By Princess Jahnavi Kumari Mewar
It is a truism that the past informs the present. However, political leaders often fall short of their undertaking to draw the right lessons from past mistakes; whether those of their own making or their peers and predecessors.
The overarching tenor of modern history has regretfully been that of colonial plunder and imperialism. Neo-forms of colonialism continue to afflict our economy, culture, and politics. The absence of an alternative imagination of politics has plunged global societies into a mire of burgeoning debt, geopolitical tensions, polarization. While the roots of colonialism are perhaps primordial, its iterations in the latter half of the twentieth century were primarily shaped by the United States’ feverish desire to best the Soviet Union and become a global hegemon and imperatorial force leading a Liberal International Order. However, China’s rise has challenged the foundations of this US led global polity and it threatens to become the raison d’être for what the political scientist John Mearsheimer has called the tragedy of great power politics. And part of this tragedy is an invisible war that is being fought in the arena that is an intrinsically integrated global economic infrastructure; ostensibly built for our world’s development and growth.
As a young professional, during my first ever experience (at the age of 21) as ‘working for someone else’; I began to observe what today has become fact – China is implementing strategic expansionism. The Chinese came to Australia for mining assets and real estate. They made great headways into African commodity assets. The ever-increasing prominence and influence in the United States and at the higher political levels across several nations. China has rapidly grown into a financing institutional force to be reckoned with. Alarmingly, as anticipated, a coercive economic footprint began to emerge with a likeness to the mightiest of sovereigns as China has started to weaponize its economic heft. International Organizations are too weakly institutionalized to reckon with China’s rise and their operating capacity has been marginalized due an Eden’s Whale Trap set by Beijing.
China’s primary method of exerting global influence has taken the form of the seemingly benign Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The BRI represents an ominous extension of China’s power and the widening of its debt-centric, extortionist geopolitical power game. The absence of more appealing economic visions proffered by other actors leaves a gaping void for China to exploit, allowing it to continue gaining ‘territory’ in the developing world. A staggering 147 countries, comprising two-thirds of the world’s population, have either signed up for the BRI or expressed intentions to do so. Currently, there is an estimated $62 billion, the largest collection of projects connecting China to Pakistan’s Gwadar Port on the Arabian Sea. China also continues to pour capital into hospitals, ports, transport and utilitarian infrastructure, across Sri-Lanka, Vietnam, Malaysia, Nepal, Africa and Latin-America, to name only a few.
A study conducted in 2021 analyzed over 100 financing contracts China had signed with foreign debtor governments. Not only do these contracts detrimentally restrict the restructuring of debt with the Paris Club (a group of 22 major creditor nations), but they also grant China the right to demand repayment at any time. Despite the efforts of the IMF and World Bank, standard restructuring solutions are proving ineffective due to the aforesaid loan covenants. Consequently, prevalently vulnerable regions are now in a worsened state, grappling with the exacerbation of climate change, soil and water shortages, and increased pollution.
Another example of China’s predatory behavior are its activities in cyberspace and its increasing surveillance and digital authoritarianism. Beijing is educating dictatorial governments on ways to monitor and influence their citizens and telecommunication. Alternatively, in democratic states, it is using Chinese telecom companies and trojan horse modifications to paralyze their “digital and/or telecommunication” infrastructure. Perils and a destructive saturnalia await the world order if this deviant great power can’t be brought to re-alignment by institutional re-composition of IO’s (International Organisations), strategic counter-balancing, and effectual and collective policy-making. The QUAD (Japan, U.S., India and Australia) grouping and most recently the G20 Bharat Summit are reflective of such moves across the geopolitical landscape. However, the QUAD in my opinion still represents a more sectionalist approach to global issues.
Furthermore, it will be a mighty inconvenience. Must we not also address the overabundance of international organizations (IOs) that serve more as talking shops today? To engage and distract, perhaps, was the original (unofficial) charter for certain IOs. Today, they stand feebly, unavailing, and impotent to have tangible impact.
