UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres warns the US and China of a new Cold War.
Tensions between different powers in the world are increasing - but there is also hope.
New York / Munich - The UN Secretary General chose strong words. The world is "on the edge of the abyss," said Antonio Guterres at the beginning of the recently concluded UN General Assembly in New York. "Our world has never been so endangered and so divided." In an interview with the US news agency AP on the same evening, Guterres warned the US and China of a new Cold War. Both nuclear powers have to put their completely broken relations back in order, he demanded.
Guterres is not alone in his concern.
The current vocabulary of the global geopolitical debate is full of words such as division, confrontation, competition, containment, decoupling.
The West fears a cold war with China, Russia and Iran.
As early as 1998, Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Advisor to US President Jimmy Carter, named a coalition of China, Russia and Iran - united not by ideology, but by common resentment - the “most dangerous scenario”.
US withdrawal from Afghanistan leads to new alliances
The hasty withdrawal of the US and its allies from Afghanistan * created a situation in which the formation of that very alliance could accelerate. Like the nuclear powers Pakistan and India, Russia, Iran and China are among the neighbors of the crisis region. You now have to take the security situation into your own hands. The foreign ministers of Russia, China, Iran * and Pakistan met in mid-September to discuss Afghanistan. Together they could make a difference in the region and help the Afghans out of the crisis, said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi presented a five-point plan for further action at the meeting. Representatives of China, Russia and Pakistan recently traveled to Doha,to hold talks with the Taliban and members of the "secular leadership" such as ex-President Hamid Karzai, Lavrov reported on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. The fact that the three states are working together does not yet constitute an alliance - the role of Iran in particular is unclear.
But there is the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), established by China many years ago, whose members read like a list of the neighboring countries of Afghanistan: China, Russia, Pakistan and the Central Asian states of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan as well as India. The SCO, which received little attention in the West, was a security organization from the start - and now wants to get involved in Afghanistan. The SCO represents an incredible 40 percent of the world's population, making it the largest regional organization there is. And more and more countries are interested in admission: In addition to Iran, these are Syria, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt - countries that tend to be dissatisfied with the international institutions created by the West. What the SCO wants in the long termand how united its members are is open.
USA: Own security alliances against China in the Indo-Pacific
Meanwhile, the USA is busily building its own alliances, especially in the Indo-Pacific *.
Right before the UN meeting, a new security pact called AUKUS with Australia and Great Britain caused trouble in Europe *: Washington had not informed Brussels;
Australia canceled a submarine deal with France within hours of the founding of the pact - to purchase nuclear submarines from the USA instead.
Joe Biden is also in the process of reviving the long bogus four-party alliance with India, Japan and Australia called Quad.
Quad is also about security in the Indo-Pacific.
The four are also planning a corona vaccination offensive.
The unnamed elephant in the room is China for both groups.
Beijing may well be right to split its Western allies because the government fears an anti-Chinese alliance between the USA and Europe. Nevertheless, China feels encircled by these alliances. AUKUS undermines "regional peace and stability" and promotes an arms race, criticized Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian. Beijing knows that alliances like AUKUS are aligned against China - and regularly accuses the USA of having a “Cold War mentality”.
"President Biden has made building international coalitions his most important foreign policy initiative," writes Cheng Li, director of the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution.
In response, China has "expanded its diplomatic, economic and military ties with Russia and Iran in recent months, leading to the closest ties between these countries in the post-Cold War era." Lavrov also threw the United States in New York to act in the "spirit of the Cold War".
The stumbling block was that the US government was choosing all participants at its planned democracy summit.
China and the US: Cold War?
We are not yet in the Cold War 2.0 - but tensions have undeniably increased in recent years due to the brisk behavior of everyone. US President Trump announced the Iran nuclear deal, stepped out of the Paris climate agreement and started a trade war with China and excluded the Chinese telecommunications equipment supplier Huawei * from all US supply chains for fear of espionage. Trump also regularly snubbed the Europeans. Conversely, China is acting aggressively against Taiwan and in the South China Sea, which it claims almost completely - a claim that no one recognizes. Russia is influencing foreign elections through cyber attacks and annexing the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea. Iran had probably largely complied with the nuclear agreement, but it caught fire in the conflict regions of the Middle East.
