Tag Archives: Global Order

Is there Order? The Growing Confusion

Posted on by
Reply

As we’ve already pointed out in a previous Substack Post from Alan’s Newsletter, focusing on Trump’s dramatic tariffs, reveals a growing global order confusion. Do we have a continuing ‘great power competition’ – the United States, Russia and China, key great powers butting heads whether in Ukraine, or Gaza or Taiwan and the South China Seas? Or, do we see with Trump 2.0 the emergence of a ‘great power collusion’? The ‘Big Boys’ establishing and maintaining ‘spheres of interest’. Or, just possibly are we enveloped currently in an international system where great power actions do little to constrain disorder. Indeed, their actions only add to the confusion and disorder in a highly conflict prone international system. The problem of course is that analysts are biased toward seeing some form of order where in fact it is just as likely none exists.

In this earlier Post on global order we quoted Stacie Goddard who has raised the contending competition versus collusion order dynamic:

“Now look it won’t stop analysts – both those determined to extract a logic and those likely not to, to keep examining the Trump policy action. Indeed I was attracted to the piece prepared by Stacie Goddard in Foreign Affairs (FA), “The Rise and Fall of Great-Power Competition: Trump’s New Spheres of Influence”. Now Goddard in the piece tackled the view that Trump’s strategic actions were driven by great power competition – a view adopted by many realist thinkers who see this as Trump’s logic focusing on US ‘interests’ in contrast to other administrations that have focused on ‘values’ and ‘collective global governance action’. As Goddard writes:

 

“But in the mid-2010s, a new consensus took hold. The era of cooperation was over, and U.S. strategy had to focus on Washington’s contests with its major rivals, China and Russia. The main priority of American foreign policy was clear: stay ahead of them.”

 

“Some hailed this consensus on great-power competition; others lamented it. But as Russia amped up its aggression in Ukraine, China made clear its designs on Taiwan, and the two autocratic powers deepened their ties and collaborated more closely with other U.S. rivals, few predicted that Washington would abandon competition as its guiding light. As Trump returned to the White House in 2025,many analysts expected continuity: a “Trump-Biden-Trump foreign policy,” as the title of an essay in Foreign Affairs described it.”

 

“Then came the first two months of Trump’s second term. With astonishing speed, Trump has shattered the consensus he helped create. Rather than compete with China and Russia, Trump now wants to work with them, seeking deals that, during his first term, would have seemed antithetical to U.S. interests.”

 

“These interpretations might have been persuasive in January. But it should now be clear that Trump’s vision of the world is not one of great-power competition but of great-power collusion: a “concert” system akin to the one that shaped Europe during the nineteenth century.”

“In Trump’s vision of a new concert, Russia and China must be treated as kindred spirits in quelling rampant disorder and worrisome social change. The United States will continue to compete with its peers, especially with China on issues of trade, but not at the expense of aiding the forces that Trump and his vice president, JD Vance, have called “enemies within”: illegal immigrants, Islamist terrorists, “woke” progressives, European-style socialists, and sexual minorities.”

But to determine the dynamic of the current international system, notwithstanding these classic global order structures just described by Goddard, there is the continuing, indeed possibly the rising mayhem in the international system. Switch for a moment to South Asia where we have just seen India’s ‘retaliation’ for an attack on Indian tourists in Kashmir. As reported in the NYTimes:

“India said early Wednesday that it had conducted several airstrikes on Pakistan, hailing a victory in the name of vengeance for the terrorist attack that killed 26 civilians in Kashmir last month.”

 

“The Indian government said its forces had struck nine sites in Pakistan and on Pakistan’s side of the disputed Kashmir region, in what it described as retaliation for a terrorist attack that killed 26 civilians in Kashmir.”

“But in recent years, particularly after both built deterrence through nuclear weapons in the 1990s, their military confrontations had been limited to largely along their border regions. While India in recent years has struck Pakistan-administered Kashmir and areas close to it during periods of rising tensions, the attack on Wednesday included strikes on Punjab, in mainland Pakistan, for the first time in more than half a century.” …

 

““The terrorist attack was one of the worst against Indian civilians in decades, and India was quick to suggest that Pakistan, its neighbor and archenemy, had been involved. The two countries have fought several wars over Kashmir, a region that they have split but that each claims in whole.””

The dilemma in this conflict between the two South Asian rivals is the absence of strong efforts to tamp down the conflict:

“Still, a major factor in the de-escalation of past India-Pakistan crises was international pressure brought to bear on both sides. And with Washington distracted and few other mutually trusted “honest brokers” available, that means it could be up to the two parties themselves to find an off-ramp.”

To say the least, that is troubling and seems to signal, not surprisingly, that a global order framing is at best a stretch in the current global environment. Nathan Gardels of the Berggruen Institute underlines the contingencies that haunt the current order in a recent Noema piece:

“In short, history is open in all directions. There is no through line you can draw that will tell us where it will all go and where it will end up. There are a multitude of possibilities and arrays of conditions everywhere, all at once, that will only have looked inevitable in retrospect.”

 

“Coherence and equilibrium are “the momentary exception” in the random swirl of disequilibrium that is the rule.”

“This understanding of the indeterminate direction of history not only departs from the modern paradigm of historical progression rooted in Judeo-Christian eschatology, or theology of destiny, but embraces its opposite in the “principle of reverse movement.” History can go forward, backward or sideways.”

Yup, forward, backward or even sideways. There might be order but in the face of a quixotic Trump administration and pugilistic Putin regime we may be stretching the notion of ‘order’ framing. Meanwhile, efforts by the EU and many member states to gather their collective will to take on their own defense – build policies that generate ‘sovereign autonomy’ with significantly less reliance on the US starting with Ukraine but building an independent European deterrence has become a subject. Richard Youngs, a senior fellow in the Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program, based at Carnegie Europe has described this potential turning point. In a CEIP article he describes this ‘moment of truth:

“Writers, analysts, think tankers, journalists, and commentators seem to agree. A standard narrative has emerged that Europe faces a “moment of truth” and that “innovative formulas” are needed to advance European interests. Some insist that the crisis moment “has reignited a dormant sense of European purpose” or that “a different kind of Europe” is emerging in 2025. Others feel that Trump has already unleashed a new era of deeper European cooperation. A common view is that as the EU moves to “transform the way we protect ourselves, “this will “force a radical rethinking . . . of the nature of the EU.” In other words, deeper integration across the board will be needed to sustain Europe’s military buildup. The Economist believes that a “radical rethinking of how European nations confederate” may be emerging.”

Richard Samans, who is a Nonresident Senior Fellow – Global Economy and Development, Center for Sustainable Development at Brookings in a piece titled, “Rebalancing the world economy: Right idea but wrong approach”, suggests that Europe can/should act with the US and China to fix what he sees as an unbalanced global economy:

“The Trump administration’s norm-busting actions are a wake-up call that the contradictions and tensions in the system are unsustainable, extending well beyond trade rules. A Plaza/Louvre Accord or Bretton Woods-like moment appears to be approaching one way or the other, most likely during this or the next U.S. administration and quite possibly later this year.”

 

“Yes, Europe currently has its hands full developing a new defense strategy and helping to reach a responsible and durable resolution of the Russia-Ukraine war. But its defense-related fiscal spending plans give it a strategic, first-mover advantage in an international macroeconomic coordination negotiation aimed at reducing economic imbalances. In particular, Germany’s long overdue relaxation of its debt brake has given Europe crucial new table stakes, reversing decades of history in which Germany’s fiscal posture prevented Europe from playing a leadership role in such settings.”

Europe seems to be a key actor, and more critically, Germany’s stepping up to a key organizing role in Europe is vital. Yet that is exactly what appears to be the problem. Yes, changing the debt brake and encouraging the new German coalition of CDU/CSU -SPD to take a more dramatic European leaders’ role is front and centre in Europe but the emergence of Friedrich Merz as the coalition’s new Chancellor posted an uninvited warning sign. As described in WPR:

“Instead, it became a nailbiter, in large part because the investiture vote is a secret ballot, allowing members of Merz’ coalition to vote against him or abstain in protest. And indeed, they did, with Merz falling six votes short of the 316 needed in the first vote despite his CDU-SPD coalition holding 328 seats. And in the second round, he still only reached 325 votes. Of course, because of the nature of the ballot, it remains unclear if the dissension to his leadership is coming from his own CDU—which is known to have rival factions—or from members of the SPD.”

 

“Regardless, it suggests that Merz’s coalition, already one of the slimmest majorities seen in postwar Germany, is even more fragile than previously assumed. That gives him less room to maneuver in implementing his party’s agenda, and considering that Merz had already shown signs of abrasiveness as a leader, the dissension bodes poorly for future votes. It also hands the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, even more ammunition to throw at his leadership and the country’s mainstream parties.”

 

“More broadly, the turmoil today came after months in which Merz had signaled he was prepared to return Germany to its historically strong leadership position in Europe, even scheduling trips to Paris and Warsaw for tomorrow before even securing the chancellorship. At a time of heightened global uncertainty and a power vacuum in EU affairs, Merz’s proactive and muscular moves to reestablish German influence even prior to taking office had been more than welcomed in Brussels and other European capitals. The events of today, though, suggest that those expectations may have been too high and the enthusiasm premature—not the first time that has been the case for Berlin in recent years”

Still Merz seemed to have gathered himself and set off for meetings with European colleagues. As described by by Roger Cohen in the NYTimes:

“Taking office as Germany’s new chancellor, Friedrich Merz headed straight for Paris on Wednesday to meet with Mr. Macron. The two leaders are united in seeking what Mr. Merz has called “independence” and what Mr. Macron calls “strategic autonomy” from Washington, a dramatic shift. Writing in the French daily Le Figaro, they said they “will never accept an imposed peace and will continue to support Ukraine against Russian aggression.””

Still the path forward for Europe and others is not clear. Roger Cohen makes that clear:

“But Europe is scarcely united, whatever the resolve in Paris and Berlin. The nationalist, anti-immigrant, anti-climate-science, anti-transgender wave that swept Mr. Trump into office last year is also potent across a continent where it has empowered Viktor Orban in Hungary and Giorgia Meloni in Italy, among others.”

With Trump 2.0 in play the global order dynamics are confused and incomplete. Europe still needs to show its unity and purpose if strategic autonomy is to become a thing. For now, the global order dynamic may just be wishful thinking.

