The Future of Global Uncertainties
The title of this essay—“The Future of Global Uncertainties”—may seem paradoxical, if not downright nonsensical. After all, how can one speak about the future of uncertainties? It would indeed be a fool’s errand to try—that is, unless the parameters of uncertainty can be defined. But if the parameters of uncertainty can be defined, are they really uncertainties?
Although I confess to a penchant for paradox, the apparent contradiction will be more comprehensible if we bear in mind the distinction made by a former U.S. Secretary of Defense, the late Donald Rumsfeld, between “known unknowns” (“that is to say, we know there are somethings we do not know”) and “unknown unknowns” (“the ones we don’t know we don’t know”).
Looking around the world today, I cannot but conclude that we have all seen this movie before. The cast of characters and locations may have changed. But the plots are not new. Rather, they are new variants of old plots within established patterns of state behavior
My emphasis will be on geopolitics: broadly speaking, while the world has indeed become more uncertain, what we are confronted with are primarily “known unknowns.”
Known Unknowns
Looking around the world today, I cannot but conclude that we have all seen this movie before. The cast of characters and locations may have changed. But whether we look at the war in Ukraine, or U.S.‑China strategic rivalry, or aggressive Chinese behavior in the East and South China Seas and the Himalayas, or the consequent stresses on globalization and the risks of a world recession—we come to realize that the plots are not new. Rather, they are new variants of old plots within established patterns of state behavior. Looking around the world today, I cannot but conclude that we have all seen this movie before. The cast of characters and locations may have changed. But the plots are not new. Rather, they are new variants of old plots within established patterns of state behavior. Some readers may remember that there was a slew of articles and statements a few years ago—including some by practitioners who ought to have known better—that riffed on some variation of the theme of the “return” of great power competition. This word, “return,” struck me: when did great power competition ever go away? Competition is an inherent characteristic of relations among sovereign states that is never entirely absent at some level of intensity in all the international relationships. And, tragically, competition sometimes becomes conflict.
For most of the twentieth century, international order was contested, at times very violently during the First and Second World Wars, and then through proxies during the Cold War (once nuclear weapons made direct superpower conflict too dangerous). But after the Cold War ended, the fundamental reality of international relations was masked for time by the overwhelming dominance of the United States and its allies—its proponents called this “unipolarity.” American dominance made it seem as if only one conception of international order was left standing, and even emboldened some to claim the “end of history.”
In that extreme form, the delusion did not last very long. But a pale version still lingers on in the idea that certain values are, or ought to be, universal—or that certain interpretations of certain values are, or ought to be, universal. The origins and development of this immensely damaging idea has been examined critically in various places, including by Damjan Krnjević Mišković in an essay in the Winter 2021‑2022 edition of Baku Dialogues titled “Atticism and the Summit for Democracy,” and will not be examined closely here.
One of the most foolish statements I have ever heard was something former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said in criticizing the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea: he called it “nineteenth century behavior in the twenty‑first century.” There are many good reasons to criticize the annexation of Crimea, but this particular criticism was singularly foolish because it assumes that your adversary should share your values. Why should it? If a country shares your values, it would not be your adversary.
The conflict between the West and Russia over Ukraine that led to the annexation of Crimea, and the present war, arose precisely because of differences of values or interests—this pretty much amounts to the same thing, because values are interests. Every country has its own values, which are still interests to them: even if you find them abhorrent, you will have to deal with them—whether by diplomacy or deterrence. The West—particularly the EU and most of its member states—confuses posture for policy; it also confuses feeling virtuous for action. Nothing really effective was done about Crimea until it was too late to stop the current war. And it is worth reminding ourselves that when we talk about a “rules‑based international order,” it is a mistake to believe that just because we may use the same words, or the same phrase, we all necessarily always mean the same thing. There will inevitably be different interpretations of the rules, or different emphasis on different rules according to different interests; and this is true even among the closest of allies, partners, and friends—let alone rivals or competitors.
A parallel illusion was the idea that as China reformed and opened up economically, its political system would, if not exactly converge with Western democracies, at least move in a relatively more open direction. And there were some tentative steps in that direction at the local level, towards the end of the Hu Jintao Administration, which in retrospect, some may have over‑interpreted out of wishful thinking. We owe Chinese president Xi Jinping a vote of thanks for making it clear to all—except the terminally naïve—that the purpose of reform in a Leninist system is always and only to strengthen and entrench the power of the vanguard Party that is characterized inter alia as holding a monopoly on power. Similarly, the U.S. and the EU ought to thank Russian president Vladimir Putin for inadvertently rescuing and revitalizing the idea of the West—the “global” West, so not just the United States, Canada, and the EU (and its member states), but also Japan, Australia, and South Korea, and, from time to time (on particular issues at least), other countries as well.
