... with the US-led international order. It accepts and supports many global governance institutions; however, it does reject some of its aspects which it considers as hegemonic or ideologically prejudiced such as the West’s emphasis on interventionism. China’s rhetoric is more Westphalian, resting on state sovereignty, noninterventionism and collective development. China’s BRI and its contribution to meaningful multilateralism offers an alternative approach that is both rooted in western liberalism, and emphasizes economic ...
... have reacted differently. They reject being treated as clients, especially when it all comes down to money flowing to America.
Hence the surprise in Washington when so many states line up for BRICS+ or SCO+. They are not necessarily embracing Russia or China unconditionally; they are signaling their refusal to live by rules drawn elsewhere.
Russia’s place
Against this backdrop, Russia finds itself not marginalized but central. Western isolation efforts only underscored Moscow’s role as a key pole around which non-Western states can organize. For many, Russia is proof that there are alternatives to Western tutelage.
President Vladimir Putin, addressing the Eastern Economic ...
... new geostrategic center. The country is said to have almost immeasurable untapped raw material deposits, including critical raw materials such as rare earths.
In the long term, these raw material deposits in Greenland could also help to make “the Western world” less dependent on China; as China holds around 90% of the world's rare earth metals.
But Greenland is still sitting on untapped raw material deposits. This means that the country will initially need massive investment from abroad to expand the infrastructure. Attractive ...
... and bilateral arrangements succeed in blocking Beijing’s intended advances along the Pacific and Indian Oceans coast line, China might opt to focus its activities on the disputed Himalayan border with India, where New Delhi is not in a position to reset ... ... This means that in order to avoid being left out in the cold, India has no other choice, but to join the United States and the West at large in trying to deter Beijing through participating in various US-led multilateral bodies.
The attitudes to Washington ...
... cannot be called an international order, but only a “local” order.
The present situation is different from both post-World War I and post-World War II: no single country or group of countries possesses absolute superiority in power, and neither the West nor China and Russia can establish a grand unified international order in their own conception. Nor can they make each other acceptable in terms of their international political concepts, value systems, and arrangements for the distribution of international ...
... Russia do not necessarily see eye-to-eye on many important international matters. In fact, no two nations in the world have completely identical interests—no matter how close their relationship may be.
Furthermore, what alternative to partnering with China do Western politicians and analysts offer Moscow? Their logic suggests that instead of turning into a junior partner to China, Russia should become a junior partner to the US. Nonetheless, the reality is that the US cannot properly handle even the closest ...
... countries’ private sectors to maintain economic, technological, financial and other forms of cooperation with Moscow. Even though in the Global South they mostly abstained from subscribing to US and/or EU financial sanctions against Russia, many non-Western countries had to stop serving Russian credit cards.
The pressure of the US financial system affects large countries like China: in order to provide for unrestricted interbank transactions between Moscow and Beijing, the two sides have to move away from the US controlled SWIFT system and to switch to the Chinese CIPS system and the Russian SPFS system. Such a switch is not ...
... When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and the USSR collapsed, China was still a distant, almost exotic country. Through the lens of “trade through change,” the country was seen to be moving towards democracy, in the former colonial style, according to Western values. The “Eurocentrism” in particular reflected an attitude of superiority towards China, as it had long been the extended workbench of the global economy. Hardly anyone suspected that the country had long wanted to tell its own story and had developed its own interests: the Grand Strategy.
China’s path to modernity is characterized ...
... control with Moscow and the nuclear deal with Tehran; and it continued to constantly provoke China over Taiwan – while launching a trade and technology war against Beijing to hamstring its prime economic competitor.
In the meantime, Russia, India and China – the three leading non-Western countries in Eurasia, as well as many of the continent’s other important independent players, continued to rise economically, as well as consolidate their cooperation. In purchasing-power terms, they currently represent, respectively, the fourth-,...
... destiny, and suchlike.
For several centuries, the West had the upper hand, so the Chinese principle simply lost out due to China’s lesser military and economic potential. But the balance of power has now shifted, and it is no longer possible to ignore China and its approach, whether we consider it sincere or not.
The Western approach to development is exhausted not only because the West is no longer the strongest. Just as importantly, the world has become so complex that conflicts can no longer address the entire range of problems. Previously, clashes led to the establishment ...
