Category Archives: Global Governance for G20/G8

The Birth and Consequences of a New Galaxy

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“When we last saw our hero…”,  sorry I couldn’t resist writing that.  In any event, this is the second part (the first part is the previous blog post, ” The Origins and Consequences of the Two Global Governance Galaxies“) of remarks I was supposed to have delivered at the ISA’s Friday Panel (13:45 at Viger C) , “the G8/G20 and International Organisations” chaired by Dries Lesage, Ghent University and John Kirton Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto.  My sorrow at being unable to attend has turned to opportunity.

Now what is the meaning of “new galaxy” above.  Well as I pointed out in the earlier blog post, John Kirton and his colleagues in their edited volume Making Global Economic Governance Effective: Hard and Soft Law Institutions in a Crowded World spoke of two galaxies but the reference to the Gx was principally about the G8.  And in fact my reference to new galaxy is really about the G20 Leaders Summit.

Now why do I say this?  For those who tend to follow these sometimes esoteric matters, there remain significant questions over the new G20 Leaders Summit.  Created in the 2008 global financial crisis, questions linger over whether the abatement of this crisis – assuming that is what we are seeing – will forestall the transition of the G20 – structured for a crisis – to a permanent steering committe for at least global economic and financial issues.

Then there is the ambivalence of some key actors with respect to the G20.  The United States  – with the concurrence of the other G20 leaders – inaugurated at the Pittsburgh Summit  the G20 as a permanent organization for global economic matters.  But it would appear that US ardor has waned since then.  From public though anonymous statements  from US officials at Pittsburgh  that the G8 was finished – I am paraphrasing – and that the future was the G20, the US has suggested that there will be an unspecified period of transition between leaders clubs to quiet hints that the US would be perfectly willing to proceed in global governance with ad hoc bodies that worked.  For the US there is some inevitable friction in the flattening of the global governance hierarchy – meaning the US has insisted that others take greater responsibility – but it would seem that it is harder to accept that the US may no longer get its way in the course of global governance decision-making.

And then there are those from the G7/8 that always remained skeptical – for a variety of reasons – over enlargement – read that at least as Canada, Italy and Japan.

But there is support for the newly rising powers and an acceptance of the new enlarged leadership – if not the responsibilities necessarily.  We have come to understand – if we needed the evidence – that China is a supporter of the new leaders club.  Indeed in a cable – released by WikiLeaks – this a cable to Jim Steinberg from US officials at the US Embassy in Beijing, dated September 29, 200 – reflecting a meeting with Chinese officials where the Chinese official,

“… thanked President Obama for his leadership in institutionalizing the G-20, which has created a “comfortable” platform for countries like China and India to play a larger role.” This official also expressed the hope, “that the United States would coordinate closely with China as we established new rules for the organization, and that it would not become an organization that duplicated the United Nations or the G-8.”

Now the reality is  that it is unclear whether there is any appetite among the key rising powers to take on greater responsibility.  In an earlier time I’ve called China “a part-time global leader”.  But as pointed out by colleagues in China, and mirroring in part the sentiment expressed by the Chinese official in the US cable, China supports the G20 and views it as a legitimate institution, at least with respect to tackling the challenges presented in the global economy.  But still China’s leaders, though accepting the role of the G20 and acknowledging its legitimacy, still are determined to retain full sovereignty over domestic economic matters.  And you can see that in the G20 struggle to fashion a sensible global imbalances framework.

The bottom line is that the G8 and G20 continue to exist in the same Gx space.  And that this, in my opinion, has the unhappy prospect of inhibiting the emergence fully of a permanent G20 steering committee.  Yet notwithstanding this – and in part as a result of the G20 creation in the midst of an all too apparent global financial crisis – what appeared to all of a crisis of biblical proportions – the G20 has grabbed authority and seized the reins of global governance decision-making.

As a result of this leadership, the G20 has moved ahead forthrightly.  It has created or reformed institutions – most notably the reform of the Financial Stability Forum into the Financial Stability Board (FSB).  As early as Washington, it began tasking the International Monetary Fund (IMF) – notably with what has become the MAP (Mutual Assessment Process).  It has called on the original G20 – the G20 Finance Ministers – established some 10 years earlier – to take on the technical work – see the efforts to advance the global imbalances framework and the Leaders pressed ahead to revise the quotas and shares in the World Bank and the IMF.  The efforts would appear to be Gx governance with the support of multilateral institutions – that is the G20, both Leaders and Finance Minister, acting as an inner cabinet and the IFIs and other bodies acting as a kind of civil service being tasked to implement commitments made by Leaders and Ministers at their summits.  There has been grumbling from the IFIs – certainly some of the executive elements – but for most the tasking is coming from their own leaders.