After the end of the Cold War, the idea of the West had loosened considerably, and looked to be in some danger of evaporating entirely. And the idea of the West was innervated precisely because of the fantasy that everybody would, whether they liked it or not and whether they are aware of it or not, in some sense, eventually become part of the West.
But if everybody is destined to become the West, what is the West? After the Cold War, even the U.S. couldn’t always agree and sometimes publicly and loudly disagreed. However, the period when American dominance masked the central reality of competing interests and strategic rivalry was historically abnormal and short. It only lasted the 20 years between 1989—when the Soviet Union was beginning to unravel and China was still reeling from the Tiananmen crisis—and 2008‑2009, when the Global Financial Crisis led to widespread disillusionment, including from within America itself, with U.S‑led globalization. It was also during this period that the very dominance of American power began to become self‑subverting. Dominance led to hubris; hubris led the United States into debilitating adventures in the Middle East that were justified, at least in part, by reference to the promotion of values claimed to be universal; and war in the Middle East distracted the U.S. at a crucial time, as China recovered from Tiananmen and began its period of spectacular growth that has led to relative changes in the global distribution of power.
We are now returning to a more historically normal period, where competition and rivalry between major powers is the primary structural reality of international relations, where international order is going to be contested, and where the possibility of war between major powers again looms over international relations.
The changes described above are only relative and not absolute. However, they will eventually lead to a more symmetrical strategic balance between the United States and China.
New Cold War?
The short and historically abnormal period of “unipolarity” is now over. We are now returning to a more historically normal period, where competition and rivalry between major powers is the primary structural reality of international relations, where international order is going to be contested, and where the possibility of war between major powers again looms over international relations.
The possibility of war between major powers should be stressed, as war in other forms of state‑sponsored violence has been a constant reality for many in the Middle East, Africa, and other parts of the Global South. The Ukraine war is unique only because it is occurring in the heart of Europe—or, to put things very bluntly, because white people are killing each other for a change—and also because nuclear weapons states and permanent members of the UN Security Council are engaged (Russia directly, and the U.S., UK, and France at a step removed).
These are familiar uncertainties, but things have also changed. The rest of this essay will analyze what I think has changed and what the implications of these changes may portend for future international order.
As dangerous as it undoubtedly is, and as egregious as Russia’s violation of some of the most fundamental principles of international conduct has been, the war in Ukraine, which has pitted a reenergized West against Russia, is actually a second‑order issue in global geopolitics. Ukraine has become an unwitting proxy in the larger and more strategically important contest between the United States and China. U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said on 25 April 2022 that the U.S. wants to use the war in Ukraine to harm the Kremlin: “we want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.”
Left unsaid, but perhaps clear enough, is that this is meant as an object lesson for China. What Xi and Putin have in common—what serves as the foundation of the “no limits friendship between the two states”—is their shared contempt for the West, which they regard as at least effete, if not in irreversible and absolute decline. I do not know if the unexpectedly swift, cohesive, and resolute Western response to the war in Ukraine has really changed Xi’s view of the West. But China’s partnership with Russia has certainly placed Beijing in a very awkward position. This partnership has now become an additional serious complication at a time when China is already facing many other complicated internal and external issues.
That being said, no state is ever going to shun or refuse to deal with China, including all the Western states. But as long as Beijing cannot bring itself to directly criticize the Russian invasion, it will be very difficult—to say the least—for China to substantively improve relations with the European Union and its member states in order to temper or balance its strategic competition with the United States. Furthermore, Beijing making anodyne statements about the need for negotiations and expressing concerns about the nuclear risk are not going to make a real difference in this respect; nor will cultivating relations with the Global South make a real difference. But China cannot risk a break with Russia because it has no other partner anywhere in the world of comparable strategic weight that shares its distrust of the American‑led international order.
Nevertheless, Moscow cannot be happy with Beijing’s tepid support that has highlighted the limits to their “no‑limits” strategic cooperation. However, Russia also has no other partner of any strategic weight, anywhere in the world, that is prepared to stand on its side against the West or against any country that has, in its own interests, taken a nuanced position on Ukraine—because acting in your own interests is not the same thing as siding with Russia.