Image Credit” DW News

This Post first appeared at my Substack as a Post there –

Is there Order? The Growing Confusion – https://globalsummitryproject.substack.com/p/is-there-order-the-growing-confusion

What is This? Trump and His Tariffs

Posted on by
Reply

With the 100 days now reached, and just passed by Trump and his second administration, there is a desperate search to uncover a logic and goal or goals in Trump’s return to the White House and his most pointed policy action – the imposition of tariffs for all. I must say, it is not easy.

 

Now where to begin. I must say I am partial to David Brooks and his insights into Trump and his actions.  And sure enough he gave us a view recently in the NYTimes in a piece entitled, ‘Trump’s Single Stroke of Brilliance”: 

“Some of this is inherent in President Trump’s nature. He is not a learned man, but he is a spirited man, an assertive man. The ancient Greeks would say he possesses a torrential thumos, [passion]  a burning core of anger, a lust for recognition. All his life, he has moved forward with new projects and attempted new conquests, despite repeated failures and bankruptcies that would have humbled a nonnarcissist.”

 

“Initiative depends on motivation. The Trump administration is driven by some of the most atavistic and powerful of all human desires: resentment, the desire for power, the desire for retribution.”

Well, I must say, the resentment is pretty evident. But it still leaves rather unclear the possible, if it can be found, a Trump strategic logic. Many opinion folk are trying. Though there are so many initial policy actions by way of Trump’s ‘Executive Orders’ – indeed it seems to be a record for an incoming President – actions against immigrants, especially deportation actions, universities, research initiatives, development assistance, and much much more. Still nothing seems to be more dramatic than Trump tariffs. And the search is on, just as it is elsewhere, for a logic for the dramatic global imposition of wide-ranging tariffs.

Peter Warr prepared a piece for the East Asia Forum (EAF)  that attempts to crystallize, if possible, a Trump tariff policy logic. Warr is the John Crawford Professor of Agricultural Economics Emeritus at the Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University (ANU) and Visiting Professor of Development Economics at the National Institute for Development Administration, Bangkok. Here is his first statement on the logic of Trump tariffs: 

“He is imposing huge tariffs on the countries most vulnerable to them, then waiting to exploit the new position of strength to make demands. The uncertainty and fear they generate are not byproducts — they are the point, establishing the leverage Trump needs for the predatory negotiations that follow.” 

So, it is about gaining leverage over allies and adversaries alike. As Warr suggests:   

“The tariffs are surely harmful, even from a US perspective, but they are not ‘crazy’. Given the way Trump sees the world and himself, they almost make sense.” 

But then it becomes clear that the actual tariff levels imposed are not particularly sensible: 

“In his Rose Garden speech, Trump revealed supposed figures for ‘tariffs charged to the USA including currency manipulation and trade barriers’ and ‘USA discounted reciprocal tariffs’. The numbers mystified observers until analysts including James Surowiecki worked out that they reflected each country’s goods trade surplus with the United States as a percentage of their goods exports to the United States — with a minimum 10 per cent tariff imposed on all countries, even those with trade deficits.”

Now Warr, accepts that many analysts think the calculations from the administration are not sensible: 

“As an estimate of protection rates against US goods, this calculation is absurd. Surowiecki called the formula ‘surprisingly silly’, and economist Paul Krugman called it ‘completely crazy’. But is it?”

So, Warr suggests there may in fact be a certain logic. The tariffs are designed, according to Warr to target those most vulnerable to Trump leverage: 

“The critics missed the point that the formula attempts a rudimentary indication of countries’ vulnerability to US tariffs. Countries receiving the highest tariffs have the highest ratio of exports relative to imports from the United States, even if they have no restrictions against US goods, tariffs or otherwise.” 

Though he attempts to highlight a certain logic – targeting what he sees as those with significant vulnerability to the US, in the end Warr has to concede that the approach is not exactly optimal: 

“A better, but still approximate, measure of that vulnerability would have been gross exports to the United States divided by a country’s GDP, but that would produce much smaller tariffs, which presumably is why it was not used. This may also explain why services were excluded from the formula. The United States is a net importer of goods but a net exporter of services and it is much harder to levy tariffs on services than goods. Placing a country’s trade surplus with the United States in the numerator falsely suggests that the tariffs reduce the US trade deficit.” 

 

“All these simplistic formulae still overlook the fact that countries have differing alternative, non-US export opportunities. They also ignore the effect of global value chains, with products crossing international borders multiple times during production. Reported trade balances misleadingly record the final assembly point as the source of US imports.” 

Recognizing that the formula for tariffs is ‘simplistic’ Warr is left a bottom line that acknowledges only that Trump is a ‘protectionist’: 

“Trump is a protectionist. He sees the decline of US manufacturing as foreigners stealing US jobs — grievance politics gone global. He thinks tariffs might reverse that.”

 

“Trump is a dealmaker. By ‘deal’ he means a zero-sum transaction in which one party wins at the expense of the other. Trump is obsessed with winning and believes tariffs can create coercive bargaining power for the United States as a major importer.” 

 

“Trump’s deal-making strategy is now transparent. First, enact huge tariffs on the countries most vulnerable to the US. Then wait for their desperate leaders to call, pleading for special treatment. Then exploit the new position of strength to demand something he wants.” 

It is not much of a strategic logic as Warr accepts in the end:

“This is the outlook Trump brings to trade policy. To respond most effectively to the tariffs, their function must first be recognised. The uncertainty and fear they produce is their essential purpose, establishing the bargaining power he requires for the predatory negotiations that follow.” 

In fact I am more inclined to see Trump’s tariffs in the way described by Alan Beattie of the FT. Beattie was previously the FT’s international economy editor and world trade editor and these days he writes ‘Trade Secrets’.The title of his opinion says a lot: “Vision of a Trump master plan is fading in a storm of incoherence. As Beattie writes: 

“The weeks and months since Donald Trump took office — in fact since he was elected — have seen companies, foreign governments, commentators and the media play the somewhat frustrating game of Hunt The Rationale.”

 

“They have watched a dizzying carousel of tariffs being threatened and then delayed, or imposed and then lifted, or imposed only to be shot through with loopholes.” 

 

“Over time, the ranks of those claiming there’s a master plan have thinned — and their arguments have grown less persuasive. Increasingly it has become obvious that there is no plan, or at least no coherent plan with a single target and a way of hitting it. Instead, Trump’s tariff policy reflects a mixture of competing and often flat-out contradictory aims and a misunderstanding of the power of the crude instruments he is using.” 

 

“All at once, he appears to be trying to cut trade deficits, protect US manufacturing, boost federal revenues, bring down other countries’ tariffs by offering deals, coerce them into a variety of actions (including allowing the US to annex Greenland or Canada), extract favours for granting exceptions to US companies, and keep the spotlight squarely on himself. The chaos surrounding his tariff policy is not just ineptitude — it is the result of huge contradictions.” 

Now look it won’t stop analysts – both those determined to extract a logic and those likely not to, to keep examining the Trump policy action. Indeed I was attracted to the piece prepared by Stacie Goddard in Foreign Affairs  (FA), “The Rise and Fall of Great-Power Competition: Trump’s New Spheres of Influence”. Now Goddard in the piece tackled the view that Trump’s strategic actions were driven by great power competition – a view adopted by many realist thinkers who see this as Trump’s logic focusing on US ‘interests’ in contrast to other administrations that have focused on ‘values’ and ‘collective global governance action’. As Goddard writes: 

“But in the mid-2010s, a new consensus took hold. The era of cooperation was over, and U.S. strategy had to focus on Washington’s contests with its major rivals, China and Russia. The main priority of American foreign policy was clear: stay ahead of them.” 

 

“Some hailed this consensus on great-power competition; others lamented it. But as Russia amped up its aggression in Ukraine, China made clear its designs on Taiwan, and the two autocratic powers deepened their ties and collaborated more closely with other U.S. rivals, few predicted that Washington would abandon competition as its guiding light. As Trump returned to the White House in 2025,many analysts expected continuity: a “Trump-Biden-Trump foreign policy,” as the title of an essay in Foreign Affairs described it.” 

 

“Then came the first two months of Trump’s second term. With astonishing speed, Trump has shattered the consensus he helped create. Rather than compete with China and Russia, Trump now wants to work with them, seeking deals that, during his first term, would have seemed antithetical to U.S. interests.” 

 

“These interpretations might have been persuasive in January. But it should now be clear that Trump’s vision of the world is not one of great-power competition but of great-power collusion: a “concert” system akin to the one that shaped Europe during the nineteenth century.”

 

“In Trump’s vision of a new concert, Russia and China must be treated as kindred spirits in quelling rampant disorder and worrisome social change. The United States will continue to compete with its peers, especially with China on issues of trade, but not at the expense of aiding the forces that Trump and his vice president, JD Vance, have called “enemies within”: illegal immigrants, Islamist terrorists, “woke” progressives, European-style socialists, and sexual minorities.”

Now digging back 200 years to describe a political order that might raise similarities to the actions of today’s Trump actions and others is intriguing but not strongly convincing. Leave aside the dangers of historical comparison, and there are many, the problem here  is imposing strategic logic to a not very strategic actor. We’ve already seen it with his major initiative, tariffs. And, moreover, there is little to suggest that the other major actors accept and act in a concert-like manner. There is too much unilateral unconcert-like action.

But let’s keep our eye on Trump’s collaborative initiatives, if they are in fact there and determine whether great power collusion is in fact an operative framing for Trump 2.0 global order actions. Paint me skeptical.

Image Credit: NBC News

This Post first appeared at my Substack Alan’s Newsletter – https://globalsummitryproject.substack.com/publish/posts/detail/162614458/share-center

Taming the ‘Bully and the Dragon’

Posted on by
Reply

It is hard to deal with a ‘Bully’. Usually efforts, even reasonable ones of accommodation only lead generally to further demands – just ask Columbia University. That was why I was pleased to see Harvard University ‘dig in’ rather than try to accommodate the Trump administration. As Philip Stephens, contributing editor of the FT wrote in a recent piece on various allied responses to Trump’s tariff actions titled, ‘Placate or retaliate? Starmer and Carney are both right on Trump’:

“Canada’s Mark Carney has picked up the gauntlet. Britain’s Keir Starmer prefers to look the other way. Japan and South Korea lead the queue to strike a bilateral deal. … Kudos generally goes to those willing to stand up to “the bully”. Carney has transformed his Liberal party’s electoral prospects by relishing the fight. In Europe, Gaullism has gone mainstream. Emmanuel Macron’s call for Europe to break free of the Americans is echoed by chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz in Berlin.”

