New Dynamics

Post-western plurality, China-Central Asia Summit, unhappy, dangerous American Empire, The Need for a New US Foreign Policy

May 18, 2023

UPDATE: In 2000, the middle-class population of China, India, and ASEAN combined was just 150 million. By 2020 it had grown 10 times, to 1.5 billion. And by 2030, it could reach 3 billion.” This was an insight shared by Professor Kishore Mahbubani in an interview he recently conducted with the Global Institute For Tomorrow (GIFT).

Since China is taking center stage and Central Asian states are making their marks on international and regional dynamics, first China-Central Asia Summit, being held from May 18-19, has set global interest afire. World is buzzing with multi-dimensional undercurrents of China-Central Asia Summit as global leaders know very well snowballing impacts of “gathering” on fast changing geopolitical, geoeconomic and geostrategic landscapes.

Sealed inside its bubble, America today is steadfastly walking the unhappy, steady and confident gait of the Soviet Union. All happy empires are alike. Each unhappy empire is unhappy in its own way. The happy empire believes the gods smile on its homeland. Its civilisation is uniquely endowed with gifts to see further than other peoples. Its constitution is an act of genius. Its armed forces, the greatest ever assembled. Its powers, undying. Its domination is a gift of order to the world. Its culture holds the greatest stories ever told. It’s museums, the graceful custodians of the loot of the world.

US foreign policy is based on an inherent contradiction and fatal flaw. The aim of US foreign policy is a US-dominated world, in which the US writes the global trade and financial rules, controls advanced technologies, maintains militarily supremacy, and dominates all potential competitors. Unless US foreign policy is changed to recognize the need for a multipolar world, it will lead to more wars, and possibly World War III.

Hollywood is losing the battle for China

Post-Western Plurality

By Chandran Nair

In 2000, the middle-class population of China, India, and ASEAN combined was just 150 million. By 2020 it had grown 10 times, to 1.5 billion. And by 2030, it could reach 3 billion.” This was an insight shared by Professor Kishore Mahbubani in an interview he recently conducted with the Global Institute For Tomorrow (GIFT).

What does a world with 3 billion new members of the middle class look like? It depends on who you ask and how they see the world. Under the current notions of consumption-driven development and wealth creation, this rising middle class will come to represent one of the world’s foremost economic powerhouses. But this is not sustainable.

I have previously explored and addressed the environmental and resource use implications in my book “Consumptionomics." → https://amzn.to/3W7fWlU But let us take a step back from the often-myopic focus on economic forecasting to consider the cultural implications of this demographic. There is the possibility of an interesting and even positive outcome. With higher levels of disposable income and rising quality of life, Asian middle classes will become culturally distinct from the Westernised generation before them.

For the first time in over a century, Western soft power – which has shaped much of “global” culture – may be slowed down or even reversed. With the rise of Asia’s middle classes, they will want films, music, and clothes that portray their lifestyles, values, their heroes, their worldviews, and so on (beyond portrayals of Super Rich Asians). They now have the industries, financing, and confidence to do so, thereby leaving behind decades of subservience to the soft power of the West.

An article in The Economist picked up on this trend, noting that Hollywood is losing its grip on the Chinese market. Western cinema’s share of viewership has steadily declined while China's domestic cinema is rising. The article has framed this shift as the success of Chinese propaganda, but this view misses the forest for the trees. We are witnessing a momentous cultural shift — and it is not just in China, but across the world. For example, by sheer number of productions, India, Nigeria, and China produce the most films annually, with the US coming in at 4th place.

Of course, due to the pervasiveness of American popular culture by virtue of its economic power and media influence (and to some extent the English language), the US’ movies are aired in cinemas in most parts of the world, while Indian, Nigerian, and Chinese films remain elusive. But as we are seeing with the rise of Korean entertainment, this will not last forever. This cultural shift has implications beyond movies. De-Westernisation via culture reverses the effects of centuries of mind capture and enables the world to experience the great diversity of culture and art that exists. The world should welcome this aspect of the transition to plurality in the post-Western world.

