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SPEAKING
FREELY
In search of
equilibrium
By David Gosset
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please click here
if you are interested in
contributing.
The trans-Atlantic
relationship has been affected by divergence over
Iraq. China is a factor that will also impact the
way Europe and the US treat each other; their
disagreement on an arms embargo is just an element
of a much broader question: are we going to stay
within the chessboard - tactical agreement or
containment - or can we open ourselves to
strategic cooperation? If put in perspective, the
importance of the dynamics between Brussels,
Washington and Beijing is obvious.
Five
major phenomena with genuine global reach are at
work to shape our time:
1 The asymmetry
between the "hyperpower" and the other members of
the international community has no precedent: the
Roman Empire or the Chinese Tang Dynasty were
macro-regional superpowers, but the hyperpower's
extension - less than 5% of the world population
and in 2003, 47% of the world's military
expenditure - is global.
2 A fifth of the
world's population sharing the oldest continuous
history and belonging to the same political
entity, China is entering into a world system
designed by the West: such a phenomenon is
unprecedented. Russia's rise was within the
18th-century European system, the German and
Japanese rises at the end of the 19th century were
comparatively processes of far lesser magnitude.
Moreover, China is a state of 1.3 billion
inhabitants, but also - and before all - a unique
civilization with deep, consistent and strong
values different from the values developed by the
West.
3 Effects of the Soviet disintegration
are producing instability and uncertainty at the
very heart of Eurasia, in both the "pivot area"
and the "heartland".
4 An intensifying
techno-economic globalization is producing a large
zone of exclusion.
5 Five hundred years after
having invented the nation-state, Europe is
transcending it for a not well defined political
construction without clear geographical limits.
Instability is the main corollary of this
evolving configuration. How long can our
unbalanced system last? Is there a path to
stability? In the foreseeable future a relatively
stable system will depend very much on positive
dynamics between the EU/US and China.
Are
Brussels, Washington and Beijing able to put
themselves under common principles, or are they
going to accept the risks of imminent and tactical
games between superpowers?
The EU, a model
of cooperation between nations, the US, a
reference for techno-economic vitality and China,
an example for developing countries, complement
each other. Potentially these three matrices can
help humanity overcome war, poverty and ignorance.
A positive EU/US/China triangulation - a renewed
West, a cooperative Eurasia under a Sino-European
arch and a China-centered US policy toward Asia -
would definitely close the 20th century and ensure
the 21st century world order.
It does
presuppose genuine strategic thinking and action
or the awareness that there is something above the
sum of the players' combinations: our world
harmony - harmony between human beings and nature,
between civilizations, between human beings,
within each person.
Immediate trends and
current events do not conduct to such a
triangulation. The EU is not one political player,
the US tends to place the continuation and the
consolidation of its socio-economic model above
other considerations, China's emergence collides
with various geopolitical interests of the
hyperpower. However, it is precisely because we
might be on the verge of major contradictions that
we have to explore ways to avoid tragedies, or to
indicate directions above a purely competitive and
one-dimensional chessboard.
The vision of
a global res publica helps Brussels,
Washington and Beijing to work simultaneously for
internal and external purposes. Internally more
cohesive, the EU is constructive externally,
respectful of its constitutional principles; the
US is more cooperative, while a more pluralistic
China is internationally more responsible.
We do not have to choose between a realist
approach or a neo-Kantian perspective, but to
comprehend in our political philosophy - a
practice with an ideal - all the tensions between
these two dimensions.
Current issues can
test the triangulation. The US legitimately
worries about nuclear proliferation in North Korea
and in Iran. China's main goal is to achieve
political integration of the Chinese world. The EU
needs an international environment - rule of law,
environmental standards, balance between economic
efficiency and social fairness - which gives its
post nation-state political construction a chance
to maintain itself.
Both the EU and China
have to help the US to avoid proliferation in the
Middle East and in Northeast Asia. Simultaneously,
the US and the EU need to facilitate dialogue
across the Taiwan Strait. At the same time, the US
and China have to adopt for themselves some of the
standards which are at the heart of the European
construction. Brussels, Washington and Beijing
have to set up mechanisms through which they can
make the best of a positive triangulation.
The path to a multipolar system will be
gradual, the outcome of a strategic vision, or
forever an ideal translated into international
organizations which do not really decide on war
and peace; defending the League of Nations Woodrow
Wilson was clear enough: "The arrangements of this
treaty are just, but they need the support of the
combined power of the great nations of the world."
In the long term, the United Nations and its
agencies will be able to efficiently tackle
transnational issues (socio-economic,
environmental, political) only if in the mid-term
the EU, the US and China enter a truly cooperative
interaction.
David Gosset is
currently director for Cultural Affairs in China
Europe International Business School, Shanghai,
and director of Academia Sinica Europaea, an
intellectual interface between Europe and
China.
(Copyright 2005 David Gosset)
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please click here
if you are interested in
contributing.. |
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