 

“None of this makes pandering to Trump look heroic, particularly when, with characteristic vulgarity, the president publicly mocks the softly spoken. Opinion polls suggest Europeans would prefer their leaders to join Carney in the ring. Appeasing Trump may simply encourage him. He clearly enjoys humiliating America’s old friends. The answer surely is to show him that Trumpism has costs. Didn’t we learn at school that the way to beat bullies is to fight back?”

So a round of applause for the Harvard folk. But there will continue to be hard times – note the request by Trump to the IRS to end Harvard’s tax-free status. What additionally is needed then to blunt Trump’s actions? What is needed is: collaboration and group support from other universities and then collective action in the courts. Bending the knee to Trump will not work. Nobody said it would be easy.

David Wallace-Wells has pointed out in the NYT what the actions of the Trump administration have led to the following actions by US partners:

“Last week Spain’s democratic-socialist government proudly announced plans to intensify relations with China, after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned that doing so would amount to “cutting your own throat.” President Emmanuel Macron of France urged European companies to stop investing in the United States, and the European Union as a whole, which is developing a retaliatory tariff response and plotting potential tax increases on American tech companies, announced it is sending a delegation to Beijing in July.

 

What comes next? Perhaps it shouldn’t be so hard to imagine, given the drift of what’s now called geoeconomics. Already, China commands global trade, and modeling from Bloomberg shows that, as constituted today, the tariffs will only add to the lead — pushing many more countries to work more with China and less with America. According to one model, 30 percent of American trading partners would fully recover from even total cessation of U.S. trade within one year; within five years, more than half would. This is why chaos is rarely the chosen strategy for a hegemon: Barring what Trump calls a “beautiful deal,” the biggest single beneficiary of the whole crusade may well end up being its intended target.”

So how do we deal with the dragon? Clearly there is ‘fire’ and a certain amount of ‘huffing and puffing’. But beyond the aggressiveness, think Taiwan, and even aggression – talk to the Philippines – about that, is there the prospect of securing a deal? And in the more immediate circumstances, is there the prospect of securing a bilateral trade arrangement, or even an enlarged one with China.

Let’s start with an assessment of what the Trump administration is up to. This is not an easy determination. What is the goal of the Trump administration? Kyla Scanlon, author of, the author of “In This Economy? How Money & Markets Really Work” wrote recently in the NYT:

“What is an overarching goal of these actions? Or, what is the purpose of Trumponomics?

In a word, reindustrialization.”

It is hard to see at times what is the end point for Trump and his minions: is it revenues, China decoupling, reshoring of manufacturing – all or none of the above. But for Scanlon it is evident – reindustrialization in the US and she goes on to say:

“To reindustrialize will require investment in people and machines — and a coherent strategy. Given the Trump administration’s aversion to collaboration and the internal contradictions of the factions within the administration, its reindustrialization drive appears disconnected from reality and destined to fail.”

She concludes that a successful strategy in the 21st century today, in her opinion, require the following from the US and its partners ultimately:

“Modern manufacturing is high-tech and requires different skills from those of the 20th century. The focus should be on advanced manufacturing sectors where America can lead through innovation, not just protectionism: pharmaceuticals, clean-energy technology, robotics and semiconductors.

 

Second, it would invest substantially in the foundations for industrial competitiveness like education, infrastructure, research and development (like the CHIPS Act) and work force training.

 

Third, a serious strategy would recognize that alliances matter. Rather than needlessly alienate partners like Canada, Mexico, Japan and the European Union, a sound approach would build cooperative frameworks that reduce dependence on geopolitical rivals while strengthening ties with allies. Selective decoupling would better serve America’s long-term interests.”

But what appears to be evident is that the Trump administration seems dramatically unwilling to work with partners and allies to enhance trade with them and to press China on what remains today a damaging economic policy from Beijing that increases production and exports as opposed to a more determined effort to improve domestic consumption. Yes, Xi Jinping and his associates have once again targeted energizing domestic consumption, but seeing is believing. We shall see.

What then is possible? Tom Friedman describes why it is highly unlikely that Trump will, or can, act in concert. As Friedman put in a recent NYT piece:

“So much crazy happens with the Trump administration every day that some downright weird but incredibly telling stuff gets lost in the noise. A recent example was the scene on April 8 at the White House where, in the middle of his raging trade war, our president decided it was the perfect time to sign an executive order to bolster coal mining.”

 

“It’s commendable that the president honors men and women who work with their hands. But when he singles out coal miners for praise while he tries to zero out development of clean-tech jobs from his budget — in 2023, the U.S. wind energy industry employed approximately 130,000 workers, while the solar industry employed 280,000 — it suggests that Trump is trapped in a right-wing woke ideology that doesn’t recognize green manufacturing jobs as “real” jobs. How is that going to make us stronger?”

 

“This whole Trump II administration is a cruel farce. Trump ran for another term not because he had any clue how to transform America for the 21st century. He ran in order to stay out of jail and to get revenge on those who, with real evidence, had tried to hold him accountable to the law. I doubt he has ever spent five minutes studying the work force of the future.”

 

“But this farce is about to touch every American. By attacking our closest allies — Canada, Mexico, Japan, South Korea and the European Union — and our biggest rival, China, at the same time he makes clear he favors Russia over Ukraine and prefers climate-destroying energy industries over future-oriented ones, the planet be damned, Trump is triggering a serious loss of global confidence in America.”

 

“The world is now seeing Trump’s America for exactly what it is becoming: a rogue state led by an impulsive strongman disconnected from the rule of law and other constitutional American principles and values.”

If indeed the US under a Trump administration is a rogue actor, and on too many days it does indeed look exactly like that. Put simply what is required and the answer may well be: coordination without the United States. And I’d add it begins with the Informals, most notably the G20.

There has been on and off talk that Trump will not attend the G20 Leaders’ Summit which will be held in Johannesburg, South Africa, on November 22-23rd. And senior US officials including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent have failed to show up for at least early meetings. On the other hand, apparently, the United States has been active in the Troika – the gathering of the G20 members – the past host, the present one and future host – in assisting in carrying out a successful G20 Summit. As it turns out the United States is scheduled to take hosting in 2026. But the point is whether the US participates – if it doesn’t the UK would likely take the hosting in 2026 – and indeed possibly US absence might benefit the working of the G20 at the moment – a serious gathering like this may be critical in advancing needed global governance action.

Coordination without US participation – at least during Trump 2.0 – may be the necessary ingredient for advancing critical multilateral action. I will return to this soon.

Image Credit: FT and Neil Hall/EPA

This Post first appeared at Alan’s Newsletter: https://globalsummitryproject.substack.com/p/taming-the-bully-and-the-dragon

The Many Possible Shapes for the Global Order: A Quick Look Back & Forward

Posted on by
Reply

The Trump attack on interdependence – particularly economic – has felt foolish and destructive but without question – relentless. What appeared to be a stalling out with Biden’s ill-disguised protectionism, has now turned into repeated blows against an open trading system and a collaborative global order. 

MInouche Shafik, former president of Columbia University and the London School of Economics, and a member of the House of Lords referenced a well-known transformation in  a recent piece in PS: 

““The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.” This famous quote, often attributed to Antonio Gramsci, feels particularly pertinent today, as the international order that has defined the past century undergoes a profound shift.” 

What is passing away? And what is emerging? Joe Nye, the very well known International relations maven has examined exactly that in another  recent piece in PS.  As he describes Trump policy actions: 

“Globalization refers simply to interdependence at intercontinental distances. Trade among European countries reflects regional interdependence, whereas European trade with the US or China reflects globalization. By threatening China with tariffs, US President Donald Trump is trying to reduce the economic aspect of our global interdependence, which he blames for the loss of domestic industries and jobs.” 

Can globalization be reversed? Nye argues it certainly has in the past. As he describes: 

“But can economic globalization be reversed? It has happened before. The nineteenth century was marked by a rapid increase in both trade and migration, but it came to a screeching halt with the outbreak of World War I. Trade as a share of total world product did not recover to its 1914 levels until nearly 1970.” 

It is striking how long it took for global economic interdependence to recover to levels that matched the late nineteenth century. But what is also interesting is how not long ago in fact there was much attention focused on an enhanced global order. Take a look at this piece published in 2001. This Introduction was written by one of the book’s principal contributors, and a close colleague, Arthur Stein. Arthur, today, is a Distinguished Research Professor of Political Science at UCLA. Arthur has been a significant international relations force at UCLA for years now. He prepared the Introduction for the 2001 volume titled, “The New Great Power Coalition”. As an aside I played a minor role in the volume with a chapter on China’s entry into the WTO.  Now, back to Arthur’s examination. There is no missing the cautious but still optimistic tone that Arthur conveys for this era following the real tensions of the Cold War and the emergence of US leadership. As he writes: 

“In short, we believe that in this era following a global conflict, the prospects for global cooperation conflicts lie in the relations between the Great Powers. Constructing a Great Power concert would make possible the establishment of a cooperative world order and truly global international organizations.” …

 

“In more general terms, however, we conclude that the movement from unilateral to multilateral incentives, norms, and structures appears to be useful in enlisting members in an  encompassing coalition. The world is now in the process of creating new high-prestige and selective clubs in the fields of economics, politics, and even the military. Once enough of these clubs in the fields overlap (regionally and functionally), they will form a linked structure that could combine into an encompassing coalition, with the latter representing the sustaining cooperation developed in separate regions and issue areas.”

Returning to Minouche Shafik this is what she sees as the new global order, one that others, as well, have suggested is emerging: 

“The world today is very different. It is a multipolar world, with China, Russia, India, Turkey, Brazil, South Africa, and the Gulf states challenging the old order, alongside other emerging powers demanding a greater voice in shaping the rules of the international system. Meanwhile, belief in “universal values” and the idea of an “international community” has waned, as many point to the hypocrisy of rich countries hoarding vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic and the response to the Ukraine war compared to the failures to act in response to humanitarian crises in Gaza, Sudan, and many other places.” 

 

“We may be heading to a zero-order world in which rules are replaced by power – a very difficult environment for smaller countries. Or it may be a world of large regional blocs, with the United States dominating its hemisphere, China prevailing over East Asia, and Russia reasserting control over the countries of the former Soviet Union. Ideally, we can find our way to a new rules-based order that more accurately reflects our multipolar world.”

