The Coronavirus Pandemic, Sanctions on Iran, and the Maladies of World Order
[Prefatory Note: This post consists of my responses to three recent interviews with the Iranian journalist, Javad Herian-Nia, and published previously in Iran over the course of the last month. The text of my responses has been modified by subsequent developments and further reflections on my part.]
1-What will be effects of coronavirus on the current world order?
At this point, in the middle of the pandemic, any response is highly speculative. When speculating it seems helpful to distinguish between what we regard as probable outcomes as distinct from what would be desirable effects beneficial for humanity and sensitive to ecological concerns.
With respect to probable effects, I am aware of two broad sets of influential perspectives emerging, which admittedly somewhat confuse what is likely to happen with what we wish would happen. As near as I can tell from listening to preliminary American post-pandemic conjectures, private and public sector leaders are preoccupied with taking steps to restore the pre-pandemic dynamics, especially with regard to the economy, without substantial modifications beyond the recognition that governments should invest more resources in preparing national health systems for the lingering persistence and possible recurrence of the COVID-19 outbreak, as well as other outbreaks of contagious disease.
It is important to appreciate that previously in this century there were several lethal epidemics (SARS, Ebola, avian flu), although this COVID-19 experience has a far greater human and societal impact for two main reasons: first, the WHO officially declared COVID-19 to be a ‘pandemic,’ which automatically focuses attention on the severity of the challenge; and secondly, the crisis has seriously afflicted countries in the West, which heightens world media and public attention, and ensures more effort to assess the experience from a world order perspective. This latter observation is particularly true for the United States, and possibly China, as both have become ‘global states,’ that is, States with an array of major political, economic, and social engagements that creates ‘presences’ far beyond national boundaries. The reality of ‘global states’ in the post-colonial era has not yet attracted the notice it deserves as altering the structure of state-centric world order.
What restoring pre-pandemic world order will mean is not entirely clear, and is somewhat contested, as to what were its essential features prior to this deeply dislocating experience. Most obviously, restoration would mean facilitating the rapid revival of transnational trade and capital flows, a renewed effort to reduce economic tensions that were rising to the level of ‘trade wars’ before the onset of the pandemic. Such a preferred model of a restored world overlooks the likely resistance of ultra-nationalist and protectionist trends in major States that include a deliberate retreat from neoliberal globalization. Such nationalistic repositioning was reinforced by negative reactions in many Western countries to the influx of refugees from combat zones and migrants seeking to raise their living standards above subsistence levels. The lockdowns during the health crisis also provided pretexts for relying on surveillance technologies, and generally led to greater social tolerance for authoritarian policies and practices, governance habits quite likely to persist after the pandemic phase of the disease has subsided, which has been the historical pattern of past pandemics so well depicted in Frank M. Snowden’s Epidemics and Society: From the Black Death to the Present (2019).
These obstacles to reviving the ‘old normal’ will also be challenged by the widespread belief that many of the jobs lost during the pandemic will not become available to workers in a post-pandemic atmosphere as economies will take advantage of automation due to developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics. Particularly in capitalist countries, past economic crises have been occasions for a streamlining of the labor force on the basis of more rigorous standards of worker efficiency. In so doing, profits margins are regained, even increased, while jobs are lost and high unemployment, especially at middle income levels, haunts the recovery process. There is little reason to doubt that this pattern will be repeated in the present circumstances, which included such drastic socio-economic dislocations, and more likely with take on more extreme characteristics.
A more prescriptive effort to restore the old world order based on stability and economic growth places emphasis on recreating the conditions that produced what is again embraced as past success worth reviving. Henry Kissinger, writing in the conservative Wall Street Journal, recommended an imitation of the strategies relied upon by the U.S. Government after the end of World War II, especially assertive American global leadership, a mobilization of resources to restore market vitality in the countries of the West. Such an approach would involve a new Atlanticism for countries in Europe most adversely affected by the pandemic, and a strengthened health system as integral to future national, global, and regional security. This kind of assessment blends the probable with the desirable, but it also swims against the pre-pandemic tide of ultra-nationalism that placed stress on transactional bargains rather than inter-governmental cooperative problem-solving, which acknowledges global interests as a main component of national interests, given the realities of digital globalization, or the complexities of interconnectedness. Insofar as directed at Washington, any serious prospect of strong American global leadership along Kissingerian lines depends on replacing Trump with someone more responsive to the global scale challenges facing humanity and more capable in managing the public relations global diplomacy.
From my perspective, a desirable post-pandemic approach would definitely seek ‘a new normal’ that modify world order as we knew it. Primary attention would be given to meeting the pre-pandemic challenges of global inequality, climate change, extreme poverty, migration and asylum, and the myriad other policy concerns that were not being adequately addressed by the procedures of state-centric world order. The various failures of global leadership by the United States and the predatory excesses of post-Cold War capitalism make adjustments in light of eco-stability, human rights, and economic and social justice vital. Such a reorientation of international political behavior would also require the repudiation of militarist geopolitics and the abandonment of coercive diplomacy (including punitive sanctions), and their replacement by behavior exhibiting respect for international law and the authority of the United Nations, and greater reliance on procedures for peaceful conflict resolution. Such a reorientation would achieve a better balance in foreign policy between the sovereign rights of States and the global responsibility of the UN System to secure compliance with individual and collective rights, as well as encouraging ecological stewardship and climate justice. Such a visionary approach will strike many observers as utopian, but from another perspective such advocacy can be regarded as embodying a necessary ethical, security, and ecological response framework to the realities and threats, and opportunities, of the contemporary world, which if not addressed in a timely and equitable fashion will result in a tragic destiny for future generations.
2-Current world order is mostly based on neoliberalism and to some extent on political realist policymaking. What are the deficiencies of these approaches as revealed by coronavirus?
