China Morning Missive
Moving Parts
Please accept my apologies for having not sent through any morning updates from Shanghai over the past week. It has been a hectic period for all of us. In addition, I have been finalizing a rather in-depth essay on the path to rivalry between China and the United States. A tome really. Will see about where best to upload it on Nostr.
For now, however, please find below the initial section of that essay’s introduction. It ties nicely into recent comment from Canadian PM Carney
Introduction
The veil has fallen. America has discarded the charade that its primacy was held to account by the very international rules-based order it built 80 years ago. This realpolitik dichotomy has been known throughout most of the world and for quite some time. What actually transpired over the past several weeks is a realization – a loss of naïveté – among the American populace and the citizenry of post-1945 allied nations that America would act as it saw fit in the pursuit of self-interest and will do so, whenever necessary, fully unencumbered.
America has deployed uber-primacy and the raw projection of power from the very moment the Cold War ended and the unipolar world commenced. These actions are just no longer concealed by diplomatic subterfuge. From the Iraq War to the Global Financial Crisis policy responses and myriad other instances, the very “international rules” forced upon others has always been deemed inconvenient by Washington and, thusly, ignored when those “rules” conflicted with self-interest.
Throughout the unipolar moment, the non-American allied world was acutely aware of American intentions. Those nation-states accepted, with reticence, the power bestowed upon this hegemon. China, and Russia for that matter, also accepted that the world was to be dominated by a single superpower. Both nations, however, knew their world histories and in 1997 began planning for that inevitable day when America’s reach would finally exceed its grasp.
That day has long since arrived and there is now a broad agreement that a realignment in the world order is underway. The only debate present is found in the international relations community and its zealous quest for labels: Multipolarity, G2, the Global South and even, more recently, the Core Five. Amongst them are the ubiquitous and overly simplistic comparisons made to the Cold War. For those seeking historical comparisons, there’s arguably far more compelling evidence to measure current events against the backdrop of those occurring in and around 1904. No matter one’s outlook or perspective, the only real conclusion which can be drawn is that the present moment is a unique point of departure from the previous century. History has not ended.
And yet, there remains an obsession over labels and constructs, an exercise – importantly to be stressed – which is Western led and Western promoted. China eschews such framing. Where others find comfort in taxonomy and historical comparisons, Beijing views such exercises, while providing some value, as unnecessarily restrictive and, ultimately, misguided. And then there’s the fact that China is the “Middle Kingdom”. An important cultural point of reference as it is a defining element for understanding Beijing’s view of the world and how it goes about engaging with all sovereign actors.
(More to follow)
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/carney-davos-speech-9.7052725