China-Central Asia Summit

By Yasir Habib Khan

Chinese President Xi Jinping will chair the China-Central Asia Summit, in Xi'an in northwest China's Shaanxi Province, starting point of ancient Silk Road.

With Likely thrust on wide-ranging agenda, including political, economic, security and people-to-people exchange, economic cooperation in energy, agriculture, green economy and other sectors, the Summit will hash out comprehensive alignments of partnerships and deeper collaboration with five Central Asian nations on challenges as well as Belt and Road Initiative.

It will also be categoric message to anti-globalization forces that future does not lie in decoupling and protectionism rather shared future is key to forge ahead in Central Asia and other parts of world.

That is why “apex meeting” will inject new impetus into development agenda not only for Central Asian countries but also for supercontinent “Eurasia”. Central Asian states sit at heart of Eurasia which is home to three of the world’s most sophisticated and advanced economic regions and where 75 percent of the world’s population lives in. Eurasia possesses “three-fourths of the world’s energy resources”. The location of Central Asia has made it a “strategic pivot” on economic, political, social, cultural and security perspective.

Region of Central Asian states lack high-tech economic structure to keep pace the world. The Summit is likely to usher in an era of fresh launch of macro and micro projects (roads, railroads, pipelines, industrial parks, and special economic zones) that would improve connectivity between China and Europe via the Central Asian region.

Through Chinese prism, the Summit is believed to unlock those areas of cooperation that are still untapped and undiscovered for cultivating joint ventures on inclusive economy, peace and security. Central Asia is in an unenviable position of being a key pillar in China’s BRI. Experts are of a view that Central Asia as one of the pillars of its Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB), thanks to the region’s abundant natural resources and position along the overland route to European markets that circumvents the maritime “Malacca challenges.”

Meanwhile security challenges are matter of concern. The shocks and aftershocks of multiple and overlapping crises—including crisis in Afghanistan and Ukraine—continue to shake the Central Asian region and its economies. Given the untoward businesses amidst these external shocks, impacts of climate change, record high inflation, unilateralism and challenges in post-Covid era, the Summit is believed to be putting sharp focus over the security dynamics and spillover effects in Central Asia as well as China.

Last month, State Councilor and Foreign Minister Qin Gang chaired the fourth China-Central Asia Foreign Ministers' Meeting in Xi'an and underlined the need to expand security collaboration because of new risks and challenges in the region, especially the chaos caused by U.S.' clumsy and hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan. Their need for security cooperation has always been existing and is increasing now to nip terrorism, extremism and separatism.

China's economic and trade cooperation with the five Central Asian countries has produced noticeable results since the establishment of diplomatic ties more than 30 years ago. China's trade with five Central Asian countries surged 37.4 percent year on year in the first four months of 2023, the General Administration of Customs revealed.

The bilateral trade volume witnessed a 40-percent growth from a year ago. It saw a strong development momentum, and recorded a year-on-year expansion of 22 percent in the first quarter of this year. Last year, China's imports of agricultural, energy and mineral products from the five countries jumped over 50 percent from a year earlier, while exports of mechanical and electronic products to them increased by 42 percent. Investment cooperation has also benefited all sides. As of the end of March 2023, China's direct investment stock in the five Central Asian countries stood at over $15 billion. The cumulative turnover of completed projects reached $63.9 billion.

A batch of cooperation projects have been launched in the fields of infrastructure, oil and gas exploration, manufacturing, medical and health care, education, technology and the digital economy. China and all the five Central Asian countries have signed cooperation documents on the joint construction of the Belt and Road Initiative. There are some landmark projects, such as the Horgos International Border Cooperation Center and China-Central Asia gas pipeline.

