This article will appear in the July 9 issue of The New York Review.
International cooperation is in decline both in the political and
financial spheres. The UN has failed to address any of the major
conflicts since the end of the cold war; the 2009 Copenhagen Climate
Change Conference left a sour aftertaste; the World Trade Organization
hasn’t concluded a major trade round since 1994. The International
Monetary Fund’s legitimacy is increasingly questioned because of its
outdated governance, and the G20, which emerged during the financial
crisis of 2008 as a potentially powerful instrument of international
cooperation, seems to have lost its way. In all areas, national,
sectarian, business, and other special interests take precedence over
the common interest. This trend has now reached a point where instead of
a global order we have to speak of global disorder.
In the
political sphere local conflicts fester and multiply. Taken individually
these conflicts could possibly be solved but they tend to be
interconnected and the losers in one conflict tend to become the
spoilers in others. For instance, the Syrian crisis deteriorated when
Putin’s Russia and the Iranian government came to Bashar al-Assad’s
rescue, each for its own reasons. Saudi Arabia provided the seed money
for ISIS and Iran instigated the Houthi rebellion in Yemen to retaliate
against Saudi Arabia. Bibi Netanyahu tried to turn the US Congress
against the nuclear treaty the US was negotiating with Iran. There are
just too many conflicts for international public opinion to exert a
positive influence.
In the financial sphere the Bretton Woods
institutions—the IMF and the World Bank—have lost their monopoly
position. Under Chinese leadership, a parallel set of institutions is
emerging. Will they be in conflict or will they find a way to cooperate?
Since the financial and the political spheres are also interconnected,
the future course of history will greatly depend on how China tackles
its economic transition from investment and export-led growth to greater
dependence on domestic demand, and how the US reacts to it. A strategic
partnership between the US and China could prevent the evolution of two
power blocks that may be drawn into military conflict.
How did
we reach this point of global disorder? During the cold war the world
was dominated by two superpowers. Each maintained some degree of control
over its allies and satellites, and avoided direct military
confrontation with the other because of the danger of Mutually Assured
Destruction. It was a MAD system but it worked: it produced a number of
local military conflicts but it avoided a world war.
When the
Soviet empire fell apart the United States had an opportunity to become
the sole superpower and the guarantor of peace in the world, but it did
not rise to the occasion. The US was founded on the principle of
individual freedom and it was not predisposed to become the policeman of
the world. Indeed, it did not have a coherent view of the meaning of
leadership in international affairs. During the cold war it had a
bipartisan foreign policy, on which Democrats and Republicans largely
agreed; but after the cold war ended the partnership broke up. Both
parties continued to emphasize American sovereignty but they rarely
agreed on subordinating it to international obligations.
Then in
1997, a group of neoconservatives argued that the US should use its
military supremacy to impose its national interests, and established a
think tank called the Project for the New American Century, “to promote
American global leadership.” But that was a false approach: military
force cannot be used to rule the world. After the terrorist attack of
September 11, the neocons persuaded President George W. Bush to attack
Iraq on dubious grounds that turned out to be false, and the US lost its
supremacy. The Project for the New American Century had approximately
the same lifespan as Hitler’s Thousand-Year Reich: around ten years.
On the financial side, by contrast, there was a clear consensus—the
so-called Washington Consensus—on America’s role in the world. It became
dominant in the 1980s under the leadership of Ronald Reagan and
Margaret Thatcher. It had strong ideological support from market
fundamentalists; it had a supposedly scientific foundation in the
Efficient Market Hypothesis and Rational Choice Theory; and it was
efficiently administered by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The
consensus was a much more subtle compromise between international
governance and national self-interest than the neocons’ view that
military power is supreme.
Indeed, the Washington Consensus had
its roots in the original compromise on which the Bretton Woods
institutions were founded. John Maynard Keynes proposed a truly
international currency, the bancor, but the US insisted on the dollar as
the world’s reserve currency and it prevailed. In the memorable words
of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, “all animals are equal, but some animals
are more equal than others.” The Washington Consensus promoted free
trade and the globalization of financial markets. In the late 1990s,
market fundamentalists even tried to modify the articles of agreement of
the IMF so as to impose capital account convertibility, the free
exchange of currencies. That attempt failed, but by allowing financial
capital to move around freely the Washington Consensus also allowed
capital to escape taxation and regulation. That was a triumph for market
fundamentalism.
