中国引领世界政治新时代
2023-03-19 15:32阅读：
西方追求的是一个等级化的国际秩序。欧盟委员会外交与安全政策高级代表何塞普·博雷利最近在“放松警惕”的时候直言不讳地表达了这个观点。他在一个公开场合说：“欧洲是一个花园。世界其它地方是丛林，丛林有可能侵犯到花园。”
眼下，世界舞台上出现了力量重组。可以肯定的是，西亚的地缘政治格局将从此不同。实事求是地说，春天已经露头，但冰面刚开始融化。尽管如此，太阳的光芒还是带来希望，预示着更温暖的日子即将到来。
China Steps Up: A New Era Has Dawned In World Politics
By M.K. Bhadrakumar
The agreement announced on Friday in Beijing regarding the
normalisation of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran
and the reopening of their embassies is a historic event. It goes
way beyond an issue of Saudi-Iranian relations. China’s mediation
signifies that we are witnessing a profound shift of the tectonic
plates in the geopolitics of the 21st century.
The joint statement issued on Friday in Beijing begins by saying
that the Saudi-Iranian agreement was reached “in response to the
noble initiative of President Xi.” The dramatic beginning goes on
to state that Saudi Arabia and Iran have expressed their
“appreciation and gratitude” to Xi and the Chinese g
overnment “for hosting and sponsoring the talks, and the efforts it
placed towards its success.”
The joint communique also mentioned Iraq and Oman for fostering the
Saudi-Iranian dialogue during 2021-2022. But the salience is that
the United States, which has been traditionally the dominant power
in West Asian politics for close to eight decades, is nowhere in
the picture.
Yet, this is about the reconciliation between the two biggest
regional powers in the Persian Gulf region. The US retrenchment
denotes a colossal breakdown of American diplomacy. It will remain
a black mark in President Biden’s foreign policy legacy.
But Biden must take the blame for it. Such a cataclysmic failure is
largely to be traced to his fervour to impose his neoconservative
dogmas as an adjunct of America’s military might and Biden’s own
frequent insistence that the fate of humankind hinges on the
outcome of a cosmic struggle between democracy and autocracy.
China has shown that Biden’s hyperbole is delusional and it grates
against realities. If Biden’s moralistic, ill-considered rhetoric
alienated Saudi Arabia, his attempts to suppress Iran met with
stubborn resistance from Tehran. And, in the final analysis, Biden
literally drove both Riyadh and Tehran to search for countervailing
forces that would help them to push back his oppressive,
overbearing attitude.
The US’ humiliating exclusion from the centre stage of West Asian
politics constitutes a “Suez moment” for the superpower, comparable
to the crisis experienced by the UK in 1956, which obliged the
British to sense that their imperial project had reached a dead end
and the old way of doing things—whipping weaker nations into line
as ostensible obligations of global leadership —was no longer going
to work and would only lead to disastrous reckoning.
The stunning part here is the sheer brain power and intellectual
resources and ‘soft power’ that China has brought into play to
outwit the US. The US has at least 30 military bases in West Asia —
five in Saudi Arabia alone — but it has lost the mantle of
leadership. Come to think of it, Saudi Arabia, Iran and China made
their landmark announcement on the very same day Xi got elected for
a third term as president.
What we are seeing is a new China under the leadership of Xi
trotting over the high knoll. Yet, it is adopting a self-effacing
posture claiming no laurels for itself. There is no sign of the
‘Middle Kingdom syndrome,’ which the US propagandists had warned
against.
On the contrary, for the world audience — especially countries like
India or Vietnam, Turkey, Brazil or South Africa — China has
presented a salutary example of how a democratised multipolar world
can work in future — how it is possible to anchor big power
diplomacy on consensual, conciliatory politics, trade and
interdependence and advance a ‘win-win’ outcome.
Implicit in this is another huge message: China as a factor of
global balance and stability. It is not only Asia-Pacific and West
Asia who are watching. The audience also includes Africa and Latin
America — in fact, the entire non-Western world that forms the big
majority of world community who are known as the Global South.