There certainly are “outs” in these commitment compliance and implementation G20 settings.  An obvious loser is the WTO.  While tasked to monitor protectionism with the OECD and UNCTAD, the WTO plays no role in the assessment of trade and current accounts in the global imbalances effort.

But it looks at this moment as though a structured hierarchy has been created with the G20 acting as the executive and the IFIs as civil servants and experts in seeking global economic and financial reforms.  Now these linkages may not continue.  The G20 Leaders may not be able to make the transition to a permanent steering committee.  We may see a widening of the scope of the G20.  Many critics of the structure of the G8 reflected the multiplication of institutions – IFIs, other UN institutions,  ministerial bodies, expert bodies.  With this multiplication of bodies there was a growing complexity without a corresponding increase in implementation: less expertise, compliance and monitoring; more deliberation, conversation and failure to implement.  So while  the relationship of the Bretton Woods-UN with the Gx systems are apparently more productive – the eye will have to ‘remain on the ball’ to insure effective commitment and compliance in the new global governance system.

The Origins and Consequences of Two Global Governance Galaxies

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I know it’s a bit of cheat but I’ve decided that a blog post is the right place to be.  What am I talking about?

Well, this week the International Studies Association (ISA) gathers  for its annual meeting in Montreal Canada.  Dries Lesage from Ghent University with the assistance of John Kirton of G8/G20 research fame – Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, organized a fine panel entitled “The G8/G20 and International Organisations”.  Chaired by these two and adding Greg Chin from York University and CIGI as the official discussant, the two chairs recruited a number of experts to tackle the global governance architecture question.  The panelists include:

  • Peter Debaere, “The European Union and the G20: A Central Role for the European Commission”;
  • Thijs Van de Graff, “The International Energy Agency and the G8/G20:  Causes and Consequences of the Close Interaction Process”;
  • John Kirton and Jenilee Guebert, “G8, G20 and the the IMF: From Rivalry to Mutual Reinforcement’;
  • David Shorr, “G8, G20 and the UN Relationship in Global Security and Development”; and
  • Yours truly preparing  remarks on: “Two Great Galaxies of Global Governance”.

This Panel goes off this Friday (March 18th) at 13:45.  One slight problem.  I won’t be able to be there.  And so I thought that the solution – certainly not a perfect one , but I think a rather good one – if I do say so myself – is to blog my remarks.  So here goes.

So what are these two great galaxies that are referenced in the title of my presentation.  Well John Kirton applied the label (See most recently, John Kirton, Marina Larionova and Paolo Savona, eds., Making Global Economic Governance Effective:  Hard ad Soft Law Institutions in a Crowded World, especially John Kirton, “Multilateral Organizations and G8 Governance: A Framework for Analysis”, pp. 23-42 (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2010)  As John inquired:

How do international institutions, led by the formal, hard law bodies of the Bretton Woods-United Nations (UN) system, and informal plurilateral bodies, led by the Group of Eight (G8) [John unfortunately fails to examine – limiting the evaluation of the institutions], help  each other govern the world?  More specifically, how have and can the world’s many multilateral organizations (MOs) assist the G8 in enhancing its members’ ability to consider, reach consensus on, commit to and comply with ambitious, appropriate agreements  to address key global needs? … Yet little is known about how well, how, where, when and why MOs help or harm G8 governance, and which MOs can be counted on in particular situations to help the most.

John and most experts focus on the formal-informal distinction between the Bretton-Woods-UN system and the Gx system – principally G8 and G20 Leaders’ Summits.  Experts focus on the hard law, broadly multilateral and heavily organized bodies of the Bretton Woods-UN system and contrast it with the far more informal lighter legal, less bureaucratic and heavily reliant on voluntary, open and flexible approaches of the Gx system.  The contrast is real but as any  observer will tell you hard law in international law and in the international system is a rather relative term.  How many Article VII (binding) resolutions of the UN Security Council (UNSC) does it take to underline the limited prospect of hard law commitment and compliance.

From my perspective, it is not the characterization of formal/informal institutions that best describes the differences but the fact is that the principal organizations of the Gx system – the G8 and now the G20 Leaders Summit are leaders clubs as opposed to the international organizations including international bureaucrats and officials.  In fact the most similar organizational form  to the Gx system is the UNSC – but even here national participants are permanent officials, occasionally home country officials, e.g.  foreign ministers, but rarely heads of government. Now this is not the time to make further comparisons on decision-making between the Gx Leaders summits and the UNSC – but it is evident how impaired the UNSC decision-making system is with the differential attribution of the veto is.  The incentives change dramatically  in permitting some countries the right to veto and other not.

Let’s return to the interaction and consequences in having these two galaxies of global governance.  Frequently proponents and critics have emphasized the possible zero sum nature of the two systems [again remember that much of this discussion and critique has taken place between the UN-Bretton Woods system and the G8]  – one formal and one informal.

