Friday, July 28, 2023

Is The United Nations Effective In The Twentieth Century?

By Sri Lanka Guardian•July 24, 2023•Essays feature Kazi Anwarul Masud Sri Lanka Guardian Essays United Nations•Comments : 0

by Kazi Anwarul Masud

SETTING UP OF THE UNITED NATIONS

Due to the tensions that have arisen in the US, China, and Russia in particular threatening peace and tranquility in the rest of the world question has arisen about the effectiveness of the United Nations. Going back to the defeat of Germany in the Second World War and then the immediate task of the victorious powers of the division of Germany one cannot but refer to the Dumbarton Oaks Proposals of October 1944 to be known as the United Nations which would consist of 1) a General Assembly composed of all the members, 2) a Security Council of eleven members, of which five would be permanent and the other six would be chosen by the General Assembly for two-year terms, 3) an International Court of Justice, and 4) a Secretariat. An Economic and Social Council, working under the authority of the General Assembly, was also provided for.

The Palais des Nations UN Headquarters in Geneva [Photo credit: Jonathan Ansel Moy de Vitry/Unsplash]

The essence of the plan was that responsibility for preventing future war should be conferred upon the Security Council. The actual method of voting in the Security Council — an all-important question — was left open at Dumbarton Oaks for future discussion. Another important feature of the Dumbarton Oaks plan was that member states were to place armed forces at the disposal of the Security Council, if needed, to prevent war or suppress acts of aggression. The absence of such a force, it was generally agreed, had been a fatal weakness in the older League of Nations.

The Dumbarton Oaks proposals were fully discussed throughout the Allied countries. The British Government issued a detailed commentary, and in the United States, the Department of State distributed 1,900,000 copies of the text and arranged for speakers, radio programs, and motion picture films to explain the proposals. Comments and constructive criticisms came from several governments, e.g., Australia, Belgium, Canada, Czechoslovakia, France, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, the Union of South Africa, the USSR, the United Kingdom, and the United States. ( History of the United Nations). At the time of the Dumberton Oaks China was Ching Kai Shek’s Taiwan and not Mao Tse Tung’s China which remains today as a rich and powerful country presided over by Xi-Jinping’s authoritarian regime.

JESSICA CHEN WEISS ON PERILOUS LOGIC OF ZERO-SUM GAME

Jessica Chen Weiss of Cornell University and an expert on China in a recent article in Foreign Affairs magazine ( China Trap- U.S. Foreign Policy and the Perilous Logic of Zero-Sum Competition) has pointed out the difficulty faced by both the US and China stemming from the inability of Western powers to read the mind of Xi-Jinping who holds absolute power in China in all spheres of the life of Chinese people. In his present term, Xi-Jinping has surpassed Mao Tse Tung whose understanding of the strategy of US President Richard Nixon was more pragmatic than one would have expected from a revolutionary. In April this year in a long conversation with the prestigious British magazine The Economist Henry Kissinger spoke of how to prevent a US and China war. Kissinger expressed his alarm about China’s and America’s intensifying competition for technological and economic pre-eminence.

HENRY KISSINGER WAS HOPEFUL OF CHINESE RESTRAINT

“We’re in the classic pre-world War I situation,” he says, “where neither side has much margin of political concession and in which any disturbance of the equilibrium can lead to catastrophic consequences.” Mr. Kissinger believes that AI will become a key factor in security within five years. He compares its disruptive potential to the invention of printing, which spread ideas that played a part in causing the devastating wars of the 16th and 17th centuries. “[We live] in a world of unprecedented destructiveness,” Mr Kissinger warns. Despite the doctrine that a human should be in the loop, automatic and unstoppable weapons may be created. “If you look at military history, you can say, it has never been possible to destroy all your opponents, because of limitations of geography and of accuracy. Now, he says, there are no limitations. Every adversary is 100% vulnerable.”

He also cautioned against misinterpreting China’s ambitions. In Washington, “They say China wants world domination…The answer is that they in China want to be powerful,” he says. “They’re not heading for world domination in a Hitlerian sense,” he says. “That is not how they think or have ever thought of world order.” In Nazi Germany war was inevitable because Adolf Hitler needed it. but China is different. He has met many Chinese leaders, starting with Mao Zedong. He did not doubt their ideological commitment, but this has always been welded onto a keen sense of their country’s interests and capabilities.