Running through Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, the China-Central Asia gas pipeline is China's first transnational gas pipeline. By the end of 2022, the pipeline had delivered a total of 423.2 billion cubic meters of natural gas to China since it began operation in 2009. The pipeline has effectively promoted the social and economic development of countries along the route, and played an important role in the diversification of China's energy imports and the improvement of domestic energy consumption structure. The assembly center of China-Europe Railway Express in Xi’an has 17 mainlines from the city to Central Asia countries, which has become the golden channel for two-way logistics in China and Central Asia.

Although China and C-5 are working in cohesion in all sectors but one of the areas that needs urgent consideration is green financing, green energy and green economy. Due to climate change and carbon-based energy sources, Central Asia is already highly vulnerable to natural disasters. In the past three decades alone, the region has experienced 500 floods and earthquakes, impacting 25 million people, and causing $80 billion in damages. Global warming is accelerating the melting of Central Asia’s glaciers, which play a vital role in the region’s water and ecosystem balance. The glaciers in Central Asia have receded by 25 percent in the last fifty years – with an equal amount expected to disappear in the next two decades.

The lack of financing is a serious obstacle to “greening” the region’s economies and conserving and restoring natural wealth. The region possesses an estimated 5 percent of the world’s natural capacity for wind and solar energy capture, yet much of this potential has yet to be unlocked. The World Bank estimates that investments of at least $20 billion would be needed to expand Central Asia’s renewable energy infrastructure.

China is keen to pass on all dividends of President Xi’s fresh gifts “Global Development Initiative”, “Global Security Initiative” and “Global Civilization Initiative” to the world and developing nations especially Central Asian states.

Already China showing its responsibility develops security cooperation with the countries in the region on a bilateral level. In August 2021, following the U.S.' announcement of withdrawal from Afghanistan, China and Tajikistan jointly held a counter-terrorism exercise to cope with the growing threat posed by terrorist groups that were migrating towards Afghanistan's northern region, which borders both China and Tajikistan. It is also good omen that leaders of Central Asian countries have clear understanding about China engagement in the region. While commenting on views that China's growing presence in Central Asia may disrupt the regional geopolitical balance during a media interview, Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said that such concerns are unnecessary because intentions of China-Central Asia cooperation are "open and sincere".

Unveiled by President Xi Jinping in a speech at the UN General Assembly in September 2021, the Global Development Initiative outlines China’s vision to be a leader in global development efforts. The initiative aims to support developing countries in poverty alleviation, public health, and other issues.

China has vowed to enhance communication with Central Asian countries, helping them address multiple shared challenges, said spokesperson Shu Jueting from China's Ministry of Commerce in January 2022. Shu emphasized multiple areas of partnership including poverty reduction, pandemic prevention, grain security and development financing, during a press conference held at the ministry, and vowed to push forward with more bilateral infrastructure projects working together with Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan.

Yasir Habib Khan is the founder and president of the Institute of International Relations and Media Research in Pakistan.

The crooked timber of an unhappy, dangerous American Empire

By Jeff Rich

But each happy empire becomes unhappy, and then the stories twist back into crooked timber. Some empires collapse fast. Some slow. Sometimes they fight back. Sometimes they throw themselves in front of trains like betrayed lovers. Sometimes we narrate the fall of empire as tragedy, sometimes as farce.

Unhappy empires twist their stories, but not in conditions of their own making. The conditions conceal each uniquely unhappy way. There are always money problems. Debt, exploitation and luxury do their work. There is often military over-extension, and generals who relive borrowed glory. There is the usual human frailty. Wayward minds. Prodigal sons. The addictions of fame, power, drugs, and ideas. Sometimes, the climate has the final say.

