Great power competition or leading from the middle?
Last month, leaders from the highest levels of government, military and industry convened in the hangar of HMS Queen Elizabeth for the third Atlantic Future Forum (AFF). Over two days, in a series of panels and speeches, the Forum grappled with the challenges and opportunities facing our nations in a world disrupted by COVID-19.
The core of the AFF, since its inception in 2018, has been celebrating and advancing international cooperation and the enduring transatlantic alliance. However, as many panellists noted, the pandemic has accelerated global trends that are shifting the tectonic plates of power competition. We now find ourselves in a divided world where a robust relationship between the US and UK is not enough. With the rise of China and its assertive posture to the West, we have entered an intense era of fragmentation where the future of multilateralism hangs in the balance.
As Henry Kissinger described last year, we are at the ‘foothills of a cold war’ and the deterioration of US-Sino relations could be no more evident than in Robert O’Brien’s video-link to the Forum. Amid the relative optimism of the Forum and calls for greater collaboration, the US Security Advisor painted a gloomier, more polarised picture of the international community. He described China as ‘the threat of the century’ and accused the country of a rap sheet of offences, including theft of IP, human rights abuses and its penchant for breaking international agreements. It is interesting that when it comes to the United States’ interactions with other authoritarian regimes, for instance Saudi Arabia, human rights are rarely brought to the fore.
However, while we could see this as short-term opportunism amid a feverish election campaign, with echoes of the Trumpian ‘I assume some are good people’ rhetoric, the US is one of the few nations holding China to account for its escalating campaign against Uighur Muslims. O’Brien admitted that in the past, the US had turned a blind eye to China’s human rights abuses and was adamant that ‘COVID-19 erased any lingering doubts about its [China’s] intentions’. From excerpts from Trump’s third national security advisor, John Bolton’s memoir about Trump’s trade talks with China, let’s hope this time it is not all bark and no bite.
At the start of the Forum, Professor Peter Frankopan, the Author of The Silk Roads echoed O’Brien’s sentiment, describing how our nations have been ‘asleep at the wheel’ and are ‘not well designed to look at what we don’t recognise’. David Kilcullen, the Author of The Dragons and the Snakes pointed to our ‘tunnel vision on terrorism’ as a reason for ignoring what was in front of us. In pursuit of Islamic extremists, he said our unilateral actions and invasions of other countries have eroded the credibility of the Western-led world order. For too long we have been distracted and, as the panellists noted, we need to wake up and find a model of multilateralism that can respond to the rise of China and threats to Western democracy.
Picture: (From left) Samira Ahmed, Prof David Kilcullen, Rose Gottemoeller, Prof Peter Frankopan and Angus Lapsley discussing the future of global competition in a disrupted world.
The great problem with the US and the West at large, as Frankopan pointed out, is its naïve (and smug) assumption that other countries want to emulate them. This patriotic denialism is to the West’s detriment – and now may be the time for the US to hold up a mirror, and perhaps concede that they could be guilty of what O’Brien described as China’s desire to win and for others to lose.
Instead of throwing the baby out with the bathwater and doubling down on its unilateral narrative of ‘America First’, the US must build stronger coalitions around common values. The US was right to hold China and the WHO accountable for the country’s failure to flag the spread of COVID-19. However, its decision to leave the WHO and silo itself off from the international community will only grow China’s influence. The great emblems of international cooperation which hold countries to account, such as the WHO, the WTO and the UN are on life support, and we must ensure they are not condemned to be mechanisms for authoritarian regimes. For the US to disengage with the international community at this crucial time, and not provide an alternative, would be an almighty own goal.
David Kilcullen offered a new alternative to the US-led model of multilateralism. He described it as ‘leading from the middle’, in which the many middle powers are aggregated to pursue a ‘self-reliant and assertive policy’. He cited the example of Australia holding China to account for the outbreak of COVID-19.
With new analysis showing that China’s trade actions against Australia have disrupted exports worth up to $19bn a year and with mounting pressure from the agricultural sector to rebuild this relationship, it will be interesting to see how sustainable this model is. Will small countries dare to follow suit? Or will the great rivalry between the US and China continue to take centre stage?
Written by Lucy Thompson, Account Manager at Audley