Kissinger sees the Chinese system as more Confucian than Marxist. That teaches Chinese leaders to attain the maximum strength of which their country is capable and to seek to be respected for their accomplishments. Chinese leaders want to be recognized as the international system’s final judges of their own interests.

BIDEN ADMINISTRATION ADVISED OFFERING ATTRACTIVE ALTERNATIVES TO CHINA

In China Trap Jessica Chen Wiess gives credit to President Joe Biden’s administration for acknowledging that the United States and its partners must provide an attractive alternative to what China is offering, and it has taken some steps in the right direction, such as multilateral initiatives on climate and hunger. Yet the instinct to counter every Chinese initiative, project, and provocation remains predominant, crowding out efforts to revitalize an inclusive international system that would protect U.S. interests and values even as global power shifts and evolves. Even with the war in Ukraine claiming considerable U.S. attention and resources, the conflict’s broader effect has been to intensify focus on geopolitical competition, reinforced by Chinese-Russian convergence.

Leaders in both Washington and Beijing claim to want to avoid a new Cold War. The fact is that their countries are already engaged in a global struggle. The United States seeks to perpetuate its preeminence and an international system that privileges its interests and values; China sees U.S. leadership as weakened by hypocrisy and neglect, providing an opening to force others to accept its influence and legitimacy. On both sides, there is growing fatalism that a crisis is unavoidable and perhaps even necessary: that mutually accepted rules of fair play and coexistence will come only after the kind of eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation that characterized the early years of the Cold War—survival of which was not guaranteed then and would be even less assured now. In Washington and Beijing, there is growing fatalism that a crisis is perhaps necessary.

SHANGRILA DIALOGUE AND FORTHCOMING BLINKEN VISIT TO CHINA

In the aftermath of the Shangrila Dialogue in Singapore held this year President Joe Biden held firm that Antony Blinken, Biden’s Secretary of State should go to China ahead of Janet Yellen, Biden’s Treasury Secretary and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo. The Chinese were more interested in getting concrete results for both economic growth and domestic consumption. Chinese unease remains as does its belief that the US despite its policy of “ Strategic Ambiguity” relating to Taiwan is determined to contain its rise as a superpower.

In March last year, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan warned China that helping the Russian invasion of Ukraine would cost China despite Sino-Russian “ limitless” friendship. It is believed that China was caught off guard by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It is also incompatible with Chinese policy because they are incompatible with the way China views war. Beijing prefers extracting concessions through coercion over the use of force and with Ukraine menaced by tens of thousands of Russian troops along its borders, China didn’t expect Putin to invade “because they didn’t think he needed to.”

RUSSIAN INVASION OF UKRAINE VERSUS CHINESE FOREIGN POLICY

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, where it has recognized two breakaway republics, has challenged fundamental principles of Chinese foreign policy particularly noninterference in other countries’ affairs, and respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity. “If the concept of sovereignty means anything in practice to a country like China she would be expected to stand up and to speak out. In formulating its response, China has had to consider the implications for Taiwan. If China explicitly endorsed the separatists’ plans, against Ukrainian sovereignty, then logically the Japanese, Americans, and others can make similar claims in Taiwan. That’s the kind of logic that the Chinese government would like to avoid. As mentioned earlier Jessica Chen Weiss in her article China Trap appears to be pessimistic. She thinks that Beijing is beginning to believe that coercion may be necessary to halt Taiwan’s permanent separation.

Although Beijing continues to prefer peaceful unification, it is coming to believe that coercive measures may be necessary to halt moves toward Taiwan’s permanent separation and compel steps toward unification, particularly given the Chinese perception that Washington’s support for Taiwan is a means to contain China. Even if confidence in China’s military and economic trajectory leads Beijing to believe that “time and momentum” remain on its side, political trends in Taiwan and in the United States make officials increasingly pessimistic about prospects for peaceful unification. Beijing has not set a timetable for seizing Taiwan and does not appear to be looking for an excuse to do so.