But, unhappy empires are dangerous. So much depends today on knowing the unique unhappy way of the American empire. American commentators like to imagine their story as the culmination of Athens, Rome and Pax Britannica. But mislead themselves with this tale of a greater Rome and a misunderstood Thucidydes’ trap. Brittania did not handover peacefully her rule of the waves. In other stories, we see fragmentary clues. Strangelove’s child? A Fourth Reich? The corruption of the military-industrial-congressional complex? An American disease? Far-right madness? The moral stain of slavery? The redemption of the American Soul? Or was this romance made in Hollywood, in a well-lit studio, in front of a green screen?

In Moby Dick, Herman Melville envisioned the American unhappiness as the vengeful, religious grandeur of the pursuit of the white whale. He wrote of America, “You cannot spill a drop of American blood without spilling the blood of the whole world. We are not a nation, so much as a world.” The tragedy was Starbuck could not disarm Ahab’s vengeance. Today, America launches its expeditions to hunt the white whales, which wounded the American dream, not from Nantucket, but from Langley, not with whaling spears, but with drones and psy-ops.

In History has Begun: the Birth of a New America, Bruno Maçães reversed the fable. He celebrated American unhappiness with reality because it was the inventive resource that would empower America to rebuild the world again “safe for America without making it look like America.” History had not ended. It had just begun. But history, alas, does not read from its lines.

However, we imagine the story of American decline, today its leaders and its people seem unable to arrest its fate. Trump can no longer be blamed. America has fled reality into a bubble of impunity that stops Americans from learning the consequences of fleeing reality. Its leaders and citizens believe consequences are for lesser nations. But the consequences of imperial impunity disorder the unhappy American nation and destabilise the world.

Impunity leads America to denounce the use of nuclear weapons, and to fail to apologise for Hiroshima. To declare on Victory Day that the US defeated Fascism in Europe. To exempt Kissinger, the Iraq War hawks and the guards of Abu Ghraib from the Hague, while arraigning defiant world leaders before a court it does not recognise.

Impunity leads America to abuse the privileges of the reserve currency system it insisted on in 1944; to play Congressional politics with the debt ceiling; to declare itself not a deadbeat nation, when it raises its credit limit, but does not pay off its debt.

Impunity leads America to the near annual government shutdown circus, with new vaudeville each season, but in which the ringmaster never tames the budget.

Impunity leads to endless misappropriation of other cultures, to the McDonaldisation of the world, the exploitation of resources, and the looting of better civilisations.

Impunity leads America to say its prayers every day after another mass shooting, but refuse to learn from any country, Australia or El Salvador, where mass murder is not a daily event.

Distracted in the echo chambers of social media, the impervious American speaks nonsense about the world, and ignores the corrections coming from outside, in the sun, where the world listens in.

Americans block their ears, stamp their feet, and march their social fabric, education institutions, justice system, business rules and political culture onto ruin. The gods have sent Americans mad, before they destroy America.

Impunity makes America mad, bad, and dangerous to ally with. It has created a mental prison for its elites as strongly barred as the Leninism that entrapped the Soviet leadership class in the 1980s. As Vladimir Putin has said, sealed inside its bubble, America today is steadfastly walking the unhappy, steady and confident gait of the Soviet Union.

The decade ahead may be very hard on America. But as yet there are few signs that the American leadership class – in politics and in culture – is prepared to learn the essential lesson.

The American century was a dream, created by the most powerful dream machine ever made. But the dream was never real.

Can the American mind wake from its fever dreams? For four years, or more, the American media convinced the world that post-truth politics was the unique disease of Donald Trump. Since January 2021, the world has learned that was not so. We should have known long ago. No one consented to the Washington Consensus. The Truman Show and Wag the Dog were released in 1998.

Can the American state pay for its dreams? The economic historian, Adam Tooze, has written that in the United States “simple liberal visions of modernisation have most conclusively come to grief [and] the disharmony between politics and economic and social development is at its most extreme and consequential.” (Shutdown, 2021)

America is not a bulletproof republic. It is the dying salesman of its own tragedy. It may have passed the point of no return. It is angrily adrift abroad in a seething multipolar world. It is beset at home by accelerating crises of climate, infrastructure, economy, society, culture, and, frankly, common decency.