Unfortunately, the scientific foundations of
this approach proved to be ill conceived. Unregulated financial markets
are inherently unstable: instead of a general equilibrium that assures
the optimum allocation of resources, they produce financial crises. This
was dramatically demonstrated by the crash of 2008. By coincidence,
2008 marked both the end of America’s political supremacy and the demise
of the Washington Consensus. It was also the beginning of a process of
financial and political disintegration that first manifested itself in
the microcosm of the European Union, but then spread to the world at
large.
The crash of 2008 had a lasting negative effect on all the
economies of the world, with the notable exception of China’s. The
Chinese banking system was relatively isolated from the rest of the
world and largely government-owned. As a consequence, the Chinese banks
could, at the government’s behest, offset the collapse of external
demand by flooding the economy with credit. The Chinese economy replaced
the American consumer as the motor of the global economy, largely by
selling to the American consumer on credit. It has been a rather weak
motor, reflecting the relative size of the Chinese and American
economies, so that the global economy has grown rather slowly since the
emergence of China’s international economic power.
The main
reason why the world avoided a global depression is that economists have
learned some lessons from the experience of the 1930s. The heavy load
of debt and lingering political prejudices limited the scale of fiscal
stimulus globally (again with the exception of China); but the Federal
Reserve under the leadership of its chairman, Ben Bernanke, embarked on
unorthodox monetary policies including quantitative easing—large-scale
injection of money into the economy through the purchase of bonds by the
Federal Reserve. This prevented the reduction in effective demand from
deteriorating into a global depression.
The crash of 2008 was
also indirectly responsible for the euro crisis. The euro was an
incomplete currency: it had a common central bank but it did not have a
common treasury. The architects of the euro were aware of this defect
but believed that when the deficiency became apparent the political will
could be summoned to correct it. After all, that is how the European
Union was brought into existence—taking one step at a time, knowing full
well that it was insufficient but that when the need arose it would
lead to further steps.
Unfortunately, political conditions
changed between 1999, when the euro was adopted, and 2008, when the need
arose. Germany under the leadership of Helmut Kohl led the process of
European integration in order to facilitate the reunification of
Germany. But reunification proved expensive and the German public became
unwilling to take on any additional expenses. When, after the
bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in 2008, the European finance ministers
declared that no systemically important financial institution would be
allowed to fail, Chancellor Angela Merkel, as a politician in touch with
the prevailing public opinion, insisted that the responsibility should
fall on each country separately, not on the European Union collectively.
That ruled out the possibility of a common treasury just when it was
needed. That was the beginning of the euro crisis. Crises in individual
countries like Greece, Italy, or Ireland are essentially variants of the
euro crisis.
Subsequently, the financial crisis has morphed into
a series of political crises. The differences between creditor
countries and debtor countries have transformed the European Union from a
voluntary association of equals into a relationship between creditors,
such as Germany, and debtors, such as Greece, that is neither voluntary
nor equal and arouses increasing political tensions.
The European
Union started out as a valiant attempt at international governance on a
regional scale. In the aftermath of 2008, the EU became preoccupied
with its internal problems and failed to pull its weight in the
international economy. The United States also became inward-looking but
by a somewhat different route. The inward turn of the EU and US led to a
decline in international cooperation on a global scale.
Since
the Western powers are the mainstay of the prevailing world order, their
declining influence has created a power vacuum in international
governance. Aspiring regional powers and nonstate actors, which are
willing to use military force, have rushed to fill the vacuum. Armed
conflicts have proliferated and spread from the Middle East to other
parts of Asia, Africa, and even Europe.