John Kirton, and perhaps some of his colleagues in this volume suggest that a  central aspect this two-system global governance environment arises from the fact that the new institution building of the Gx process did not follow on from the destruction of the prior system.  Rather, following the demise of the Cold War system in 1989, “The institutions and ideals of a new and old order thus had to compete, converge and cooperate with each other as they sought to govern this ever more demanding and globalizing system.  This of course contrasts dramatically from the architectural building efforts after say World War II (We are reminded of this course by G. John Ikenberry’s seminal volume After Victory: Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order after Major Wars i(Princeton, NJ,: Princeton University Press, 2001). Furthermore, and critically in my estimation, is the fact that the creation of the Gx system –  first in the 1970s and then in 2008 – came about as a result of what was perceived to be the inadequacy of the global governance institutions.  I think its fair to say that these institutions were called forth because of identifiable major economic crises where some officials and leaders determined – rightly or wrongly – that the current institutions were not capable of dealing with the challenges facing the states in the global economy.   And as a result they created these informal institutional leaders clubs.

As with so much of the analysis on the Gx process – whether G8 or now G20 –  there is no consensus here of the relationship between the two galaxies of global governance.  Views range from the two isolated from each other, through the two systems acting as rivals towards each other, to a perspective where the G7/8 and now the G20 act as a kind of ‘inner cabinet’ and the international organizations provide a civil service that can be tasked to implement commitments made at the Gx summit or at the ministerial level.  Certainly in the global financial crisis the G20 leaders summit, especially in the Washington communiqué, tasked the IMF to carry out a number of leaders’ commitments identified at the summit.

It is likely, of course,  that the truth lies somewhere in-between.  The relationship of these two systems is one is one where there is a “pulling together” with, “support flowing both ways,” as suggested by Kirton.  Indeed there is collaboration and support through many of the Gx phases from preparation, commitment and finally implementation.  In that continuum the international organizations can provide, among other things, expertise, officialdom, and compliance monitoring.  In addition the heads of some of the key institutions such as the UN, the IMF, and the World Bank do attend the G20 summits.  Two great galaxies and the effort to support each other, if only grudgingly at times, is probably the best description of this complex relationship.

Let’s look somewhat more closely at the relationship of the G20 to the Bretton Woods-UN system.  I shall do that in the followup blog post.  Kinda of a little bit like a thriller.

Gazing Starward – The Second Annual Princeton Winter Conference

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It is hard not to be distracted by the momentous events unfolding in the Middle East  – especially in Egypt.  But I wanted to turn my attention back to last month and specifically January 14-15th at Princeton University.   On that weekend a number of partners held the second annual Princeton global governance conference.  These Conferences are the partnership of: the Project on the Future of Multilateralism at the Woodrow Wilson School led by John Ikenberry, the International Institutions and Global Governance Program at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) led by Stewart Patrick, the Stanley Foundation led by David Shorr and the Munk School  of Global Affairs led by myself but accompanied by John Kirton.

This Second Princeton Conference was titled “Rivalry and Partnership – The Struggle for a New Global Governance Leadership”.  This Conference was a carry forward from our first Conference, “New Foundations for Global Governance”.  This year’s conference drew together about 30 scholars – principally from the academy in the United States but participants included, as well, experts and officials from Brazil, Canada, Korea, France and Russia.  Our Korean colleagues were invited, especially, to bring to the group a close-in analysis of the Seoul G20 meeting and then our French colleague advanced the debate by describing how the new French host at its President Nicholas Sarkozy would address certain issues in both the G8 and G20 meetings in France.

The Conference reflected a healthy combination of the more theoretic and the close policy discussions on the vital policy issues in the G20.  The organizers put together five panels:

  • Panel One – Tensions in the Structure of Global Governance Leadership – US, the BRICs and Europe;
  • Panel Two – The Consequences of the Seoul G20 Summit – Uncertain Transition?
  • Panel Three – Competing Paradigms – Universality versus Clubs – the Legitimacy Challenge – UN Climate Change, the MEF, IMF and the Bretton Woods System;
  • Panel How Big a Tent? – Like-Mindedness and Diversity and the High Table – NATO, IAEA, G8 and G20; and
  • From Commitment to Compliance – The Challenge of Effectiveness – UN Security Council, IFIs and Gx – Global vs Regional Organizations

The organizers identified for each panel two experts to prepare short memos (5-7 pages and) and also identified 3 to 4 discussants who led off with comments about the substance of the memos.

