shared interests
what we try to forget in foreign affairs
I attach 1below a brilliant, if long, speech entitled ‘The Future of Global Uncertainty’ by the Singaporan scholar, Bilahari Kausikan, delivered as the 3rd Atal Vajpayee Memorial Lecture in Delhi on 23 January 2023. He never fails to provoke us to think far differently than we usually do. Here he is demanding we examine our current assumptions and challenges far more rigourously than does the contemporary debate in the United States.
Singaporans have to think brilliantly as they are an island nation in the most significant spot in Asia. They are a nation comprised of citizens largely from two contrasting mega-cultures of Asia, Indian and Sinic, and they have little margin for error in their ability to survive since they could see Malaysia attempt to eradicate their few decades’ of independence. But, superb strategic thinkers and questioners they are.
I cite the speech which every single educated person, regardless of location, should read. It may not ring everyone’s chimes but it asks us to think about perspectives, assumptions, interests, and the most basic premises about the world in 2023 and into the foreseeable future.
Yet, he is not able to predict that future. Instead, he asks us to try applying different lenses and recognising that certain known conditions, or I always used the world imperatives when I was a core course director at the National War College thirty years ago, are at work. Kausikan doesn’t think things are as unknown as some want to assert, nor are they either as bleak or glorious as assumed.
His message is not only to Americans, far from it. It’s a message to the thinkers engaged in the world. Some in Europe, many in Asia, and lots here as I noted.
In particular, I am struck by the following:
‘It is worth reminding ourselves that when we talk about a rules-based order, it is a mistake to believe that just because we may use the same words, we all necessarily always mean the same thing. There will inevitably be different intrpretations of the rules or different emphases on different rules, according to our different interests. And this is true even among the closest of allies, partners and friends, let alone rivals or competitors.’
As some reading this know, I abhor the term ‘rules-based order’ for precisely this reason. It’s an order we have defined to our liking but we also—shock alert—ignore it when it serves our purposes. Yes, we largely abide it more often than others (read Vlad the Impaler and Xi Jinping) but we never entirely follow the rules we set for others (see UN Conference on the Law of the Sea which our Senate—led by Democrat or Republican- has never empowered us to join fully). Actions create consequences and others see our selectivity so stop using ‘holier than thou’ language. Let’s call it the post-World War II order which is indisputable.
Further, Kausikan notes ‘neither the US nor China are comfortable because of interedependence exposes mutual vulnerabilities. Both have tried to temper their vulnerabilities. Americans and their allies by trying to enhance the resilience of key sectors by diversification to reduce the dependence on China of their most important supply-chains; China by trying to become more self-reliant in key technologies and placing more emphasis on domestic household consumption to drive growth.’
Wait, wait: China feels vulnerabilities? Yes, why yes, they do which is why the Party spends a lot more on internal security than they do on traditional defense. Whatever else one says about Xi during his decade in power, he bloody well has built up the internal security forces to assure the Party continues to rule in China because he fears that the citizenry are not entirely buying what he is selling. The Chinese Communisty Party just celebrated their centenary two years ago and they know how they came to power.
The author spends much time discussing the internal problems plaguing the United States, China, and Russia. These are states, each for a different reason, playing an invaluable part in the world community, thus cannot be shunted aside because a smaller state (or leader) doesn’t like something about that state’s politics, misbehaviour, or aspirations. Make no mistake, Vlad the Impaler is the weakest in a dying Russia but we are foolish to ignore the resources he still commands, whether they are nuclear or natural.
Kausikan concludes with observations that probably shake many in the United States to our core. First, he notes that the United States and China are both important interlocutors for the world into the foreseeable future. This is international realism at its core: they are too big and too important to ignore and vital, in fact, to the success of many states of the world. That is a hard one for us to swallow as we continue seeing China as the malevolent archetype of the twenty-first century. The Singaporan just does not buy things being that simple.
The ‘allies and partners’ we expect to abandon their economic ties with China are not going to do so because it’s in their interests to continue those ties. The United States is a long way away, we have turned our back on formal multilateral trade agreements in Asia, and have become pretty erratic in some of our core principles of the post-World War II world (free trade is a flashing red light here). Just because China is an aggressor in many situations in Asia does not mean those states will help us on Taiwan or some of the other steps advocated to ‘contain’ China.
Second, ever more painfully for Americans, the rest of the world worries about our behaviour as well as that of China. Our belief in the righteousness of our ways does not always sell abroad. Kausikan notes the concerns differ state by state about what Washington and Beijing do but the concerns are real, sustained, and unlikely to disappear because of the known beliefs, premises, and interests at work in each capital.
The author concludes by reminding his audience that states will choose where to align based on what is in their national interests as each has what political scientists call ‘agency’ or some ability to operate for themselves. This is a warning that we in the United States should not assume our repeated condemnations of Beijing’s ill ways will sell in Dacca, Abijan, or Berlin. The charges may well be true but that doesn’t compel others to a certain behaviour threatening their long-term futures.
We in the United States have come to believe, whether we admit it or not, that the unipolar moment as the post-Soviet collapse was known will return once we get our bearings back after the debacles in Afghanistan and Iraq…Once we have figured out how to tame the $31 trillion dollar debt…After we show the Communist Party that we will support Taiwan’s democracy……
Kausikan’s lecture is a reminder that the complexity of the world, if it ever had that sort of trajectory, has returned to a far more nuanced one than we seem to want to admit. Like many Asians, he is obliquely reminding us that history is long, major states still have power based on economic, military, cultural and political conditions and instruments, and that population and geography matter.
Kausikan is not predicting who ‘wins’ in competition but he is stating unequivocably that the dynamics of the international system will continue because the great powers have strengths and weaknesses, each of which ebb and flow.
The title of his lecture included uncertainties. He believes those uncertainties have a bit more known facts than we have been letting on. Ponder his argument and especially the questions he believes we need to answer in global affairs because they will confront us for the remainder of our lives and those of our children and grandchildren unless we make heinous mistakes which utterly end the uncertainties.FIN
https://foreignaffairs.co.nz/2023/01/25/mil-osi-asia-pac-address-by-ambassador-bilahari-kausikan-at-the-third-atal-bihari-vajpayee-memorial-lecture-january-23-2023/