Similarly, taking a strong stance against the invasion in furtherance of your own interests—as Singapore has done—is not the same thing as siding with the West. This seems to be a simple proposition, but it is one that some countries have great difficulty in understanding.
The larger point is this: unless the war takes a decisive turn in Russia’s favor, which does not seem very likely, Russia and China are trapped in an unenviable geopolitical position. It follows that there is no strong incentive for the U.S. to seek any quick or permanent negotiated settlement. While there are those in the EU bloc that may still today have an interest in a quick and permanent negotiated settlement, the fact is they are incapable of dealing with Russia without the U.S.—and those Europeans are not willing to set the pace on this issue. Therefore, the most probable scenario is a prolonged war that will eventually taper off into a frozen conflict. Ultimately, the world will have to live with these consequences for the foreseeable future.
It is clear that the Western characterization of the conflict over Ukraine, and, more generally, of U.S.‑China competition, as being a contest between democracy and authoritarianism is both simplistic and ill advised. “Democracy” is a protean term and not every country regards every aspect of Western democracy with admiration or every aspect of every authoritarian system with revulsion. To frame the issue in this way is thus to limit support rather than expand it. However, the now common trope that describes U.S.‑China competition as “a new Cold War” is perhaps an even more misleading framework because it evokes a superficially plausible, but in fact intellectually lazy and inappropriate historical analogy that fundamentally misrepresents the nature of that competition. This misrepresentation can be dangerous for both Washington and Beijing, as well as for the rest of the world, as states across the globe seek to position themselves in the evolving geopolitical environment.
One System, Not Two
There are key differences between the present‑day U.S.‑China competition and what would be required for this to seriously amount to a “new Cold War.” When all is said and done, the analogy simply does not hold up. China is not the new Soviet Union. But the question remains whether America’s posture has remained the same.
Consider that during the Cold War, the U.S. and the Soviet Union led two separate systems connected with each other minimally and at their margins. Therefore, the choices for other states, including members of the Non‑Aligned Movement like Singapore, were essentially binary—although, when national interests dictated, it was sometimes pretended to be otherwise.
Moreover, although the prospect of mutual destruction instilled prudence and eventually tempered their rivalry through the execution of the doctrine of détente during the Richard Nixon Administration by Henry Kissinger, the essential aim of U.S.‑Soviet competition was for one system to displace the other—we all remember how Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev famously told a group of Western ambassadors in 1956 that “we will bury you.” However, it has been a very long time since anyone could seriously hope, or fear, that communism will replace capitalism on a global scale.
Now contrast this with the present situation. Whatever their differences—and they are great—the U.S. and China are both vital, irreplaceable parts of a single global system, intimately enmeshed with each other and with the rest of the world by a web of supply chains of a scope, density, and complexity that is historically unprecedented. This intertwined web was established and quickly spread to all corners of the globe during the short post‑Cold War period of unchallenged American dominance—the “unipolar moment” to which I referred earlier. It is now an established fact in its own right; and it has even managed to outlive that dominance. Its consequences are what we call globalization or interdependence.
There have been earlier periods of interdependence between rival major powers, but nothing like this complex web of supply chains has ever existed before. This is what distinguishes twenty‑first‑century interdependence from earlier interdependence periods. Certainly, neither the United States nor China are comfortable with this situation because their interdependence also exposes their mutual vulnerabilities, which is why both have tried to temper their vulnerabilities in this regard.
For its part, the United States and its allies have tried to enhance the resilience of the key sectors of their economies by diversification and by reducing dependence on China for their most important supply chains. China, on the other hand, has tried to temper its vulnerabilities by attempting to become more self‑reliant in key technologies and by placing more emphasis on domestic household consumption to drive its growth. It is doubtful that either will succeed—at least not entirely.
Both strategies—diversification and self‑reliance—are easier said than done in the twenty‑first century: for instance, in February 2023 it was announced that U.S.‑China trade in good hit an all‑time high of $690 billion.
Even if their respective strategies do end up working, the measures both countries have adopted (and may adopt in the time ahead) will take a long time to have a significant effect. This is neither to say that a partial bifurcation of the system has not already occurred nor that there will not be further bifurcation—particularly in areas of technology with security implications, such as semiconductors, the internet, and big data. But it is doubtful that the system will ever divide across all sectors into two separate systems as existed during the Cold War. Complete deglobalization is highly improbable.