Regional blocs may be in order. Or, possibly the reassertion of a form of geopolitical and ideological blocs. That seems to be what is described by colleague, G. John Ikenberry. In an article in International Affairs, penned at the beginning of last year, entitled, “Three Worlds: the West, East and South and the competition to shape global order”, John writes this about the emerging global order:

“Today, among the many impacts of Russia’s war on Ukraine, the most consequential may be that it marks the moment—the tipping-point—when history reversed course, pushing the world back in the direction of geopolitical and ideological groupings.” 

 

“Today, we might call these three groupings the global West, the global East, and the global South. One is led by the United States and Europe, the second by China and Russia, and the third by an amorphous grouping of non-western developing states, led by India, Brazil and others. Each ‘world’ offers grand narratives of what is at stake in the Ukraine conflict and how it fits into the larger problems and prospects for twenty-first century world order.” 

 

“Each offers ideas and programmes for the reorganization and reform of global rules and institutions. Each has its own constructed history, its own list of grievances and accomplishments. Each has its leaders, projects and ideological visions.” 

 

“These Three Worlds are not blocs, nor even coherent negotiating groups. They might best be seen as informal, constructed and evolving global factions, and not as fixed or formal political entities.”

 

“The Three Worlds are not best defined as poles so much as loose coalitions seeking to shape global rules and institutions. States in these three ‘worlds’ occupy different locations in the global system, creating shared interests and affinities that, taken together, shape patterns of interstate behaviour. The Three Worlds are defined in important respects by diplomacy— that is, by speeches, summit meetings and UN gatherings in which leaders advance their visions of world order. Each grouping has a loose political identity and a range of more-or-less consistent convictions about what constitutes a desirable and legitimate international order.”

I think it is difficult to know where we are at this moment, and more so where we are going. It is evident, however, that the world we have experienced over the last decades is being hammered out of existence especially by Trump 2.0. As David Wallace-Wells describes it in a NYTimes Opinion article, written just the other day: 

“But each declaration of imperial desire is that mercurial kind of Trumpist speech act, in which a given utterance can be both meaningless and full of portent at the same time, self-disavowing even as it also demonstrates the president’s world-shaping power.” 

 

“And whatever comes of Trump’s retrograde dreams of manifest destiny, the implicit challenge to the legacy geopolitical order is just as striking: If we want these things and these places, who is going to stop us?” … 

 

“What comes next? New paradigms rarely arise fully formed. But if we spent the last four years watching Joe Biden’s ineffectual attempt to revive some rickety version of the moralistic postwar order, it is supremely clear what Donald Trump would like to replace that pretense with: the principle that global chaos opens up opportunity for great powers long hemmed in by convention and deference.” 

 

“The MAGA riposte is, Let’s not be naïve and let’s not be suckers: We are all wolves on the world stage, and the game begins when we show our teeth.”

It would be valuable if new rules, principles, and norms emerged but at the moment what we can see is the dramatic impact of power on interstate relations. For the moment we are less driven by the emergence of order but by its opposite.  But we will come back here at Alan’s Newsletter to examine  – likely repeatedly – the shape of the global order as I think there may be surprises, possibly many surprises we have not anticipated given the immediate and dramatic attention to Trump.

The Post originally appeared as a Substack Post at Alan’s Newsletter

https://globalsummitryproject.substack.com/p/the-many-possible-shapes-for-the

All comments and subscriptions are welcome

 

 

“What Can We Expect?”: A Second Look At America’s Political Transition

Posted on by
Reply

Well, hello, we’re back! I do hope the holidays proved to be a warm time and filled with family and friends. Now, I was ‘chomping at the bit’ to return to Alan’s Newsletter before the end of the Biden administration and the return of Donald J Trump. We are looking at the transition of administrations – focusing on foreign policy.

So where we left Alan’s Newsletter at this first Post of ‘What Can We Expect’ – the last Post of the year 2024, was me actually looking at the end of the Biden administration – and, as I said: “… trying to focus on the end of the Biden administration: what folks conclude about the Biden initiatives and where that then leads, possibly,  for the upcoming Trump administration”, especially targeting US-China policy. 

In this earlier Post I looked primarily at trade and technology policies – and there seemed to be much to be desired – though it was interesting to get Biden’s last words on his own assessment of his administration’s efforts. But now I want to extend the analysis by turning to national security. Interestingly, and as I noted in the earlier Post I was keen to review, none other than Senator McConnell, a dominant Republican figure over several decades in Congress and the Republican majority leader from 2015 to 2021, making him the longest-serving Senate party leader in U.S. history. And for the moment he remains in the Senate and an influence on some at least. But to get there – to McConnell that is,  I thought it worthwhile to first look at Fareed Zakaria’s early 2024 FA article, “The Self-Doubting Superpower: America Shouldn’t Give Up on the World It Made” Fareed has a large public role in assessing US international politics as the host of CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS and he also writes a weekly column for The Washington Post. Fareed starts out acknowledging the Biden administration’s turn – and not for the better – in international economic policy making: 

“And yet, much of his governing strategy has been predicated on the notion that the country has been following the wrong course, even under Democratic presidents, even during the Obama-Biden administration. In an April 2023 speech, Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, criticized “much of the international economic policy of the last few decades,” blaming globalization and liberalization for hollowing out the country’s industrial base, exporting American jobs, and weakening some core industries.”

Now, I remain rather sceptical of the consequences these folks assign to trade policy but it continues to be a ‘warm blanket’ for many analysts and politicians. Fareed acknowledges it, it but then situates the US in the global order as still a dominant presence: 

“On measure after measure, the United States remains in a commanding position compared with its major competitors and rivals. Yet it does confront a very different international landscape. Many powers across the globe have risen in strength and confidence. They will not meekly assent to American directives. Some of them actively seek to challenge the United States’ dominant position and the order that has been built around it. … The challenge for Washington is to run fast but not run scared. Today, however, it remains gripped by panic and self doubt.” 

Fareed raises the real prospect that the US will quail from continued leadership in the global economy but in fact even beyond that to global order and national security relations as well: 

“The most worrying challenge to the rules-based international order does not come from China, Russia, or Iran. It comes from the United States. If America, consumed by exaggerated fears of its own decline, retreats from its leading role in world affairs, it will open up power vacuums across the globe and encourage a variety of powers and players to try to step into the disarray.” 

 

“Since 1945, America has debated the nature of its engagement with the world, but not whether it should be engaged to begin with. Were the country to truly turn inward, it would mark a retreat for the forces of order and progress. Washington can still set the agenda, build alliances, help solve global problems, and deter aggression while using limited resources—well below the levels that it spent during the Cold War. It would have to pay a far higher price if order collapsed, rogue powers rose, and the open world economy fractured or closed.”

Now the actions by the departing Biden administration may have already done some real damage to relations with allies – this the determination by Biden to kill the Nippon-US Steel deal. As Alan Beattie described it in his FT ‘Trade Secrets’ column:

“Still, some of us were also moderately hopeful that Biden’s long history as an alliance-builder in international relations might weigh reasonably heavily in the balance. That’s where we were largely wrong. When it came down to it, steelmakers were prioritised above all. As a unionised industry located in electoral swing states (Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) with tariff protection inherited from Donald Trump and national security and environmental rationales, however specious, they ticked too many boxes to ignore.” 

 

“All politics is local, including trade politics, but the politics here is quite weird. It’s surreal that the geopolitically important practice of friendshoring is being sabotaged by a USTR with no specialism in national security and a union leader both acting in defiance of colleagues who are closer to the issues at hand. Tai’s obsession with the steel industry has extended to sending groups of USTR officials on tourist trips to do photo-ops with steelworkers. This is vibes-based trade policy backed up by show-and-tell.” 

So, the focus on allies and partners in firming trade relations and building resilient supply chains with them is, in this instance, revealed as hollow: 

“When it came to it, it wasn’t the substance but the vibe of protecting the steel industry that prevented the Biden administration giving friendshoring a fair go. It’s a sad end for a respectable but ultimately unloved idea.” 

And, it suggests that the US under Biden is not ‘walking the walk’ when it comes to friendshoring but also undermining trust with, in this case, one of its closest allies in the Indo-Pacific, Japan.

All right then, focusing more directly on national security, let me turn to Rush Doshi who is a colleague – an assistant professor of security studies at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. He is also senior fellow for China and director of the Initiative on China Strategy at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and importantly he served the Biden White House at the National Security Council (NSC) as the Director and later Deputy Senior Director for China and Taiwan from 2021 to March 2024. So involved with Biden national security. Having just emerged from the Biden administration, how does he now view the requirements of US national security policy today? Well, Rush assists us in a FA article produced in late November. There he wrote: 

“Without corrective action, the United States faced a growing risk of being surpassed by China technologically, dependent on it economically, and defeated militarily in the South China Sea or Taiwan Strait.” 

 

“The Biden administration focused on rebuilding American strength by focusing on its foundations at home and its relationships with partners abroad, an approach summed up in its “invest, align, compete” tagline.

 

“That formula can also serve as a way to fulfill the Trump administration’s vision of “peace through strength.” But rebuilding American power will require the Trump administration to undertake new efforts, too, that depend on bipartisan congressional support and the buy in of the American public.”

 

“But the foundations of that strength have atrophied, especially since the end of the Cold War. The administration will need to undertake significant structural reforms to remedy these weaknesses.”

 

“The United States needs to fix its defense industrial base to rapidly deter China and, if necessary, defeat it in a potential conflict. At present, the United States would expend all its munitions within a week of sustained fighting and would struggle to rebuild surface vessels after they were sunk, with a national shipbuilding capacity less than that of one of China’s larger shipyards.”

 

“Washington also needs to protect its critical infrastructure from cyberattack. China has compromised U.S. critical infrastructure upon which millions of Americans rely, including water and gas, transportation, and telecommunications systems, with the aim of inciting chaos, sowing panic, and reducing U.S. will in a conflict scenario.” 

 

“Finally, the United States needs to invest in reindustrialization and technological leadership. China already accounts for more than 30 percent of global manufacturing, can innovate successfully, increasingly leads in the sectors of tomorrow, and is redirecting massive amounts of capital into manufacturing as its housing market stagnates. The result, a second “China shock” akin to the one that flooded U.S. markets with cheap Chinese goods at the beginning of this century, will threaten the United States’ future as an industrial power and leave it more dependent on China than China is on the United States. 