I would add a structural element to your way of summarizing current world order. It is the statist character of world order that has evolved over time from the 1648 Peace of Westphalia that ended the Religious Wars in Europe, and gave rise to the primacy of the territorial sovereign state as the main building block of world order. This state-centric system of world order, originally a European regional arrangement, became gradually universalized as the dialectic between colonialism and anti-colonialism in the non-Western world unfolded in the twentieth century. This process established a strong consensus among governments that only States were eligible to become fully accredited participants in formal international politics. This criterion regulating status and participation in international political life also explains limiting membership in the United Nations to entities that qualify as States under international law, although there has been advocates of more inclusive participation, which would include regional actors and representative civil society actors. Colonialism imposed statist networks in the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa with little attention to the antecedent experience of empire and colonial rule, thereby overlooking the reality of ethnic and traditional contours of natural political communities for the affected peoples. This has led these regions to endure continuous strife in the post-colonial world that has so far only been overcome by imposing authoritarian rule that achieves order by repressing resisting elements in the society, often supplemented by gross corruption at the apex of the governance pyramid.
A further aspect of this kind of Westphalian world order is the role of geopolitics, which here refers to the discretionary behavior of leading States that refuse to accept restraints on their freedom of maneuver externally, and reject any kind of accountability with regard to abuses occurring within their own country, thereby absolutizing territorial sovereignty. The global legalization of such rogue behavior is embedded in the UN Charter, most openly expressed by vesting a right of veto in the five permanent members of the Security Council, the only organ within the UN System with the authority to reach binding decisions. In effect, the UN Charter rather shockingly acknowledges the uncontrollability of the five political actors, although these are the states that most endanger international peace and security. Turkey has for a decade been challenging this kind of hegemonic arrangement by calling for global reform along constitutional lines, adopting the slogan ‘the world is greater than five’ to highlight its campaign to diminish the influence of geopolitics within the workings of the UN System.
As your question suggests, neoliberalism and political realism have played influential roles in giving shape to international life, but in both cases, at considerable cost from the perspective of human wellbeing, justice, and ecological stability. As earlier indicated, neoliberalism privileges the efficiency of capital over the wellbeing of people, accentuating ecological harm on one side, and inducing extremes of inequality on the other side (26 individuals control more than half of the world’s wealth). The effect of this ideological shaping of behavior is to accentuate poverty, alienation, class conflict, while inclining governance at the level of the State toward autocratic, and often corrupt, leadership. Political realism, although coming in many forms, is imbued with the essential idea of promoting national interests, narrowly and selfishly conceived as excluding both global concerns and values related to peace and justice, as well as deference to international ethical and legal norms. Realists are in agreement that such a calculation of national interests in only reliable basis for the formation of foreign policy, reflecting an understanding that history is made by wars, giving pride of place to military capabilities. In this sense, prevailing forms of realism have become unrealistic to varying degrees spanning the political spectrum from the hard right to the internationalist liberal center. In our times we need to develop strong mechanisms of global problem-solving and robust methods of conflict resolution to meet such challenges as global warming, migration pressures, declining biodiversity, ecocide, and genocide. Political realism as diversely practiced remains anchored in seventeenth century conditions where autonomous territorial communities didn’t require or acknowledge any framework of restraint external to their realm of territorial authority, and changes did result mainly from militarism. Under twenty-first century conditions such realism has become dangerously out of touch with the severe and accumulating existential threats of the twenty-first century, as well as the mixed record of militarily driven foreign policies of geopolitical actors. The United States despite having the greatest war machine of all history has endured a disappointing record of political defeat in armed conflict since 1945. The European colonial powers and the Soviet Union did not fare any better when relying on military superiority. China after some border confrontations with neighboring countries, has pioneered new modes of imperial expansion not dependent on projecting military power overseas, except to some extent in island controversies in South Asian waters.
3- Although Corona has drawn the attention of countries to the realist approach and the principle of “self-help”, on the other hand, it has led to the inefficiency of the realist approach to security, which is based on “state security” and prioritizes It defines “the security of the ruling elite” and sees the issue of security as purely military. On the other hand, the outbreak of the virus has shown that militaristic economies do not provide public security(human security), and that governments should pay more attention to “human security” in the post-Coronavirus world, which confirms that the overlapping of “state security” and “human security” is greater than ever. What do you think about this?
I would again call attention to my distinction between probable and desirable outcomes once the crisis atmosphere subsides. There is no doubt in my mind that a human security approach to ‘security’ would be a desirable way to incorporate the lessons of the COVID-19 ordeal. Yet I believe this to be a highly improbable outcome other than some strengthening of national preparedness for facing future epidemiological challenges, and possibly endowing the WHO with an early warning responsibility and additional capabilities. Even this focus is less a matter of upholding human security than it is a realization that governmental legitimacy depends on keeping the economy functioning to the extent possible when struck by epidemics. Efforts to minimize the impacts of disabling health challenges, which unlike climate change have an immediate concrete life-threatening and economic dislocating potential impact on every person on the planet, make the case for effective warning and mitigating capabilities irrefutable. Health disasters of the COVID-19 scale are current, and cannot be long evaded by politicians, at least after the bodies begin to pile up. Although the complacency of some governments in the West with regard to ignoring warnings and waiting too long to impose societal constraints suggests that many politicians seek to defer rational responses as much as possible.
Nevertheless, it is more important than ever for public intellectuals to insist upon a human security framework both to challenge the war system, including its enormous unproductive diversion of energies and resources, and to endow a human rights culture with political potency so as to ensure that state/society relations develop ethical standards implemented by the rule of law.
We live at a time when what seems necessary seems politically out of reach, which suggests that we should reach further, and admit that struggle for a better future is worthwhile because good surprises, as well as bad ones (for instance, the pandemic) can happen. In a sense, to meet the threats confronting the world we need to realize that our basic condition is radical uncertainty about what the future will bring. A fatalistic passivity that waits for the apocalypse to end it all is no more reasonable than is irresponsible reassurances that there is nothing to worry about because on the average people are living longer and better.
An important reflection on the reaction to the pandemic was the willingness of political elites of major countries to abandon austerity economics and free trillions to ensure the recovery of major private sector business operations like airlines and fossil fuel companies. In other words, complaints recently directed at progressive agendas, such as were advanced by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren that had been greeted derisively with the dismissive ‘how will you pay for this (universal health care, eliminating student debt)?’ would be less easy to reject by appeals to fiscal discipline. This could make a big difference in future political campaigns if such a lesson of the pandemic is learned and vigorously invoked by progressive movements for change. There is as little reason to follow the guidance of Wall Street billionaires and hedge fund stewards of capital as there is to heed the belligerent guidance of Beltway thinktank gurus or Pentagon pleas for yet more funding.
