New world order: impressions and realities

The recently held SCO Summit and Tiananmen Square parade in China trumpeted the onset of a new world order based on China's rise, as America retrenches at the global scene. On both events, China showcased her political, military and economic capability for resetting the world order through is 'Global Governance Initiative' aimed at equal and orderly system and economic globalisation.

As China unveiled her global vision, foreign leaders' attendance was carefully choreographed, claiming realignment of Global South and others along the rising China. On the parade, the conglomerate of China, Russia and North Korea referred to as "Axis of Upheaval" was prominent, whereas Modi avoided the parade venue, reinforcing India's posturing as counter to China.

President Xi Jinping was projected as an unchallenged global leader representing China — a country poised to replace the prevailing unjust unilateral global governance system that is characterised by chaos, insecurity and uncertainty. Such a system is led under the "law of jungle" wherein the oppressed loses justification to exist, with institutions like the UN rendered as mere debate forum.

As the global stability crumbles, China's incredible military and economic consolidation enables her to openly challenge the US, the receding superpower. On the military side, with China technologically pacing in key capabilities — including hypersonic regimes, aerospace, naval power projection, etc — the US has been forced to retreat from strategy based on 'Primacy & Dominance' to one of 'Deterrence', admitted first time in the 2018 National Defence Strategy. Succeeding reviews realise China as "most consequential strategic competitor", or No 1 threat. The Tiananmen Square power-show reinforced America realistic realisation.

China has turned into a massive economy over the last two decades, prompting her to squeeze American economic and political dominance, exercised through IMF and World Bank. BRICS, a collection of expanding economies with China also a part, boasts a collective GDP of $31 trillion, outweighing that of the US. This forum is ambitiously pursuing de-dollarisation of the global finance through alternative currency of rich economies, thus curtailing the American sway.

China's economic ascendancy also anchors on the Belt and Road Initiative that encompasses 149 countries, accounting for almost 75% of the world's population and more than half of the world's GDP. In 2016, China established Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) for businesses, representing a seismic shift in economic power from the US to China. AIIB has 92 member states including America's European allies, Middle Eastern states and India.

Whilst China's military and economic ascent has been steep since decades, challenging American dominance has been necessitated by systematic American retrenchment from the world's scene - something that began much ago, and is now hastened by the its intimidation of global economy and governance, and its blind support to Israel in unleashing killing and destruction.

Once considered 'Power For Good', the US appears to have lost her independence, in the last few decades, to domestic 'Industrial Cartels' and inland 'Ideological Constituencies' working at the behest of foreign entities. Having destabilised regions through wars of choices since early 1990s, the US appears helpless in halting extermination of bleeding humanity in Palestine by far-right extremist Zionist ruling dispensation, while the world including Muslim Ummah remains a bystander. The US stands embarrassed by Israel's defiance in openly targeting Qatari infrastructure close to her main base in Al Udeid, which symbolises American regional power in the Middle East.

The US finds herself more marginalised with President Putin not acceding to President Trump's scheme for ending war in Ukraine. The Trump Administration was naïve in offering 20% of Ukraine's under-siege territory to Putin just for the sake of symbolic ceasefire optics. Though Trump successfully brought an early end to India-initiated hostilities in South Asia, his failures to end the war in Ukraine and cease its wholehearted support to Israel in its bloody genocide in Gaza signal receding American influence at the global scene.

Another reason for American global recession is her over-investment in the Indo-Pacific scheme to contain China, which is totally unstoppable. The biggest flaw in this scheme is heaping expensive military in the region by a country, i.e. the US, whose debit exceeds $37 trillion whilst it pursues 'Strategic Ambiguity' as it is herself not committed to the defence of Taiwan. Another flaw is the US projecting India to counter China at the cost of its relations with China and other regional stakeholders, including Pakistan. Whilst India badly lacks the ability to stop China, she openly defies American interests, further questioning the America-led world order.

With the world buzzing with new global order, there is an impression of a multipolar system settling in, with power from the existing unipolar system diluting to multiple centres, each forming its own hub of power. In reality, the world would, in most likelihood, only transcend from unipolar to bipolar, with the US and China at the perch. Likely contenders for regional dominance could be Russia, India and Brazil. Russia — despite having military enormity and vast energy resources — would not be able to secure regional clusters of the feared ex-Soviet neighbours given that it is surrounded by Nato and suffers from military and economic fatigue. Russia would, however, have energy-related strategic alliance with China, becoming stronger in future in the context of untapped energy reservoirs in the Arctic Region.

India, with all its military spending and growing economy as well as American patronage, has failed in establishing military ascendancy in the region. It is locked in enduring territorial disputes with China and ideological hostilities towards Pakistan. It also emits insecurity towards her other neighbours because of her hegemonic ambitions. The European bloc, whilst tied with China economically, would always be carefully, but not totally dependent on the US for the continent's security. For decades to come, one-window security — as availed in the past against Russia — would remain a challenge for Europe given that the Trump Administration has successfully eased Europe out of her inner orbit by disowning its vulnerabilities and insecurities. The Southeast Asian bloc, an important element of America's Asia-Pacific scheme, with all the economic charm, would be militarily dependent upon the US until China settles her territorial insecurities in the South China Sea.

With the current order becoming irrelevant in its purpose of just governance and stability, the world is impatient for aligning with China in bringing an end to the chaotic and rogue system that denies right to the weak to exist. It does not imply that the US would vanish as a global power; it would continue to compete with the rising China by virtue of the robust institutions it inherited over centuries.