Page 2 of 2 COMMENT
Little prospect of East-West accommodation
By W Joseph Stroupe
Western-dominated global order over the past several years, the East sees an
opportunity to press the strategically weakened and increasingly discredited
West for a greater voice and significantly increased leverage across the global
economic order, all at the direct expense of the global position of the US and
the wider West.
This crisis therefore provides a golden opportunity for the East to accelerate
the advancement of its agenda. Not only is this true in the financial and
economic sphere, but also in the sphere of geopolitics, diplomacy and military
intervention, where the East wishes to press its agenda for using the United
Nations (where the East holds sway) and diplomacy, rather than military
invasion
and occupation, to address the world's problems. With the much-less-militarist
Obama now in office, and with former president George W Bush and his militarist
policies thoroughly discredited, the East sees a golden opportunity to advance
that particular agenda against the West as well.
Reason 7
Because the US will insist on, and actively strive for, a reconsolidation of
its shaky dominant global position, and because the East must insist on having
greater voice and leverage for itself at the direct expense of the US position,
and because neither side is willing or able to sufficiently soften its stance,
then the agendas of East and West are mutually exclusive of each other, and
thus no strategic accommodation between them is possible.
Each side will, at best, agree token concessions to the other side, not
substantive ones, because the requisite foundation of mutual trust is
non-existent. Both sides know substantive concessions will empower the rival
side by potentially creating a slippery slope leading to greedy exploitation of
such concessions, and a loss of stature, leverage and power by the side making
the concessions.
Reason 8
While analysts and experts in the West imagine that in this global crisis the
increasing hardship on the East is placing it (the East) in an increasingly
weakened negotiating position with the West, the precise opposite is true. How
so?
The US has profoundly violated the global trust placed in it and in its
stewardship of the global financial and economic order. Its scandalous and
reckless stewardship of the global order is also massively discrediting the
ideology of liberal capitalism, prompting rapid global gains for socialist and
statist ideologies.
In the emerging global debate and negotiations over what shape the world order
must now assume, the position of the West is astoundingly weakened, while that
of the East, which subscribes to statist ideologies, is being profoundly
strengthened.
In the post-1991 order, the US also profoundly violated another global trust -
that the "sole superpower" would not abuse its unequalled economic, military
and geopolitical power. The ignominious exit of Bush speaks volumes about how
the world at large reckons the US violated that trust too. This also profoundly
weakens the position of the West in the ongoing global debate over the
preferred shape which the world order should now assume.
The old West-dominated world order is being discredited in a grand fashion for
all its failures and for all the ill-effects it has brought on the world.
Against that backdrop, why would the East agree any accommodation with the West
that keeps such an order intact? It would not do so. The more hardship suffered
by the East, the harder its position will become, and the more strident will be
its insistence that the old West-dominated order be replaced by a new order.
Reason 9
The West in general, and the US in particular, are notorious for shorting the
interests of the East after making promises and agreements. Just ask the
Russians and the Chinese how deeply they trust US promises and "guarantees".
This ingrained US culture of shorting its partners' interests spans multiple
recent presidencies and even extends to its own partners in the West. It has
virtually obliterated what remnants of any trust that existed between East and
West. Hence, in any negotiations with the West, the East will prudently hedge
its bets, not leaving itself open to exploitation.
It will maintain other options at the ready, ones that cut directly across the
interests of the West. Because the West also distrusts the East, and for good
reason, it will prudently do likewise, hedging its bets too. Under such
conditions, no meaningful East-West accommodation is possible.
Reason 10
East-West competition is intensifying on a fundamental level for (1) control of
the globe's finite strategic resources and (2) access to, and control over the
world's finite capital wealth. These two factors constitute the life-blood of
the industrialized economy of any nation, or any geopolitical grouping of
nations.
This fact distinctly limits the range and degree of compromise and
accommodation on both sides, East and West. The facade constituted by East-West
ideological rivalry, which in the pre-1991 era gave thick cover to the
fundamental East-West contest over control of the two vital resources named
above, has been getting thinner and more transparent since the death of
communism in 1991.
Since 1991, that facade has only thinly veiled mounting East-West competition
over those vital resources. And now, with liberal capitalism massively
discredited, and swiftly giving way to statism in the West, the dissimilarity
between Eastern and Western political and economic ideologies is only becoming
thinner.
We are moving into an era where East and West are much less dissimilar. We will
soon have Western-style statism and Eastern-style statism, with only a thin
difference between the two. Especially is that so when you consider that the
mounting ill effects of the deepening economic collapse in the West will
undoubtedly produce such levels of civil protest, anger and disorder as to
oblige Western governments to progressively curtail and revoke civil liberties,
take more and more steps toward ever stricter government control, all for the
sake of national security.
As the ideological facade gets thinner and thinner, near the point of
evaporating completely, the underlying motives and goals on both sides will
only be more fully exposed, leading to more open and bitter rivalry for the
control of the two vital resources mentioned above.
In a perverse sort of way, the thicker ideological facade has enabled both
sides to hide behind, keeping up the pretense of noble motives and aims, and
giving a place for some courtesy in the rivalry. But when that facade
inevitably evaporates, as it is already progressively doing, neither side will
have the option of maintaining any noble pretense, nor any civility, in the
contest. For these reasons, the worst in the epic match is yet ahead of us.
In the near future, the reader should look with skepticism on any media
hyperbole regarding the supposed emergence of East-West accommodation under
Obama's leadership. In any agreements that are reached between the two sides,
the devil will be in the details, and these won't support the wishful thinking
that the two sides are moving toward strategic compromise. The reader should be
prepared instead, perhaps after a brief honeymoon period in the ongoing
East-West rivalry, for matters between them to rapidly worsen.
W Joseph Stroupe is a strategic forecasting expert and editor of Global
Events Magazine online at www.globaleventsmagazine.com.
(Copyright 2009 Global Events Magazine, All Rights Reserved.)
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