New Cold War, Old Geopolitics

By Uditha Devapriya

“The context, cause and course of events on US House Speaker Pelosi’s provocative visit to Taiwan are crystal clear. It is the US that has breached its one-China commitment and undermined China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, not the other way round. It is the US leader who traveled to China’s Taiwan region to support the ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist activities. No one from China has gone to Alaska or elsewhere in the US to support separatist movement there.”

Wang Wenbin, August 19, 2022.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and fears of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, continue to define geopolitics today. While most countries have taken sides, others are at a crossroads, unsure of what to do next. Intermediate powers, like India, have refused to take part in the great power game being played out in Asia and West Asia, except where it concerns its interests. Smaller players, including not just Sri Lanka, but also countries like Malaysia, Vietnam, and Indonesia, have taken a similarly ambivalent stance, calling for a de-escalation of hostilities on all sides while refraining from naming specific names.

There is nothing particularly unprecedented about these developments. They differ very little from the stands that these countries, and regions, took during the Cold War. But the new Cold War is different. It is not defined by one major geopolitical split. Instead, we have different countries pitted against each other over some interests and allied with each other over others. Geopolitics today is far more complex than it has ever been.

Of course, this is another way of saying that we are seeing through an unprecedented period in history. We have lived through at least two such periods before: the Cold War, when the US was pitted against a common enemy in the Soviet Union; and the “unipolar moment”, when the US stood as the sole superpower. Each era was defined by a contest between power and ideals: naked national interest versus universal abstractions like human rights, democracy, accountability, and good governance. The dynamics today are, of course, no different. But the logic underlying them is, and markedly so.

The issue is no longer about the age-old conflict between national interests and universal ideals. It is about perspective and perception. The US-led New Cold War front sees China’s claims over Taiwan as an infringement of territorial integrity and sovereignty, while China sees Western meddling in the Taiwan issue along the same lines. For Beijing, the One-China policy is paramount: enshrined by a UN Resolution, the notion has been fully accepted and endorsed by international law. Similarly, Russia sees NATO’s ambitions in Eastern Europe, in particular its former satellite states, as a violation of its security.

Simply put, each side mobilises the same rhetoric against the other. The US sees China as undermining a rules-based order, while Chinese officials warn that the US, in escalating support for Taiwan, is pushing the world back to “jungle rules” and “barbarian times.” The US has been using these terms to demonise its enemies, even before the Cold War. That China is using them today is indicative of two things: that it is embracing the rhetoric of a rules-based order, and that it is deploying such rhetoric in defence of its perceptions of that order, which clearly are not the same as the US’s or Western Europe’s.

Now it’s easy to compare this with the Cold War. But the situation then was different. Even though the US and the Soviet Union did confront each other over the same values, often at the same forums and institutions – the UN being the preferred platform – each side pursued a very different economic and political paradigm. The US was committed to its vision of a free world, buttressed by a capitalist free market system, while the Soviet Union was committed to socialist transformation and reconstruction. Today, by contrast, the contest is not between those paradigms, but between an array of interests and priorities, which both sides advocate as the basis (the “grundnorm”) of international order.

The Cold War made it possible for both sides of the divide to conceal these interests. Under various ideological covers, the United States and the Soviet Union could mask its intentions: if the US deployed the rhetoric of human rights against the Soviet Union, the latter deployed the gospel of socialist reconstruction against the US axis.

Today, by contrast, the issue is not about what gospel you prefer, but rather what version of the gospel. China uses human rights to criticise Western intervention in the same way the United States uses it to criticise China’s treatment of its minorities. Russia does the same vis-à-vis NATO. This has made it easier for us to see through ideological obfuscations, while making it difficult for the opposing factions to reach a compromise. In other words, what we see now is a display of naked self-interest, unhindered by universal ideals yet cloaked in the language of the latter. The conflicts this has given rise to, Matthew Kroenig notes in Foreign Policy, can only be resolved “after major-power wars.”

Not surprisingly, the Left has split as well. To be sure, they were divided during the Cold War, arguably more so than now. Yet back then it didn’t matter if you were a Stalinist, a Trotskyite, a Maoist, or a Castroist: the disagreements that prevailed between them paled away in favour of the bigger rift between Washington and Moscow.

In comparison, present-day Marxists are split over one issue: is the Western axis the only imperialist bloc, or do China and Russia belong in the same league? If so, should the Left pick sides, or should it criticise both? Should it ally with a specific bloc, or should it disengage from all blocs? That China, Russia, and the US resort to the same rhetoric, over issues like human rights, sovereignty, and democracy, has only complicated this debate. I think Rohini Hensman has summed up the Left’s dilemmas better than anyone else.

“Imperialism is opposed by struggles for national liberation, which constitutes one element in a democratic revolution – the people cannot rule themselves so long as they are ruled by another Nation-State – but not the only one. Genuine anti-imperialists oppose all imperialisms, while pseudo-anti-imperialists oppose some while supporting others.”

Rohini Hensman, “Indefensible: Democracy, Counter-revolution, and the Rhetoric of Anti-Imperialism”, Haymarket Books, 2018

The bottom line is that these sides are playing against one another using the language of the same morals, ethics, and values. The West (the liberal axis) condemns China’s intentions in Taiwan, while China condemns US interventions in South America. The US defends those interventions on the basis that it is concerned with the preservation of certain ideals, while China replies that it is moved by the same motives in Taiwan and the South China Sea. Here one cannot downplay the role taken on by international institutions.

“Russia and China are infiltrating these institutions and turning them against their intended purposes. Who can forget Russia chairing a meeting of the United Nations Security Council as its armies invaded Ukraine in February? Similarly, China used its influence in the World Health Organization to stymie an effective investigation into COVID-19’s origins. And dictators vie for seats on the U.N. Human Rights Council to ensure their egregious human rights abuses escape scrutiny. Instead of facilitating cooperation, international institutions are increasingly exacerbating conflict.”

Matthew Kroenig, “International Relations Theory Suggests Great-Power War Is Coming”, Foreign Policy, August 27, 2022

In this respect the US’s attitude to its main two rivals count, big time. Richard Falk argues, for instance, that Washington has focused more attention on Beijing than on Moscow, since the latter is perceived as a traditional foe. China, by contrast, is a bigger threat, and is less manageable: the same point that international relations theorists like John Mearsheimer have been saying for over a decade, since Russia’s interventions in Crimea. For Falk, the new Cold War has intersected with “an old geopolitics.” Calling for sanity, he contends that the only way out is for the West to engage seriously with itself, to embark on a radical political agenda, since “the Chinese threat cannot be successfully met frontally.” For better or worse, such confrontations are now taken for granted, almost as the gospel truth.

Ironic as it may seem, it was easy to resolve and put an end to Cold War hostilities, because the contending camps differed over certain ideals. To be sure, China and the US are still not on the same page with respect to those ideals. Yet they are using the same rhetoric relating to them. This has complicated geopolitics, and has made the idea of reconciliation between the contending camps untenable. The Cold War saw its share of negotiators like Kissinger and Gorbachev. The current status quo has made such individuals, heroes of the old order, passe in the new. Gorbachev is already dead. We hence need a new logic and a new politics to make sense of our world. Until then, it will remain in a stalemate.

The writer is an international relations analyst, researcher, and columnist who can be reached at udakdev1@gmail.com