4-If we accept that the post-Corona world order will be different from the existing one, will the changes be structural and fundamental ones? Which new meanings will be experienced as fundamental changes?
I think it is impossible to identify at this point what will be the post-Corona effects on global structures and the fundamental characteristics of world order. I believe that there is unlikely to be any significant effects on world order without prior seismic-scale challenges to the established order coming from political movements in major countries of the world. Neither the U.S. nor China, the former asserting itself via an outmoded reliance on military capabilities and the forcible penetration of foreign political spaces and the latter expanding its influence mainly by way of positive economic inducements, seem inclined to alter world order in ways that are structural and fundamental, but this perception might be mistaken. The U.S. seems somewhat open to a movement from below for drastic change aspiring for power, and shifting the policy focus of government closer to a human security agenda. The Sanders campaign for the Democratic Party presidential nomination arguably came close to gaining enough influence to mount such an effort, and it has pledged to continue pursing these goals by further augmenting its influence as a social and political movement. China has become a formidable global state by relying on ‘soft power,’ expansion of trade, economic growth, foreign economic assistance, and non-coercive diplomatic activism at the UN and elsewhere, although its success is starting to encounter a variety of pushbacks. Hard power geopolitics heavily depends on military capabilities for leverage and as a policy instrument, while soft power avoids political violence to the extent possible, without rejecting it on principle, conserving its resources for more productive applications, including global cooperation and human security. At the same time, with respect to internal politics, the U.S. ‘soft’ authoritarianism is more amenable to reformist changes and more adaptable to certain aspects of human security than is China ‘hard‘ variant of authoritarianism. From this perspective, the main energy for human security in the West is likely to come, if at all, from movements of people whereas in China and other deeply rooted authoritarian systems such energy for change would almost certainly have to start with some fracturing within governing elites.
Interview Questions from Javad Heiran-Nia (April 26, 2020) on
Humanitarian Aspects of Sanctions as Applied to Iran
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- US officials have always stated that Iran’s humanitarian goods are exempted from sanctions. However, due to the sanctions and the change in the label of some of Iran’s sanctions on the nuclear issue and the placement of terrorism or weapons of mass destruction by the United States, their trade has been disrupted and foreign parties are reluctant to export humanitarian goods to Iran. How effective do you think changing the label of sanctions has been?
I believe it is hard to assess the connections between the relabeling of humanitarian supplies (food, medicine, medical equipment) in ways that lead them to be treated as encompassed by ‘sanctions’ that are being maintained despite pressures on state and society resulting from emergency challenges in Iran arising from the high level of cases (more than 80,000) and deaths (over 5,000) resulting from the Coronavirus Pandemic. In effect, this relabeling or reclassification is a means to deny humanitarian relief to Iran at a time that finds the national health system on the verge of being overwhelmed. It is a cruel practice that should be abandoned.
- In an recent interview with the Los Angeles Times, Iranian sanctions planner “Richard Nephew” said complex rules were in place and that companies violating sanctions would face serious penalties. However, are companies interested in humanitarian trade with Iran?
The reality is that banks and many corporations are reluctant to engage in trade involving humanitarian exceptions to the sanctions regime because the commercial
gains of doing are relatively minor. Incentives to do so are generally far outweighed by a fear that the U.S. Government might respond in ways that could be costly to the wide spectrum of more profitable operations of an international company. The official tone of Treasury Department regulatory oversight seems deliberately intended to discourage humanitarian economic activities despite its mixed message of claiming that humanitarian goods sent to Iran are not subject to sanctions and suppliers will not be penalized: “Compliance with all of the conditions of a general license is required to qualify for the authorization. Without perfect compliance, a U.S. person would be conducting a prohibited transaction. Even an innocent or accidental transgression may subject a U.S. person to civil penalties such as fines.”
- Medical equipment companies find easier ways to make a profit, especially when the world is facing a pervasive disease. On the other hand, the transfer of humanitarian aid does not bring much benefit to most international banks, shipping companies and insurance companies, which they want to ignore the risk of sanctions. What is your opinion on this and how effective do you think sanctions are in disrupting the treatment of coronavirus in Iran?
It is difficult for an outsider to evaluate the effect of imposing bureaucratic burdens and potential penalties on doing business with Iran that consists of the sale of medical equipment.
I cannot say whether the shortages of ventilators and other equipment in Iraanian hospitals can be attributed to the indirect impact of sanctions, but it seems to follow from the ‘maximum pressure’ approach that Pompeo and Trump have reaffirmed in the midst of the pandemic, receiving criticism from more liberal media outlets, human rights organizations, and several of the more progressive members of Congress. In sum, Pompeo/Trump seek to condition sanctions relief on Iran’s willingness to surrender its political goals by altering its foreign policy in the Middle East, which is a clear interference with the sovereignty of Iran. In the background, it should be appreciated that sanctions even absent the pandemic are a form of economic warfare inconsistent with the spirit and substance of contemporary international law that outlaws aggression in all its forms. If world order was more shaped by law, and less by geopolitics, sanctions would be imposed on the U.S., and humanitarian relief would be sought by Washington to cope with the demands of the pandemic.
Interview Qs from Javad Nia-Herian (March 15, 2020)
- What are the most important reasons for the rise of right-wing politics and extreme nationalists in Europe and America?
Many speculations exist as to why these unexpected developments have occurred over the course of recent years. There is no doubt that a core explanation is the widespread alienation arising from the effects of neoliberal globalization, which has distributed the benefits of economic activity and technological innovation unfairly, making the very rich even richer while leaving the great majority of people in society worse off. Such a pattern seems systemic as it happening in so many countries, although the mix of reasons vary depending on national circumstances. A second set of explanations arises from the refugee and migrant flows that have arisen in the course of the long civil strife in Syria, Yemen, and Iraq, which are perceived to challenge the social and ethnic cohesion of many European societies. Closely related to ‘conflict migrants’ are ‘climate refugees’ who seek to achieve a tolerable life by moving to more affluent countries, which reinforce resistance in these countries based on labor pressures to retain jobs and keep wages at higher levels, as well as concerns about breaching civilizational identity. Against this background, an increasing segment of the public in Europe and North America is ready to support leaders that promise to protect the interests of the territorial citizenry and blame economic globalization for lost jobs and income inequalities due to its policies of privileging the flow and efficiency of capital over protecting the wellbeing of people. In this sense, large portions of the public in these societies seem responsive to explanations of their distress by leaders with highly nationalistic viewpoints, and seem ready to give up democratic values by supporting autocratic and chauvinistic leaders that violate human rights. This pattern is not only visible in the West, but also in other parts of the world, including India, Brazil, Philippines.