The cost of doing so—both for the two principal states at issue and for pretty much all other countries—would just be too high. Whatever concerns about China’s behavior there may be, even the closest American ally is never going to cut itself off entirely from China. And few, if any (Western) companies are ever going to entirely forswear the Chinese market—in fact, most will probably pursue a “China plus” strategy to spread risks around more evenly. But that hardly amounts to the same thing. Moreover, whatever successes China may have in its research and development (R&D) efforts—and we should not underestimate China—Beijing has no real alternative (for the foreseeable future) other than to look to the global West for the critical enabling technologies that it needs to be able to put the results of its R&D to practical use.
Domestic household consumption relies on confidence and much better social safety nets to further free‑up household spending. This is basically the case for every country, including China. Indeed, it will take some time for China to restore domestic confidence, given Beijing’s response to the pandemic—the so called zero‑COVID approach—and, more importantly, the country’s chaotic exit from that same approach. It will take even more time to establish adequate social security nets in a country of China’s size and uneven development. The Chinese slogan of “dual circulation”—with “dual” here referring to an external component—acknowledges the country’s inability to separate itself from the world.
Like it or not, both the United States and China must accept the risks and vulnerabilities of remaining connected to each other. Washington and Beijing will compete robustly within the single system of which they are both vital parts. And the dynamics of competition within this system are fundamentally different from the competition between systems that existed during the Cold War.
The conclusion to be drawn from the foregoing is that, like it or not, both the United States and China must accept the risks and vulnerabilities of remaining connected to each other. Washington and Beijing will compete robustly within the single system of which they are both vital parts. And the dynamics of competition within this system are fundamentally different from the competition between systems that existed during the Cold War.
Competition within a single system is about achieving a position that will enable one to benefit from interdependence while mitigating one’s own vulnerabilities and exploiting the vulnerabilities of one’s rivals. In other words, competition within a single system is about using interdependence as a tool of competition—it is certainly not about one system displacing the other.
There is no better example of these complicated and complex dynamics than high‑end semiconductors, which are the most serious Chinese vulnerability with regards to dependence on enabling technologies. All the most critical nodes in the semiconductor supply chain are held by the U.S., its allies, and its friends—yet China represents about 40 percent of the global semiconductor market. Basic economics textbooks teach us that it would be foolish for a country to completely cut off its own companies, and those headquartered in friendly and allied states, from 40 percent of the market without doing serious damage both to the states and the companies. And this, in turn, impels a policy of fine discriminations rather than a heavy‑handed approach—a scalpel, not an axe, as it were. In fact, as of August 2020, most applications for exemptions to bans on exports of technology to China has been approved by the United States government.
And so, the choices facing the United States and China, and also pretty much all other countries, are complex: they are no longer binary choices (if they ever were). This is important because complexity broadens both our ability to exercise agency and to find new options (provided we have the will to recognize the opportunities). Complexity also broadens both the agility and courage to seize these same opportunities on offer. And this is important because although China and the United States each indicate that they do not want to make third countries choose between them, in fact, they do want us to choose: China, in particular, devotes a great deal of resources on influence operations intended to impose false binary choices on us. The United States utilizes other means to achieve what is effectually the same result, including a longstanding policy of purposefully designing its own coercive measures (e.g., economic sanctions) to have extraterritorial reach (universal jurisdiction)—the chief aim of which is to compel non‑American entities engaging in otherwise legitimate and legal commercial activities with a targeted third state to adhere to American executive and legislative preferences. More recently, the United States has also begun making expanded use of its amended 1959 National Security Foreign Direct Product Rule, which enables the U.S. government to place controls on the re‑export or transfer of foreign‑made items if their production involves technology, software, or equipment if any part of their intellectual property originates in America.
Accordingly, while it is important not to be complacent about the uncertainties, we should also recognize that they are not unprecedented. We have survived and prospered amidst previous periods of uncertainty. The first prerequisite for doing so again is psychological poise and keeping a sense of perspective. No sovereign state is without agency. While this may be obvious in the case of continental‑sized countries, it also holds true for tiny city states like Singapore and pretty much all other countries in between (both in terms of size and power).
Questioning America
When deciding how a state ought to exercise its agency to protect and advance its interests in the midst of U.S.‑China strategic rivalry, its leaders will need to begin by acknowledging that there are serious questions about both countries. What follows is an examination of some of these questions as they apply to both, starting with the United States.