The discussions were wide-ranging and a times exhilarating – not to mention exhausting.  I shall dwell a bit more on the memos in another blog but let me raise the big themes that seemed to be generated through the discussion and debate.  As the sub-theme suggests the great debate is over two matters:

  • the leadership place and the substance of United States global governance; and
  • the leadership – if any – of the newly emerging large market states, particularly China, but also Brazil, India and Indonesia and even some of the so-called middle powers – Korea, Mexico and even some of the European states.

There was much debate over both themes but no resolution.  In part the continuing and yet unresolved debate arises from different perspectives on:

  • Whether the states are reasonably content with the global governance architecture or it requires a wholesale makeover.  There were views expressed that the leading states were, and are, driven by deep cleavages and norm divisions.  Others focus on the complex web of interdependence that ties traditional states and the rising powers;
  • The matter of hegemony.  Is US ‘decline’ and the fading of hegemony driving the creation of a new architecture or does the US leading role continue to insure the leadership of the United States and the basic architectural structure.  Must the United States forge a new diplomatic behavior in order to reshape the global governance architecture.  If so what is that new behavior;
  • If the leadership structure is to continue – which entails the rising powers taking on leadership in a variety of settings – who are the stakeholders in the newly emerging states that will underpin this new leadership responsibility; and
  • and is the architecture being remade with the entrance of rising powers to positions of global governance leadership, or is there a drawing apart with regions and regional authorities becoming the new architecture of international relations.

The future remains clouded and contentious.  I’ll return to the Princeton debate soon.

Waiting for Godot

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As is always the case, it has been extremely interesting to travel around China  and to talk to colleagues at various research centres and think tanks.  My discussions have focused on global governance and the G20.  And in the current context, of course, there have been large dollops of discussion on the impending Hu Jintao state visit to Washington.

Let me focus on that just a bit.  I have acknowledged in a recent blog post the growing commentary in the US characterizing and then analyzing  the US-China relationship – “Defining the Key Relationship“.  In this post I comment on the Zbigniew Brzezinski op-ed from the NYT.  Brzezinski argued that the leaders should work to produce a declaration to set out the basic principles and practices that should govern the US-China relationship.  I must say I was rather critical of this approach and argued for pragmatic and meaningful steps to advance US-China collaboration.

I am less puzzled now by Brzezinski’s deliverable.  For at stop after stop I got an earful from my colleagues about US policy being unilateral and potentially harmful for other G20 and a wider circle of countries. Colleagues raised the spillover impact of current US policy most notably quantitative easing or QE2.  Though indirectly acknowledging China’s unilateral and hurtful efforts  – mainly fixed exchange – China experts, chose to attack current US efforts.

It would appear that neither country comes away with clean hands and each threatens to impact the G20 countries with policies  carrying significant spillover implications.

Brazil and Global Leadership

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Now my excuse on waiting to blog on the Brazil meeting (November 21st-22nd, “Global Leadership: The Role of Brazil and the US and the Agenda for the 21st Century) referenced in my blog post “Constructing New Leadership“, was in anticipation of the finaling of the meeting’s consensus document. Well the document is now out and you can review it at the Stanley Foundation website.

The Conference in Rio de Janeiro hosted by CEBRI , the Brazilian Center for International Relations,  lasted a day with Brazilian and US experts – yes, your right,  once again I was the interloper in the crowd – in Rio de Janeiro hosted at Cebri offices and focused on global governance leadership questions.  It was both a lesson for me in Brazilian motivations, attitudes and behaviors toward the United States and Brazil’s role in international relations.

Brazil feels highly satisfied by its emergence as a rising power.  Brazilians have always seen themselves as a great power but their domestic political and financial conditions in particular always seemed to get in the road.  But they believe that – finally – they have made it.  As one Brazilian expert pointed out Brazil always saw itself as “Greece upside down”.  The Greeks always look back to a golden age; but Brazilians always look forward.  Brazilians now believe they have gotten their democratic politics right; they have emerged as a multicultural/multiracial society; and their economics and finances have overcome the limitations and manipulations of earlier decades.  They are proud of President  Lula – who leaves on January 1st extraordinarily popular – leaving the presidency  to his PT party successor, Dilma Rousseff.

Brazil was – as one of the Outreach 5 (Brazil, China, India, Mexico, South Africa) and was most vocal in questioning the legitimacy of the G8.  Now, of course, with the emergence of the G20 leaders club it sits at the heart of global governance leadership.  But there is no sense that Brazilian experts feel that it needs to shoulder greater leadership responsibility.  While it is possible, even likely, that President Lula took on an animated role discussing issues in Seoul (he didn’t show up in Toronto), his countrymen seem less inclined to claim a visible leadership role.  Evaluate the following from the Report:

A Brazilian participant helped explain why his foreign policy expert compatriots are hesitant about new global political responsibilities when he noted that Brazil’s basic outlook is to be generally satisfied with its strategic position and lack of immediate threats. Conversely, in other words, the United States has not been totally convincing as it argues for urgent action and the unsustainability of the status quo. Naturally, all participants hope their countries join each other and the rest of the world for enough international cooperation to promote the steady spread of peace and prosperity.