- One of the most important issues related to the developments in the Middle East was the announcement of the US withdrawal from the region. But in practice this has not happened. Do you think the US really intends to pull its troops out of the region? And if so, why?
It does seem that military disengagement from the region was a genuine policy objective of Trump at the beginning of his presidency and a main campaign promise in 2016, but there is friction coming from the main forces that have controlled American foreign policy ever since 1945, what I call ‘the three pillars’: Wall St., Pentagon, and a bit later, Israel, more or less in this order. How this friction will affect the timing and rate of withdrawal probably depends on many factors, including the further unfolding of the current overarching health crisis, and whether signals of confrontation or accommodation come from Iran. Israel’s opposition to American military disengagement in the region is also influential. It is difficult to predict at this point, but unless there are unexpected regional flareups military disengagement should proceed if Trump remains president, and the upcoming U.S. presidential elections may hasten the process. The redeployment of American troops from three bases in Iraq after recent rocket attacks, while not an instance of withdrawal, did seem to move in the direction of disengagement. Ironically, Biden’s election as president is likely to produce a revival of ‘liberal internationalism’ as the marker of U.S. global leadership, and could be accompanied by an increased military engagement in the Middle East/
- One of the major problems facing the US now and in the future is China. Various Western security documents, including a statement from the Munich Security Conference with China, have been cited as a threat. How will America be able to contain China? Will the containment policy work?
The future of U.S./China relations is the most challenging geopolitical issue of our time. It matches two global states from distinct civilizational outlooks. The U.S. and China are both what I call ‘global states,’ whose contours and even presence, cannot be assessed by territorial borders. Both have a global non-territorial reach that no other political actor possesses, but there the similarity ends. The U.S. depends primarily on its military capabilities to punish and coerce those states that it regards as hostile to its global ambitions. Iran (and Venezuela) is the current leading example, as victimized by ‘the maximum pressure’ approach based on threats and punitive sanctions. In contrast, China has brilliantly extended its influence and increased its prosperity by reliance mainly on non-military instruments of expansion, including trade, investment, and foreign assistance. The two global states exemplify an encounter between hard and soft power foreign policies, giving rise to a unique rivalry in the history of international relations.
This rivalry does pose risks of a new cold war or even war in the sense of armed combat, especially in relation to the disputed sovereignty of South Asian seas. When an ascending power threatens the previously dominant political actor, as China is now threatening to overtake the U.S., there are many instances in history, where war has resulted, most frequently by the leading state seeking to defeat the challenger while it still seems to have the upper hand. Of course, the prospect of a war fought with nuclear weapons leads to greater caution on the part of leaders than in the past, but it does not give us confidence that current leaders will act prudently and rationally under pressure in a crisis, or if perceiving a threat. The risks of stumbling into war by miscalculation are considerable, given how unwanted wars started in the past.
I am not sure whether ‘containment’ is relevant to fashioning a Western response to the Chinese challenge. Containment was a doctrine developed to deter military expansion, initially of the Soviet Union. It was in a geopolitical context in which two hard power leading states were in competition, economically and ideologically throughout the world. Containing a soft power global state such as China is already taking the form of trade wars and efforts to curtail Chinese penetration of foreign markets. To an alarming extent, this kind of confrontation has accelerated during the Trump presidency, fueled by the adoption of a nationalistic and transactional policy agenda, blame game tactics in the midst of the pandemic that display a willingness by Trump to raise international risks of conflict for the sake of avoiding responsibility for not handling the COVID-19 experience in a responsible manner.
- The outbreak of the Coronavirus points out that there are threats that are more easily resolved through cooperation among countries. Will the international community learn from the damage caused by the spread of the virus, and will we see increased international cooperation to address global threats?
The incentivizing of global cooperation may become the silver lining of the COVID-19 challenge. It has become obvious to even the most nationalist viewpoints that we help ourselves by helping others, and hurt ourselves by hurting others. Only by cooperating in good faith can constructive responses to the spread of this virus be achieved. What is true in relation to the Coronavirus Pandemic is also true for other issues of global scope: extreme poverty, climate change, global migration, biodiversity, militarism and nuclear weaponry. In these latter instances, the benefits of cooperation are less obvious, especially for the rich and powerful.
For thiss reason, extending the experience in relation to health policy to other policy domains may not be so easy. The transfer to these other areas is rendered difficult, or impossible, if the benefits of cooperation are uneven, less immediate, and more abstract. Also, governmental resistance is likely to occur whenever there are special interests embedded in bureaucratic structures and the private sector. This resistance arises, in part, from continuing to regard international relations as a zero-sum, win/lose contest rather than an arena in which seeking win/win outcomes bring the more enduring gains for all.
- What will be the economic impacts of the Coronavirus on the world economy? How will this affect the upcoming US presidential election?
It is too soon to tell what the economic impacts will be, but it seems as if these impacts will be severe and long lasting, both for the world economy and all national economies, especially hitting hard the economically most vulnerable parts of the population, which usually include the disfavored minorities. There will be variations from state to state depending on their resources, the discipline of different societies, and the skill of government officials. It appears at present as though the world economy will experience a collapse comparable to the situation that produced the Great Depression of the 1930s, and contributed to the rise of Fascism and the onset of World War II. This current Coronavirus challenge is unfolding in unprecedented ways, and our assessments must be tentative and frequently updated as it proceeds on uncharted territory.
The same cautionary attitude shapes my response to the effects on the November elections in the United States. As of now, the pandemic would seem to hurt Trump’s chances of reelection because the leader at the time of downturn is held responsible by many voters for results. If the economy is doing well, the incumbent president reaps the benefits, whether deservedly on not, while if it is doing badly, existing leaders are held responsible whether or not at fault. In addition, this interpretation is reinforced by the fact that many Americans, including some Republicans, felt that Trump handled the challenge badly, especially at its crucial early stages, belittling the seriousness of the spread of such a lethal disease, and thereby postponing self-isolating steps to slow the spread of the disease. This negligent slowness of response increased the number of cases and fatalities. But there are many unknowns between now and the elections. If the situation does not improve, or worsens, it is easy to imagine a situation where the elections are postponed in accord with the state of emergency, while if the situation unexpectedly improves, Trump might easily win reelection, especially if opposed by such a weak candidate as Joe Biden.