The biggest concerns about the United States center on its domestic politics. Without getting into all the details, I think it is safe to say that all democracies are to some extent dysfunctional by design: distrust in an over‑concentration of power results in restraint at the cost of efficiency. Americans politely call this feature of democratic political systems “checks and balances.” Still, one can be forgiven for feeling that American politics are often more dysfunctional than absolutely necessary.
And even the foregoing has to be put in perspective. Consider that a vain, egocentric (to the point of being narcissistic), and fear‑mongering demagogue runs for President of the United States and wins. Whilst this perhaps sounds like a description of former U.S. president Donald Trump, it also describes the basic premise of a 1935 novel titled It Can’t Happen Here by the great American writer, Sinclair Lewis. Lewis based his plot on the political career of a real‑life Louisiana politician, Huey Long, who was elected as Governor and then U.S. Senator as a member of the Democrat Party, and who might well have had become U.S. president had he not been assassinated in the same year as the novel was published. Similarly, even if Trump is defeated in 2024—or if he changes his mind about running this time around—it seems unreasonable to presuppose that a Trump‑like political phenomenon will never again be manifested in the United States.
The purpose of highlighting Lewis’s almost 90‑year‑old novel is that Trump, together with all that he represents, did not suddenly appear out of thin air; and the phenomenon he brought back to the fore will not suddenly vanish into the ether. He represents an established strain of American political culture that periodically surfaces—one that political scientist Richard Hofstadter called “the paranoid style” in American politics. It would thus be imprudent to ignore these admittedly serious shortcomings of the American system. However, one should also not forget that despite its politics, the United States is still a major power, and that those who are overly focused on its periodically self‑destructive and almost always ill‑disciplined political process to the extent of underestimating the robustness of the American regime often have not lived long enough to regret it.
The fundamental sources of American strength, creativity, and resilience have never depended totally on what happens in Washington, DC. More fundamentally, they reside in its great universities and corporations, on the system personified by Wall Street, and on the Main Streets of its 50 states. American federal politics is not unimportant, but, in my view, is ultimately a second‑order factor. Politics has never prevented the United States from eventually doing the right thing, or at least doing what is in its interests, but only after first having exhausted all the alternatives—to borrow from a quotation apocryphally attributed to Winston Churchill.
Thus, for instance, there seems to be a basic political consensus on the key issues of China and the war in Ukraine. At least for now. Still, there will surely be many political quarrels to come on these issues—quarrels within the U.S., between the U.S. and the EU, and within both the EU and NATO. Democracies are by nature quarrelsome, but there will be quarrels primarily over the means, not the ends, of policy. No state should allow itself to be distracted by American domestic politics nor to overreact to them. There is only one United States of America, and the rest of the world has to work with it—and to learn to do so in a new context.
And that new context is plain to see: with the end of the Cold War, the U.S. no longer faces any existential external threat of the kind posed by the Soviet Union. Today’s Russia is seen as dangerous, but for economic and demographic reasons its long‑term trajectory is downwards and has been accelerated by the Kremlin’s disastrous miscalculation in Ukraine. China is a formidable rival, but competition within a system cannot be—by definition—existential because the survival of the system is not at stake. Moreover, China is the principal beneficiary of the existing system and has no strong incentive to kick over the table and change it in any fundamental way for the simple reason that its own economy rests on the foundation of that same system—and, hence, on its perpetuation. Beijing may want to shift the U.S. to the periphery of the system and take its place at the center, but that is not an existential threat. Even if it had the capability to do so, which is doubtful, China cannot displace the U.S. from the system without the risk of undermining it entirely—and that is clearly not in Beijing’s interest. In other words: reform, yes; revolution, no.
The point is ultimately a simple one: without an existential threat, there is no longer any reason for the United States to “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, [and] oppose any foe” to uphold international order. The essential priorities of every post‑Cold War U.S. administration have been domestic, with the George W. Bush Administration being the exception that proves the rule—and even this exception was not self‑imposed but rather forced upon it by 9/11. Since then, every U.S. president has tried to rectify Bush’s mistakes by disengaging from its Middle Eastern entanglements—with limited success, admittedly, until Biden finally cut the Gordian knot in 2021.
That ruthless move in particular, as well as the domestic focus of all post‑Cold War administrations more generally, have often been misrepresented as the United States retreating from its self‑appointed international “obligations,” but this should be more accurately understood as America redefining the terms of its engagement with the world. Again, this is not entirely new.