The lack of enthusiasm for seizing leadership was sharpened by the difficulties encountered by Brazil with Turkey when President Lula tried to mediate the proliferation issues between Iran and the P6 (the permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany).   The rather harsh public dismissal by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of the compromise offered by Brazil and Turkey certainly embarrassed President Lula – and did nothing to encourage the President or Brazil to continue his efforts.

But international leadership remains in flux.  The greater diversity of leadership seen most evidently in the G20 suggests a more-concert-like structure for global governance.  But how to move from American hegemony to a diverse concert of powers that may not reflect like-mindedness is not clear at all. As the Report identifies:

The task of integrating newer pivotal powers into the multilateral order and adapting its structure, norms, and policy frameworks involves intertwined challenges. The international system must make room for the new players to assume a bigger role— which calls for traditional powers to welcome political leadership and policy ideas from new quarters, support adjustments to multilateral decision making, and address their own leadership shortfalls. In return, the emerging powers must give tangible content to their new stature by shouldering some of the burden of leadership, bolstering key international norms, and adding their impetus and influence to resolution of major global problems.

The Faces of Celebrity Diplomacy

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By Andrew F Cooper – University of Waterloo

[From the Blog Editor: This is the first blog post by Celebrity Blogger.  This post launches a new series within Rising BRICSAM.  Periodically Celebrity Blogger will provide new insights into the intersection between popular culture and global affairs.  Watch for it.]

Celebrity activism continues to garner a huge amount of attention. The popular Guardian newspaper’s Development Blog currently features a Podcast on the role of celebrities in development http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/audio/2010/dec/17/focus-podcast-celebrity-aid-development?intcmp=122

William Easterly wrote a typically provocative Op Ed in the Washington Post (December 10) on ‘John Lennon vs. Bono: The death of the celebrity activist

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/09/AR2010120904262.html And Daniel Drezner added a quick follow-up piece on his Foreign Affairs Blog.

While the Guardian and Drezner are intrigued by the staying power of celebrity activism, Easterly is convinced he knows the answers: Bono’s access oriented, professional approach to activism serves as a wrong-headed approach. Pointing to the way not taken, he bemoans the symbolic demise of John Lennon’s enthusiastic amateur brand of celebrity activism.

From my own work, showcased in my Celebrity Diplomacy book and subsequent articles, I judge Easterly to be wrong on both counts. Through his fixation on Lennon, Easterly demonstrates he is stuck in a time warp with a focus on narrow profile of dissenters. If he cared to take a global look he could find that this rebellious stream among celebrity activists (or what I term, anti-diplomats) is alive and well. Some of these dissenters such as Harry Belafonte go back to the civil rights era in the US. However, in recent years, there has been a marked transnational turn. In 2006, Belafonte along with Danny Glover made headlines by praising Hugo Chavez’s Bolivarian revolution. And this list of dissenters can be expanded to include not only other mainstream entertainers (Sean Penn jumps out!) but also a number of vibrant activists in many other parts of the world.  In his preoccupation with musicians from the Anglo-sphere Easterly misses the amplified role of performers/dissenters such as Angelique, Kidjo and Arundhati Roy.

Reinforcing the need to expand the global lens a number of these dissenters are featured in the Guardian Blog, notably Bianca Jagger and Annie Lennox. Among other campaigns, both of these celebrity activists have been outspoken critics of Israel’s offensive against Gaza taking part in major rallies in January 2009.

Turning away from this extended pattern of dissent, Easterly’s portrays Bono as a charming technocrat. Yet, as witnessed by his work in the context of the G8 summit process, what is unique about Bono is his ability to go beyond the common boundaries of celebrity activity by acting both an insider and outsider. Bilaterals with G8 leaders were combined with meetings with representatives of civil society, press conferences and public events (such as the 2007 Raise Your Voice against poverty in Rostock) Bono is also an exemplar mentor for other celebrities across the spectrum from Matt Damon to Alicia Keys. If he is a wonk he combines that element of celebrity diplomacy with a deep reservoir of spirituality. After all, Bono made Jesse Helm’s cry by his depiction of AIDS as the leprosy of our age.

What provides celebrity activism with its legitimacy and selective effectiveness is its essential dualism. Diversifying since the Lennon era, notable dissenters that operate as rebellious advocates persist. Rather than being crowded out they operate in contradistinction to the networked and professionalized celebrity stream, epitomized by Bono through his work at DATA/ONE. Rather than nostalgically bemoaning the decline of the stream of dissent, and dismissing celebrity ‘wonkism’ as a wrong turn, this diversity – both in style and geographical scope – needs to be fully appreciated.