By annexing Crimea and
establishing separatist enclaves in Ukraine, Putin’s Russia has
challenged both the prevailing world order, which depends on the Western
powers for support, and the values and principles on which the EU was
founded. Neither the European nor the American public is fully aware of
the severity of the challenge. President Vladimir Putin wants to
destabilize all of Ukraine by precipitating a financial and political
collapse for which he can disclaim responsibility, while avoiding
occupation of a part of eastern Ukraine, which would then depend on
Russia for economic support. He has demonstrated his preference by twice
converting an assured military victory into a cease-fire that
threatened to destabilize all of Ukraine. Unfortunately, Putin is
succeeding, as can be seen by comparing the “Minsk Two” cease-fire with
“Minsk One,” even if his success is purely temporary. Putin now seeks to
use Ukraine to sow dissension and gain political influence within the
European Union.
The severity of the Russian threat is directly
correlated with the weakness of the European Union. The EU has excelled
at muddling through financial and political crises but now it is
confronted with not one but five crises: Russia, Ukraine, Greece,
immigration, and the coming British referendum on EU membership—and that
may be too much. The very survival of the EU is at risk.
International governance on a global scale is equally fragile. The world
may break up into rival camps both financially and politically. China
has begun to build a parallel set of financial institutions, including
the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB); the Asian Bond Fund
Initiative; the New Development Bank (formerly the BRICS Bank); and the
Chiang Mai Initiative, which is an Asian regional multilateral
arrangement to swap currencies. Whether the two camps will be able to
keep their rivalry within bounds will depend on how China manages its
economic transition and on how the US reacts to it.
The
International Monetary Fund could play a positive part in this. It has
abandoned its commitment to the Washington Consensus but the controlling
shareholders of the Bretton Woods institutions—the US, the UK, France,
and Germany among them—are unwilling to relinquish their voting control
by increasing the representation of the developing world. This is very
shortsighted on their part because it does not recognize changes in the
relative weight of various economies and particularly the rise of China.
The controlling shareholders are unlikely to abandon their control,
however tenuous; but the IMF has an opportunity to build a binding
connection between the two camps. The opportunity arises from the fact
that the composition of the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights (SDR) basket
will be up for its five-yearly review at the end of 2015.
The SDR
is an international reserve asset, created by the IMF in 1969 to
supplement the existing official reserves of member countries. The
Chinese renminbi is not fully qualified to be included in the SDR
basket, but the qualifications to be included are not as rigorously
defined as is generally believed. The Japanese yen was introduced when
it was not yet widely traded; the franc entered the basket when the
French capital account was heavily controlled; and the Saudi riyal was
introduced when it was completely pegged to the US currency. The
criteria for inclusion have changed over the years but now call for (1) a
large exporter country and (2) a “freely usable” currency. This term is
often misconstrued as imposing complete convertibility of capital
accounts and flexibility of exchange rates; but that is not the case.
Indeed, the basket of Special Drawing Rights formerly included
currencies with no or little capital account convertibility.
The
Chinese leadership has now embarked on a major effort to have the
renminbi included in the SDR basket, and the IMF staff is sympathetic.
For instance, it has announced that the renminbi is “no longer
undervalued,” and it doesn’t seek full and precipitous capital account
liberalization, but rather a cautious and gradual pace of reform in
order to ensure the smooth functioning of the SDR and the preservation
of financial stability in China.
Much now depends on the attitude
of the US government, which holds veto rights in the IMF—even if the
decision regarding the SDR basket requires only a 70 percent majority of
the IMF’s board. The US would be making a major concession if it opened
the door to allowing the renminbi to become a potential rival to the
dollar. It could demand similar concessions from China in return, but
that would be the wrong approach. The relationship between two great
powers is not a zero-sum game: one party’s gain is not necessarily a
loss for the other.
China is seeking SDR status for the renminbi
not to please or hurt the US but for reasons of its own that are only
indirectly connected with China’s ultimate ambition of replacing the US
dollar as the dominant currency in the world. China seeks to use
financial liberalization as an engine of growth for the Chinese economy.
China wants to deepen the government bond market and open it up to
international investors in order to enable the central government to
clean up the bad debts of insolvent local authorities; it also wants to
reduce the excessive leverage in the economy by promoting conversions of
debt to equity. Inclusion of the renminbi in the IMF basket would
facilitate the process, and success would automatically advance the
renminbi’s weight and influence in the world.
The US government
has little to gain and much to lose by treating the relationship with
China as a zero-sum game. In other words it has little bargaining power.