- What do you know about the most important international developments in Europe, America, Asia and the Middle East over the past year?
Such a question is so broad that it is difficult to answer briefly, but I will try. Without doubt, as my earlier responses suggest, the Coronavirus Pandemic overshadows all other recent developments both by the magnitude of its health challenges and by the gravity of its non-health impacts. Other international developments of note are the continuing ordeal of vulnerable minorities, including the Rohingya in Myanmar, Kashmiris in India, and the Palestinian people, who additionally are likely to be the least protected against the ravages wrought by the virus. In addition, the struggles in several Middle East countries exhibit continuing chaos, massive displacement, and ongoing violence. Syria, Yemen, and Libya continue to experience chaos and strife without any serious capacity to restore peace and normalcy. As well, in the same Middle East region there has been a second wave of popular challenges to the established order in Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, and Algeria, as well as nearby Sudan that suggest that the conditions that led to the Arab Spring a decade earlier continues to produce social unrest and political protest. A final set of developments can be associated with the disappointing failures to move forward with respect to the threats associated with climate change despite fires of savage intensity in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil and across huge tracts of land in Australia. These threats highlighted the urgency of a cooperative approach to issues of ecological balance, while the behavior of important states seemed to produce a regressive, head-in-the-sand trend toward the embrace of ultra-nationalist foreign policies and transactional geopolitics, thoroughly dysfunctional from a global problem-solving perspective. The relative impotence of the UN, due to the geopolitical impasse between the U.S. and China, aggravated by Trump’s ‘America First’ orientation, missed a rare opportunity to build renewed confidence in the UN as an actor capable to some extent of upholding human interests of the planet as a whole.
Tags: After COVID-19, COVID-19, Economic Depression, geopolitics, global reform, health system, Iran Sanctions, UN, WHO, world order
Global Justice in the 21st Century 
Will China be the New Russia? The Future of American Geopolitics
16 JulWill China be the New Russia? The Future of American Geopolitics
[Prefatory Note: The text below is a slightly modified interview conducted by Daniel Falcone, and published in Counterpunch on July 9th. Even the passage of a few days has made it seem more likely that a new geopolitical confrontation could dominate the global peace and security landscape for years, with likely dire economic consequences coming on top of the dislocations arising from COVID-19 pandemic and heightened risks of war and regional tensions. One question is whether the differences in the global setting and main geopolitical actors sufficiently resemble the Cold War circumstances to make designating a U.S./China confrontation as a Second Cold War. As my responses below suggest, I have my doubt.]
[Daniel Falcone’s Introduction to the Interview: Should there be a Second Cold War an alleged US concern for human rights would indeed become another ongoing tool of propaganda. In this interview, International Relations scholar Richard Falk breaks down the grave dangers and prospects for a New Cold with China. Falk worries that tensions and rivalries both regionally and economically could result in a series of hot war conflicts set off by nuclear complacent countries that fail to recognize the catastrophic risks at stake.
In retracing the collapse of the Soviet Union and China’s entrance into the World Trade Organization, Falk analyses the origins of US resentment towards China’s remarkable market growth that is absent of liberal democratic structures. Aside from commenting on how ‘cold war’ with China, an economic rival, is different from 20th century Russian tension, which was largely militaristic and ideological, Falk suggests additional motivations for an escalation on the part of Trump and the possibly forthcoming bi-partisan consensus.]
Will China be the New Russia? The Future of American Geopolitics
Daniel Falcone: Do you anticipate the United States entering a new Cold War with China? What are the prospects for a new Cold War? Can you also discuss the fall of the Soviet Empire and the modern rise of China to better contextualize the present set of diplomatic tensions?
Richard Falk: I think there are grave dangers of either sliding into a new Cold War by unwitting interactions, especially with China, and possibly with Russia. More complex opposing alignments could also take shape, for instance, an alignment that features the U.S., Europe, and India on one side and China and Russia on the other. Such an encounter would likely be less ideological than the Cold War that broke out after World War II and also less preoccupied about the outbreak of an all-out nuclear war. The next cold war is likely to be more focused on economic rivalry, cyber dimensions of conflict and major regional wars involving Iran, the Korean Peninsula, India/Pakistan, or elsewhere. In this regard, what might start as a cold war has a greater prospect of producing major hot wars as there could be present less of a self-deterrent. In this altered global setting, there are distinctive risks arising from what I would call ‘nuclear complacency, underestimating the dangers and catastrophic results of nuclear war.
In the background of this look ahead is the extent to which China has spoiled the triumphalist narrative that was spun in the West after the collapse of the Soviet Union. One somewhat notorious version, associated with Francis Fukuyama ‘s claim, which seemed ludicrous when it was put forward in the early 1990s, is that after the Cold War the world had reached ‘the end of history.’ Western secular values had prevailed both with regard to state/society relations and in relation to the organization of the world economy. The future seemed, for some years, almost to vindicate this myopic interpretation, with a virtually universal endorsement of neoliberal globalization, which Fernando Henrique Cardoso, the previously left socialist leader of Brazil explained in the 1990s as ‘the only game in town.’
A cruder version of this clear vision of a victorious West was the assertions of the Tory leader in Britain, Margaret Thatcher, who aggressively shouted down the British opposition to her economic policies with the slogan ‘there is no alternative’ (to market driven economies), or simply TINA. This idea had been initially attributed to Herbert Spencer, notorious for suggesting in the 19th Century that history of society parallels human evolution in the sense of privileging ‘the survival of the fittest.’ Not surprisingly, given such an uncongenial atmosphere, progressive forces felt demoralized.
Left perspectives often adopted defeatist postures after the Soviet collapse, and were derided as having endorsed political oppression and backed economic failure. Perhaps worse for progressive prospects, was the awkward fact that the only surviving major socialist economy, post-Mao China after the ascent of Deng Xiaoping in 1978, seemed itself to be opting for joining the capitalist choir, seeking and gaining membership by in the World Trade Organization and rationalizing its active participation in the neoliberal world economy as ‘market socialism’ fooling almost no one, least of all capitalist investors and traders.
