A Chinese ‘spy’ balloon and three other unidentified objects have been shot down by US fighters over North America for a week. A “radar anomaly” over Montana has triggered an alert. The hysteria sparked in the United States over it seems to exceed the thrill produced by the radio program War of the Worlds, by Orson Welles, at the end of the 1930s. This time, the objects are very real, and the reactions illustrate, if need be, the tension which reigns between China and the United States.
You have to come to your senses. These incidents clearly show to anyone who wants to see the need to relaunch dialogue between the two greats and to strengthen or review the rules that govern international relations. In other times, all it would have taken was a phone call to sort it all out discreetly. But, in recent years, the rules and norms that had served the world so well since the end of the Cold War have been crumbling. The United States illegally invades Iraq and kills 200,000 Iraqis without being punished, which gives the idea to Russia to do the same with Georgia and Ukraine, and to China with the islands of the sea from China. Might takes precedence over right, and the opposing camps take refuge behind their walls, watch each other, challenge each other. This does not bode well.
Last month, South Africa welcomed Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. The two members of the BRICS have soon announced joint military naval maneuvers with China, another member of this grouping with Brazil and India. South African Minister Naledi Pandor has been clear about her country’s intentions: Russia is a friendly country, and the two allies are determined “to redesign a world order where non-Western organizations such as the BRICS partnership will play a more great role”. Pandor said it wants to expand the group to other countries, such as Egypt, Argentina and Saudi Arabia, and replace the US dollar with other currencies in their trade relations.
This challenge to the West, and particularly to the United States, aims, according to Pandor and Lavrov, to create a truly multipolar world, where the United States would be only one actor among many others.
The idea would be attractive if the United States played the game. However, all American foreign policy since the end of the cold war is to use preventive action and unilateralism to protect the interests of the country and to prevent the emergence of a peer (alone or in a group) able to challenge his domination.
A recent conversation overheard on the podcast of journalist Ezra Klein, New York Times, illustrates the topicality of this American strategic orientation since its elaboration in the early 1990s. Jessica Chen Weiss, a researcher at Cornell University and very recently adviser to the State Department on China, revealed to the journalist the deep feelings that rule in Washington over the world order. The recording and transcript are available on the journal’s website.
The interview focused on China, but the host wanted to broaden the discussion. I think, he told him, that “critics of the United States will say cynically that we don’t care so much about the international order as about our own leadership or our own predominance within that order. What do you think we care about? “.
To this Weiss replied, “I have to say that these cynics are not far from the truth. And it’s not happy. I wish it were otherwise. It is enough however to advance a few months until the speech of Jake Sullivan [conseiller à la sécurité nationale] on the eve of the rollout of US semiconductor restrictions, where he talks about maintaining not a relative lead, but an absolute lead over China, as big a lead as possible. »
Dominating is therefore the end word, she says. “I’m of the view that, although we don’t talk about it much, it’s about the primacy, the dominance of the United States, at a time when we’ve grown accustomed to our role as a superpower after the fall of the Soviet Union. »
Weiss didn’t like what she saw and heard in the Biden administration. According to her, this Democratic government treats the international system exactly as Trump did. And she thinks that the element of competition contained in the strategy adopted towards China has taken precedence over cooperation and will only lead to confrontation.
But isn’t the very nature of the Chinese, or Russian, regime a factor of turmoil and tension making coexistence difficult and reforming the world order impossible, Klein suggests? It is possible, Weiss replies, but the first thing to do to coexist in an increasingly fractured world where states adapt their alliances according to circumstances is to ensure that the great powers behave towards each other. each other and with the rest of the world in moderation, particularly on issues of promoting values and respecting the rules.
Therefore, “I am entirely of the opinion that a safe world for democracy is also a safe world for autocracy, on the condition that it reaffirms the rule of sovereignty which is at the heart of the Charter of the United Nations, or that of non-interference in the affairs of others”.
On the one hand, a heterogeneous coalition in which dictatorships and democracies rub shoulders is forming around a project whose outlines are still poorly defined, but whose objective is to make the West understand that it no longer has the monopoly of power. On the other, a united Western world, at least in appearance, while being led by a country determined not to yield anything on the essentials. So, how to redesign the world order so that it corresponds to everyone’s desires?