Emil Avdaliani：Shifting World Order the Power of Responsibility

【明報文章】The Middle East is experiencing dramatic shifts from connectivity to military affairs to diplomacy. Great powers try to advance their own trade route projects. Mimicking the oft-mentioned silk roads which spanned the whole of Eurasia from ancient and medieval times to modern period, China unveiled the Belt and Road Initiative.

Russia, Iran and India have accelerated their work on the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC) which stretches from the India ln Ocean to the Baltic Sea. More recently, the United States, India, the European Union, and the major actors among the Persian Gulf countries agreed on advancing the corridor from the Indian Ocean to Europe via the Arabian Peninsula.

The pace of competition for new connectivity fits into the overall heightened military, ideological and simply political competition across Eurasia, the Middle East and even Europe.

The battle for the new world order is in full swing and it is far from clear whether close commercial ties will actually contribute to avoiding a major military confrontation. Numerous historical facts indicate otherwise. Even if the competing countries are closely interlinked via trade and political affairs, the war can still break out. Take an example of the pre-World War I era when Germany and the Great Britain were closely tied commercially. This nevertheless did not prevent the outbreak of the conflict.

One can go even further in the past to see numerous examples of expanding trade relations between competing powers failed to forestall confrontations. The Romans and Sasanians, Ottomans and Persians, Russians and Ottomans and many others all traded extensively but also confronted each other militarily.

Present geopolitical tensions in the Middle East and the more globally could indeed lead to a global conflagration. There are simply too many simultaneous, geographically distant but nevertheless closely related crises. The present geopolitical show of growing tensions is very much similar to what was taking place in the 1930s before the World War II. Japan, Germany, Italy, Soviet Union and a host of smaller actors all were actively undermining the existing order by challenging it militarily and politically. The order created by the Treaty Versailles could not survive.

Nowadays, similar scenario might play out. With Russia, Iran, and numerous smaller states across Eurasia contesting the post-Cold War-era geopolitical hierarchy, coupled with unabating disagreements between China and the US, the present world order is being stretched to its limits. Though there are no guarantees that it will survive, it still has a chance and China and the US can indeed set an example of how the two powers with diverging visions can work together to secure a stable and prosperous global order.

The recent US-China summit in San-Francisco ended surprisingly positively. The meeting was held during Xi Jinping’s participation in the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) and on paper the two sides reached several results.

First, it is about resuming military-to-military communications which was cut by the Chinese side in 2022 following the visit by Nancy Pelosi, then serving as the US House Speaker, to Taiwan. The two sides also agreed to hold a meeting between the ministers of defense after the new one is selected in China. The measures, it is widely believed, would help de-escalate the tensions between the two in the South China Sea and overall infuse the feeling of de-escalation.

Other major agreements included the one on stemming the flow of fentanyl into the US, which is expected to reduce the number of lethal cases across the country. Since Chinese companies are dominating the market, Beijing’s decision to cooperate – going after the companies that produce various fentanyl precursors – is a significant achievement for the US-China diplomacy.

The two powers also touched upon the issue of jointly examining artificial intelligence, i.e. commiting to limiting the risks. Another area marked by evident progress is the climate change agenda where Washington and Beijing agreed to resume cooperation.

While there are no signs of a wider détente, a short-term rapprochement might stabilize the fraught ties between the two superpowers. This could serve as a good example of how the two powers can handle their competition responsibly and actually help solidify the order that nowadays benefits most of the nations.

Emil Avdaliani is a professor of international relations at European University in Tbilisi, Georgia.

（本網發表的時事文章若提出批評，旨在指出相關制度、政策或措施存在錯誤或缺點，目的是促使矯正或消除這些錯誤或缺點，循合法途徑予以改善，絕無意圖煽動他人對政府或其他社群產生憎恨、不滿或敵意）

[Emil Avdaliani]