US-CHINA TRADE AND ECONOMIC RELATIONS

The most urgent goal for U.S. officials is restoring military-to-military channels with Beijing following multiple dangerous close calls in recent months, including a near-collision of warships near Taiwan and an aggressive fighter jet flyby over the South China Sea. Beijing recently rejected a U.S. offer for Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to meet his Chinese counterpart doubting the “sincerity” of the invitation. Chinese officials are still upset about the punishments the United States imposed on the Chinese Defense Minister in 2018 for buying arms from Russia. They also view Washington’s deployment of air and naval assets to the South China Sea as an affront to China’s-sovereignty and believe that improving communications with Washington will simply make the Pentagon more comfortable operating in East Asia.

CONCLUSION

Yet one has to take into consideration that the world today is neither unipolar nor bipolar. Multipolarity has taken center stage and the US has to take the help of other countries of NATO and the European Union as China has to take into account help from Russia and others who either voted in favor of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in the UN Resolution or those who had abstained. In any case, the world would not accept the extinction of humanity just because a few countries possess nuclear weapons.

Kazi Anwarul Masud is a retired Bangladeshi diplomat. During his tenure, he worked in several countries as the ambassador of Bangladesh including Thailand, Vietnam, South Korea and Germany

Flags in front of United Nations building in New York City

Flags in front of United Nations building in New York City

Is The UN Still Effective? – OpEd

July 21, 2023 0 Comments

By Ambassador Kazi Anwarul Masud

Due to the tensions that have arisen in the US, China, and Russia in particular threatening peace and tranquility in the rest of the world, the question has arisen about the effectiveness of the United Nations.

Going back to the defeat of Germany in the Second World War and then the immediate task of the victorious powers of the division of Germany one cannot but refer to the Dumbarton Oaks Proposals of October 1944 to be known as the United Nations which would consist of 1) a General Assembly composed of all the members, 2) a Security Council of eleven members, of which five would be permanent and the other six would be chosen by the General Assembly for two-year terms, 3) an International Court of Justice, and 4) a Secretariat. An Economic and Social Council, working under the authority of the General Assembly, was also provided for.

In April this year in a long conversation with the prestigious British magazine The Economist, Henry Kissinger spoke of how to prevent a US and China war. Kissinger expressed his alarm about China’s and America’s intensifying competition for technological and economic pre-eminence.

Now, Kissinger says, there are no limitations. Every adversary is 100% vulnerable.” He also cautioned against misinterpreting China’s ambitions. In Washington, “They say China wants world domination…The answer is that they in China want to be powerful,” he says. “They’re not heading for world domination in a Hitlerian sense,” he says. “That is not how they think or have ever thought of world order.” In Nazi Germany war was inevitable because Adolf Hitler needed it. but China is different. He has met many Chinese leaders, starting with Mao Zedong. He did not doubt their ideological commitment, but this has always been welded onto a keen sense of their country’s interests and capabilities. Kissinger sees the Chinese system as more Confucian than Marxist. That teaches Chinese leaders to attain the maximum strength of which their country is capable and to seek to be respected for their accomplishments. Chinese leaders want to be recognized as the international system’s final judges of their own interests.

In China Trap, Jessica Chen Wiess gives credit to President Joe Biden’s administration for acknowledging that the United States and its partners must provide an attractive alternative to what China is offering, and it has taken some steps in the right direction, such as multilateral initiatives on climate and hunger. Yet the instinct to counter every Chinese initiative, project, and provocation remains predominant, crowding out efforts to revitalize an inclusive international system that would protect U.S. interests and values even as global power shifts and evolves.

Even with the war in Ukraine claiming considerable U.S. attention and resources, the conflict’s broader effect has been to intensify focus on geopolitical competition, reinforced by Chinese-Russian convergence. Leaders in both Washington and Beijing claim to want to avoid a new Cold War. The fact is that their countries are already engaged in a global struggle. The United States seeks to perpetuate its preeminence and an international system that privileges its interests and values; China sees U.S. leadership as weakened by hypocrisy and neglect, providing an opening to force others to accept its influence and legitimacy. On both sides, there is growing fatalism that a crisis is unavoidable and perhaps even necessary: that mutually accepted rules of fair play and coexistence will come only after the kind of eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation that characterized the early years of the Cold War—survival of which was not guaranteed then and would be even less assured now. In Washington and Beijing, there is growing fatalism that a crisis is perhaps necessary.