The celebrity streams operate as two faces of the same fascinating and on-going phenomenon.

China Cannot Rise Peacefully

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The title in this blog post is the declared bottom line from John Mearsheimer’s recent speech (given in Australia in August 2010) and the article from the China Journal of International Politics, (Vol 3, 2010, “The Gathering Storm: China’s Challenge to US Power in Asia”).  Now I promise to get off this US-China relationship thing soon but I couldn’t leave without evaluating John’s speech and recent article.

For those who don’t know John, he is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago.  He is an IR celebrity – a rather hard thing to do.  He is well known for developing what is called, “Offensive Realism,”  an international relations approach that asserts that all states in an anarchic international system seek power and dominance in the international system.  This is not classic realism but realism that sees nations seeking hegemony more from uncertainty than defensive actions.  Offensive realism in contrast is realism on steroids.

So John looks at the current situation and sees US-China relations through this offensive realism lens:

Thus, the core question that any leader has to ask him or herself is this: what is the best way to maximize my country’s security in a world where another state might have significant offensive military capability as well as offensive intentions, and where there is no higher body I can turn to for help if that other state threatens my country?  This question—more than any other—will motivate American as well as Chinese leaders in the years ahead, as it has in the past.  … The best way for any state to ensure its survival is to be much more powerful than all the other states in the system, because the weaker states are unlikely to attack it for fear they will be soundly defeated. No country in the Western Hemisphere, for example, would dare strike the United States because it is so powerful relative to all its neighbors. To be more specific, the ideal situation for any great power is to be the hegemon in the system, because its survival then would almost be guaranteed.

John is a mild-mannered –  and a thoroughly likable colleague (actually I went to graduate school at Cornell with him) – who is seriously committed to international relations. So while I can, and do, disagree with him frequently – I always take him seriously.  But as you can see from the quotes above, offensive realism is anything but mild-mannered.

For John the actions of China will be not unlike the United States.  The emergence of the United States as a great power is defined by the US’s achieving regional hegemony.  It is the only great power, according to John, to have done so, and having done so it has dedicated itself to not facing another hegemon.  In John’s world of great powers – best expressed in: The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (NY: Norton, 2001)  – a rising power like China will imitate a previous great power – the United States.

It is unlikely that China will pursue military superiority so that it can go on the warpath and conquer other countries in the region, although that is always a possibility. Instead, it is more likely that Beijing will want to dictate the boundaries of acceptable behavior to neighboring countries, much the way the United States makes it clear to other states in the Americas that it is the boss. Gaining regional hegemony, I might add, is probably the only way that China will get Taiwan back.

China will seek hegemony in Asia – pushing out the United States as the United States pushed out the Europeans in the Western Hemisphere to establish regional hegemony.  China will then claim regional hegemony in the Asia-Pacific.  The struggle will not be identical to but also not unlike the struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

For John the world is a world of great powers, not identical to the past but not that different either.  And the significant differences that describe global relations today fade into insignificance in the face of great power dynamics.  As it was; so will it be. Even the dynamics of globalization so dramatic over the last decades fade away and are assessed as insignificant:

My view is that economic interdependence does not have a significant effect on geopolitics one way or the other. After all, the major European powers were all highly interdependent and prospering in 1914 when First World War broke out.

And though the interdependence that John acknowledges was present in the twentieth century, I think most would recognize as significantly different in scale and influence taking into account financial, trade and investment trends.  These trends describe a tight global economic system far beyond the world understood in 1914.  And China is so much more integrated into the world economy than earlier rising powers.  Is conflict impossible? Of course not.  But the dismissal of the global economic context by John is not realistic.

I remain convinced that US-China relations are best described as “yi di, yi you” ( 亦敌 亦友) – “Both Friend and Foe” (see recent posts including “Jumping to Conclusions“).  China and the United States will have to work through periods of rivalry and periods of partnership. Those periods of rivalry could be quite tense but the periods of partnership in global leadership are likely to be quite restorative.

The picture narrated by John Mearsheimer is tragic –  possible  but not likely.  We do not have to conclude as he does:

Indeed, it is downright depressing. I wish that I could tell a more optimistic story about the prospects for peace in the Asia-Pacific region. But the fact is that international politics is a nasty and dangerous business and no amount of good will canameliorate the intense security competition that sets in when an aspiring hegemon appears in Eurasia. And there is little doubt that there is one on the horizon.

The Global Declinist Position

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Harvard’s Niall – pronounced like Neal –  Ferguson is an absolutely prolific writer and a creator of some of the more colorful contemporary metaphors for the evolving world.  A good friend was kind enough to forward me a piece that Niall had penned in the WSJ – “In China’s Orbit“.  The principal thesis of the article is – as the subtext promotes – “After 500 years of Western predominance the world is tilting back to the East.”