Taking a more macro, global viewpoint, the world itself has become more fractured. Momentum seems now reversed, witnessing a resurgence of nationalism and populism and distrust, great power competition, and with rising politics of suspicion and resentment. The decay of truth and trust is unequivocally impacting our world’s security and stability; it is decisively undermining the public’s trust in government and economic steadfastness. Globalization as we recognize it, has woefully (perhaps disastrously as well) led to weaponization of interdependence. Nation-states are today more fragmented, their relations more contentious, adding to the troubles along the already troubled path to global economic growth. Now isn’t that a disaster for its own special reasons? Where collective action should become an intrinsic part of policymaking, and rational foreign, economic, and international trade policies should find their way into the norm – we are instead seeing more extreme positions. Such polarization is evident across elites on the political spectrum.
Global patterns of competition have become more complex and diverse, with various forms prevailing across different areas of contention. The postwar multilateral order provides the framework within which this emerging competition will unfold. Currently, the competition appears largely focused on status grievances or ambitions, economic prosperity, technological advantage, and regional influence. Initially, the competition is likely to be most intense and persistent in nonmilitary areas of national advantage. The two obvious flashpoints for the emerging competition lie in regional, territorial, and influence claims. The emerging era is likely to involve a protracted combination of contestation, competition, and cooperation.
Inviolable exigencies of present-day; Avoiding strategic myopia and blind spots in secondary theatres; maintaining baseline degrees of access and expertise in these theatres. Managing competition and conflicts in secondary theatres. Recognizing the interconnection between counterterrorism and great-power competition and conflict.
Working with key allies to economize resources and reorganizing the Global Supply chain with the objective of creating a framework of Incentivized Engagement, affecting better global governance practices.
Examining an emerging trend of the relocation, diversification, and reshoring of supply chains by mapping the foreign investment policies of economies in the Indo-Pacific region.
Investing in special economic projects with key allies; financial sector, infrastructure – utility and social, logistics, tech, telecommunications, mobility, and sustainment assets. Global Coalition and Tribunal to implement the needs of today and the future.
With reference to the last recommendation, I am not suggesting an almighty regulator of nations, but an institution for collective intelligence, policy making and coordination, which also facilitates accountability at large by emboldening the weakened implementation capabilities of the pre-existing “enforcers”.
Human ingenuity can drive progress, even if it is not linear. If the international system of the near future is to be characterized by a norm-governed order rather than competitive anarchy, it will have to be based on both great power consensus and the toleration of political diversity, rather than Western or Chinese primacy and the single-minded pursuit of hegemonic preferences. India today is poised to become the fulcrum of this multipolar world order. It has solidified its position of prominence in the Global South at the G20 Bharat summit, which was a resounding “loudhailer” of this shift in paradigm, with 112 outcomes adopted in the New Delhi Declaration, and the announcement of the India-Middle East-Europe economic corridor. India’s leadership has made evidently clear its intentions toward collective action, international cooperation, power correction, collaborative economic growth and promotion of a new geo-political value system. India’s natural influence and role in maneuvering mini-lateral cooperation could be construed as a strategy in the face of a prospective shift in the balance of power, its diplomatic policy now has the potential to revive meaningful multilateralism.
The most basic democratic values such as freedom of information and transparency have great consequences for smooth functioning and resilience. Historically, we have seen that institutions do not perform well as global regulators during periods of order transition (i.e. when there are rising powers looking to disrupt the status-quo). Hence it is important to frame economic, geopolitical and growth incentives for nation-states in a manner that creates a preference for the values that we are looking to promote. The mercurial condition of the world today can and should be remedied with evaluative political and economic consciousness; widening the policy agenda to encapsulate contemporary thought processes and climacteric internationalism, to address the needs of now and the future.
While I conclusively have been prompted to take up that flaming sword; may I also plead the case for the power of policy and suggest we not limit policy making to narrow disciplinary methodologies but instead allow it to be the change humanity needs to flourish.
The author is a real life princess and the head of development in Hukum Raj Legacy. She holds degrees in economics, international trade, international business and marketing.
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