Half a century ago, the United States corrected the mistake it had made in Vietnam by withdrawing from direct intervention and towards maintaining stability in East Asia by assuming the role of an offshore balancer. It has been remarkably consistent in that role ever since. An analogous shift to an offshore balancer role is now occurring in the Middle East after the withdrawal from Afghanistan and, perhaps, sooner or later it will occur in Europe, too—delayed, but not diverted, by the war in Ukraine.
An offshore balancer is not in retreat, but demands more of its allies, partners, and friends to maintain balance. With former U.S. President Barack Obama, it took the form of an emphasis on multilateralism—and multilateralism is a form of burden sharing; his successor Donald Trump made unilateral and crudely transactional demands; whereas Biden is consultative. But the present occupant of the White House does not consult allies, partners, and friends merely for the pleasure of their company. He is consulting states near and far to ascertain what they are prepared to do to further America’s strategic concerns—and that is something that should never be forgotten.
For those countries that meet his expectations, Biden has gone further than any of his recent predecessors in providing them with tools to help the United States advance common strategic aims—the establishment of the Australia, United Kingdom, and United States Partnership (AUKUS) in 2021 is a good example. In this sense, Biden’s consultative approach is a more polite form of Trump’s crude transactionalism.
On the other hand, if a country does not meet his expectations, Biden will probably still be polite, but that country should not expect to be taken too seriously. This shift to a more transactional, whether polite or otherwise, American foreign policy is likely to be permanent. This is a fact that ASEAN, the GCC states, and even some of America’s allies in Europe are only beginning to understand.
Questioning China
States ought to be concerned with China as well—not simply the United States. The most crucial questions about China revolve around what lessons, if any, Xi Jinping has taken from his experience of the United States over the past decade. And what has been the primary lesson? That there have been two transitions in the White House, and in the last one there was no change of approach towards China. Moreover, during this period Beijing has seen its most important partner commit a major blunder (i.e., the Ukraine war), which has put China in an awkward position.
More so than in the recent past, it is important to stress the personal (Xi Jinping) rather than the collective (China), because the most important consequence of the first decade of Xi’s rule has involved him utilizing his high‑profile anti‑corruption campaign against senior Party cadres to crush all organized opposition and concentrate power around himself. This, in turn, led to the abolition of term limits for the top position. The most important consequence of all that has been to reintroduce a single point of failure into the Chinese system. Authoritarian systems are able to set goals and pursue them relentlessly over the long term, but this is a strength only if the goal was correct in the first place. In China, the two ends of the political spectrum in this respect are set by Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. Mao’s ideologically‑driven Great Leap Forward and subsequent Cultural Revolution were unmitigated disasters whilst Deng Xiaoping’s pragmatic decision to begin a comprehensive process of “reform and open up” saved the Chinese Communist Party.
In no other system could a leader take a cold, hard look at his life’s work, decide it had all gone wrong, and make a 180 degree turn without significant opposition. But it took millions of deaths, and the need to avert an existential threat to the Communist Party, to change course—too often, it takes catastrophes to force policy changes in a China‑like authoritarian system.
So where is Xi situated on this spectrum? The optimists us can point to his recent reversal of China’s zero‑COVID policy that, botched though it was, was nevertheless the right thing to do. They could also point to the easing of controls on big tech companies’ efforts to revive the property sector, the nuanced support for Russia, and to the quest to improve at least the atmosphere or relations with America. All this would suggest that Xi may be reverting to Deng’s style of pragmatism. Although this is not an assessment that can be entirely dismissed, I am inclined to be more skeptical: it is more prudent to continue to reserve judgment rather than to prematurely conclude that Xi has definitely shifted his overall approach.
Indeed, the foregoing examples may as easily be interpreted as being simply tactical adjustments to mitigate mounting internal and external problems, rather than a strategic change of direction. The spontaneous, country‑wide protests against the country’s zero‑COVID policy brought together workers and students—a combination that surely had a very ominous resonance in modern Chinese history for the Communist Party. This should be put alongside the fact that these were directed against a policy that Xi had claimed as a personal achievement. Hence the argument that they could neither be ignored nor effectively contained (or repressed)—particularly in the context of long‑term demographic trends, present slow growth, and high youth unemployment. The lack of preparation for the shift away from the zero‑COVID policy clearly suggests an emergency response rather than a deliberate rethink. Even if the authorities wanted to do it, there will be no going back to zero‑COVID.