In formulating its response, China has had to consider the implications for Taiwan. If China explicitly endorsed the separatists’ plans, against Ukrainian sovereignty, then logically the Japanese, Americans, and others can make similar claims in Taiwan. That’s the kind of logic that the Chinese government would like to avoid. As mentioned earlier Jessica Chen Weiss in her article China Trap appears to be pessimistic. She thinks that Beijing is beginning to believe that coercion may be necessary to halt Taiwan’s permanent separation.

Besides given the $700 billion in trade between the United States and China, the U.S. business community “remains focused on the importance of the relationship,” said the senior State Department official. “U.S. businesspeople are likely to ask for a reduction in tensions so there is lower risk and lower acrimony for their businesses in China,” said Daniel Russel, a China expert at the Asia Society. The most urgent goal for U.S. officials is restoring military-to-military channels with Beijing following multiple dangerous close calls in recent months, including a near-collision of warships near Taiwan and an aggressive fighter jet flyby over the South China Sea.

Beijing recently rejected a U.S. offer for Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to meet his Chinese counterpart doubting the “sincerity” of the invitation. Chinese officials are still upset about the punishments the United States imposed on the Chinese Defense Minister in 2018 for buying arms from Russia. They also view Washington’s deployment of air and naval assets to the South China Sea as an affront to China’s-sovereignty and believe that improving communications with Washington will simply make the Pentagon more comfortable operating in East Asia.

Conclusion

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Ambassador Kazi Anwarul Masud

Kazi Anwarul Masud is a former Secretary and ambassador of Bangladesh

Friday, July 21, 2023

Kazi Anwarul Masud

Kazi Anwarul Masud is a retired Bangladeshi diplomat. During his tenure, he worked in several countries as the ambassador of Bangladesh including Thailand, Vietnam, South Korea and Germany

Can There be a Concert In Europe to Prevent a Nuclear Catastrophe?

PUBLISHED ON JULY 17, 2023

SRI LANKA GUARDIAN ESSAYS

CONCERT OF EUROPE AND EUROPEAN BALANCE OF POWER

As is generally known Concert of Europe was a general consensus among the great powers of 19th-century Europe to maintain the European balance of power, political boundaries, and spheres of influence. Never a perfect unity and subject to disputes and jockeying for position and influence, the Concert was an extended period of relative peace and stability in Europe following the Wars of French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars. which had consumed the continent since the 1790s. Congress of Vienna (1814–1815), was dominated by the five great powers of Europe: Austria, France, Prussia, Russia, and the United Kingdom. Initially envisioning regular Congresses among the great powers to resolve potential disputes, in practice, Congresses were held on an ad hoc basis and were generally successful in preventing or localizing conflicts. The more conservative members of the Concert of Europe (Russia, Austria, and Prussia), used the system to oppose revolutionary and liberal movements and weaken the forces of nationalism. The formal Congress System fell apart in the 1820s but peace between the Great Powers continued and occasional meetings reminiscent of the Congresses continued to be held at times of Crisis. Following German unification, German Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck sought to revive the Concert of Europe to protect Germany’s gains and secure its leading role in European affairs. The revitalized Concert included Austria, France, Italy, Russia, and Britain, with Germany as the driving continental power. The Concert of Europe ended with the outbreak of World War I in 1914. The Concert of Europe describes the geopolitical order in Europe from 1814 to 1914, during which the great powers tended to act in concert to avoid wars and revolutions and generally maintain the territorial and political status quo. Particularly in the early years of the Concert, the Concert was maintained through the Congress System – sometimes called the Vienna System – which was a series of Congresses among the great powers to resolve disputes or respond to new issues.