Only by breaking the seal on the prison of impunity can America reverse the forces of disintegration. In early 2021, Tooze wrote, “the haunting question remains: Is the United States as a nation-state capable of responding in a coherent and long-term fashion to the challenges of the great acceleration?” After more than two years of rule by an old, mad, blind, despised and dying king, can any honest person answer, ‘Yes’?

And what of the peoples of secondary status on the periphery of the empire? Like Australia. While the unhappiness of America reveals itself to the world, this outer reach of the empire could choose its own way, like some middle powers not suborned to America. But the haunting question remains: Is Australia as a nation-state capable of responding in a coherent and long-term fashion to disarm the vengeance of an unhappy American empire?

The Need for a New US Foreign Policy

By Jeffrey Sachs

The inherent contradiction in US foreign policy is that it conflicts with the UN Charter, which commits the US (and all other UN member states) to a global system based on UN institutions in which no single country dominates. The fatal flaw is that the US has just 4 percent of the world population, and lacks the economic, financial, military, and technological capacities, much less the ethical and legal claims, to dominate the other 96 percent.

At the end of World War II, the US was far ahead of the rest of the world in economic, technological, and military power. This is no longer the case, as many countries have built their economies and technological capacities.

President Emmanuel Macron recently spoke the truth when he said that the European Union, though an ally of the US, does not want to be a vassal of the US. He was widely attacked in the US and Europe for uttering this statement because many mediocre politicians in Europe depend on US political support to stay in power.

In 2015, US Ambassador Robert Blackwill, an important US foreign policy strategist, described US grand strategy with exceptional clarity. He wrote, “Since its founding, the United States has consistently pursued a grand strategy focused on acquiring and maintaining preeminent power over various rivals, first on the North American continent, then in the Western hemisphere, and finally globally,” and argued that “preserving U.S. primacy in the global system ought to remain the central objective of U.S. grand strategy in the twenty-first century.”

To sustain US primacy vis-à-vis China, Blackwill laid out a game plan that President Joe Biden is following. Among other measures, Blackwill called on the US to create “new preferential trading arrangements among U.S. friends and allies to increase their mutual gains through instruments that consciously exclude China,” “a technology-control regime” to block China’s strategic capabilities, a build-up of “power-political capacities of U.S. friends and allies on China’s periphery,” and strengthened U.S. military forces along the Asian rimlands despite any Chinese opposition.

Most US politicians and many in Britain, the EU, Japan, Korea, Australia, and New Zealand support the United States’ aggressive approach. I do not. I view the US approach to China as contrary to the UN Charter and peace.

China has the right to prosperity and national security, free from US provocations around its borders. China’s remarkable economic accomplishments since the late 1970s are wonderful for both China and the world.

During the long century from 1839 to 1949, China was driven into extreme poverty in a period marked by European and Japanese invasions of China and Chinese civil wars. Britain invaded in 1839 to force China to buy Britain’s addictive opium. Other powers piled on during the following century. China has finally recovered from that disastrous period, and in the process, ended poverty of around 1 billion people!

China’s new prosperity can be both peaceful and productive for the world. China’s successful technologies – ranging from vital cures for malaria to low-cost solar power and efficient 5G networks – can be a boon for the world. China will only be a threat to the extent that the US makes China into an enemy. US hostility to China, which mixes the arrogant US aim of dominance with long-standing anti-Chinese racism dating back to the 19th century, is creating that enemy.

The dangers of US foreign policy extend beyond China. The US goal to expand NATO to Ukraine and Georgia, thereby surrounding Russia in the Black Sea, helped stoke the Ukraine War. Countless nations see the danger of this approach. Major nations from Brazil to India and beyond aim for a multipolar world. All UN member states should recommit to the UN Charter and oppose claims of dominance by any nation.

Long Mekong

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