One of the dilemma’s for prolific writers such as Ferguson is that they tend to run right into their own earlier position.  Thus in Niall’s case he and a colleague create “Chimerica” the fusion of the the Chinese and American economies  – one export and surplus, the other consumption and deficit – and then in the midst of the meltdown declare it dead.  The problem is that the declaration may yet remain premature.

In this article, the problem presented by his analysis may be that the facts fail to reflect – at least for the time being – this narrative.  Niall suggests that China’s strategy is what he parodies are the Four “Mores”.  By this Niall means: “consume more, import more, invest abroad more and innovate more”.  And while there are elements of this in current Chinese policy, it is not such a clear cut strategy nor outcome.  And certainly it not yet east versus west  as described by Niall – “What we are living through now is the end of 500 years of Western predominance.  This time the Eastern challenger is for real, both economically and geopolitically.”

First on the 4 Mores there remain questions over each element. The fact is China has not really achieved it’s rise on the back of consuming.  Indeed the problem for China is that it remains addicted (see my recent blog post The ‘Drug’ of External Trade)  to exporting and achieving the shift to domestic consumption will not come easily or quickly.  As for more importing, well there is no question that to fuel the manufacturing machine – owned by the way by a variety of folk including the lao wai （老外）  the foreigners, there is significant importation of resources including energy.  But there is a rising chorus of complaint from a number of these countries – (having just returned from Brazil – it is one) that China is only interested in natural resources.  And such disquiet of course spills over from  resources to investments especially by Chinese State-owned enterprises – owned by the government (so much for privatization) – being made in many of these countries.  As for innovation, the final one of the 4 Mores, there is not yet strong evidence of an innovation society.    I might add – since Niall quotes a Chinese Rear Admiral – that the investment strategy justifies, apparently,  ambitious plans for naval expansion and ties it to recent official statements – not public – that raised the temperature on the South China Sea.  But if we want to look at naval strength there is a very long way to go before others – read that the United States – need to start worrying about naval challenges.

The reality is China has made enormous strides and has drawn a greater number of folk out of poverty than any other country in history.  But the development of newly emerging large market countries is not confined to Asia.  And I’m not prepared to conclude that the current primus inter pares – the United States – is now a spent force.  The reality is Asia is rising but the United States is a part of that rising.  It is present in alliances and the US has committed significant military forces in Asia.  As a power that backs on the Pacific it contends along with others in the emergence of this vast region.  So yes, Niall is right in his conclusion –  China is not the master but is no longer the apprentice. But that’s a far cry from some of the more excited assertions about China.

Constructing New Leadership

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An area of obvious difference between the Brazilian and American experts in Rio de Janeiro at Cebri was the question of leadership actions by the rising states.  Much like the Obama Administration, many US experts urged that Brazil  – as other rising powers – needed to step up and take greater responsibility for global governance.  The Brazilians were skeptical of the variously expressed views by US experts that Brazil needed to accept a “pay-to-play” approach to leadership.  Like the US Administration many of these experts urged that Brazil  needed to take responsibility first – to shoulder the burden of leadership – and receive leadership benefits subsequently.  As David Shorr, the Program Officer of the Stanley Foundation, co-host of the Brazil meetings, suggested in the “Discussion Summary” “… the United States has not been totally convincing in making the case for urgent action and the un-sustainability of the status quo.” – Yes I know I haven’t done a full review of the Stanley Foundation-Cebri conference, notwithstanding an earlier promise – and it won’t be done here. But I will tackle it – really.

In struggling to construct a new global governance leadership in the  contemporary circumstances there is no more frustrating calculation than understanding the nature of the relationship between the US and China.  Here is the quintessential traditional power-rising power  conundrum.  This is the power transition in ‘spades’. How should China and the United States interact and to do so in a way to move forward on some of the growing challenges to global governance?

In Sunday’s NYT (November 28, 2010) Helene Cooper in “Asking China to Act Like the U.S.” explores the complex nature of the US-China relationship.  As Cooper suggests, the critical question “turns on a question that is, at its heart, an impossible conundrum: How to get Beijing to make moves that its leaders don’t think are good for their country?” What is evident is that increasingly in the China-US relationship, but also more generally in the rising power relationships, the US is apparently asking the new and diverse leadership circle to take actions that fail to be in conformity with their national interests.

Among others, Cooper turns to some of the realists – possibly neo-realists – in the Washington circle.  And you won’t be surprised these folks are hardly supportive of the current Administration.  One of the identified critics is David Rothkopf a former US official in trade and a former managing director of Kissinger Associates – and now a strategic consultant in the Washington beltway.  For Rothkopf the problem is clear – and so is the answer for that matter.  As Rothkopf sees it this Administration is, as he says, “…still struggling with a post-unilateralist hangover.”  Rothkopf concludes:

… the United States is heading into a future in which countries like China, with independent sources of power, are not reliant on or easily influenced by the United States, and so are pursuing their own national interests.