For many years, this seemed like a win/win reality. China’s economy expanded at a remarkable rate, but world trade increased and Western investors were pleased with their profits, associated with the low costs of skilled labor in China and the absence of strict environmental and safety standards. All was well as long as China stayed in its lane as ‘the factory for the world,’ but when it made the transition to a sophisticated high technology innovating economy it began to pose a new kind of geopolitical challenge to the primacy of the United States and the West, and murmurs began to be heard about stealing Western technology, unfair trade practices, and currency manipulations. In my view, although these issues were significant, they were capable of negotiated solutions, and were not the core concern. What began to bother the West was the degree to which China for all of its superficial adaptations to capitalist logic was dramatically outperforming its competitors in the West, seeming benefitting from the state management of economic activity, despite political authoritarianism, in a manner superior to what seemed possible in the developed societies of the West, especially with respect to savings, the investment of public funds, and even with regard to technological innovativeness relating to the post-industrial, digital age.
This extraordinary Chinese dynamic is brilliantly depicted for Asia as whole by the Indian economist, Deepak Nayyar, in The Asian Resurgence: Diversity in Development (2019). The book explains the overall post-colonial Asian challenge to Western ascendancy in which 14 Asian countries, led by China, produced the most remarkable record of economic growth and poverty alleviation in the past 50 years that the world has ever known. These countries achieved these remarkable results without the private sector trappings of liberal democracy, thus drawing into question the American claim that market-driven constitutionalism was the only modern arrangement of state/society relations that was both legitimate and materially successful.
With these considerations in mind, three rather distinct alternative futures for the U.S./China relationship deserve scrutiny if the objective is to avoid the onset of a lose/lose second cold war. On a preliminary basis it would seem helpful to take notice of a serious language trap that suggests misleadingly that because the words ‘cold war’ are convenient to designate a new central geopolitical confrontation, if it occurs, it would resemble in its essential features the Cold War that followed directly from the contested peace arrangements of World War II, and represented two major states that both conceived of international relations through the realist postwar prisms of hard power as complemented by adherence to rival ideologies that temporarily suspended their enmity toward each other in order to join forces to defeat fascism. There are many differences between the global settings then and now. First, there is only a rather shallow ideological difference among the leading political actors at this time, although those on the far right in the West are seeking a renewal of intense geopolitical conflict by portraying China as a Communist, socialist, even Maoist, and hence an ideological adversary of the supposedly freedom-loving West. In contrast, old style Cold War liberals are thinking more along traditional lines of geopolitical competition among principal states promoting national interests as measured by growth, military capabilities, wealth, status, and influence, with ideological differences and human rights invoked, but put situated far in the background.
With these thoughts in mind it becomes reasonable to depict three world futures that portray relations between China and the West. The first, and most evident one, arises from the kind of provocative Trump diplomacy that combines blaming the COVID pandemic on Chinese malfeasance with intensifying the divergencies relating to economic policies and in relation to the island disputes in the South China Sea. Such a conflict-generating diplomacy is best understood as a diversionary tactic to obscure the multiple and shocking failures by the Trump presidency to provide unifying leadership or science-based guidance during the unfolding of the health disaster that continues its lethal sweep across the country with undiminished fury, and should be exposed as such. If China takes the Trump bait, the world will be plunged into a new ferocious geopolitical rivalry that will divert resources and energies from an agenda or urgent global-scale challenges.
A variation on this theme is connected with the possibility that Trump thinks he faces a landslide defeat in the November election, and esscalates hostile diplomacy to stage a confrontation with China, possibly accompanied by declaring a national emergency, or by contriving Gulf of Tonkin style false incidents as a pretext for launching some sort of attack on China that is the start of a hot war, which if saner minds prevail, would be contained, and toned down to mere Cold War proportions, and likely becoming a multi-dimensional rivalry that comes to dominate international relations.
The second more subtle drift into a Cold War with China would arise from a deep state consensus reinforcing a bipartisan consensus in Congress, and further encouraged by private sector war industry pressures. The likely objective would be to challenge China militarily in the South China Sea or in the course of some regional confrontation, possibly arising from tensions on the Korean Peninsula, along the Indian border, or in the Indo-Pakistani context. It would represent a more common structural militarist response patterns to growing evidence of relative Western decline in the face of a continuing Asian rise.
The third future is even more abstract and structural, and has been influentially labeled ‘Thucydides Trap’ in a book by Graham Allison [Destined for War: Can America and China escape the Thucydides’s Trap? (2017)], who accepts the analysis of the classical Greek historian on the basis of case studies over the centuries finds that when an ascendant Great Power fears the loss of its primacy to a Rising Power, it frequently initiates war while believing it still retains a military edge, which it will not retain for long. Note that such an assessment presumes actual warfare, and should not be perceived as a sequel to the U.S./Soviet Cold War, which came close to war in several situations of bipolar, but managed to restore order in a series of tense crises without engaging in direct combat.
There is a further complication with an analysis that extrapolates from the Cold War. Unlike the Soviet Union, China’s rise and challenge is far less associated with military capabilities and threats than it is with a remarkable surge of economic growth and soft power expansionism by pursuing win/win approaches that combine infrastructure aid to foreign societies with the growth of influence. In this regard, China has not weakened its domestic society by excessive investment in a militarist geopolitics, which depends on maintaining an expensive and vast global military presence that produced a several failed interventions that cast doubts on the United States’ capacity to uphold global security. This loss of credibility with respect to global security, despite its military dominance can be traced back to the Vietnam War in which overwhelming combat superiority on the battlefield nevertheless led to a political defeat.
The United States has repeated that fundamental failure first fully exposed in Vietnam in several other military misadventures. This inability to adjust to the realities of the post-colonial era in which nationalism mobilized on behalf of self-determination often neutralizes and eventually outlasts an intervening external power despite having grossly inferior weaponry has still not been overcome by the United States as it continues to act as if its military prowess shapes contemporary history. There is a second Thucydides trap that Allison doesn’t mention, which is that Athens lost its ascendancy from internal moral and political decay more than from the challenge posed by rising Sparta, succumbing to demagogues who led Athens into imprudent military adventures that weakened its overall capabilities, and especially its political self-confidence. Such a downhill path has been traveled by the United States at least since the 9/11 attacks in 2001 in which wars and contested long occupations of hostile societies has been expensive and contributed to alienation, extremism, and unrest within the United States.