 

“National security is not just about foreign policy. Trump’s team should remember that the key to this decisive decade is not just what the United States does abroad. What it does at home to improve its competitive position may be even more important.” 

What is more than interesting is that Rush urges these major efforts after just emerging from several years at the Biden administration. Now what does that say about the Biden years. 

So, finally, let’s turn to what I promised you above Mitch McConnell. Now McConnell is more than willing to attack the Biden administration for what he describes as a weak national security effort. But it also urges Trump to avoid just focusing on China and in doing so ignore the real threat to Europe – and to the US obviously, from Russia’s Ukraine efforts. As McConnell describes:

“Trump would be wise to build his foreign policy on the enduring cornerstone of U.S. leadership: hard power.” 

 

“To pretend that the United States can focus on just one threat at a time, that its credibility is divisible, or that it can afford to shrug off faraway chaos as irrelevant is to ignore its global interests and its adversaries’ global designs.”

 

“China poses the gravest long-term challenge to U.S. interests. But although successive presidents have acknowledged this reality, their actual policies have been inconsistent.”

 

“In so doing, it [Trump] must not repeat the mistakes of President Barack Obama’s so-called pivot to Asia. The Obama administration failed to back up its policy with sufficient investments in U.S. military power.” 

Against the grain I suspect of many of the MAGA Republicans including, possibly Donald Trump, McConnell urges: 

“The United States needs a military that can handle multiple increasingly coordinated threats at once. Without one, a president will likely hesitate to expend limited resources on one threat at the expense of others, thereby ceding initiative or victory to an adversary.The United States must get back to budgets that are informed by strategy and a force-planning construct that imagines fighting more than one war at once.”

 

“The United States’ security and prosperity are rooted in military primacy. Preserving that decisive superiority is costly, but neglecting it comes with far steeper costs.”

For McConnell, then, there is a real need to underpin current US economic strength with policy initiatives: 

“I am not naive about the downsides of international trade, but there is no question that free markets and free trade have been responsible for much of the United States’ prosperity.”

 

“That’s why the United States and like-minded free-market economies must work together to reform the international trading system to protect U.S. interests from predatory trade practices—not abandon the system entirely.  Without U.S. leadership in this area, there is little question that Beijing will be able to rewrite the rules of trade on its own terms.”

Finally, there is a real abiding requirement, from this side of the Republican Congressional majority – directed to the MAGA Republicans and urging  this critical need for the incoming Trump administration:

“Trump will no doubt hear from some that he should prioritize a single theater and downgrade U.S. interests and commitments elsewhere. Most of these voices will argue for focusing on Asia at the expense of interests in Europe or the Middle East.  Such thinking is commonplace among both isolationist conservatives who indulge the fantasy of “Fortress America” and progressive liberals who mistake internationalism for an end in itself.”

 

“Neither camp has committed to maintaining the military superiority or sustaining the alliances needed to contest revisionist powers.” 

So, there you are. McConnell is urging ‘a full court press’ to maintain a dominant US military position and global leadership. Will Trump and his MAGA Republicans in Congress follow through. I have my doubts. 

Image Credit: Getty Images

This Post first appeared as a Substack Post at Alan’s Newsletter –

https://open.substack.com/pub/globalsummitryproject/p/what-can-we-expect-a-second-look?r=bj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

“What Can We Expect?”: In the First Instance

Posted on by
Reply

Now you might think, with that title, that I’d be delving into Trump 2.0. Well, not exactly in the first instance. Instead, I am trying to focus on the end of the Biden administration: what folks conclude about the Biden initiatives and where that then leads, possibly, for the upcoming Trump administration. Now, to be clear, I’m not trying to guess where the Trump administration is likely to take us. Not with the inconsistent Trump at the helm again; but it would be good if the incoming administration might choose to take a hard look at what the Biden administration hoped to achieve with its policy initiatives and where, in fact, it found itself in the increasing disorder in the international system. We are particularly interested, not surprisingly, in the state of US-China relations in the face of four years of Biden strategy and policy. What has China done in reaction to Biden strategic competition? And what does the United States do now in the face of today’s US-China competition?

Just the other day, Tom Friedman from the NYT gave us a peek of what he saw in a recent visit to Beijing and Shanghai. Where is China today in the face of the challenging US relations: the end of US engagement, the rise in tensions with Trump 1.0 and the Biden strategic competitive policy. Friedman in an opinion article titled, “How Elon Musk and Taylor Swift Can Resolve U.S.-China Relations” makes “no bones about it” and early in the opinion piece he writes:

I just spent a week in Beijing and Shanghai, meeting with Chinese officials, economists and entrepreneurs, and let me get right to the point: While we were sleeping China took a great leap forward in high-tech manufacturing of everything.

And he starts with Trump 1.0:

If no one has told Donald Trump, then I will: His nickname on Chinese social media today is “Chuan Jianguo” — meaning “Trump the (Chinese) Nation Builder” — because of how his relentless China bashing and tariffs during his first term as president lit a fire under Beijing to double down on its efforts to gain global supremacy in electric cars, robots and rare materials, and to become as independent of America’s markets and tools as possible.

What Trump 2.0 now faces in today’s China that he helped to create is, according to Tom:

The China that Trump will encounter is a much more formidable export engine. Its advanced manufacturing muscles have exploded in size, sophistication and quantity in the last eight years, even while consumption by its people remains puny.

 

China’s export machine is so strong now that only very high tariffs might really slow it down, and China’s response to very high tariffs could be to start cutting off American industries from crucial supplies that are now available almost nowhere else. That kind of supply-chain warfare is not what anyone, anywhere needs.

Further, Tom signals what a Trump administration must now do in the face of much more evident competitor:

But if we don’t use this time to respond to China the way we did to the Soviet Union’s 1957 launch of Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite, with our own comprehensive scientific, innovative and industrial push, we will be toast.

So for Tom what it requires is a ‘full court press’ – ‘A Sputnik Moment’ by the US under a second Trump administration. Hmm, if really required one has to wonder if given today’s US politics there is anything even somewhat similar to that much earlier, “all hands on deck” type US strategy.

Tom Friedman, however, is not the only one calling for a concerted US national effort to deal with a charging China that the US helped to create. More focused on the technology/science/innovation front is the examination by my good colleague Scott Kennedy from CSIS. Scott is senior adviser and Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies at CSIS and recently he examined the US-China technology competition in Foreign Affairs, in an article titled, “How America’s War on Chinese Tech Backfired And Why Trump’s Plans Would Make Things Even Worse.

But just before going there I thought it was worth setting up that examination by focusing on probably one of Joe Biden’s last public talks as President, this at Brookings in Washington, just a few days ago on December 10th. The remarks were titled by the White House as, “His Middle-Out, Bottom-Up Economic Playbook”. There was a fair bit of coughing and missing words in the transcript but the message was clear enough:

Today, here at Brookings Institution, I would like to talk about pivotal actions we’ve taken to rebuild the economy for the long haul, you know, and how we’re — how we’re at a critical, in my view, moment in the direction the economy is going to take.

 

After decades of trickle-down economics that primarily benefited those at the very top, we — we’ve written a new book that’s growing the economy — the middle-out and the bottom-up — that benefits, thus far, everyone. And that’s going to be the test with go- — going forward.

 

I was determined to restore U.S. leadership in industries of the future.

 

We understood we needed long-term investments for the future. Investing in America agenda, which includes my Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, CHIPS and Science Act, the Inflation Reduction Act — together, they mark the most significant investment in America since the New Deal. And that’s a fact. I mean, whether it’s good or bad, that’s the fact.

 

We not only — we not only beat the pandemic; we broke from the economic orthodoxy that has failed this nation, in my view, for a long time — a theory that led to fewer jobs, less economic growth, and bigger deficits.

 

And the best way to build that in America was to invest in America, invest in American products and invest in the American people — not by handing out tax breaks to those at the top.

But the tools employed by the Biden administration, as described by the President, barely touched the protections initiated by Trump 1.0 and advanced further in some cases by the Biden administration. But Scott targets exactly those initiatives by the Biden administration, particularly in the technology innovation sectors. As he describes:

Washington’s array of tools is highly expansive: export controls, tariffs, product bans, inbound and outbound investment screening, constraints on data flows, incentives to shift supply chains, limits on scholarly exchange and research collaboration, industrial policy expenditures, and buy-America incentives.

 

The goals of these measures are equally diverse: slow China’s progress in the most advanced technologies that have dual-use potential, reduce overdependence on China as a source of inputs and as a market for Western goods, deny China access to sensitive data, protect critical infrastructure, push back against economic coercion, protect the United States’ industrial competitiveness, and boost its manufacturing employment.

And he concludes by arguing:

Beijing’s shift toward a more expansive and assertive form of mercantilist techno-nationalism poses genuine risks to the prosperity and economic security of the United States and others. Something must be done, to be sure, but Washington’s increasingly restrictive policies have yielded highly mixed results.

So it’s not that China doesn’t pose a challenge but the solutions chosen by the Biden administration, in part built on the earlier Trump years, raise serious concerns and pose real questions in the face of Trump 2.0:

As President-elect Donald Trump returns to power, his administration would be wise to reflect on the fact that existing restrictions on Chinese technology have yielded decidedly mixed results. The Biden administration has described its strategy as a “small yard, high fence,” or placing high restrictions on a small number of critical technologies. That yard is already growing, with negative unintended consequences for the United States.

What then can be done, according to Scott. It seems to be in several parts. First, according to him:

Washington needs to set clear priorities, identifying the most urgent threats that deserve a response. Otherwise, the United States will be dragged into a game of whack-a-mole or, more worryingly, try to block all commercial ties with China. To the extent that the United States attempts to deny technologies to China, the only sustainable approach involves working with allies and other countries so that the United States will not be outflanked by China and lose technology leadership in the rest of the world. If the Trump administration pursues extensive decoupling from China, the result will most likely be an isolated, poorer, and weaker United States.

And additionally Scott targets international organizations and multilateral initiatives:

The Trump administration would also be unwise to ignore global institutions, such as the World Trade Organization, as doing so would dramatically raise the likelihood of unbounded conflict. Instead, Washington should intensify multilateral cooperation to set new rules for global economic activity in order to avoid a race to the bottom.

 

The United States may in some instances need to take unilateral steps to maintain its relative technology superiority, but excessive economic security measures will mean less innovation, slower economic growth, reduced profits, and fewer jobs. With a combination of wise domestic policies, collaboration with allies, and investment in international institutions, the United States can achieve both prosperity and security.

