Above is a revealing analysis dated 23 April 2024 in Foreign Affairs by Elizabeth Economy, Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and former Senior Adviser for China at the U.S. Department of Commerce. She is the author of The World According to China.
Ms Economy’s insightful overview calls into question the effectiveness and popularity of America’s default policy of maximum coercion, legitimate or otherwise, to realize its vision of an America-led “liberal” world order. This includes the formation and fortification of exclusive military groups of allies (such as the AUKUS (Austria-UK-US) nuclear-propelled submarine-pact) and long-armed dollar-based sanctions against perceived adversaries, especially China. The latter is now viewed by bipartisan consensus as the prime “existential threat” to America’s national interests.
America’s more coercive foreign policy compares with Beijing’s more-inclusive and more development-oriented version, particularly with the Global South, marginalized for decades under U.S. hegemony. While China’s image has plummeted across the globe in recent years, there is little doubt that its gravitas has been gaining traction.
Ms Economy flags up the “four pillars” underpinning China’s relatively more impactful international relations: the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013, the Global Development Initiative (GDI) in 2021, the Global Security Initiative (GSI) in 2022, and the Global Civilization Initiative in May 2023. China is globally perceived to be relatively consistent in words and deeds. This compares with America’s “saying one thing, and doing another” in its most recent attempt to stabilize US-China relations (as pointed out by President Xi at his meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. on 26 April 2024.)
Ms Economy suggests that the United States should take a leaf from China’s book to mount a more robust and more inclusive foreign relations drive, but one centred on “openness, transparency, rule of law, and official accountability, the hallmarks of the world’s market democracies”.
However, the Global South has been resisting American exceptionalism with its “manifest destiny” of reshaping the world in its own image.
To be fair, American supremacy was originally largely restricted to the Western Hemisphere (under the Monroe Doctrine). It was not until the Third Reich’s rapid victory over Europe when the Second World War first started that American elites embraced the imperative of shaping the world order according to American ideals, according to Stephen Wertheim’s revealing book Tomorrow, the World: The Birth of U.S. Global Supremacy (Belknap Press, An Imprint of Harvard University Press, October 2020).
Following the collapse of the British Empire after the Second World War, the United States had been enjoying the fruits of its “unipolar moment” for decades. American global supremacy has now become hardwired into the national psyche and bipartisan politics, notwithstanding epochal shifts in global dynamics including the dramatic rise of China with a different civilization and ideology, the rapprochement and eastern tilt of opposing factions in the Middle East, the growth of the Global South, and an even more interconnected world embracing the 4th and 5th Industrial Revolutions.
Unless the United States changes its binary “win-or-lose” mindset, is genuinely prepared to compete with China in the Olympic Spirit rather as a mortal combat, and is prepared to coexist with China despite diametrically-opposed ideology and other differences, a more harmonious world order is unlikely to materialize any time soon, even if America tries to take a leaf from China’s book.
Author: Andrew KP Leung – International and Independent China Strategist. Chairman and CEO, Andrew Leung International Consultants and Investments Limited. He previously served as director general of social welfare and Hong Kong’s official representative for the United Kingdom, Eastern Europe, Russia, Norway, and Switzerland.
(The views expressed in this article belong only to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy or views of World Geostrategic Insights).