[EpochTimesDecember292021]The “polar change” in this article refers to the world situation changing from bipolar to multipolar. The world changed from unipolarity in the United States to bipolarity, which occurred in the second half of Bush’s second term. In 2021, Biden drove the American train on the Change track at high speed, and waved to the world frequently: The United States is back, but apart from Taiwan’s enthusiastic cheers, the applause from traditional allies has fallen. After more than a year of Bai-Hah administration and the United States‘ efforts to return to the throne of world leaders, the world‘s multi-polarization pattern has begun to take shape.
worldTwenty years of vicissitudes: unipolar→two-level→multipolar
After the end of the Cold War, the United States was the natural leader of the world. Since China proclaimed “China’s peaceful rise” in 2003, the world believes that the Sino-U.S. bipolar structure has taken shape. At the end of 2006, Niall Ferguson, a former professor at Harvard University and the London School of Economics, and Moritz Schularick, a professor at the Free University of Berlin in Germany, created a new English term “Chimerica” (in Chinese). United States), also translated as Sino-American Consortium, Sino-American Community, etc., which refers to the mutually beneficial and interdependent relationship between China and the United States. Since then, the world believes that China has the ability to lead the world together with the United States. China itself thinks so. At the 2011 APEC summit in Hawaii, President Barack Obama, who has always been friendly to Beijing, asked China to “stop playing with the international system” and “behave like an adult.” Chinese Foreign Ministry official Pang Sen responded to Obama’s remarks. One critic said: “If these rules are jointly formulated through an agreement and China is a part of them, then China will abide by these rules. If the rules are decided by one country or several countries, China has not abided by them. Obligations.”-Since then, China has repeatedly expressed its intention to participate in the formulation of international rules.
The European Union formally put forward the term “multipolar world” in 2007. In March 2007, Le Monde published an article “A multipolar world is taking shape” by Thierry de Montbrial, Dean of the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI), article Said that the bipolar world came to an end with the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991. The unipolar world that has been born since then is also unsustainable after the midterm elections in the United States in November 2006, because that election ended Bush’s supremacy, and the multi-polar world that France has been calling for for a long time began to become a reality. Since then, France has been working hard to become the center of the world again. In mid-October 2021, finance ministers and economic officials from 190 IMF member states gathered in Washington to attend the meeting. Before the meeting, French Minister of Economy, Finance and Revitalization Bruno Le Maire publicly stated in an interview with The New York Times: Europe should be regarded as one of the three superpowers of the 21st century. “The United States wants to cooperate with China confronts. The European Union wants to engage with China” because the United States is the world‘s number one power and does not want “China to become the world‘s number one superpower in a few years or decades.” He pointed out that, by contrast, Europe’s strategic focus is independence.
The United States has not yet figured out whether to recognize the “three-polar world“, but it did not expect Turkey to make another big move. On November 12, 2021, the leaders of the six countries of Turkey, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Azerbaijan announced at the 8th Summit of the Cooperation Council of Turkic-Speaking Countries in Istanbul that the “Turkic-speaking National Committee” was renamed ” Turkic State Organization”. Previously, the Turkish side stated that Turkey and the five Central Asian countries have deep connections in religion, language and customs. “Six countries, one nation” should imitate the Arab League system and establish an alliance of Turkic states. The idea of establishing a unified Turkic League of Nations began at the seminar on the new pattern of Eurasia held in Turkey in 1991. Now this idea has finally landed.
Although Russia’s national power has long since declined, Putin still has ambitions. He has always wanted to re-incorporate the former CIS countries into one pole through various means. In order to fight the European Union and cannibalize the original CIS countries, Russia and China have joined forces on many issues.
U.S. leadership is rapidly declining
Due to the double failure of domestic and foreign affairs, the leadership of the United States has seriously declined. There are at least three things that seriously affect the world‘s confidence in the United States:
The internal affairs of the United States led by the Biden administration have completely changed the direction of previous governance. Its new diplomatic policy is to lead the world in responding to human rights, climate change, public health and other challenges. Climate change is the top priority, but apart from Europe, Asia and Africa Latin America probably did not regard this as the primary issue. They each have their own priorities, and the common important issue is economic issues. In practice, these few things have frustrated the confidence of allies:
First, the retreat of Afghanistan’s troop withdrawal has greatly harmed America’s international prestige. Although Biden tried hard to argue that the troop withdrawal policy was set during the Trump era, the American media, including the New York Times and CNN, which have always praised Biden, knew that this was the fault of Biden’s troop withdrawal method. Not only the United Kingdom and France in NATO countries have criticized this, but even those Americans who don’t want to worry about it in their own country, after the media showed “Afghanistan’s American ledger” and exposed the huge amount of corruption in it, they also became suspicious of the United States‘ world stability.
Second, the United States’ desire to lead the world as demonstrated by the Democracy Summit rather than leadership. The democratic summit that was hurriedly convened for the failure of the climate summit is actually a failed meeting. There were more than 110 participants in this conference, and the war of words with China was very lively. However, because Biden’s opening speech and Harris’ speech both mentioned that they would promote the US’s voter ID verification in the name of abolishing voter suppression, the EU and the EU France clearly denied it in its speech the next day, and the fear of communism was quickly withdrawn because Taiwan was not included in the map of China, which left countries with a lack of confidence.
