From Ukraine to Taiwan, Eurasia has once again become the epicenter of a major confrontation between great powers (the United States, China and Russia). To analyze this, we must free ourselves from the mental software inherited from the Cold War, rethink and fully take into account the planetary context, that of a global and multidimensional crisis. This contribution does not claim to be exhaustive, but rather an invitation to discussion.
The international political situation is dominated by the conflict between a new rising power, China, and the established power, the United States. This face-to-face is analyzed here as an inter-imperialist conflict. The social structure of China is certainly very specific (this is not a detail), but the extent of the break in continuity between the Maoist regime and that of Xi Jinping is well documented. [1] There is obviously controversy in this area and the very concept of imperialism has several legitimate interpretations (as when we speak of the imperialism of tsarist Russia). It is perfectly possible to study the geopolitical conflicts in progress while maintaining reservations about the stage of development of Chinese (or Russian) society, without this disturbing the analysis – unless you think that the regimes of Xi Jinping and of Putin, stemming from the counter-revolutions, remain “progressive”.
The conflict between a rising power and the established power is a classic scenario. But it must imperatively be analyzed in its historical context. The current context is that of the world crisis in which capitalist globalization has plunged us, therefore an unprecedented context in its implications. We will come back to this, but before that, let us underline the singular place occupied by Eurasia in world geopolitics.
Eurasia and great power conflicts
The great game between rising power and established power is being played out all over the world, but for historical and geostrategic reasons it is particularly acute in Eurasia. An economic zone of the greatest importance (with China at its heart), the continent borders the North Atlantic to the west and the Indo-Pacific zone to the east, hence China again! can project as far as the South Pacific. It was the epicenter of revolutionary and counter-revolutionary upheavals of the 20th century involving Europe, Russia, China, Vietnam and many other countries in the region. She knew, more deeply than elsewhere, Nazism, Stalinism, division into blocks, wars.
The continent bears the scars of that time. Read also : “Chinese Tesla” to run lifestyle-based Nine houses across Europe. The nuclear threat is global, but Eurasia has a monopoly on ‘hotspots’, where nuclear weapon holders share the same border – Russia and NATO members in the west, India and Pakistan in the centre, Taiwan to the south (China-USA). ), the Korean Peninsula to the east.
This past, however, is over. The international defeat of my militant generation in the 1980s paved the way for the spread of neoliberal counter-revolution and capitalist globalization. The vocabulary and reflexes of the so-called Cold War (which is burning in Asia) have reappeared in reaction to the invasion of Ukraine, and this analytical framework is no less obsolete. Russia and China are integrated into the same global market as the United States and Europe. One of the major issues currently concerns the contradictions generated by conflicts between States in an interdependent world governed by the free movement of goods and capital.
We must free ourselves from the more or less unconscious analysis software of the Cold War in order to think back to the time when Eurasia has again become the scene of a sharp confrontation between the great powers, whether in the East around Taiwan since Xi Jinping came to power or in the West since the invasion of Ukraine.
The United States remains, by far, the world’s leading military power, but that does not mean that it is always in a position of superiority everywhere. This superiority depends on the nature of the theater of operations, the reliability of the allies, the internal political situation, logistics, etc. Indeed, we can say that on all the Eurasian “fronts”, they were in a situation of weakness.
President Obama would have liked to tilt the “pivot” of the American politico-military apparatus towards Asia. He couldn’t, mired in the Middle East crisis. Beijing took the opportunity to establish its hold over the entire South China Sea over which it proclaimed its sovereignty without taking into account the maritime rights of other bordering countries. It exploits its economic wealth and has built a set of artificial islands hosting a dense network of military bases on reefs. Donald Trump has been unable to pursue a coherent China policy. Joe Biden has succeeded in refocusing the United States on the Asia-Pacific front, but he finds himself facing a situation of fait accompli.
