The US is not our friend. China is not our enemy. Part One
Earlier this week I gave a lecture to Masters students in Politics, Philosophy & Economics at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington. This is the first of two articles that will share the content of the lecture with you. The full lecture covered these topics:
We are at a Tipping Point as we enter a multipolar world order
The US is not our friend
China is not our enemy
Lessons for Asia Pacific from the Iran War
Choosing a better path forward.
Entering a multipolar world order
My argument today is that we are at an historic Hinge Moment, a moment when old certainties are dying and the changing realities of our world require us to think and act differently. This may take years but a change to a multipolar or multi-nodal world seems inevitable.
In September last year China hosted most of the Eurasian nations at the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organisation) summit in Tianjin. The SCO statement for the conference said: “Tectonic shifts are underway in global politics, economy, and other spheres of international relations. A fairer multipolar world order is being born.”
The sight of so many leaders, including those of Russia, China, Iran, India and Turkey was a powerful signal that the Eurasian landmass is emerging from centuries of Western domination to become the powerhouse of global economics and politics for the coming century. Here are some useful statistics that we should be mindful of:
Population: Member countries are home to over 3 billion people, 40% of the world's population.
Land Area: 34 million square kilometres, over 60% of the Eurasian landmass.
GDP: Over 25% of the world's Gross Domestic Product.
Energy: SCO member countries hold impressive natural resources, including natural gas reserves and proven oil reserves.
Growing interconnectivity
“China's” Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)
China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Gwadar.
Western Europe-Western China Expressway: $150 billion
Trans-Caspian International Transport Route
Moscow-Kazan High-Speed Railway
Most international relations scholars and even unscholarly people like US Secretary of State Marco Rubio acknowledge that we have now transitioned out of the Unipolar Moment when – between the end of the Soviet Union in 1991 and more or less now – there was only one superpower in the world: our ally the United States of America. This Global Hegemonic era is behind us.
What has changed is the pressure on the US created by the rise of China, the return of Russia as a great power, and the emergence of Iran, India, and other states as more powerful, more independent actors in the global system. It comes at a time when US debt has tipped 40 trillion dollars and more and more people are wondering how long this can continue?
Adapting to such a momentous change is hard particularly when our politicians, defence leaders and intelligence and foreign affairs establishment are deeply attached to the US power structures and wedded to a world that is rapidly disappearing into the rearview mirror.
The US is not our friend
There was a theory popular till quite recently that as China rose and became a genuine peer competitor with the United States, the US would adjust its behaviour; it would become less reckless, launch fewer wars, be less unstrategic in the way it conducted itself … in a word it would adopt more restrained and conservative foreign policies to avoid risk, conserve resources and maintain alliances.
That clearly hasn’t happened.
If anything the US is growing more reckless, more aggressive and seems to be in a war against everyone.
Sure, since World War II the US has been our “friend” and protector. It suited our interests. We got rich selling wool to clothe US troops killing Korean people in Korea; we made a few bucks selling chemical weapons ingredients to the US during the Vietnam war – and killing a few Vietnamese in Vietnam for good measure. We happily accepted that the Pacific was in the words of US General Douglas MacArthur “an Anglo-Saxon lake”.
The emergence of the US as the global hegemon around 1990 with the end of the Soviet Union reinforced this “natural” alignment with the US. The blip we experienced in the 1980s when our nuclear free policy saw us ejected from the Circle of Love … slowly softened and NZ regained the trust of the Australians and the US by sending troops to kill Yemeni people in Yemen, kill Afghans in Afghanistan and so on. We also provide useful intelligence resources to the Five Eyes intelligence programme and have even been polite and respectful enough to turn a blind eye to the US-Israeli genocide in Gaza.
But America is not our friend. In the real world, states are not friends. There are often long-term alignments of interests, bonds of language and culture and so on but when fundamental interests change the foreign policy, trade and defence settings of a country need to shift in accordance with the best interest of the state.
In the past year the US has not only launched multiple wars of aggression it has threatened its own allies including Canada – the country the US President refers to as the 51st state.
Along with Canada – Denmark and Greenland, Panama and Oman are all US allies and have all been threatened with military attacks – or “having the shit bombed out of them” in the words of the Leader of the Free World.
Just this month, the US threatened Canada, and launched a trade war on its ally imposing 50% tariffs on a whole series of goods. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said Canada refused to sign the deal in order to protect Canada’s national sovereignty against US aggression.
“We have been under no illusions,” Carney said. “We recognized from the start that America has changed. Early last year, I observed that the decades-long process of steadily increasing integration between our economies was over.”
He was referring to the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement which has now effectively been gutted. Across the globe the US has abandoned free trade and international agreements and increasingly uses tariffs, sanctions and coercive measures to get its way. When it comes to trade, the US treats friends and foes alike.
As Canada pivots ever-so-gently away from the US … building new markets and relations, New Zealand should start asking itself why we are driving ourselves deeper and deeper into the US system of power and why we are allowing the US to penetrate our most sensitive security systems.
I am part of the global majority of the world's citizens who believe that the United States and its allies pose the greatest threat to humanity.
The next article will cover: China is not our enemy and Lessons for Asia Pacific from the Iran War.
Eugene Doyle
