When President Donald Trump lost the 2020 US presidential election to democratic candidate Joe Biden, many leaders in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) saw an ominous warning that democracy may again take center stage in US foreign policy, with autocrats trying to consolidate power in their hands.
The Western nations and especially the United States awoke today to a new world today.
After decades of hearing US politicians boastingly describe the US as the “exceptional nation,” justifying its repeated violation of international law with invasions of Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Panama, Grenada, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, El Salvador, and “regime change interventions in a host of other countries, because it could, all the while telling the rest of the nations of the world that they had to strictly obey the “rules-based order” of international relations, that countries do not invade or violate the borders of other countries, suddenly there is another nation that has decided it is “exceptional.”
Mainstream US media continues to celebrate the supposed strength of the US economy. Almost daily, headlines speak of hopeful numbers, sustainable growth, positive trends and constant gains. The reality on the ground, however, tells of something entirely different, which raises the questions: Are Americans being lied to? And for what purpose?
Chinese-Russian Convergence and the Future of American Order
The greatest strategic problem the United States faces is the convergence of its two main rivals, China and Russia—countries that don’t always like or trust each other but nonetheless derive great benefits from their simultaneous assaults on the existing international order. And as Moscow and Beijing contest the balance of power at both ends of Eurasia, they are drawing together in ominous ways.
Up until the spring, the pro-democracy movement in Myanmar was mainly expressing its opposition to the military junta that seized power in February through peaceful protests.
Taiwan scrambled fighter jets Thursday in response to nine Chinese aircraft entering its air defense identification zone, the Taiwan Ministry of National Defense said on its website.
Chinese aircraft have encroached on Taiwan’s air defense zone with increasing frequency during the past year, but Thursday’s sorties come at a particularly fraught time, just hours after Russia launched an invasion into Ukraine.
Pakistan’s Taliban movement, led by its most vicious and largest group, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and apparently buoyed by the recent triumph of their ethnic Pashtun cousins in Afghanistan, is revitalizing its strategy either for regional autonomy or to overthrow Pakistan’s government and replace it with an Islamic Emirate of Pakistan — a Pashtunistan made up of Pashtuns, an ethnic group in central Asia — under Sharia law.
[Elite capture] is a crucial tool of [China’s] success. The idea is simple enough: by tempting another country’s elite with money, access and favors, you move them to see their interests and China’s interests as intertwined or even the same.
The Debate Over Washington’s China Strategy
Most observers would agree with John Mearsheimer that the liberal bet on China did not work out (“The Inevitable Rivalry,” November/December 2021). Welcoming the country into the world economy after the Cold War did not cause it to open up, liberalize, and become a responsible stakeholder in the global order. Worse, under President Xi Jinping, the country has taken a dangerous autocratic and illiberal turn. But Mearsheimer goes further, arguing that the United States’ strategy of engagement with China ranks as one of its worst foreign policy disasters and that an alternative strategy, containment, would have prevented or at least delayed the emergence of China as a threat.
How Fear of China Is Forging a New World Order
The international order is falling apart, and everyone seems to know how to fix it. According to some, the United States just needs to rededicate itself to leading the liberal order it helped found some 75 years ago. Others argue that the world’s great powers should form a concert to guide the international community into a new age of multipolar cooperation. Still others call for a grand bargain that divides the globe into stable spheres of influence. What these and other visions of international order have in common is an assumption that global governance can be designed and imposed from the top down. With wise statesmanship and ample summitry, the international jungle can be tamed and cultivated. Conflicts of interest and historical hatreds can be negotiated away and replaced with win-win cooperation.