War is not only a military matter, far from it, but the outcome of battles is not without importance. However, a conflict in the South China Sea would a priori be likely to turn to the advantage of Beijing, which could use its most modern weapons, the combined firepower of a militarized maritime zone and a militarized coastal line, the proximity of continental bases (missiles, aviation, etc.), as well as the logistical facilities offered by a modern road and rail network (speed of transport and movement on the front of troops, ammunition, etc.). The war in Ukraine lasts a long time and we see how much it consumes shells! The constant rearming of the fronts is a major constraint, much easier to resolve for Beijing than for Washington. The Pentagon is faced with a complicated equation to solve.
However, this analysis can be questioned. [2] China has no experience of modern warfare. The Maoist strategy was defensive, with the army and popular mobilization as the mainstay. Xi Jinping forcefully builds the attributes of a great power with the navy as its mainstay. However, its troops, its equipment, the reliability and precision of its armaments, its chain of command, its logistical organization, its information system (mastery of space) and its artificial intelligence have never been tested in a situation. real – while its fleet of strategic submarines still represents an Achilles’ heel
At the time of the invasion of Ukraine, Washington was also in a weak position in Europe. Russia had been preparing for at least two years for an offensive on the European front, both economically and militarily. Although Putin was hoping for a whirlwind victory in Ukraine (a mistake that cost him dearly) and the consequent paralysis of NATO (he was aware of its state of crisis), he had other goals in mind and knew that the tension at its borders be sustainable. On the other hand, Washington’s lack of preparation was evident.
After the Afghan failure, NATO was in crisis and its forces in Europe were not massively massed on Russia’s borders. Donald Trump had dynamited the multilateral cooperation frameworks of the Western camp. The impotence of the European Union was obvious, incapable of any coherent diplomacy vis-à-vis China and Russia.
With Brexit, cooperation between the two countries with intervention armies, France and Great Britain, has come to a standstill and their means remain very limited. Morale is not there (the succession of failures suffered by Paris in Africa has something to do with it). French forces have no strategic autonomy, depending on Washington for intelligence and… Russians and Ukrainians for deployment. Ironically, Paris has long leased jumbo jets from Russian and Ukrainian companies to transport its troops. I imagine that is no longer the case (although, capitalism and commerce being what they are, it is possible).
Ukraine in context
NATO was neither the only nor the main reason for the invasion. In Putin‘s own words, he aimed to wipe Ukraine off the map – a state he believed should never have existed. [3] It is impossible to know what would have happened if a blitzkrieg had allowed Russia to conquer the country, balkanize it and establish a puppet government in Kyiv. This was not the case, as the Russian offensive was thwarted by massive national resistance involving the army, territorial forces and the people. It is under these conditions that the war in Ukraine has become a major geopolitical fact which is causing geostrategic realignments that are much more complex than one might imagine.
Beijing and the scenario that did not take place
To what extent was the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) aware of Russian plans? On the eve of the invasion, Xi Jinping and Putin announced with fanfare an agreement of unlimited strategic cooperation. However, Beijing did not attack Taiwan, opening a second front, when the occasion seemed favorable and Xi had made the “reconquest” of this territory a marker of his reign. This may interest you : The United States provided effective high-mobility artillery missile systems in Ukraine. In fact, China began by taking a cautious stance at the UN, not explicitly dissociating itself from Moscow, but not vetoing the first condemnation of the invasion and even saying that international borders should be respected. Remember that for the leadership of the CCP (and the UN), Taiwan is a Chinese province and not a foreign state.
Why this restraint? Consider several reasons. The first is military. Taiwan is a huge fixation abscess in the heart of the South China Sea that Beijing would like to break, but crossing the strait, 120 kilometers wide, makes an invasion very perilous. The Taiwanese probably have the means to resist the time that the American forces manage to cover. No matter how much progress has been made, China’s naval aviation is unable to cope. Xi Jinping has certainly not forgotten past failures, when Mao, at the end of the civil war, tried three times to attack Chiang Kai-check’s Kuomintang (Kuomintang) forces on the island. The converse is also true: an American invasion of China seems unthinkable.