This latter focus is welcome, it seems to me. As bad as some of the Biden tariff and sanction approaches have been, certainly the dismantling of the WTO trade and investment policies stand out, in particular, because earlier administrations were vital to the creation of the multilateral trade framework. While it was, and is imperfect, as any multilateral instrument is, it is a ‘damn sight better’ than where we are today. Geneva at the moment is dead.

But it is not just the economy/technology front that demands apparently a concerted Trump administration effort. There is also national security. The message, it seems, is being delivered by one of the key figures over decades, that is none other than Senator Mitch McConnell.

I plan to return to Senator McConnell, and a number of others on national security, after the holiday break. But it is holiday time and I plan to put down my pen for the holidays. Look for me back here at Alan’s Newsletter in the week of January 6th – 2025, if not earlier. Have a great Holiday time!

This Post first appeared as a Substack Post at Alan’s Newsletter.

https://globalsummitryproject.substack.com/p/what-can-we-expect-in-the-first-instance

All comments and Subscriptions are welcome.

Image Credit: USNews.com

The Impact of Trump 2.0

Posted on by
Reply

They were obvious moves by Trump, I suspect. Nevertheless, some of the choices by Trump for his senior appointments were startling – and what one might otherwise describe as ‘dismaying’. For many of us not a particular surprise. So we have House of Representative Matt Gaetz nominated as Attorney General. As The Guardian declared:

Donald Trump’s decision to nominate the far-right Republican congressman Matt Gaetz as attorney general has sent shockwaves through Washington, including the president-elect’s own party.

 

Trump on Wednesday announced Gaetz as his pick to be the nation’s chief law enforcement officer in the justice department, a role that directs the government’s legal positions on critical issues, including abortion, civil rights, and first amendment cases.

Michelle Goldberg, writing for the NYT had some choice words for this Trump nomination:

Of all the people Trump was considering for A.G., Gaetz is unique mainly for how much he is hated by other Republicans, and not just moderate ones. In the final months of the last Trump administration, the Justice Department opened an investigation into whether Gaetz had a relationship with an underage girl that violated federal sex trafficking laws.

 

It should go without saying that Gaetz is not, by any normal standards, even a tiny bit qualified to be attorney general. He practiced law for only about two years before running for office, handling small-time civil matters, like suing an old woman for money she owed his father’s caregiving company.

Then, there was the equally startling nomination of Robert F Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic and more that Trump has nominated for the head of Health and Human Services. And then there is Pete Hegseth nominated for Secretary of Defence and Tulsi Gabbard nominated for Director of Intelligence. Each in their own career and experience raising questions over their appointment. And then, finally,  there is the appointment of Elon Musk Trump’s now seemingly close buddy to a Commission to bring efficiency to the US federal government. As Ed Luce at the FT commented:

What you might feel less comfortable in admitting is that Trump is giving utterance to America’s soul. The US is driven by the spirit of limitless resources and surmountable frontiers. Its mission is “To explore strange new worlds . . . to boldly go where no man has gone before”, as James T Kirk put it. On Tuesday Trump promoted Elon Musk, his own Captain Kirk, to Starfleet Admiral. Musk’s USS Enterprise is the department of government efficiency (Doge).

Notwithstanding the name the Musk initiative is unlikely to be a government department as noted by Luce:

It is unclear whether Doge will have any statutory authority, which would require an act of Congress, or simply be a super-advisory body to the Trump administration. Either way, Musk’s goal is to close down regulatory agencies in Washington or drastically pare them back. He recently said he would also cut almost a third from the federal government’s $6.7tn budget.

Government authority or not, Musk will be disruptive, as are likely to be all these recent appointments, and that is the point. Disruption, chaos and controversy  – the Trump modus operandi. As noted again by Luce on the choice of Musk:

But Musk will probably get a lot of his way on deregulation. If you work for the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Department of Justice, the US Federal Reserve, the Bureau of Labor, the Environmental Protection Agency, the US Department of Agriculture or the departments of energy and education, be afraid; be very afraid.

For those poor souls who suggested that Trump wouldn’t follow through on some of his crazier actions, often after plaintively admitting that they had voted for him, these appointments seem to put ‘stop’ to that benign view of Trump governing.

And raising the spectre of serious policy steps likely leading to disruption, chaos and controversy, Trump 2.0 will have a significant impact on US foreign policy efforts. Here, it is worth examining the recent comments by my colleague, Susan Thornton. Susan is currently a Senior Fellow at the Paul Tsai China Center at the Yale Law School. She also participates in many of the China-West Dialogue (CWD) discussions that we have held over the last few years. Susan retired as a senior diplomat after almost three decades of experience with the U.S. State Department in Eurasia and East Asia. She retired, in fact, as Acting Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs at the Department of State.

Susan does not underestimate the prospect for a dramatic impact by Trump on American foreign policy driven, as Susan sees it, by an American public that is no longer willing to bear the burden of a leading US role in the global order. As she wrote recently at the East Asian Forum, the US public, from Susan’s view, is determined to stand down the United States:

Americans are no longer confident in the promise and effectiveness of their institutional system, they reject the obligation of answering the world’s fire alarms, they are weary of bearing the cost of global security and they see clearly that other states are free-riding on US largesse. The US electorate has been consistently ahead of its politicians in its rejection of the role of ‘world policeman’.

In Susan’s view the election of Trump satisfies, it seems, a desire among many in public to wind down US entanglements in the global arena:

Trump, and certainly his national security team, does not appreciate that he was put in power to dismantle US global hegemony. But Trump’s bullying transactionalism, his aversion to commitment, his penchant for tariffs and complete indifference to the potential impact that the United States has on other countries can have no other outcome.

 

It is obvious that permanent damage will be done to the United Nations, international economic institutions, multilateral organisations in which the United States is a member and any international effort to combat transnational challenges. The dissolution began during his first term and will be irreversible after the coming four years. The Americans who elected Trump as their standard bearer will cheer their demise.

And, the Trump actions, according to Susan, will only raise the temperature in the key global relationship, the US and China. As Susan suggests:

There will be a further sharp disconnect of the US and Chinese economies. Trump and the Republican Congress are likely to invoke more tariffs, export controls and sanctions leading to global fragmentation, rising costs and slower growth. Businesses will face an ever more complicated picture and are already strategising how to adjust. Many countries in Asia are devising economic hedging strategies and will try to walk a middle line amid deteriorating US–China relations. Whether and how a Trump administration might impose costs for such an approach remains an open question.

Susan further suggests that, in fact, Trump is the instrument of many in the US electorate that are tired with the burden resulting from the US leading role in the global order:

We have already entered the transition to a post-Pax Americana world — Trump is an accelerant. This does not mean that the United States will disappear. It will remain the most powerful and wealthy country in the world. But it does leave a vacuum in the international arena and US partners will hopefully step in to provide leadership and public goods.

My colleague Dan Drezner agrees with Susan at least with the impact of a second Trump administration. Dan is the Distinguished Professor of International Politics and Associate Dean of Research at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and among other things, the author of the Substack, Drezner’s World. In a FA piece entitled, “The End of American Exceptionalism: Trump’s Reelection Will Redefine U.S. Power”, Dan declares:

Trump will navigate world politics with greater confidence this time around. Whether he will have any better luck bending the world to his “America first” brand is another question entirely. What is certain, however, is that the era of American exceptionalism has ended. Under Trump, U.S. foreign policy will cease promoting long-standing American ideals. That, combined with an expected surge of corrupt foreign policy practices, will leave the United States looking like a garden-variety great power.”

 

He [Trump] believes that the U.S.-created liberal international order has, over time, stacked the deck against the United States. To change that imbalance, Trump wants to restrict inward economic flows such as imports and immigrants (although he likes inward foreign direct investment). He wants allies to shoulder more of the burden for their own defense. And he believes that he can cut deals with autocrats, such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin or North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, that will reduce tensions in global trouble spots and allow the United States to focus Inward.

For Susan the change in foreign policy is driven by the American public; for Dan the direction comes from Trump and his acolytes but the outcome appears to be the same. The end of American leadership as we’ve understood it for seven decades and more.

So how, or what will provide the leadership that can manage the global order? Who can help shape and critically, who can presumably stabilize the increasingly fractious international environment?  Positively, who can promote international development, energize the efforts to meet the climate crisis, and reform international financial reform and meet the growing debt crises for many? Who will energize the multilateral institutions that can promote peace and security and advance global governance? Where is the leadership?

Here Susan gives us a bit of a hint. As she suggests:

In this more fragmented, disordered world, US partners in Asia should also pursue more networked security cooperation and regional integration to safeguard peace and mitigate the negative effects of deglobalisation for their economies. Such measures are useful on their own merits, no matter who is in the White House, as the world is set to become a more difficult and dangerous place.

We have, at recent gatherings of the China-West Dialogue, been exploring the role of Middle Powers. I hope to turn back to the potential key roles that Middle Powers may bring to the growing threats to the global order. I think that may be a hopeful direction.  I will return to this subject.

Image Credit: ABC News

This Post first appeared as a Substack Post at Alan’s Newsletter. Feel free to comment and subscribe to Alan’s Newsletter.

https://globalsummitryproject.substack.com/p/the-impact-of-trump-20

 

 

 

In a Trump World, ‘Widening the Who’ in the Global Order

Posted on by
Reply

Now we are out a bit early. But that’s not surprising because of the US national elections on Tuesday night. So a few thoughts on that and then a redirection to the, “what do we do about the global order in the light of Trump’s return, including many of his former advisers, to the White House”

The electoral equation in the end proved to be rather simple if also somber. Harris lost too many non-college and latino men and she won women – but not by nearly enough. With the Latinos, Trump won 32 percent in 2020; in 2024 Trump won about 45 percent.  Harris,  on women, won 54 percent but Biden in 2020 won 57 percent. The Harris statistic on women is dismaying.

Now I am not one to focus and comment on US elections – other than as a ‘somewhat informed’ but non-expert – but it does seem to me that the Harris campaign did not strategically break through with a host of electoral groups with her message. And she needed to to secure the Presidency. As Michael Hirsh described in FP: 

Despite overpowering Trump in their only debate on Sept. 10 and raising more than $1 billion in donations in just three months—a new record—Harris often floundered when challenged to deliver a convincing summary of her agenda on critical issues such as the economy and immigration. She also fumbled badly in explaining her flip-flops on issues such as fracking (which she once opposed and later supported, but without pointing out the simple fact that improved technology had made it environmentally safer). That led Wall Street Journal commentator Peggy Noonan to label Harris an “artless dodger.”