Hotheads could well trigger an escalation in this situation.
US Chief of Staff Mark Milley also knew this in the fall when he picked up the phone and called his Chinese counterpart Li Zuocheng.
The US will not attack China despite President Trump's anger against Beijing, he told General Li. Milley defended that call in the Senate on Tuesday and another in January.
The reason was intelligence information that China "feared an attack by the US," said Milley.
His message was: “Stay calm, steadfast and de-escalated.
We won't attack you. "
USA: Perception of China and Russia as aggressors
But often the perception is more important than the reality. It determines how political actions of others are classified, says David Doodwell, director of the Hong Kong-APEC Trade Policy Study Group. Anyone who believes that China is generally acting aggressively has no doubt that the New Silk Road * is also a "covert attempt to build up soft power and expand control." Just as plausibly, however, the huge infrastructure program could also be seen as a contribution to “stabilize and build up the economies of neighboring countries.” In the USA, China is currently perceived primarily as aggressive. Mood below.
"The competition between the great powers is often portrayed as an all-or-nothing conflict in which revisionist autocracies challenge the US in all areas," writes Emma Ashford in the US magazine Foreign Policy *.
"In reality, China and Russia have so far only been selectively revisionist - and are trying to change the status quo where it suits their interests and to maintain it in other areas."
But if you assume that China and Russia are relentless enemies of the US, determined to destroy the existing order and overthrow US hegemony, then suddenly political measures are on the table that would otherwise be unthinkable. "
Things like armament in Asia or economic decoupling.
China: Frosty and uncompromising - Xi does not tolerate criticism
Conversely, China too often acts frostily and uncompromisingly. So-called “core interests” such as territorial issues or Xinjiang cannot be discussed with Beijing. For China, power is seen as a driver of geopolitics: Those who do not position themselves accordingly have already lost. In the South China Sea, China is acting as if its claim were completely undisputed - and, for example, turning controversial atolls into militarily fortified islands. President Xi Jinping * does not tolerate criticism of this aggressive behavior from the West.
Perception is also a problem in China: China imagines America's hand behind all difficulties and conflicts with Western states.
According to a report by the British
Economist
magazine, European and other Western ambassadors in Beijing have to
listen to lectures from Chinese counterparts that their respective homeland only challenges China because it tries stupidly to please America.
Many in Beijing see Western societies as increasingly decadent and in decline - while China is working hard and returning to old size.
The fact that the USA, viewed as a failing hegemon, is trying to slow down China's rise is causing enormous anger.
New Cold War: First signs of common sense
Recently, however, there have been increasing signs that all sides are gradually realizing the risks of this confrontation. Shortly before the UN General Assembly, Biden and China's President Xi Jinping spoke on the phone *. As the essence of the conversation, both sides stated that the competition should “not degenerate into a conflict”. Biden also said in New York that he did not want a Cold War with China *. Xi announced there that China would no longer sell coal-fired power plants abroad - thereby fulfilling a demand from Europe and the USA. In an interview with Wang Yi on Thursday, EU Foreign Affairs Representative Josep Borrell said that Europe and China must work together “despite all differences on a number of issues”.
Under Biden, the USA * agreed to negotiate with the EU, Russia and China to save the nuclear deal with Iran.
According to Lavrov, Russia, China and Iran are also coordinating with the United States on Afghanistan.
Since the end of August, the US government has taken a more relaxed course vis-à-vis Huawei;
At the end of September, Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou, who had been in custody in Canada for three years due to a US extradition request, was allowed to go home unpunished.
China then released two Canadians imprisoned for alleged espionage.
Analysts now expect the US trade war with China to ease.
And everyone has to work together on climate change anyway.
Hopefully the world will turn around before the abyss.
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