When Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine on the 24th February the world changed irrevocably. Exactly what the contours of the new order will be cannot be definitively predicted, since it will all depend on how the conflict evolves and how long it lasts. If it drags on into winter and beyond, which unfortunately seems likely, will the Europeans manage to maintain their current unity in the face of gas shortages, high inflation and the discomfiture of states like Hungary and Italy which are more dependent on Russia than some of the others? And will Nato under American leadership succeed in holding the disparate factions which includes Turkey together? In short, just how much economic deprivation over the longer term are Western electorates prepared to tolerate in the name of the suffering Ukrainian people and the defence of liberal democracy on their home patch, if not by extension the world at large?
President Joe Biden has described the new world order which is evolving as a struggle between autocracy and democracy. While that view no doubt contains more than a measure of truth, the divisions which eventually emerge might not be quite so neat. According to Chaguan in the Economist, the Chinese view is that Russia will survive the sanctions, energy prices will rise dramatically and Western unity will wane in due course causing American-led alliances to fall apart. All of this will lead in turn to a global order reflecting spheres of influence “dominated by a few, iron-willed autocracies” including China.
China has long been of the view that the US is bent on repressing its rise. Even as recently as March 7th Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi was reported by more than one news agency as telling the media that China and Russia had a “rock solid” friendship which represented a strategic partnership to bring peace and stability to the world, and which was against American attempts to suppress China. And there was Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in China on Wednesday saying that China and Russia would work to achieve “a multipolar, fair and democratic world order.” It might be noted that this is not the first occasion on which the term ‘democracy’ has been hijacked by the two autocratic players on the world stage and invested with an entirely antithetical meaning.
It might be noted that the one point of agreement between Beijing and Washington would seem to be that America too for its part sees China as its main adversary, despite the fact that the immediate concern is Russia.
In a different piece from the one cited above, the Economist reported diplomats at more than a dozen embassies in China as concurring that what that country wanted was a world order indeed built around spheres of influence, with China in control of Asia, Russia with a veto on security arrangements in Europe and America pushed back to its own continent.
The West had been hoping, somewhat unrealistically, no doubt, that China would denounce the invasion of Ukraine. In fact it has adopted a posture of purported neutrality, abstaining from condemnations of Russia, but still blaming the West for being responsible for the war and then reciting the Kremlin’s flagrant lies about Ukraine. In the initial days it was hoped that China would be able to mediate owing to its influence on Russia, but it is now quite clear that that is not possible because Beijing is not neutral; it is just pretending to be.
For all of that Beijing will not be happy about how the war is progressing; like President Putin it no doubt thought the invasion would be quick and tolerably clean. It cannot be comfortable with the images of destruction on the world’s TV sets every night (not those in China and Russia). In particular, it will be sensitive to the fact that it has good trade relations with Ukraine, which supplies the majority of its corn imports, among other products, and massive ones with Europe as a whole, which dwarfs trade with Russia. According to the Economist, European governments with markets and technologies to which China wants access are now being assiduously wooed, and being told that it is time that Europeans sought more autonomy from the United States and increased ties with China.
Certainly if the US, Nato and Europe hold together and Mr Putin is humiliated Beijing would not be happy because at a global level it would invigorate the West. However, a severely weakened Russia would still become dependent on China which would extract all kinds of concessions, among which would be the opening of its northern ports to the Arctic. One Western diplomat was quoted as saying that for China, “A weakened Russia will be more malleable.”
What Beijing has been consistently critical of have been the economic sanctions applied by the US and Europe. Mr Biden recently threatened to extend these to China, should it give material support to Russia. In a feature in the UK paper the i, it was said that what had given the US its global dominance for so long was the US dollar, whose status as the world’s undisputed reserve currency had meant that Washington’s influence could extend into almost all banks and financial institutions. This enabled it to apply stringent financial sanctions on foreign companies or governments everywhere, interdicting an organisation’s ability to do business.
Russia and China, said the paper, have it in their sights to bring an end to the domination of the dollar by means of a mixture of digital and cryptocurrencies and alternative payment systems. The i reported economic commentators as saying that the present tough sanctions over Ukraine while causing serious damage now, will give an impetus to the de-dollarisation movement, which in its turn will bring an end to US superpower status. While the details will not be given here, the paper said that Russian and Chinese attempts to construct a new financial order are “well under way”.
Moscow and Beijing, the article said, wanted other countries to join the anti-dollar campaign.
Russia has attempted to foster more support from among the Brics group – Brazil, China, India, Russia, and South Africa – as well as the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. While each had somewhat different reasons, India and South Africa abstained from condemning Russia’s invasion. While it is not going to happen anytime soon, a Bloomberg commentator was quoted as saying it would be “earth-shattering” when it did. A more moderate voice described it as removing “a key tool from US foreign policy …”
In the present global dispensation – however long it lasts – can any state be neutral? There is at least one state which is managing it, and that is India. According to Foreign Policy magazine, India is getting oil and fertilizer, among other things, at discounted prices from Russia, which for obvious reasons is looking for new buyers. The Chinese have also been making overtures in New Delhi as part of their invigorated strategic approach, and from them Prime Minister Modi will be looking for a reduction of Sino-military pressure in the Himalayas.
This does not mean that India will be changing its strategic alliances, and the US understands well that it is dependent for spare parts from Russia for its military equipment. What New Delhi is looking for from the West is the modernization of its defence equipment, to make it less dependent on Russian military supplies.
Guyana is not in the same category. The era of non-alignment has long gone, and given its ExxonMobil connections, its avowed insistence on a democratic framework, and a relationship with a neighbour whereby its territorial integrity is threatened, it has to take the principled path and not play political games.