FAILURE OF CONCERT OF EUROPE AND FIRST WORLD WAR

The ultimate failure of the Concert of Europe, culminating in the First World War, was driven by various factors including rival alliances and the rise of nationalism. The Congress-focused approach to international affairs continued to be influential in the later League of Nations, the United Nations, the Group of Seven, and other multi-lateral summits and organizations. The Concert of Europe drew upon their ideas and the notion of a balance of power in international relations, so that the ambitions of each great power would be restrained by the others: The Concert of Europe was very much a response to the French Revolution. The Holy Alliance was an informal alliance led by Russia, Austria, and Prussia which aimed to reduce the influence of secularism and liberalism in Europe. The Quadruple Alliance, by contrast, was a standard treaty, and the great powers did not invite any minor allies to sign it. The primary objective was to bind the signatories to support the terms of the Second Treaty of Paris for 20 years. It included a provision for the High Contracting Parties to “renew their meeting at fixed periods for the purpose of consulting on their common interests” which were the “prosperity of the Nations and the maintenance of peace in Europe”. The Concert of Europe began in 1814-1815.

THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA

The Congress of Vienna took place from November 1814 to June 1815 in Vienna, Austria, and brought together representatives from over 200 European polities. The Congress of Vienna created a new international world order which was based on two main ideologies: restoring and safeguarding power balancing in Europe; and collective responsibility for peace and stability in Europe among the “Great Powers”.( the writer acknowledges that parts of the history written above are inspired from WIKIPEDIA). Things have changed since the days of the Congress of Vienna along with the disappearance of the Austro-Hungarian empire and the emergence of the US from the isolation of being surrounded by two oceans. Strangely some scholars blamed President Woodrow Wilson for choosing the wrong advisers to represent his policies. His closest advisor even thought that Britain allied with Japan could attack the US while in fact at that time Britain was sorely dependent on the US due to her financial difficulties. The Great War has long been fodder for historical debates. The German historian Fritz Stern famously labeled the conflict, which erupted in the summer of 1914 and officially ended in November 1918, as “the first calamity of the twentieth century, the calamity from which all other calamities sprang.” Philip Zelikow, a University of Virginia professor with several tours in the U.S. government, has written an important book, The Road Less Traveled: The Secret Battle to End the Great War, 1916-17. Zelikow argues—convincingly—that there was a missed opportunity to achieve peace in the middle of what would later become known as World War I. The Great War has long been fodder for historical debates. But often overlooked was whether peace could have been made in 1916 and early 1917—before the entry of the United States in April 1917. By joining the Entente alliance, the United States helped seal the fate of the so-called Central Powers: Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottomans. An earlier peace would’ve foreclosed the possibility of the communists seizing power in Russia and could have, the British Foreign Secretary Edward Grey later wrote, “demonstrated the stultification and failure of Prussian militarism.” This was the failure of Woodrow Wilson to grasp the opportunity of acting as the mediator when the so-called Central Powers and Britain would have consented to a meditator role by the US President. Similarly, analysts have argued that Second World War could have been averted if Adolf Hitler had either not attacked the Soviet Union or the Western Powers had put an end to Hitler’s expansionist ambition which got encouragement by the Western Powers’ inaction on Hitler’s annexation of Austria and later his march on Poland, France, and other European nations.

KARSTEN JUNG ON NEW CONCERT FOR EUROPE SINCE SECOND WORLD WAR

In his masterly analysis, German Professor Karsten Jung ( WASHINGTON QUARTERLY A NEW CONCERT FOR EUROPE SINCE THE END OF SECOND WORLD WAR 2023 The Elliott School of International Affairs ) argued that Much of the debate on post-war order thus centers on the question of how to reconcile these positions and (re)build a European security architecture that accounts for Russia’s structural power without rewarding, or even merely accepting its aggressive behavior. This article argues that the two positions are not as irreconcilable as they may initially seem. Indeed, a fresh look at how the 19^th-century Concert of Europe dealt with post-Napoleonic France provides a possible answer to the vexing question of how to protect vulnerable states from, while building a sustainable continental order with, today’s Russia. To fully appreciate why, especially in its early years, the Concert of Europe was so remarkably successful in keeping the peace and preserving order, it is imperative to consider its dual nature as both a mutual defense arrangement and a collective security organization.