Second, Russian and Chinese interests do not always coincide, far from it. Their alliance makes sense in a defensive context and Russia has experience that China has sought to capitalize on, for example by participating in joint military exercises in Siberia. However, the historic quarrel between Moscow and Beijing against the backdrop of the Sino-Soviet split in 1969 is very serious (at the time it led to fights for control of the Amur River border). With Xi Jinping’s major initiative of the New Silk Roads, Chinese influence has grown considerably in Central Asia in a region that Putin considers his own. The invasion of Ukraine challenged Chinese interests in Eastern Europe (including Ukraine) and Western Europe. Abandoning one’s own European ambitions in the name of Moscow’s imperial ambitions is not easy. However, the worst possible scenario for Beijing would be to find itself alone against Washington.
Third, Xi Jinping’s position within the CCP is not consolidated. His management of the Covid-19 pandemic is criticized. The army staff did not digest the purges to which it was subjected. The factions of the organs of power that have been brutally eliminated await their hour of revenge. Xi has imposed a constitutional reform that allows him to preside as long as he wants – but can he? A party of 90 million members in a country-continent cannot be led by the nose and its situation is undoubtedly more fragile than it seems.
A generalized crisis of governance
Joe Biden’s situation in the United States was already critical at the time of the invasion of Ukraine, without a functional majority in Congress, under the threat of a resurgence of Trumpism. See the article : The US is urging countries to reach out if they have problems with Russian food, exporting fertilizer. Since then, things have gotten worse, with the creeping judicial coup led by the six ultra-conservative members (against the three sane members) of the Supreme Court.
We now know how the extreme right (especially its evangelical component) prepared its hold on institutions for decades by training and placing lawyers and magistrates in key positions. [4] We know the extent of the Trumpian plot that led to the assault on the Capitol. [5] And yet I do not understand how in the United States six people (six!) can impose their dictatorship by breaking with the traditional functioning of the Supreme Court, by attacking reproductive rights, by blocking the program (yet if moderate) of the fight against global warming and announcing that this is only the beginning and that their obscurantist offensive will continue in other areas, including that of elections. [6]
There are important checks and balances in the United States, such as the role of the states. This is not the case in France, a country of hyper-presidentialism where Macron is trying to impose an authoritarian “transcendence” of bourgeois democracy, a project fortunately thwarted (for now) by the recent legislative elections. The situation is no less disastrous across the Atlantic, as in Europe (the burlesque farce of Boris Johnson, for example). We are going through an atrocious democratic crisis.
Globalization in critical crisis
Market globalization is now at a standstill, even if this is not necessarily the case with financial globalization. Geopolitics in principle studies the correlation between many factors, which can only be a collective work. [7] This is outside my topic here. However, Eurasia has provided a new geopolitical factor of primary importance: the Covid-19 pandemic. Born in China, it spread to Europe which served as a springboard to reach the whole world.
The rapidity with which the epidemic became a pandemic can be explained by the negligence of governments which were slow to act (in Europe too), the density of exchanges of globalized capitalism and the characteristics of the Sars-Cov-2 virus, in particular its ability to manufacture new ranges of variants and attack almost all pulmonary, blood, nervous, digestive systems and so on (so nothing to do with the flu). The only precedent could be the misnamed Spanish flu (it originated in the United States), at the time of the First World War, but it was not known then how to analyze the variants and therefore cannot be compared.
We have entered the era of epidemics, in addition to the climate and ecological crisis. Covid-19 has exploded the contradictions of a global economy based on just-in-time production and unlimited trade growth. There will be no turning back.
The new tectonics of geopolitical plates
Almost five months after the invasion of Ukraine, the global situation may seem simple to characterize: Eurasia and the Indo-Pacific remain the epicenter of geopolitical conflicts, American leadership is restored in the Western camp, the NATO is refounded with new ambitions, Russia and China remain united despite their differences which we have spoken about, a “de-globalization of war” is underway on all fronts, the climate, ecological and health crisis is accelerating from However, the suffering of peoples increases with the ongoing disasters.
The refoundation of NATO
The invasion of Ukraine has, as expected, allowed NATO to overcome its post-Afghanistan crisis by giving it a new raison d’être and a new legitimacy – a very heavy blow to the fight against the Organization and military alliances. The Madrid summit, at the end of June 2022, was an opportunity to acquire an unlimited mandate, authorizing it to intervene in the world against any “threat”, whatever it may be. [8] Russia is presented as “the most important threat” at the moment and China, in the long term, as the main “strategic competitor” in all areas.