Worse, possibly, was the view expressed by Opinion Writer Peter Baker who suggests that Trump represents a significant current of American thinking. As he wrote in the NYT:

The assumption that Mr. Trump represented an anomaly who would at last be consigned to the ash heap of history was washed away on Tuesday night by a red current that swept through battleground states — and swept away the understanding of America long nurtured by its ruling elite of both parties. … With his comeback victory to reclaim the presidency, Mr. Trump has now established himself as a transformational force reshaping the United States in his own image.

 

No longer can the political establishment write off Mr. Trump as a temporary break from the long march of progress, a fluke who somehow sneaked into the White House in a quirky, one-off Electoral College win eight years ago. With his comeback victory to reclaim the presidency, Mr. Trump has now established himself as a transformational force reshaping the United States in his own image.

 

Populist disenchantment with the nation’s direction and resentment against elites proved to be deeper and more profound than many in both parties had recognized. Mr. Trump’s testosterone-driven campaign capitalized on resistance to electing the first woman president.

In fact, according to Baker, Trump was appreciated for all his effrontery and racism:

Rather than be turned off by Mr. Trump’s flagrant, anger-based appeals along lines of race, gender, religion, national origin and especially transgender identity, many Americans found them bracing. Rather than be offended by his brazen lies and wild conspiracy theories, many found him authentic.

So with Trump in the White House and his people in the Administration where do we go? On the immediate geopolitical front we are very likely to see rising tensions with China – though I believe there is a path to less tension. We are very likely to see pressure on Ukraine to halt the conflict with Putin even at the cost of transferring Ukrainian lands to Russia – a real cost and speaking of costs we are likely to see a blizzard of tariffs on Chinese goods and possibly beyond. But it is a bit early to fill in the contours of Trump 2.0 foreign policy.

But, instead, let me look at the outline of the direction we saw coming from Democrat and Democrat-leaning experts and operatives. In particular let me look briefly at the design described by Anne-Marie Slaughter in a recent Foreign Affairs piece titled: “How America Can Succeed in a Multialigned World: The Importance of Building Truly Global Partnerships”. Anne-Marie is currently CEO of the think tank New America. From 2002 to 2009, she was Bert G. Kerstetter ‘66 University Professor of Politics and International Affairs and Dean of the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. In 2009 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appointed her as the first woman Director of Policy Planning in the U.S. State Department. She has been a ‘close in’ Democratic voice and it is why I refer to this article to give an inside possible glimpse at where the Harris administration might have moved had she been elected and indeed the possibility of Anne-Marie’s very real likely participation.

Anne-Marie is quite aware that there are two challenges this Biden administration faced and would be front and center for a Harris administration – the rising geopolitical tensions with Russia, and with China and with Iran, but also the existential global governance threats, climate, finance and weakened multilateralism and the institutions that no longer served global order purposes. Anne-Marie moved back to gaze at the Biden administration and its effort to build not just an alliance system but beyond that to a ‘multipartner world’. As Anne-Marie declared:

It [the Biden administration] has reanimated and expanded traditional alliances such as NATO and strengthened and created a host of new diplomatic and security partnerships. Secretary of State Antony Blinken described in Foreign Affairs a network of “partners in peace,” the result of an intense diplomatic strategy to safeguard U.S. interests abroad while rebuilding competitiveness at home.

Yet as she described the effort:

 These partnerships are important and valuable. Still, the Biden strategy overall has tilted too far in the direction of geopolitical competition over global cooperation, even as it tries to do both at once. To strike the right balance, the next administration must partner with a wider variety of global actors, focus those partnerships more on existential global threats, and accept a more decentralized, messier world that welcomes leadership from many different quarters.

 

The concept of “multistakeholder governance” holds that all actors who have a stake in the outcome of a specific decision, whether a state, an international institution, a corporation, or a municipality, find a place at the table at some point in the decision-making process.

So the future of multipartnering was just not just constructed on state, regional and international organizations but extending to non-state and substate actors. As Anne-Marie argues:

The concept of “multistakeholder governance” holds that all actors who have a stake in the outcome of a specific decision, whether a state, an international institution, a corporation, or a municipality, find a place at the table at some point in the decision-making process.

Her conclusion for this multipartner approach is as follows:

A national security strategy dedicated to building a multipartner world will still leave plenty of room for the United States to lead on the global stage. Moreover, embracing multisector partnerships gives open societies such as that of the United States a leg up in in geopolitical competition, given the autonomy and energy of American civic, corporate, philanthropic, technological, scientific, and educational institutions.

This wide multipartner approach, as described in part by Anne-Marie Slaughter, is unlikely to be captured and furthered by the incoming Trump administration. But it is worth keeping in mind and may well be an approach that will be valuable for many national, regional and international actors in the near future, even if not for a Trump America.

Meanwhile, another piece in a multipartner world is a possibility. And we at the China-West Dialogue (CWD) are keenly examining the role today of Middle Powers in furthering efforts to meet the challenge of global threats and to diminish the ratcheting up of geopolitical tensions. We are currently examining with colleagues across the globe the potential for Middle Power Diplomacy (MPD)  to tackle global threats and stabilize the global governance environment. As the lead co-chair of the CWD, Colin Bradford has written:

Global pluralism, developed in 2020-2023, posits the existence already of “autonomous” strategies and independence in foreign policies as a “global political dynamic” in global relations.  Pluralism is a core concept for CWD, in that it leads to the “pluralization” of relations with China as an “alternative framework” to address the toxic tension in the bilateral China-US relationship in recent years. This has been the goal of CWD from its foundation.

 

In the last year of CWD exchanges, the importance of Middle Powers and Middle Power Diplomacy has arisen as the domestic driver of pluralism.  This new CWD series seeks to elucidate the factors enabling countries to be Middle Powers and the features of their international behaviors which are effective in addressing global systemic challenges.

 

A better understanding of these factors and features could facilitate proactive national efforts to deliberately contribute to global pluralism by “punching above their weight” and to influence global governance outcomes that include China and the US but which “globalize” those outcomes, rather than narrow them by allowing great power dominance to prevail.

We have examined with colleagues globally, and always with our colleagues from China in the CWD process, Middle Power actions from Japan and Latin America, especially Brazil, and Korea shortly with Turkey, Indonesia and the ASEAN to come and also with examinations of Europe and the US and China and MPD.

Trump America with its hypernationalist focus and its likely transactional initiatives fails to promote any kind of global order optimism; but there are other pathways. We need to explore these further and promote those that appear promising.

This was first posted as a Substack POst at Alan’s Newsletter. All comments and free subscriptions are welcome

https://open.substack.com/pub/globalsummitryproject/p/in-a-trump-world-widening-the-who?r=bj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Image Credit: ABC News

 

 

 

The ‘Global Order’: ‘Who is on First’

Posted on by
Reply

I was trying very hard to ignore the impending vote for US president upcoming next week. We will have plenty of time to contemplate the action and consequences of the presidential choice on US foreign policy and global leadership.

But then again I was not fully able to ignore the consequences for the international order of this event. I was caught by a very recent Special Report from CIGI on: “Scenarios of Evolving Global Order”. Now CIGI is located in Waterloo Ontario and CIGI stands for the Centre for International Governance Innovation. I have a small soft spot for the think tank as I and a number of close colleagues spent some good years there when it launched as a global affairs outfit and, I think produced some good early work on global governance, among other things.

Anyway, the Report is interesting as it attempts to:

… fill a gap between the analysis of current trends and mapping of potential futures by outlining five possible scenarios for an evolving global order. These five scenarios represent a spectrum from the most modest plausible change (reform of the current system) to the most radical (transformation of the whole system due to a global shock).

There clearly is much current discussion over the evolving global order in the context of significant geopolitical tensions between the two leading powers and the numerous conflicts burdening international relations. So the Report describes 5 different scenarios built on these assumptions:

• The current international system is not working; international institutions, including the United Nations and Bretton Woods institutions, are unable to address most contemporary challenges.

• Responses to contemporary global challenges are siloed, nationally and institutionally.

• The United States’ global leadership is waning due to reduced capacity and internal focus.

• The relative economic power of liberal democracies is diminishing.

• Emerging powers — including, but not limited to, China and India — are increasingly asserting their influence and driving change.

• Finding new pathways of international cooperation on security issues may be more elusive, meaning attention may focus on cooperation on economic issues.

• Deglobalization, and regional integration as an alternative to multilateralism, continues to accelerate by many, but not all, measures.

• Momentum for nationalist and isolationist policies continues to build in many countries.

The result five different scenarios as filled out by the author team:

Scenario 1: Reform of the Existing Global System

Scenario 2: Replacement of the Existing Global System

Scenario 3: The Emergence of a Bloc-Based Global System

Scenario 4: A Case of Disorder

Scenario 5: Transformed Global Order

Each scenario is interesting and for every scenario there are two pathways described by the authors leading to an identified outcome:

The authors’ view is that these five scenarios broadly represent core directions that global order may evolve toward in the coming months and years. They acknowledge that there are numerous potential pathways that the five scenarios could take — by choosing only two for each, many possibilities remain for further exploration.

Now each scenario is worth assessing – and I will try and examine some perghaps at a later date, but I was struck by the perspective the authors identified for the structure and the dynamics for all five scenarios. As the Report suggested:

All of the scenarios explored assume the current and evolving global dynamics are multipolar (rather than other forms such as bipolar, hegemonic or concerted). It is, of course, possible that global order does not continue to evolve in  a multipolar way — for example, that one group of states forms a security and economic coalition in a way that dominates all the rest or that the world devolves into a bipolar world utterly dominated by American and Chinese spheres of control. The world is currently operating with multipolar dynamics on most issues, and this is likely to continue into the future.

Now that assumption of a multipolar system struck me. The reason is I came across an interesting Substack Post from Clarence Gu and Chenghao Sun, ChinAffairs+ describing in the Post titled “Yan Xuetong & John Mearsheimer Conversation: Who Shapes Global Order, and Who Will Win the Competition?”an interesting encounter, the third in fact, between these two experts. Now Yan Xuetong is the Dean of the Institute of International Relations at Tsinghua University, a highly prestigious university in China and John Mearsheimer is, as he describes himself, “the  R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor in the Political Science Department at the University of Chicago, where he has taught since 1982 and an international relations theorist. More specifically, I am a realist.”