What the pandemic and the Ukraine crisis have brought to the
surface is the latent geopolitical reality accruing through decades
that the Global South rejects the policies of neo-mercantalism
pursued by the West in the garb of ‘liberal internationalism.’
The West is pursuing a hierarchical international order. None other
than the EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell blurted this out in
an unguarded moment recently with a touch of racist overtone when
he said from a public platform that ‘Europe Is a garden. The rest
of the world Is a jungle, and the jungle could Invade the
garden.’
Tomorrow, China could as well be challenging the US hegemony over
the Western Hemisphere. The recent paper by the Chinese Foreign
Ministry titled ‘US Hegemony and Its Perils’ tells us that Beijing
will no longer be on the defensive.
Meanwhile, a realignment of forces on the world stage is taking
place with China and Russia on one side and the US on the other.
Doesn’t it convey a big message that on the very eve of the
historic announcement in Beijing on Friday, the Saudi Arabian
foreign minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud landed suddenly
in Moscow on a ‘working visit’ and went into a huddle with Foreign
Minister Sergey Lavrov who was visibly delighted? (here, here and
here )
Of course, we will never know what role Moscow would have played
behind the scenes in coordination with Beijing to build bridges
between Riyadh and Tehran. All we know is that Russia and China
actively coordinate their foreign policy moves. Interestingly, on
March 6, President Putin had a telephone conversation with Iran’s
President Ebrahim Raisi.
Audacity of hope
To be sure, the geopolitics of West Asia will never be the same
again. Realistically, the first sparrow of spring has appeared but
the ice was melted for only three or four rods from the shore.
Nonetheless, the sun’s rays give hope, signalling warmer days to
come.
Conceivably, Riyadh won’t have any truck further with the
diabolical plots hatched in Washington and Tel Aviv to create an
anti-Iran alliance in West Asia. Nor is it in the realms of
possibility that Saudi Arabia will be party to any US-Israeli
attacks on Iran.
This badly isolates Israel in the region and renders the US
toothless. In substantive terms, it scatters the Biden
administration’s feverish efforts lately to cajole Riyadh to join
Abraham Accords.
However, significantly, a commentary in Global Times noted somewhat
audaciously that the Saudi-Iranian deal “set a positive example for
other regional hotspot issues, such as the easing and settlement of
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And in the future, China could
play an important role in building a bridge for countries to solve
long-standing thorny issues in the Middle East just as what it did
this time.”
Indeed, the joint communique issued in Beijing says, “The three
countries [Saudi Arabia, Iran and China] expressed their keenness
to exert all efforts towards enhancing regional and international
peace and security.” Can China pull a rabbit out of the hat? Time
will tell.
For the present, though, the Saudi-Iranian rapprochement will
certainly have positive fallouts on the efforts toward a negotiated
settlement in Yemen and Syria as well as on the political situation
in Lebanon.
The joint communique emphasises that Saudi Arabia and Iran intend
to revive the 1998 General Agreement for Cooperation in the Fields
of Economy, Trade, Investment, Technology, Science, Culture,
Sports, and Youth. All in all, the Biden administration’s maximum
pressure strategy toward Iran has crashed and the West’s sanctions
against Iran are being rendered ineffectual. The US’ policy options
on Iran have shrunk. Iran gains strategic depth to negotiate with
the US.
The cutting edge of the US sanctions lies in the restrictions on
Iran’s oil trade and access to western banks. It is entirely
conceivable that a backlash is about to begin as Russia, Iran and
Saudi Arabia — three top oil/gas producing countries start
accelerating their search for payment mechanisms bypassing the
American dollar.
China is already discussing such an arrangement with Saudi Arabia
and Iran. China-Russia trade and economic transactions try to shun
American dollar for payments. It is well understood that any
significant erosion in the status of the dollar as ‘world currency’
will not only spell doom for the American economy but will cripple
the US’ capacity to wage ‘forever wars’ abroad and impose its
global hegemony.
The bottom line is that the reconciliation between Saudi Arabia and
Iran is also a precursor to their induction as BRICS members in a
near future. To be sure, there is a Russian-Chinese understanding
already on this score. The BRICS membership for Saudi Arabia and
Iran will radically reset the power dynamic in the international
system.