Daniel Falcone: Can you draw on specific historical comparisons to the Soviet Union and China in terms of what is at stake geopolitically?
Richard Falk: There are several important comparisons. To begin with, the Soviet Union emerged from a devastating war as a victorious military power, and soon acquired nuclear weapons, posing a direct threat, ideologically and militarily to the European heartland of the Western alliance. The Cold War unfolded out of the tensions associated with the mutual disappointments of the peace diplomacy, especially as it divided Europe, including the city of Berlin.
The other flashpoint that provoked extremely destructive and dangerous wars in Korea and Vietnam, and recurrent crises in Germany, was the problems arising from unstable compromises between the victors in the war taking the form of countries divided without the consent and against the will of their national populations, and in disregard of the right of self-determination. In the present historical situation, the only leftover divided country is Korea, which after a serious and devastating war, 1950-52, ended as it began with the division remaining along with crises, tensions, threats, and periodic diplomatic efforts to achieve normalization leading to some form of reunification. It should be noted that although China’s geopolitical profile is overwhelmingly economistic as compared to the U.S. militarist profile, China become very sensitive about threats and disputes along its borders, and has had fighting wars with both India and Vietnam, as well as a defensive engagement in defense of North Korea.
Tensions rising to confrontation levels with China would probably either derive from disputes within China’s sphere of South Asian influence with respect to Taiwan, Hong Kong, island disputes or in some way related to China’s economic rise to a position of primacy, which contrasts with the grossly inferior economic performance of the Soviet Union if compared to the U.S. and the other major world economies, including Germany and Japan. The Soviet Union was never an economic rival or mounted a challenge in the manner of China.
The Cold War also coincided with the decolonizing process in Asia and Africa, which put the West and the Soviet bloc on opposite sides in a variety of struggles. In one respect this provided a safety valve that shifted bipolar confrontations to peripheral countries while trying to keep nuclear peace and stability at the center of the world system, which both sides assumed to be Europe, as well as their relations with one another. If a prolonged geopolitical confrontation emerges with China, Europe will not likely be an important site of struggle, and Europe even might sensibly opt to be non-aligned. Asia, including the Middle East, will become the main geopolitical battlegrounds, and Africa will offer a peripheral zone of contention where a Cold War II rivalry might assume its most direct expression as escalation risks would seem lower than in the various Asian theaters of encounter.
Unquestionably, the biggest difference is between the nature of the two challengers to Western systemic hegemony. The Soviet Union was a traditional geopolitical actor relying for expanding influence on its material capabilities and ideological penetration, while China focuses its energies and resources on soft power economic growth at home that is sustained and managed by the state in a manner that attracted massive foreign investment and domestic reinvestment based on a high rate of savings, a skilled labor force, and benefitting from highly favorable trade balances. China’s expansionist energies relied on win/win forms of economic and infrastructure assistance to countries in need with minimal interference with their political independence. The Soviet Union never undertook anything remotely comparable to China’s Road and Belt extraordinarily massive infrastructure initiative, again stressing huge win/win gains for a large number of countries, including in Africa. Aside from the special case of Cuba, the Soviet Union provided only military support to its allies in the so-called ‘Soviet bloc,’ and in East Europe intervened militarily to avoid ideological deviation.
It remains to be seen whether now that China is being challenged geopolitically by the United States it will begin to adopt a hard power mode, and the resulting confrontation between the two countries will come to resemble the Cold War. It is likely that China will emerge from the COVID pandemic with a reputation for greater efficiency in controlling the spread of the disease, reviving its economy, and understanding the functional benefits of global cooperation than the Trumpist West. At the same time, the Chinese image has been badly tarnished by damaging disclosures documenting the repression of the 10 million Uighur minority in Xinjiang Province and by forcible extensions of direct control over Hong Kong.
Daniel Falcone: The Cold War featured widespread propaganda in all facets of American cultural and political life. How could the United States attempt to sell the concept of an ideological confrontation with China in these times? The Republicans and Democrats are both constructing similar policy proposals it seems.
Richard Falk: I believe there are two approaches to confrontation with China that might be followed in the coming months, depending on which leadership controls American foreign policy after the November elections. Neither is desirable in my opinion. There is the approach of provocation adopted by Trump, which blames China for the pandemic and imposes various sanctions designed to roll back their economic and technological advances coupled with Trump’s normal transactional emphasis on securing a more favorable trade deal for the U.S. tied to a promise of warmer diplomatic relation.
The second approach is more closely associated with a reenactment of the Cold War bipartisan consensus that formed after World War II, and continues to animate the national security establishment in Washington. It involves a new version of containment as focused on the South China Seas island disputes, sometimes more loosely described as ‘boxing China in’ with India playing the role that Europe played in the earlier Cold War, along with an emphasis on China’s human rights abuses to achieve liberal backing, or at least acquiescence.
This approach is more likely to be pursued by a Biden presidency reasserting U.S. global leadership, with a Carteresque revival of ideological emphasis on Western liberalism as a superior mode of governance and global leadership due to its record on human rights and democracy, proclaiming its dedication to ‘a new free world.’ It is this approach that is more usefully and accurately regarded as a successor to the first Cold War. This softer version of confrontation with China would not challenge the structural features of America’s geopolitical posture adopted during the Cold War based on militarism at home and globally, capitalism, Atlanticism, and ‘special relationships’ with Israel and, somewhat less stridently, with Saudi Arabia, India, Egypt.
At the same time, there are some strong disincentives for so engaging China in a post-pandemic setting when policy priorities should be directed at restoring the economy and addressing climate change/biodiversity, which was almost forgotten about during the health crisis. The wisest course for future American foreign policy is providing constructive global leadership with an emphasis on inter-governmental cooperation for the human interest, a receptivity to compromise and conflict resolution in dealing with economic and political disputes, a radical defunding of the military, and strong commitments to restoring the spirit and substance of the New Deal with respect to social protection and national infrastructure.