Given this, what does Rothkopf and others offer up – good old fashioned balance of power? So whether its dealing with global imbalances and exchange rate regimes or the problems of North Korea and nuclear proliferation, it would seem that Rothkopf urges a return to the past.  As he says:

… the United States must first determine the areas where China won’t bend, and work with Beijing to find compromises so that America is not in the impossible situation of trying to tell China to act against its own national interests.  … We have moved from the cold war era of bipolar reality through the brief bubble of sole superpower unilateral fantasy into a world of a new multipowered system which requires old-fashioned balance-of-power diplomacy.

Why “Washington” is appealing to the nineteenth and twentieth century tools of international relations – which seldom worked then – and are even more unlikely to work in the complex contemporary global governance world – is hard to understand.  It is familiar but promoting renewed rivalry and competition with the China’s and Brazil’ of the world hardly seem the way to fashion a new leadership.  And I don’t think it will.

What will?  I promise – really – to examine and answer this conundrum in an upcoming blog post.

Whose Irresponsible Stakeholder?

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My good colleague from the the Council on Foreign Relations, Stewart Patrick has recently examined the dynamics of global governance in his Foreign Affairs article, “Irresponsible Stakeholders?  The Difficulty of Integrating Rising  Powers” that appears in this November/December issue of the journal.  Now, I always thought that it was slightly patronizing for the United States to call on -in the first instance – China  to become a responsible stakeholder.  So, I find it even more patronizing to call the large emerging market countries the former G5 (Brazil, China, India, South Africa and Mexico) I assume “irresponsible stakeholders” though at least he use a question mark.  I mean really who defines responsible or for that matter irresponsible.  I suspect you can guess.

In any case leaving aside the characterization, Stewart explores the dynamics and architecture of the new global governance order – yes, I use the dreaded ‘global governance’ phrase as opposed to the apparently more acceptable – “multilateralism”.  For Stewart the objective of this US administration and presumably the follow on ones is:

Over the next ten years and beyond, the United States will have to accommodate new powers in reformed structures of global governance while safeguarding the Western liberal order it helped create and defend.

The fear for Stewart, and others, is that the global governance will become increasingly chaotic and that the rising powers will – not possessing the same norms and rules of the current global  governance leadership e.g. the G7 – become the new rule makers as opposed to the old rule takers.  Furthermore the United States will be required to alter its role in the world – leave behind hegemony for a far more multilateral/multi-partner (the current phraseology of the Secretary of State)  role.  The fear for Stewart, and indeed his boss Richard Haass CFR President, is that power will become increasingly diffused and lead to a rather dark scenario: “What if the new global order leads to an era of multipolarity without multilateralism?”

So what impact will the diffusion of power have in this situation?  The principal concern is that such a diffusion will exacerbate the strategic rivalry between the traditional powers and the rising powers.  While these powers may agree on certain policies they may not cooperate on others.  And such rivalry could complicate global governance. To that I say – well yes that will occur but that strategic rivalry will not simply polarize rising and traditional states.  I mean look at the most recent efforts to create a framework for global imbalances in the global economy.  At the G20 Seoul summit there certainly was contention between the US and China.  But the most outspoken critic of US proposals and in the case of the Federal Reserve – actions –  was Germany  – a traditional power and long time ally of the the United States.  And for good measure India was rather positive to the US suggestions and options.

The reality is the United States will have to get used to the pulling and hauling required in building a dominant coalition.  No more – or at least little – hegemony.  The US will be required to do the heavy lifting required of a ‘first among equals’ only member of the international system.  And the multiple identities possessed by all powers of consequence here – and not just the rising powers – will have to be engaged.  The US doesn’t need strategic partners, but it will face shifting coalitions in the context of differing issue areas.  As Stewart writes:

In this complex international reality, fixed alliances and formal organizations may count for less than shifting coalitions of interest.

Stewart is probably correct in assuming that the US will be required to form “partnerships of convenience.”  But it doesn’t necessarily mean that the US must follow the path – expressed by Richard Haass – of a la carte multilateralism.  The US will have to possess a little more “stick- to-itness.”  Less noticeable frustration in various forum would be helpful.  For instance the G20 is likely the ‘proper’ institutional setting for reforming the global economy. Crafting agreement among these diverse interests in this forum is not easy.  This not hegemony or even ‘hegemony lite’.

But as my old heroes – Firesign Theatre – of yesteryear used to say  – believe it or not over the radio:

Living in the future is a little like having bees in your head.  But there they are.