But the same cannot be said of the other examples I mentioned, which also may well be understood as emergency responses. For example, it was not wrong to try to dampen an over‑leveraged and overvalued property sector, which may indirectly account for one quarter or more of China’s GDP and thus pose a very serious systemic risk. But the response, which consisted basically of reverting to all macro‑economic stimulus tools to try and boost growth, only further postpones rather than resolves the problem. It could even magnify its scope.
What about big tech? Well, it had already been cut down to size, and the relaxation is occurring within new parameters. Xi would probably not hesitate to act again in the event another Jack Ma‑like character with ideas beyond what the Party considers his station in life should be foolish enough to take a higher profile. Certainly nothing occurred at the Twentieth Party Congress in October 2022—which took place only a month or so before these shifts—that suggests any strategic rethinking of the direction set in the first decade of Xi’s rule. Those ten years have made it clear that Xi is a true Leninist, in the sense that his solution to almost every issue has been to insist on strengthening the role of the Party and its ideology, which has now become synonymous with Xi after having been codified in four thick volumes (with, no doubt, more tomes to come). And this synonymity has been true even of the most fundamental issues facing China.
At the First Plenum of the Eighteenth Party Congress in November 2012 (this is the one at which Xi became the top leader), the Chinese Communist Party itself acknowledged that the country’s growth model—which had brought spectacular results in the 1990s and the first decade of the 2000s—was not sustainable over the long run. That was an admission by the Party itself. The next year (in November 2013), the Eighteenth Party Congress held its Third Plenum and announced the outlines of a new growth model that promised “a decisive role for the market in the allocation of resources.” The timings of both the acknowledgement and the announcement suggests that they were probably based primarily on earlier work by Xi’s immediate predecessor, Jiang Zemin, and his outgoing team, rather than Xi himself, who was at the time probably more preoccupied with consolidating his power than charting a new strategic course for the economy per se.
At any rate, very little of that 2013 plan has been implemented—according to some academic estimates, no more than perhaps 20 percent. Xi’s emphasis has clearly been on the state sector and Party control rather than the market. China is not about to collapse and probably will improvise its way forward, but it should be underlined that growth has been the key pillar of the Chinese Communist Party’s legitimacy for three decades. And at the Nineteenth Party Congress in October 2017, Xi himself redefined China’s “principal contradiction”—a classical Marxist term—to acknowledge the Chinese people’s growing expectations for a better life. However, Xi has so far been half‑hearted about making the market adjustments that the Party itself had deemed necessary to sustain growth to meet rising expectations. This seems to be a strong indicator of where his true priorities may lie. Additionally, his “common prosperity” slogan is a clear indication that the Party does not approve of what it has dubbed the “disorderly expansion of capital”—this also points in the same direction.
In June 2021, Xi enjoined senior Party cadres to present an image of a “credible, lovable, and respectable China.” This suggests that he knows that his foreign policy has not exactly been a stellar success. The “wolf warriors” seem to have been leashed and muzzled—at least for now. But the real issue goes beyond overzealous diplomats.
More than any of his predecessors, Xi has tried to use the ethno‑nationalist historical narrative of humiliation, rejuvenation, and the attainment of the Chinese Dream to justify the Party’s monopoly of power and his personal ascendancy over it. With no other credible legitimating narratives, the Party cannot significantly modify or temper this narrative—and there is no indication that Xi thinks it necessary to do so. This essentially revanchist narrative instils Chinese foreign policy with a strong sense of entitlement, which has resulted in aggressive and uncompromising behavior in the past several years. One can think of it this way: if I am only trying to reclaim what was taken from us when we were weak—that is, not just territory, but, more fundamentally, the deference that we believe is due to a civilization that has always considered itself superior to all others—then why should we compromise? Why should we not instead strongly assert ourselves to regain our view? Indeed, not to do so makes us look weak in our people’s eyes and risks undermining their support. And for the Party, this is the primary consideration. To a Leninist state, diplomacy is only a tactical expedient or a secondary consideration.
The revanchist historical narrative, which the Chinese Communist Party uses to justify its rule, centers on Taiwan. In other words, the Chinese Dream cannot be achieved without reunification, as Xi has said himself several times. This, of course, does not mean that war between the U.S. and China is inevitable. True, Taiwan is the most dangerous potential flashpoint, and Beijing will never forswear the option of reunification by force. But despite China’s fierce rhetoric, and contrary to some rather alarmist assessments that suggests war is imminent, Beijing does not appear eager to go to war over Taiwan unless its hand is forced.