Thus, guarding and preserving both security (understood as protecting the integrity of individual states and their systems of government from external aggression) and order (understood as governing continental affairs through setting and enforcing principles and norms), the concert approach promises to reconcile two seemingly conflicting objectives that have marred the Central and Eastern European borderlands throughout the post-Cold War era. To make this argument, this article first outlines the unique nature and characteristics of the Concert of Europe in its historical form. It then sketches the major fault lines and the gradual demise of the post-Cold War security architecture in Europe.

In a third and fourth step, it adapts these lessons to the present and shows how a concerted alliance and a great power concert can complement each other in maintaining security and order in 21^st-century Europe. The Concert of Europe was both a mutual defense arrangement and a collective security organization. If it seems worthwhile to revisit a centuries-old institution in search of a present-day peacemaker, this is not least due to the fact that Russian analysts like Dmitri Trenin, a member of Russia’s Foreign and Defense Policy Council and vocal advocate of Putin’s war in Ukraine, seem convinced that “the best model for managing power rivalries is some sort of a global Concert of Powers, modeled on the nineteenth-century Concert of Europe.” Assuming, of course, that their country would be part of the exclusive great power club, Fyodor Lukyanov, research director of the Valdai Discussion Club and Chairman of the Foreign and Defense Policy Council, concurs that “what is needed is precisely a genuine professional diplomacy in the spirit of the 19th century, a diplomacy that is familiar from textbooks but whose actual practice has been virtually forgotten.”

Compared to the international institutions we are used to today, the Concert of Europe was a much more diffuse and immensely less institutionalized affair. It had no headquarters, no international staff, and no single founding document. It was also decidedly more hierarchical than today’s egalitarian international formats: claiming for themselves “rights as such, distinct from any derived from treaties,” the great powers united in the Concert took on a shared, yet exclusive, responsibility for the maintenance of order and stability in Europe… The first institution established by the great powers at the end of the Napoleonic Wars was in fact not the consultative congress system that is now most prominently associated with the Concert, but rather a defensive alliance directed explicitly against the aggressor: with the Treaty of Chaumont, signed in March 1814, Britain, Austria, Russia, and Prussia prolonged their alliance for twenty years beyond the end of the war to keep France in check and preserve the order they had fought to defend.11 The 1814 Treaty of Chaumont prolonged the Quadruple Alliance for 20 years to keep France in check A New Concert for Europe: Security and Order After the War.

Only later did the great powers formally adopt the principle and practice of periodic consultations to shape and guide the continental order. Having come to appreciate the advantages of working closely with their peers during wartime, the Big Four vowed in the Quadruple Alliance Treaty of November 1815 to keep up their habit of private deliberations in peacetime. To this effect, they undertook in Article VI of the treaty to henceforth convene at regular intervals to discuss and collectively decide upon any measures they might deem necessary for the maintenance of peace and security in Europe. It was not until three years later, in 1818 at Aix-la-Chapelle, that the Allies were prepared to take up the question of a potential French accession to the Concert. Firmly convinced that the great power status of his country and the legitimacy of his restored monarchy accorded him a seat at the table, historian Mark Jarrett writes, King “Louis XVIII boldly instructed his minister to either join the alliance or destroy it.” Having anticipated such a move, the British Foreign Secretary, Viscount Castlereagh, offered a creative response, yielding to King Louis’ demand for representation in the Concert, but preserving intact the defensive commitments under the Treaty of Chaumont without the French. The allied ministers concurred, thus inviting the erstwhile enemy to join the Concert, but not the Alliance. In this manner, the concert system of the early 19th century institutionalized a dual architecture for maintaining security and order in Europe.

On one hand, the Quadruple Alliance and the provisions of the Treaty of Chaumont ensured security from France through a mutual defense agreement directed against the erstwhile aggressor. On the other, the consultative mechanism under Article VI of the Quadruple Alliance at the heart of the Congress System provided for the maintenance of continental order in cooperation with France through a fledgling collective security arrangement involving all—but also only—the great powers. The solution conceived by Castlereagh thus addressed both the immediate security concerns of continental powers weary of a renewed attack by keeping their defenses intact and the broader need to quell revisionist challenges to the fundamental principles and norms underpinning the continental order by giving all major powers a stake in its preservation. At both tasks, the concert system was remarkably successful. The era of relative calm it oversaw between the Congress of Vienna and the Crimean War of 1854, Henry Kissinger notes, was “the longest period of peace” Europe had ever known.”