Third, boycott the cat head and rat tail of the Beijing Winter Olympics. The United States took the lead in proposing a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics, but the official respondent included seven countries including Britain, Australia, Japan, and Lithuania. German media have long claimed that the boycott failed even if the ten countries did not reach a certain scale. But the most embarrassing thing is not this, but the news that came out on December 24 that the United States is applying for visas for 18 State Department and Pentagon officials to participate in the Winter Olympics, and 40 officials will apply for visas in the future.
The United States gives the world the most confidence in the United States‘ military power, which is the psychological support of China’s rapid military growth after the panic caused by neighboring countries. The U.S. Department of Defense completed the Global Posture Review on November 29. The U.S. military plans to improve its Guam and Australian bases to counter the CCP. The Indo-Pacific region is known as a key point of the US defense strategy. The U.S. military is planning new bases to deal with the increasingly likely new Pacific War and prevent potential military aggression by the CCP. Response measures include seeking wider regional access and military cooperation, strengthening infrastructure in Australia and the Pacific islands, and rotating aircraft deployment in Australia. The assessment report requires the Department of Defense to reduce its troops and equipment in other parts of the world and focus more on the Indo-Pacific region—that is, the US military’s main battlefield in the future will be in the Indo-Pacific region, but the U.S. military will only be able to cope with this. In one area, military forces from other places need to be transferred there.
China’s peak period has passed the severe decline of EU power
China’s national strength, especially its economic development capability, is declining. I talked about this in the article “2022 China’s Economy: Domestic Worries and Uncertain External Demand”. Another weakness is that the overall military strength is not as good as that of the United States. Compared with the United States, China, whose economic strength is far inferior to that of the United States, is able to concentrate resources to do things and become the world‘s largest purchaser of resources, the largest market in the eyes of Western countries, and the largest provider of funds in African countries. This is China’s leverage to allow countries around the world to form economic dependence, market dependence and capital dependence on China. Although China’s economy is currently weakening, it will still perform best in the international community in 2021.
It is an indisputable fact that the economic power of the European Union is weakening. More importantly, the unified global strategy of the European Union and the United States is to deal with climate change and promote green energy. Germany is a pioneer in green energy. In order to promote the green energy policy, the Merkel government has continuously increased the proportion of natural gas in the energy supply, and despite the opposition of the United States, insisted on importing large amounts of natural gas from Russia. Starting in 2017, Germany’s natural gas imports from Russia accounted for 40% of Germany’s total natural gas consumption, resulting in Germany’s dependence on Russia for energy supply. Recently, Russia has begun to tighten the noose. On December 17, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs proposed a draft treaty requiring NATO and the United States to protect Russia’s national security as a precondition for resolving the Ukrainian crisis, and the EU and NATO are limited to make a decision within one month. . Forcing the EU countries to make comprehensive concessions on national defense and security, Germany fell into a triple dilemma of politics, economy, and national defense.EU’s green idealistic diplomacy is about to go bankrupt
Turkey has worked hard for many years to form a Turkic alliance, and high inflation has caused the country’s monetary system to close to collapse. Official Turkish data show that in November the country’s annual inflation rate has exceeded 20%. Since the beginning of 2021, the lira has depreciated about 48% against the US dollar. The Associated Press reported on December 13 that Standard & Poor’s has reduced the country’s outlook to “negative.”
Relatively weak powers cannot become poles alone, they can only watch as they walk, and constantly adjust their positions in a world that is undergoing extreme changes.
New challenges facing the new landscape require new responses
The world has gradually become a multi-polarity trend, but there are not many countries that can soberly cope with this changing situation.
After the media announced that the United States is seeking visas for State Department and Pentagon officials to participate in the Beijing Winter Olympics, Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau has followed the United States in dealing with Huawei and diplomatic boycotts of the Beijing Winter Olympics in recent years. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau realized that his country would be isolated by China. In a year-end interview with CTV Network on December 21, 2021, he gave a series of answers to reporters’ questions about relations with China. In his interview, he stated that Western countries should reach a united front against China to prevent China from using commercial interests to make Western countries compete with each other and target each other. Trudeau emphasized that China has been making Western countries fight, because Western countries have been fighting for economic and trade opportunities in China.
The United States is obviously not aware of this problem. So far, the Biden administration still regards human rights, climate change, green energy, and public health as the top challenges that the United States has to lead the world to deal with, just like Obama. It also regards multilateralism (an organized relationship between three or more countries) as a good tool for the United States to deal with major global challenges, and believes that when like-minded countries form alliances, this partnership can inspire its members to find Solutions to global problems.
It is not wrong to use multilateral strategies to construct relations between major powers in the era of economic globalization. However, there are two biggest problems. One is that the complicated economic relations of various countries will severely restrict their foreign policy toward China; the other is The values of the U.S. Democratic Party are getting off the sidelines, and countries around the world have difficulty accepting them;
In terms of the Indo-Pacific strategy that the Biden administration now regards as a global strategy, there is no doubt that the most important players in the Indo-Pacific region are the United States and China. However, these two big countries have already formed economic “mutual dependence” in the economic structure of economic globalization. Compared with the Cold War in the past, the economy now and in the future constitutes a more important part of geostrategic competition. , But the United States obviously does not have a clear consideration of this at present.
The globalization that began in the 1990s was to promote human rights and use the American model to transform the world. That was the policy of a mixture of American hegemony, Western liberal order concepts, and European idealism. Now this mixture has come to an end, and the United States and Europe have jointly promoted it. Green idealism is completely out of touch with the multipolar world.
The Epoch Times
Editor in charge: Zhu Ying
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