One important reason is that China still lacks the capability and the experience to launch an amphibious operation of the scale that would be necessary to triumph. Of course, China will eventually acquire this capability, but a war of reunification would still be an immense gamble. If China starts a war over Taiwan, it must win it—and it must win it quickly. Putin can survive a botched war against Ukraine, but no Chinese leader could survive a failed war against Taiwan. If a war over Taiwan fails, then even the foundations of the Chinese Communist Party’s rule would be seriously shaken.
In any case, China is very unlikely to launch a war until its nuclear modernization program has given it the ability to deter a direct American response, as Russia has in Ukraine. At present, the biggest risk regarding Taiwan is not a war by design, but either an accident whose consequences take on a life of their own or Taiwanese domestic politics taking a turn that forces China’s hand. Although both these risks have risen, it would be useful to keep in mind that Beijing has a plethora of non‑kinetic options to deal with Taiwan—making use of these is, in my view, China’s preference.
No state can avoid engaging with both the U.S. and China; and dealing with both simultaneously is a necessary condition for dealing effectively with either.
Dynamic, Fluid Multipolarity
No country is without concerns about one or another aspect of both American and Chinese behavior; they exist even in the closest of American allies, and in states deeply dependent on China.
Two inescapable realities for the world arise from the foregoing analysis. First, no state can avoid engaging with both the U.S. and China; and dealing with both simultaneously is a necessary condition for dealing effectively with either. Without the U.S., there can be no balance to China anywhere; and without engagement with China, the U.S. may well take most of the rest of the world for granted. Second, no country is without concerns about one or another aspect of both American and Chinese behavior. The concerns are neither the same nor are they held with equal intensity, depending on the particular country. In some cases, they are not even explicitly articulated; indeed, they are often publicly denied. But they exist even in the closest of American allies, and in states deeply dependent on China.
Dealing with major powers—with whom we cannot avoid working but do not entirely trust—requires strategic autonomy. Even the closest of American allies seem to be moving in that direction. This does not mean that alliances like NATO or less formal arrangements like the Indo‑Pacific Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (the Quad) will break up, but they will become looser over time as states will want to preserve the widest possible range of options for themselves—including, for those who can, the nuclear option.
Few if any countries will commit to aligning themselves across the entire gamut or range of issues with any single major power, and this will encourage the natural multipolarity of a diverse world.
In other words, few if any countries will commit to aligning themselves across the entire gamut or range of issues with any single major power, and this will encourage the natural multipolarity of a diverse world. Multipolarity will not, however, be symmetrical: the United States and China will remain at the center of the international order. And it is also unlikely that the international system, which will evolve around the central axis of Sino‑American relations, will have as clear a definition as did the bipolar Cold War structure. Rather, the international order will become more fluid.
Ambiguity is an intrinsic characteristic of relationships where interdependence creates deep ties while, ironically, the very extent of those ties exposes those vulnerabilities
Complex interdependence is making it increasingly difficult to neatly classify relationships as friend or foe. Ambiguity is an intrinsic characteristic of relationships where interdependence creates deep ties while, ironically, the very extent of those ties exposes those vulnerabilities. Globalization is under stress, but the more apocalyptic predictions about its future demise lack credibility. Managing the politics—both domestic and international—of globalization has become more difficult for almost everybody. But the technologies that drive globalization and interdependence cannot be unlearned: they have their own dynamic that may be slowed but not stopped.
Still, international relationships will become more complicated as countries grapple with political and economic considerations that pull them in different directions. Perhaps an order of dynamic multipolarity is emerging. Such an order could be characterized by shifting combinations of regional middle powers and smaller countries continually arranging and rearranging themselves in variegated and overlapping patterns along the central axis of Sino‑American relations, sometimes tilting in one direction, sometimes tilting the other way, and sometimes going their own way—i.e., sometimes ignoring both the U.S. and China, as dictated by their particular national interests in different domains and circumstances. In other words, we may see the emergence of an order of variable geometry and constant motion rather than static structures. We will have to learn to think of concepts like “order,” and its corollaries “balance,” “equilibrium,” and even “stability” in dynamic rather than static terms.
To successfully navigate this emerging system will require a fundamental shift in mindset and approach that not every country will find comfortable embracing. Countries like Singapore may find it relatively easier to make this adjustment than most others, because what will be required is largely already our diplomatic modus operandi. But even countries like mine will still have to ensure that our institutions, and perhaps even more importantly, our politics, remain agile and courageous enough to continually adapt to this fluid emerging order without losing sight of our fundamental interests.