EMERGENCE OF CHINA AS A THREAT TO WESTERN POWERS

The world of yesteryears has changed today with the emergence of China as the richest country though she remains years behind the US both in wealth and militarily. In July this year When NATO put forward a new blueprint for the future this week, the alliance did not mince words about China. China, NATO declared, was a systemic “challenge,” calling out the country for the first time in its mission statement. The country’s policies were “coercive,” its cyber operations “malicious” and its rhetoric “confrontational.” Together with Russia, Beijing was striving to “subvert the rules-based international order,” the alliance said — efforts that “run counter to our values and interests.” For Beijing, the forceful declaration by NATO reinforced a sense that China is being encircled by hostile powers bent on hobbling the country’s ascent. Adding to that concern, the NATO summit included, also for the first time, the leaders of four Asia-Pacific countries: South Korea, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand.

“This is very serious,” said Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing. “It frames China as an adversary in a global perspective, not only in the Pacific and in East Asia, and it does so in a formal document.” … Days before the NATO summit, leaders of the Group of 7 countries announced plans to raise $600 billion to expand global infrastructure investment in developing countries. It is designed to counter Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, a big money push to build ports, rail lines, and telecommunications networks around the world — and shore up China’s diplomatic ties in the process. Such moves are part of the Biden administration’s ongoing effort to strengthen global alliances in the face of China’s growing economic, political, and military might.

In the last year, the administration has announced that the United States and Britain would help Australia develop nuclear-powered submarines; created a new economic bloc with about a dozen Asia-Pacific nations; and strengthened relations within the so-called Quad coalition of Australia, India, and Japan and the United States. …

CHINA’S EXPANSION OF NUCLEAR ARSENAL

China’s push to rapidly expand its nuclear arsenal has also set off alarm bells, as has its willingness to leverage economic ties for political purposes. Beijing, for example, cut off trade with Lithuania for allowing Taiwan to open a “Taiwanese representative office” in its capital. The uneasiness intensified after China’s leader, Xi Jinping, declared in early February that his country’s friendship with Russia had “no limits,” just days before Moscow launched its attack on Ukraine. Since then, Chinese leaders have declined to condemn Russia for the invasion, instead blaming Washington and NATO for goading Moscow with the alliance’s expansion in Central and Eastern Europe.

In some NATO countries, negative views of China remain at or near historic highs, according to a new Pew Research Center survey published recently. Despite NATO Secretary General’s assurance that China is not NATO’s adversary“In the future, Chinese war planning or security will have to take into consideration not only the U.S. as a potential enemy, but also NATO,” said Yun Sun, the director of the China Program at the Stimson Center in Washington. A White House official said last week that the administration did not see the participation of the four Asia-Pacific countries as a move toward the creation of an “Asian version of NATO.”

But the prospect remains a concern for Beijing. Ahead of the Madrid summit, the Global Times, a state-backed nationalist tabloid, strongly condemned the participation of Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand in the meetings. “It’s an extremely unwise choice for any Asia-Pacific country and is bound to damage that country’s strategic trust with China, inevitably leading to consequences,” read the editorial. “The sewage of the Cold War cannot be allowed to flow into the Pacific Ocean.”

