countries are going to have to choose sides between the US and China just as they did between the West and the Soviet bloc during the Cold War, Aleksandr Yakovenko says.

            But the new conflict, while it is certain to intensify, is not going to have the potential to draw into it other states because it lacks many of the characteristics of the Cold War bipolarity and thus will play out in an entirely different way, the rector of Moscow’s Diplomatic Academy says (ng.ru/ideas/2020-06-08/7_7881_bipolarity.html).

            Russia is among the countries that doesn’t have to choose sides but rather can pursue its own sovereign autonomy, all the more so because neither side is in a position to offer it benefits from forming an alliance or imposing costs on it for its failure to sign up with it, Yakovenko continues.

            The current situation, he says, “is essentially different from the bipolarity of the time of the Cold War when the world was divided into two systems which were in a state of political, military-political and ideological confrontation.”  At that time, there was nothing to approach the globalization and integration that the world has now.

            Instead, Yakovenko says, “both systems were self-sufficient and autonomous economically” and there existed “a strategic interdependence between the US and the USSR based on their capacity to destroy one another that pushed both sides to détente and the search for formulas of strategic stability.” 

            “What do we have now?” China’s military power is growing rapidly but its military capacity is not comparable to that of the US.  At the same time, its trade with the US gives it leverage on the US, and that is what Washington now wants to escape from by reducing its economic connections with Beijing.

            The Trump Administration in the name of American autonomy engaged in a “voluntarist” violation of market principles in the pursuit of the independence of its business. Such an approach will ultimately flounder as did the pursuit of autarky by the Soviet Union a half century ago.

            One reason for drawing that conclusion is that other parts of the West do not want to sacrifice the benefits of trade on behalf of allowing the US economy to isolate itself; and that in turn is accelerating the disintegration of “the historic West” on which the bipolarity of the past might have continued to this day.

            “During the Cold War, the West, under the unquestioned leadership of the US, at least took collective decisions, for example on ‘the socialization of the economy in response to the challenges of the Soviet Union.’” Now, Washington simply wants to issue orders, something that doesn’t work because in the minds of most there is no existential threat from China.

            According to Yakovenko, “all Chinese policy has a reactive character,” that is, it responds to its environment rather than being formed by a desire to become the dominant power in the world.  Beijing is thus “not prepared ‘to pay for empire’” because “this doesn’t correspond to the historical tradition of China.”

            Moreover, “it should be remembered that just a couple of years ago, Western countries in response to the challenges of Trump’s policies proclaimed China the driver of globalization and the German chancellor the new leader of the West. We should not forget that the world is encountering a large number of common challenges and threats including climate change that can be addressed only by the collective efforts of the entire international community.”

            That is widely recognized, Yakovenko argues; and because it is, few governments have time “for ideologically motivated and extravagant diplomacy in the spirit of Trumpism.” And because of that, the supposed rise of a new bipolarity rests on an extremely weak foundation and is unlikely to take off.

            The conflicts between the US and China will grow, but they need not and are indeed unlikely to draw in other countries.  Those that fail to do so will be engaged in what Talleyrand described as something “’worse than a crime.’”  They will be making a mistake, the rector of the Diplomatic Academy concludes.