Daniel Falcone: Are there any specific human rights issues and regions that would present immediate concerns and be jeopardized in your estimation within a new Cold War framework?
Richard Falk: Neither China nor the United States are currently positioned to promote human rights in other parts of the world with any credibility. The U.S. has lost credibility due to its handling of asylum-seekers on its borders and the maintenance of sanctions against such countries as Iran and Venezuela despite widespread humanitarian appeals for temporary suspension. In addition, the worldwide surge of support for Black Lives Matter after the Floyd police murder has called attention to the ugly persistence of systemic racism in gun-toting America. With these and other concerns in mind, it is hypocritical for the U.S. to be lecturing others, complaining about human rights abuses, and imposing sanctions allegedly as punitive responses to human rights failures.
China has never treated human rights as an element of its foreign policy, and with its own failures to adhere to international standards at home it is unlikely to engage the West on these terms. At the same time, there are at least two positive sides to China’s treatment of human and humanitarian issues that are rarely acknowledges in the West. First, China has lifted tens of millions of its own people out of extreme poverty (while the U.S. has widened disparities between rich and poor, and oriented growth policies over the course of the last half century to benefit the super-rich causing dysfunctional forms of inequality and acute alienation and rage on the part of working class). The Chinese achievement could easily be interpreted as a great contribution to the realization of the economic and social rights and to some extent should balance its disappointing record with regard to civil and political rights.
Secondly, during the COVID pandemic China has displayed important contributions to human solidarity while the United States has retreated to an ‘America First’ statist outlook that is combined with very poor performance with regard to both preventive and treatment aspects of responding to the virus. China has added funding to the WHO, send doctors and supplies to many countries, and most impressive of all has pledged to place any formulas it develops for effective vaccines in the public domain, placing this vital intellectual property on the web accessible to public and private sector developers. China deserves to receive positive recognition for such acts of what is sometimes described as ‘medical solidarity,’ while the United States deserves to be shamed for its blending of capitalist greed and nationalist selfishness.
Should there be a Second Cold War, human rights would become even more than, at present, a tool of cynical propaganda, especially if the bipartisan consensus regains the upper hand in U.S. policymaking. As with the First Cold War, human rights considerations would be brought to bear on countries deemed hostile to U.S. geopolitics and ignored with respect to friends and allies. At present, such a dichotomy is evident by way of an emphasis on Turkish human rights failures while ignoring the far worse failures in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Israel. Because the Second Cold War would be more explicitly geopolitical rather than ideological, I would expect less emphasis on ‘free world’ definitions of the core issues giving rise to the conflict.
Daniel Falcone: Although it’s a long-standing concern of strategists and planners, how do you see or anticipate China becoming an issue in the upcoming presidential election?
Richard Falk: It seems likely that Trump will campaign on a new strategic threat to the United States emanating from China, primarily aimed at its unacceptable economic manipulations to deprive the U.S, of trading benefits and jobs as well as its charging China with responsibility for American deaths due to the pandemic resulting from its refusal to release information about the virus immediately after it struck Wuhan and by way of conspiring with the WHO to conceal information about the international dangers of the COVID-19 disease. As in 2016 with its inflammatory message about immigrants, it can be anticipated that Trump will use the same techniques to cast China as an evil challenge to American greatness that only he has recognized and possesses the will and ability to crush.
I would expect that the Democratic Party election strategy would not take fundamental issue with the Trump approach, although its emphasis might seem quite different, attacking Trump for using China as a means to distract Americans from his gross failures of international and domestic leadership. A Biden campaign would also condemn China with regard to curtailing Hong Kong democracy and autonomy, as well as its abusive policies toward the maltreated Uighur minority. Biden might also agree that Chinese behavior has been unacceptable with respect to trade practices, stealing industrial secrets, including advocating militarization and confrontation in the South China Seas.
Where Biden and the Democrats would differ from Trump quite dramatically is with respect to Russia. Biden Democrats would likely make Russia enemy #1, sharply criticizing Trump for being ‘Putin’s poodle,’ and arguing that Russian expansionism and its alleged responsibility for killing Americans in Afghanistan is a more frontal threat to American interests in the Middle East and Europe than are the China challenges. Depending on the rhetoric and supporting policies being advocated there is a risk that Biden’s approach would lead to geopolitical fireworks, but probably not with China, and with less preoccupation with Europe than the First Cold War that ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Daniel Falcone: How does our ongoing and continual: medical, racial, economic and environmental pandemics help in exploiting Cold War narratives and approaches for heads of state around the world?
Richard Falk: I believe it is not yet clear whether these competing narratives will outlive the health crisis when pressures to revive the economic aspects of the ‘old normal’ will be intense. It is possible that if Trump remaining in control of the U.S. Government, there would be an opportunity for China or possibly a coalition of countries to exercise global leadership by seeking to promote a global cooperative approach to health, while also seeking common ground and shared action on climate change, global migration, food security, and extreme poverty.
If Biden becomes the U.S, president and reasserts U.S. leadership it will likely strike a balance between pushing back against Russian and Chinese challenges and learning from the pandemic to seek global cooperative solutions to urgent problems confronting humanity. This renewal of liberal internationalism would likely be signaled on Day One by rejoining the Paris Climate Change Agreement and soon thereafter restoring American participation and support for the Iran Nuclear Agreement, supplemented by such internationalizing initiatives as returning to active membership in and robust funding for the WHO and support for the UN.
In conclusion, the buildup of anti-Chinese sentiments is establishing this dual foundation for a Second Cold War. Not surprisingly, the Editorial Board of the NY Times calls on Trump to use sanctions against China in response to reports of its mistreatment of the Uighur minority and its Hong Kong moves. Such advocacy is set forth without a mention of the hypocrisy of Trump being an international advocate of human rights given his record of support for autocratic denials at home and abroad, not to mention border politics and cruelty toward those millions in the U.S. without proper residence credentials. This kind of belligerent international liberalism, if not moderated, would recall the ideological joustings that made the First Cold War such a drain on resources and destroyed hopes for a rule-governed geopolitics, anchored in respect for the UN Charter and embodying commitments to promote a more peaceful, just, and ecologically responsible world.
Tags: alignments, China, COVID-19, geopolitics, liberal internationalism, post-pandemic globalism, Russia, the Chinese challenge, Thucydides Trap, U.S.