The world today is on the brink of a major transformation. The West is not exactly declining in the sense of losing its economic power: it still holds the cards there. But it is losing the moral space it occupied, and monopolised, not too long ago.
Led by the US, the Western axis no longer commands the moral suasion it did. In its place an array of other countries and regions have sprung up. Not all of them tout themselves as rivals to the Western order. But Russia and China have challenged that order, and behind them a dazzling plurality of countries and entire territories have thrown their lot with them.
What are we to make of these transformations? As I have noted before in this paper, US domination of the West, and by extension the rest of the world, depended on two crucial factors: its friendship, or so-called ‘special relationship,’ with Western Europe, and the dominance of the dollar and petrodollar. Today both these factors have been undermined.
Economically devastated, Western Europe, indeed Europe as a whole, has become a shell of what it used to be. The US’ efforts to spur a revival in domestic manufacturing have harmed China much less than it has its oldest allies across the Atlantic.
In denial
US officials may, of course, be in denial of this development. Some of them have gone as far as to praise the Government’s pursuit of protectionism, even as they critique protectionism abroad. According to a recent study by Cornell University’s Eswar Prasad, these measures will have a devastating impact on emerging markets and poorer countries.
Yet the official line is that subsidising US manufacturing is crucial to the US’ global leadership. To quote US Trade Representative Katherine Tai in a recent Foreign Policy interview, subsidies play a totally different role in the US compared to China: they are, she notes, “Meant to operate in a market system and to influence firm behaviour.”
Tai does not of course mention in what way China’s use of subsidies for domestic industries differs from this, but she does imply, very strongly, that subsidising US industry is good for the world, and logically for the US’ European partners. Indeed, she appears to be in denial of criticism of the US’ protectionist policies, to the extent that she differentiates between official statements from European leaders and their private sentiments regarding those policies.
What’s interesting here is how economic policies that the US and its allies have been busy censuring and recommending against in the non-West are being framed as beneficial to the world order – that is, if pursued by the world’s self-appointed hegemon.
Duplicity and hypocrisy
This rather paradoxical attitude – of defending the pursuit of certain policies and economic-political philosophies at home while excoriating them abroad – has been a hallmark of the US for years, if not centuries. There is much duplicity and hypocrisy here: too much of it, in fact, to pass by unnoticed.
There is also a rift here between the values the US promotes and the values it pursues, a rift so discernible that the Global South has, for decades, sought a more pluralistic order. The Global South’s stance on alternative powers – in particular, China – may not be unanimously positive.
But recent shifts suggest that the US itself has realised it has no alternative but to go back on its values to address domestic economic concerns, and that China is making use of its soft power to project itself as a viable alternative to Western duplicity. The recent Saudi-Iran peace deal is just one example of this.
How these transformations will play themselves out in the near future, no one can really say. The US media is busy peddling China’s takeover or annexation of Taiwan in 2027. China itself has emphasised a peaceful reunification, a term so ambivalent as to provoke Western commentators to read military aggression into it.
Yet, despite these ambiguities, the moral and political domination of the West is clearly declining. So long as it has the dollar, it will, of course, continue to wield economic influence. Even so, the recent banking crisis, starting from California and penetrating the very heartland of Western finance, Switzerland, indicates the contradictions underlying its economic domination.
Topping this has been a global shift from multilateral to ‘minilateral’ diplomacy. Several ‘middle-powers,’ from India to Israel to Türkiye, are pursuing their own foreign policies, and along the way are forging important partnerships with other regions and countries which go beyond a typical bilateral framework.
Such groupings do not, of course, post a risk or a challenge, even less a threat, to Western domination. Yet they show clearly that while the non-West is dependent on powerful markets and economies, they are keen on exploring ties with other partners.
The Saudi-Iran deal, for instance, was followed almost immediately by Saudi Arabia’s decision to enter the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), an outfit which only recently accepted and took in Iran as a member state.
Sri Lanka’s foreign policy
Sri Lanka, of course, has only belatedly realised its potential here. It is mired in a crisis, and a crisis of the magnitude it is going through prevents it from asserting a more independent foreign policy.
This does not, and should not, mean that it should remain tethered to a few countries and interests. Yet the political incompetence, and the incompetence of a Foreign Service whose potential has never fully been tapped into, has preempted Sri Lanka’s efforts at diversifying its foreign policy basket – or its foreign policy risk basket.
Recent statements to the effect that Sri Lanka is ‘multi-aligned’ do not help matters much here. Instead, what the country should be doing – what it is not doing at present – is to establish as many links as its finances permit, with up-and-coming powers.
Whether the country has the willpower to see such reforms through remains to be seen. But there is no doubt that it should go after such reforms and implement them.
(The writer is a freelance columnist who can be reached at udakdev1@gmail.com. He is the Chief International Relations Analyst at Factum, an Asia-Pacific focused foreign policy think tank based in Colombo and accessible via www.factum.lk)