NATO’s “new strategic concept” is in no way ambiguous. The question remains: does the Organization have the means for its policy? There is nothing obvious in that. While most countries at the United Nations have condemned the invasion, only a small minority have taken the path of sanctions. Today, Joe Biden and NATO demand that the countries of Eurasia and the Indo-Pacific unite against Russia and China. What did they have? The accession of new European countries to the Organization with, and this is what is important, the popular support, the agreement of the great majority of the members of the European Union to come under the American military umbrella, the Japan’s enthusiastic line-up.
Concerning Japan, the country’s constitution contains a pacifist clause (article 9) which prohibits the country from reconstituting an army (“the Japanese people forever renounce war as the sovereign right of the nation”) and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes. This clause was circumvented (“reinterpreted”) from 1954 by the Liberal Democratic Party (right-wing nationalist) which developed the “self-defense forces” in contradiction with article 9 which specifies that “to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, the land, sea and air forces, as well as other war potentials, will never be maintained”.
Japan thus has the fifth largest army in the world, behind the United States, Russia, China and India. It has 1,450 aircraft (only the United States has more) and a navy of 36 destroyers. Destroyers are the most powerful warships after aircraft carriers. Tokyo does not have nuclear weapons but could acquire them very quickly. The government believes that by participating in multilateral operations, it will be able to create a fait accompli and send its forces to external theaters of operations. Tokyo will play its own game and not be a subordinate ally of Washington.
As for India, Joe Biden promoted the concept of an Indo-Pacific zone to integrate New Delhi into a common front against China. He now has no chance of obtaining the agreement of the Modi government to side with Washington against Russia. For obvious expediency reasons, India ostensibly displays a principle of diplomatic neutrality. It has maintained continuous ties with Moscow since the 1960s and around 60% of its military needs are met by Russia. He would even agree to consider trading in rubles (the Russian currency) and not in dollars. [9]
The new non-aligned
Misalignment again became a recurring theme. The term is attractive, reviving the memory of the Bandung conference in 1955. This conference was held under the auspices of the Indonesian leader Sukarno, with Zhou Enlai for China, Nehru for India, Nasser for Egypt, Sihanouk for Cambodia, Tito for Yugoslavia. , as well as Japan (the only industrialized country) and Hocine Aït Ahmed for the Algerian FLN. The Non-Aligned Movement (MNA) is part of a vast struggle for decolonization and a challenge to the dominant order.
Nothing to do with the non-aligned countries of today, generally composed of regimes that have nothing progressive about them. Thus, Modi’s India is considered by many left currents as fascist. [10] Yet the reference to non-alignment means that business will continue as before and that Russia is not isolated internationally, especially since its denunciation of the West’s perfidy resonates with popular memory. colonization or invasion of Iraq.
On Russia’s European borders, everything being relative, NATO and the European Union certainly appear more democratic than Putin’s regime, even if the reconstruction program for Ukraine discussed in Lugano, with a view to the post -war, seeks to impose on the population the canons of the neoliberal order. [11]
Solidarity
The future remains very uncertain. We do not know how crises of national democratic decomposition can affect the international situation, whether a paroxysmal crisis will open tomorrow in the Mediterranean around Turkey or in the Middle East, how “total war” (including sanctions and economic countermeasures) will continue, if the brutality of the effects of the climate crisis will cause waves of migration and a further hardening of Fortress Europe.
However, the Ukrainian crisis was an opportunity for the Western European left to understand the importance of the experience of the Eastern European left, to integrate their “point of view”. We cannot think geopolitics without rising above our national horizons and learning to see the world from elsewhere. It is not enough to support our comrades who are fighting on both sides of the Russian border, in particular Sotsialniy Rukh, the Ukrainian “Social Movement”, we must also listen to them and learn.
Similarly, Ukraine must not make us forget the terrible war that is ravaging Burma (Myanmar), nor the dangerous nature of the continuation of the struggle in the Philippines after the return to power of the Marcos clan. The radical left will be internationalist in action, or it will not be.
Translated by International Viewpoint of ESSF.