Now I have known John for many years as we were graduate students together at Cornell University with the same adviser, the recently passed Richard N Rosecrance, renowned international relations expert. But we were seldom on the same side of the fence when describing the underlying dynamics of the international system. But that is neither here nor there.

Both Yan Xuetong and John are known for their focus in international relations on ‘realism’, and in fact John’s  writings identify what is known as ‘offensive realism’. And while the two differ to a degree in this encounter at Tsinghua in Beijing they both strongly endorse the notion that the system is driven by the need by states to maintain dominance in a current bipolar not multipolar world (You will note by the way that the quotes that follow have been slightly edited due at times to  imperfect transcription). As John describes the international system:

How do you survive the international system? The system is where there is no higher authority. The answer is very simple. You want to be very powerful. You want to maximize your power, you cannot be certain of the intentions of those other states. It pays to be really powerful, to pay to be a hegemon.

 

If you think more specifically, the argument is that you can only be a regional hegemon, number one. Number two, you want to make sure that no other state is a regional hegemon. The ideal situation is to be the only regional hegemony in the international system.

 

All of this is to say we are involved today, in an intense security competition. It shows no signs going away. And if anything will get worse with the passage of time. This is a tragic situation. It has nothing to do with Chinese culture or American culture. And many people in China blame the United States for this trouble. … So my argument is, it’s the system that has caused this intense security competition.

Yan Xuetong is even more direct. He states:

The new trend of global order is Counter-Globalization. Then certainly today, I think because today’s title is Global Order and US-China relationship, we have to talk about how the relationship between China and US impact the current global order, my understanding is that the China-US relationship just like John argued that it will be intensified in terms of conflicts.You cannot expect China and US suddenly find a way to set down those disputes become the partners. If that happens, it means our theories are wrong. And actually, why the China-US conflicts are increasing and intensifying. It’s because now we’re in a bipolar configuration. The power structure is not multipolar.

 

The power structure is not multipolar. The current power structure is bipolar. And in the IR community, we all agree the situation after the World War One was multipolar, and after World War Two is bipolar.

 

What I mean is that the historic experience tells us, today we still have to understand what the international configuration is. It is not multipolar, not unipolar, it is bipolar, because except China no other major powers have capability or national power that account for 1/3 of the United States. None of them, except China. I don’t know how exactly we can do the measurement, but at least China’s capability is larger than 1/3 of the United States, possibly I would say 2/3 of the US.

Well, I won’t go into the five scenarios at this point though they are worth reviewing. The point here is to raise concern over analyses that are largely driven by structure rather than dynamics generated by policy – security, economic and political. These are the drivers that shape international outcomes. It is difficult at this moment to determine whether the structure is slightly less hegemonic, or is already bipolar, or in fact has become multipolar. The real analytic need, however, is to focus on the leading states and their foreign policy determinations. Structure is there, of course, but it does not drive foreign policy action or outcomes.

This Post first appeared at my Substack, Alan’s Newsletter. All comments and free subscriptions are welcome

Image Credit: Clarence Gu

 

Leadership – or Not

Posted on by
Reply

The killing of Yahya Sinwar in Gaza, as many observers have suggested, may impact on the continuation, or a possible cessation of the conflict in Gaza. Some like Tom Friedman of the NewYork Times, and other commentators have even suggested that it could have possibilities beyond just the Gaza conflict. But all this rightly raises again the influence – and dare I say the leadership – of the United States. This question of US leadership brings attention not just to Israel and the region but beyond and raises real questions of US leadership with the global order.

On the Middle East front the US has expressed strongly its belief that it is time to end the war. As David Sanger of the NYTimes suggested in his  analysis of the current state of relations:

Within hours of the death of the Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar on Thursday, President Biden and his aides scrambled to design one last push for a broad de-escalation of violence in the Middle East: a cease-fire and hostage deal in Gaza, a pullback from Israeli attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon, a confident declaration of victory by Israel that might allow it to forgo a major retaliation against Iran.

It is time for this war to end,” Mr. Biden said as he emerged from Air Force One when it landed outside Berlin late Thursday. He added that he had called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and urged him to “move on” from the war and focus on building a new political landscape for the region.

Tom Friedman elaborated on what was required beyond just a ceasefire, if the cessation is to have a real impact on international stability:

The broad idea is for the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, to agree to appoint the economist and former P.A. prime minister Salam Fayyad — or someone of his sterling reputation for incorruptibility — as the new Palestinian prime minister to lead a new technocratic cabinet and reform the Palestinian Authority, root out corruption and upgrade its governance and security forces.

Such a reformed Palestinian Authority would then formally ask for — and participate in — an international peacekeeping force that would include troops from the U.A.E., Egypt, possibly other Arab states and maybe even European nations. This force would be phased in to replace the Israeli military in Gaza. The Palestinian Authority would then be responsible for rebuilding Gaza with relief funds provided by Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E. and other Arab Gulf states, Europeans and most likely the U.S.

 

A reformed Palestinian Authority, with massive Arab and international funds, would attempt to restore its credibility in Gaza, and the credibility of its core Fatah organization in Palestinian politics — and sideline the remnants of Hamas.

The problem, at least immediately, however, is as David Sanger points out is that there is no interest by Prime Minister Netanyahu, it seems at this moment, to accept even a ceasefire let alone steps beyond:

Nothing in his face-offs with Mr. Netanyahu suggests that the Israeli prime minister will take his advice or seize the chance to turn the military victories into a lasting political accomplishment. One of Mr. Biden’s senior aides said the administration’s concern was that the killing of Mr. Sinwar, and before him the killing of the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, ratifies in Mr. Netanyahu’s mind his certainty that he was right to deflect American calls for de-escalation over the past few months.

These observations seem to target the immediate difficulties that such a US plan envisages. But it is beyond that. The underlying question that is there, and ultimately more impactful, is the influence of the US in this situation but beyond it in other international arenas such as the Ukraine, the South China Sea and Taiwan. What is the capacity and policy chops of the US to influence and indeed to pressure allies and foes alike to accept outcomes that the US identifies as improving the state of relations and hopefully terminating conflict and stabilizing, or even possibly improving relations among the countries and more broadly the system?

As Ross Douthat of the NYT recently wrote in an article titled, “America needs a President”:

In neither case, though, does the world’s most powerful country seem to have a real handle on the situation, a plan that it’s executing or a clear means of setting and accomplishing its goals.

He further argues:

Scenarios where great powers end up led around by their allies and clients are not historically unusual. But it’s hard to escape the impression that America’s current difficulties are linked to a very specific problem: the vacuum at the heart of this presidency, the slow fade of Joe Biden from the normal execution of his duties, the general uncertainty about who is actually making decisions in U.S. foreign policy.

But it seems to me that a focus on the twilight of the Biden years as an explanation for US inability to shape conflict outcomes is a bit of a cop out. Rather as I see it, it seems to me that the US has come to a point where it is unwilling to fashion credible threats on friends and more importantly on foes. The key action mechanics of leadership – credible threats and equally credible assurances – are increasingly missing.  As noted by Douthat:

Today’s restoration of deterrence could become tomorrow’s overreach or quagmire. For another, America has global responsibilities, not just regional ones, and a widening war in the Middle East could be bad for the American position in Asia and Eastern Europe no matter its outcome for the immediate participants. If the United States can’t exert real leverage over countries that it arms and supports, a weakening Pax Americana will end up hostage to too many interests not our own.

And that is the concern and the nub of the global order issue. And while there is a reflection, as noted above, that it is this President who has lost influence recently as he comes to the end of his Presidency, the weakness of America’s efforts extend beyond this, it appears to me.

The dilemma in my mind lies more with the rise of nationalist, even populist politics. We need not go to the most extreme versions of this populist view, as expressed by Donald Trump.The fact is it has spread to Democratic politics with Biden but it would appear with his advisers and to Democratic Presidential candidate, Vice President Harris as well. It can be seen most prominently with US trade policy. You need go no further than this administration’s determined effort to neuter the international trade dispute mechanism, the WTO. In addition, it extends to the growing willingness of US administrations, starting with Trump but infecting the Biden administration also to use tariffs, and increasingly so, as a trade policy. Michael Froman, currently President of the Council on Foreign Relations, and who served as the U.S. Trade Representative from 2013 to 2017 during the Obama Administration has examined current US trade policy:

For much of the last century, in response to the disastrous 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariffs, the United States’ international economic policy was focused on liberalization and integration. Competitiveness, efficiency, and growth were the metrics of success. This framework achieved many of its objectives, contributing to the biggest reduction in poverty in human history, opening vast new markets to U.S. exports, and greatly strengthening the comparative advantage of U.S. firms. At the same time, attention it paid to particularly vulnerable groups of workers and their communities. The advent of China as a strategic competitor further highlighted the limitations of that approach. The rules-based system was not designed to accommodate an economy that is so large and so integrated and yet is determined to follow a fundamentally different set of rules.

The result is the enlargement of protectionism signaled by National Security Adviser, Jake Sullivan:

April 2023, U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan delivered a critique of the neoliberal consensus that had served as the foundation for international economic policy for nearly a century. In a prominent speech, Sullivan suggested that the United States was moving on from an agenda of global integration and trade liberalization.

 

To protect Americans and to take on China, Sullivan contended, Washington would no longer shy away from raising tariffs, imposing restrictions on exports and foreign investment, and engaging in domestic industrial policy. It was an important speech for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that it was delivered by the national security adviser, not the treasury secretary, commerce secretary, or U.S. trade representative. …

 

Consistent with Sullivan’s framework, the Biden administration has embraced a range of economic tools: export controls, restrictions on inward and outbound foreign investment, tariffs, industrial policy, and antitrust enforcement. Many of these tools enjoy broad bipartisan support.

 

If they are to form the basis of a new, enduring Washington consensus, however, the next president—whether Trump or Kamala Harris—will need to develop a more systematic approach to using them. That means understanding their limitations, developing principles to guide their use, and grappling fully with the tradeoffs they involve.

But I am not heartened by this approach on trade, and the wider implications of a nationalist approach to policy well beyond trade policy. The direction of US leadership is troubling. We are only too aware of where it could go with Trump but the signals are not positive for a Harris administration either.

Image Credit: US Institute for Peace

This Post first appeared at Alan’s Newsletter and is a Substack Post from there. All comments and free subscriptions are welcome.

https://open.substack.com/pub/globalsummitryproject/p/leadership-or-not?r=bj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true