With the start of every new year one of the most pressing questions concerns how the international order has changed. The reason people are so interested in this question, especially when international crises flare, is that world powers shape political, strategic, economic, and technological realities. As political scientists will tell you, the world of international relations is about the interplay between great powers. The rest is detail. Lesser powers do not have much say in matters of hegemony, worldwide influence, and the rivalries between nations through peaceful means, war, or deterrence through alliances with others. The international order is generally described in terms of its number of geopolitical poles. It was multipolar between World War I and II, bipolar in the post-World War II era when the US and USSR dominated the system, unipolar under British hegemony from the defeat of Napoleon in 1815 and the outbreak of World War I and then under US hegemony from the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 to the global financial crisis of 2008. The latter period was described as the era of globalisation, but that was only in form. The reality was that the US was the sole unrivalled global leader.
How does the international order change or move from one state to another? It happens through a major shift in the principal world powers and the dominant modes and patterns of interplay through cooperation and mutual dependency or tension, rivalry and even war, whether directly or by proxy. Recently this interplay came through in responses to major global crises such as the war in Ukraine in Europe, the Gaza war in the Middle East, the Covid-19 pandemic and global warming, regarding which 2023 recorded the warmest average temperatures in modern history.
It goes without saying that the world’s regions are not the same in their historical and geopolitical circumstances. The ground rule, though, is one. States and regions manoeuvre to attain or maintain an equilibrium based on the aggregate of their hard, soft, and smart power. At present the commonly held view is that the world has returned to a bipolar order, in which the two poles are the US and China. The GDP of those two countries has steadily been converging. While the US is still ahead of China in nominal GDP, China has surpassed the US in GDP as calculated in the purchasing power of the dollar. China is also outstripping the US in industrial growth, forging ahead in productivity, especially now that it is pioneering many of the fields of the fourth industrial-technological revolution. The mode of interplay between the two poles is highly competitive, with tensions between them verging on trade and tactical wars centring around Taiwan and the South China Sea. The friction manifests itself in, among other things, US sanctions against China’s allies, such as North Korea and Iran.
On the other hand, several years ago, the American political journal, Foreign Affairs, saw the bipolarity playing out in US-Russian relations. Its April 2018 edition featured a collection of articles under the heading, “The New Cold War: Russia and the US then and now.” It opens with an article appearing at the very outset of the old Cold War called “The Sources of Soviet Conduct.” It was originally published in 1947 under the pseudonym Mr X, though it soon came to light that its author was former US ambassador George Kennan. The article pronounced the end of the US-Soviet alliance during World War II and laid out the US’ Cold War strategy which became known as the Soviet containment policy. Subsequent articles chronicled the following phases of the Cold War and the peaks and ebbs of tension in US-Soviet relations. Of particular note was Henry Kissinger’s article of July 1959 titled “The Search for Stability,” which was followed in October of the same year by an article by Nikita Khrushchev with the title “On Peaceful Coexistence.” The moments of coexistence and concord were the exception to the rule during the decades of the Cold War which lasted until the collapse of the Soviet Union at the outset of the 1990s. The next decade and a half were characterised by the US’ sole leadership of the world. Foreign Affairs articles from that period focused on how the West should save Russia and engage with it in the framework of the G8. An example was the 2002 article called “Russia Renewed?” by Daniel Treisman. The honeymoon was short-lived, and the Foreign Affairs articles began to reflect the mounting tensions between Washington and Moscow. The following articles were like historical road signs: “Russia Leaves the West” (July 2006), “Managing the New Cold War” (June 2014, which was soon after Russia annexed Crimea), “Containing Russia, Again” (January 2018), and “Has a New Cold War Really Begun?” (March 2018).
A few years later, time had come full circle. In February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine and the new Cold War between Moscow and Washington switched into high gear while the other Cold War between Washington and Beijing continued to simmer. The first Cold War is strategic in nature and unfolding primarily in Europe and the Middle East. The second is more of an economic war revolving around trade, although it, too, has its strategic dimensions involving the pursuit of geopolitical power, control, and influence. As for the three main players, the US is still, in theory, the leading economic and military power in the world. Russia may be only a middle-weight economic player, but it has more than 9,000 nuclear warheads and an edge in military and aerospace technology. China is more about potential; with its growth rates and the inroads it is making in modern technologies, it is on its way to becoming the foremost economic powerhouse.
We are looking at a totally new situation in modern international relations in 2024. Not only are there three poles, the circumstances are also unprecedented and unlike anything we have seen throughout the 20th century and even at the outset of this century. Technological advances have given these powers advantages unavailable to other powers such as India and the EU. The latter was shaken by Brexit and further weakened by the poor performance of key economies, such as those of Italy, Spain, and Greece. These factors, combined with the decline of Europeanism as a whole, have aggravated pressures on Germany and France, which are also succumbing to tides of rising far right forces and spreading hostility to immigration which is blamed for bringing “terrorism” into Europe.
That Russia’s role in international politics has faded due to the war in Ukraine is beyond doubt. However, it is premature to predict a bipolar world, especially given the signs that the war in Ukraine may take a new turn in 2024. Firstly, the Ukrainian counteroffensive launched in June 2023 has failed to change the strategic shape of the battlefield in Ukraine. Russia still holds about 20 per cent of the territory, which is situated in the Russian-speaking regions. Secondly, the economic straits in Europe and the surge of the right in both Europe and the US have given growing preponderance to the voices in favour of a peaceful settlement. This increases the likelihood that Western powers will move, if not towards a formal peace agreement then at least to a tacit acknowledge of a fait accompli, as occurred when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. Thirdly, Israel’s war on Gaza ushered in the US’ return to the Middle East after a brief hiatus in which it had planned to withdraw from the region.
As the fifth Gazan war flared, a Sino-US summit was held on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in California. It followed through on a similar meeting during the G20 conference in Bali, Indonesia, a year ago. Crucially, the presidential tete-a-tete in California was the culmination of a series of exciting meetings that covered almost all strategic issues between the US and China, from the questions of Taiwan to drugs. The meetings, which brought US National Security Adviser Jack Sullivan, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and the governor of California together with their Chinese counterparts, along with the upbeat statements in the conferences afterwards, increased in pace and positivity up to the eve of the Xi and Biden meeting.
In light of the foregoing, we can expect that, in 2024, bilateral relationship between Washington and Beijing will be shaped more by what they have in common than what divides them. Both want a stable global economic system which would inspire them to benefit from their heavy economic interdependence. Secondly, in view of the current situation on the ground in Ukraine, both would be more inclined to push for a settlement between Moscow and Kyiv or at least a prolonged ceasefire that would freeze the conflict along the current line of contact. Thirdly, China’s recently published position paper on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict calling for the two-state solution suggests that China’s approach is not far from the US’ on how to deal with the war in the Middle East. Fourthly, the Biden administration, which is entering an election year, might want to curry favour with China to help settle the Ukrainian crisis and to address other issues in which they have common interests, such as global warming, which can only be remedied if they work together.
In sum, next year will usher in a Chinese-US rapprochement that could steer them to a détente such as that which occurred under president Nixon in the 1970s. Perhaps this will lead to a bipolar order. More immediately, hopefully, it will end the war in Ukraine.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 21 December, 2023 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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