Achieving peace in the new multipolar era

With the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States assumed it would dominate the world as the unrivaled hegemon. However, the timing unipolar The American dominance was short-lived. That country’s geopolitical dominance ended with the rise of China, the recovery of Russia after the period of Soviet collapse, and the rapid development of India. We have arrived at a new multipolar era.

The United States is still fighting for world hegemony, but this is a bluff and is doomed to fail. Washington is in no position to lead the world, even if the rest of the world wanted it to, which it does not. The United States’ share of world output (at international prices) is at 16 percent and falling, from about 27 percent in 1950 and 21 percent in 1980. China’s share is 19 percent. China’s manufacturing output is about twice that of the United States, and the Asian country rivals the United States in cutting-edge technologies.

The United States is disproportionately overextended militarily, with some 750 bases in 80 countries. It is embroiled in long-running wars in Yemen, Israel-Palestine, Ukraine, Syria, Libya and elsewhere. America’s wars and struggle for hegemony are financed by debt, including debt owed to rival powers such as China.

A debt of the total of its GDP

Furthermore, US fiscal policy is paralysed. The rich, who finance political campaigns, want lower taxes, while the poor want more social spending.

The result is a stalemate, with a chronic budget deficit (now equivalent to 5 percent of GDP). Public debt has expanded from the equivalent of 35 percent of GDP in 2000 to 100 percent today.

The United States has a technological dynamism in areas such as artificial intelligence and microchip design, but its advances are quickly being overtaken by China, which is spreading its own knowledge and progress. Most of the world’s green and digital technology – including advanced solar panels, wind turbines, nuclear power plants, batteries, chips, electric vehicles, 5G systems and long-distance power transmission – is manufactured in Asia, much of it by China or through Chinese-dominated supply chains.

In the face of its budget deficits, the United States is shirking the financial burdens of global leadership. It demands that its NATO allies pay for their own military defense, and it is increasingly stingy in its contributions to the United Nations system to finance climate and development programs. In short, while the White House deludes itself that it still has global hegemony, we are already in a multipolar world. This raises the question of what this new multipolarity should mean. Here are three possibilities.

First, our current trajectory is a continuing struggle for dominance among the great powers, pitting the United States against China, Russia, and others. America’s leading foreign policy expert, Professor John Mearsheimer, has proposed the theory of offensive realismaccording to which great powers inevitably fight for dominance; however, the consequences can be tragic, in the form of devastating wars. It is certainly our task to avoid such tragic outcomes, rather than accept them as fatal.

The second possibility is a precarious peace, through a balance of power between the great powers, which is sometimes called defensive realismSince the United States cannot defeat China or Russia, and vice versa, the great powers must keep the peace by avoiding direct conflict with each other. The United States should not try to push NATO into Ukraine, against Russia’s strenuous objections, nor should it try to arm Taiwan against China’s vociferous opposition.

In short, the great powers must act with caution, avoiding the red lines that each draws. This is certainly good advice, but it is not enough. Balances of power become imbalances that threaten peace. The Consensus of Europe, which balanced power among the great European powers in the 19th century, eventually succumbed to changes in the balance of power at the end of that century, leading directly to the First World War.

The third possibility, neglected for the past 30 years by American leaders but which represents our best hope, is a genuine peace among the great powers. This peace would be based on a shared recognition that there can be no hegemony and that the common good requires active cooperation among the great powers. There are several bases for this approach, including idealism (a world based on ethics) and institutionalism (a world based on international law and multilateral institutions).

Towards sustainable peace

Sustainable peace is possible. We can learn much from the long peace that prevailed in East Asia before the arrival of the Western powers in the 19th century. In his book Chinese cosmopolitanismphilosopher Shuchen Xiang quotes historian David Kang, who noted that “from the founding of the Ming Dynasty until the Opium Wars—that is, from 1368 to 1841—there were only two wars between China, Korea, Vietnam, and Japan. These were the Chinese invasion of Vietnam (1407–1428) and the Japanese invasion of Korea (1592–1598).” East Asia’s long peace was shattered by the British attack on China during the First Opium War, 1839–1842, and by the East–West (and later Sino–Japanese) conflicts that followed.

Professor Xiang attributes the half-millennium of peace in East Asia to Confucian norms of harmony, which underpinned the art of governance in the region, in contrast to the struggle for hegemony that characterized governance in Europe. Dr Jean Dong, an expert on Chinese foreign policy, expresses similar views on the differences between Chinese and European governance in her book Chinese Statecraft in a Changing World: Demystifying Enduring Traditions and Dynamic Constraints.

I recently proposed 10 Principles for Perpetual Peace in the 21st Century, based on the five Chinese principles for peaceful coexistence, plus five other practical steps; thus, a blend of Confucian ethics and institutionalism. My idea is to combine the ethics of cooperation with the practical benefits of international law and the UN Charter.

As the world gathers in September for the United Nations Summit on the Future, the key message is this: We do not want or need a hegemonic power. We do not need a balance of power, which can easily turn into an imbalance of forces. We need a lasting peace, based on ethics, common interests and international law and institutions.

* Professor and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University and President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. www.jeffsachs.org

Originally published in New World Economy

Translation: Jorge Anaya