CHINA’S CALL FOR COOPERATIVE MULTILATERAL PARTNERS

Determined to show that it is not isolated, Beijing has accelerated efforts to build up its own partnerships. In recent months, Beijing has sought to expand its military and economic presence in the South Pacific. Last month, Mr. Xi spoke virtually to leaders from the BRICS economic bloc — which includes Brazil, Russia, India, and South Africa — and touted Beijing as an open and cooperative multilateral partner. He contrasted China’s approach with what he called the “bloc-based” and “zero-sum” strategy of other countries. He called on nations to join China’s new Global Security Initiative and its Global Development Initiative, two loosely defined campaigns. “China is in a rush to gather friends to break isolation and to break down U.S. and Western alliances,” said David Arase, a professor of international politics at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center. Recently, Jens Plötner, a top German foreign policy adviser, warned that attempts to decouple economically from China would result in a “self-fulfilling prophecy” by driving Beijing and Moscow even closer together. But any attempts by Beijing to exploit such disagreements within the bloc would not go unnoticed, NATO warned in its mission statement. “We will boost our shared awareness, enhance our resilience and preparedness, and protect against the P.R.C.’s coercive tactics and efforts to divide the Alliance,” it said, referring to the People’s Republic of China.

CHINA WARNS US OF NUCLEAR THREATS

In the recent past, China has warned of nuclear threats against the US. Hu Xijin, chief editor of Global Times, “Given the intensifying US strategic containment of China, I would like to remind once again that we have many urgent tasks, but one of the most important is to keep rapidly increasing the number of nuclear warheads and strategic missiles like the Dongfeng 41 with extremely long-range and high survival capabilities,” Hu Xinjin wrote in a post written about the cornerstone of China’s strategic resilience against the United States. He wrote voicing the will of the Chinese government or in other words, those of Xi-Jinping that “Our nuclear missiles must be so numerous that the US elite will tremble at the thought of military confrontation with China at that time. “On such a basis, we can calmly and actively manage our differences with the US and avoid all kinds of gunfire. As US hostility toward China continues to burn, China needs to use her strength and the unbearable risks China would face if she took the risk to force China to remain calm. His comments come days after US President Biden ordered the US intelligence community to investigate whether the Covid-19 virus first emerged in China from an animal source or from a laboratory accident – stoking fury from China. The move hints at growing impatience with waiting for a conclusive World Health Organization (WHO) investigation into how the pandemic that has killed more than 3.5 million people worldwide began.US President Biden ordered the US intelligence community to investigate whether the Covid-19 virus first emerged in China from an animal source or from a laboratory accident. During an ongoing meeting of WHO member states, European Union countries and a range of others also pressed for clarity on the next steps in the organization’s efforts to solve the mystery, seen as vital to averting future pandemics.

The WHO finally managed to send a team of independent, international experts to Wuhan in January, more than a year after Covid-19 first surfaced there in late 2019, to help probe the pandemic origins. But in their long-delayed report published in late March, the international team and their Chinese counterparts drew no firm conclusions, instead ranking a number of hypotheses according to how likely they believed they were. In another article ( CAN US-CHINA POLITICAL TENSION LEAD TO WAR) I had written about US TARGETTING CHINA AND THUCYDIDES’ TRAP). Unfortunately targeting China as the prime enemy of both by Donald Trump and Joe Biden has not improved the situation. Though the US reportedly is working backchannel diplomacy so that China does not make the mistake that centuries back Sparta and Greece had committed causing the death and destruction of thousands of lives. In an article written in the Diplomat in 2015, Professor Graham Allison of the Harvard Kennedy School popularized the phrase “Thucydides’ trap,” to explain the likelihood of conflict between a rising power and a currently dominant one. This is based on the famous quote from Thucydides: “It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this inspired in Sparta that made war inevitable.” This usage has even spread to Chinese President Xi Jinping who said “We all need to work together to avoid the Thucydides trap – destructive tensions between an emerging power and established powers … Our aim is to foster a new model of major country relations.”

Despite the overwhelming demand of the world population that SINO-RUSSIAN friendship should not be turned into a race to demonstrate the superiority of Communism versus Democracy disregarding the lessons taught by, in the case of China, Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao. Jiang Zemin served as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party from 1989 to 2002, as chairman of the Central Military Commission from 1989 to 2004, and as president of China from 1993 to 2003. Jiang was the paramount leader of China from 1989 to 2002. He was the core leader of the third generation of Chinese leadership, one of four core leaders alongside Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, and Xi Jinping. In the case of Russia, complications have arisen in world politics due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In the final analysis, the multipolar world of today would not allow a few countries possessing nuclear weapons would not allow the extinction of mankind which has survived disasters for a millennium.