It could, of course, obstruct China’s progress, but that would be very
dangerous. President Xi Jinping has taken personal responsibility for
the economy and national security. If his market-oriented reforms fail,
he may foster some external conflicts to keep the country united and
maintain himself in power. This could lead China to align itself with
Russia not only financially but also politically and militarily. In that
case, should the external conflict escalate into a military
confrontation with an ally of the United States such as Japan, it is not
an exaggeration to say that we would be on the threshold of a third
world war.
Indeed, military budgets are rapidly increasing both
in Russia and in China, and they remain at a very high level in the
United States. For China, rearmament would be a surefire way to boost
domestic demand. China is already flexing its military muscle in the
South China Sea, operating in a unilateral and often quite belligerent
manner, which is causing justifiable concern in Washington.
Nevertheless, it may take a decade or more until a Russian–Chinese
military alliance would be ready to confront the US directly. Until
then, we may expect a continuation of hybrid warfare and the
proliferation of proxy wars.
Both the US and China have a vital
interest in reaching an understanding because the alternative is so
unpalatable. The benefits of an eventual agreement between China and the
US could be equally far-reaching. Recently there has been a real
breakthrough on climate policy on a bilateral basis. By taking the
nonbinding representations and promises made by the two countries at
face value, the agreement has made more credible some recent efforts to
bring climate change under control. If this approach could be extended
to other aspects of energy policy and to the financial and economic
spheres, the threat of a military alignment between China and Russia
would be removed and the prospect of a global conflict would be greatly
diminished. That is worth trying.
On his last state visit to the
US in 2013, President Xi spoke of a “new type of great power
relationship.” The subject has been widely discussed in China since
then. President Obama should outline his own vision by drawing a
distinction between Putin’s Russia, which has replaced the rule of law
with the rule of force, and today’s China, which does not always abide
by the rule of law but respects its treaty obligations. Russian
aggression needs to be firmly resisted; by contrast China needs to be
encouraged—by offering a more constructive alternative—to avoid the
route of military aggression. This kind of offer may elicit a favorable
response. Rivalry between the US and China is inevitable but it needs to
be kept within bounds that would preclude the use of military force.
It does not follow that a far-reaching agreement amounting to a
strategic partnership between the US and China would be easy to
accomplish. The two countries have fundamentally different political
systems. While the US is founded on the principle of individual freedom,
China has no significant tradition of such freedom. It has had a
hierarchical structure since time immemorial and it has been an empire
throughout most of its history. In recent years the US has led the world
in the innovative development of social media, while China has led the
world in finding means to control it. Since the end of the cold war,
China has been much more successful than Russia in creating a successful
hierarchical system.
This is best seen by looking at the way
information is distributed. Since the rise of social media, information
increasingly travels along horizontal lines, but China is different:
information is distributed vertically. Within the party–state apparatus,
the closer one is to the top, the better one is informed and the more
latitude one enjoys in expressing an opinion. This means that the
party–state apparatus offers not only an opportunity for personal
enrichment but also a semblance of individual freedom. No wonder that
the apparatus has been able to attract much of China’s best talent. The
degree of latitude it allows is, however, strictly circumscribed by red
lines. People have to walk within a grid; those who transgress the red
lines may fall into the hands of the security apparatus and disappear
without a trace.
The stranglehold of the security apparatus was
gradually diminishing but recently there has been an ominous reversal:
under the leadership of President Xi the informal rules defining the
rights and status of NGOs, for instance, are now in the process of being
significantly tightened.*
Comparing President Xi’s “Chinese
dream” with the American dream highlights the difference between the two
political and social systems. Xi extols China’s success in
“rejuvenating the nation” by harnessing the talents and energies of its
people in service of the state. By contrast, the American dream extols
the success of the rugged individual who achieves upward social mobility
and material prosperity by overcoming obstacles posed by social
conventions or prejudices or authorities abusing their power, or sheer
bad luck. The US would like China to adopt its values but the Chinese
leadership considers them subversive.
In this respect China has
more in common with Russia than with the US. Both Russia and China
consider themselves victims of America’s aspiration to world domination.
From the US point of view, there is much to disapprove of in China’s
behavior. There is no independent judiciary and multinational companies
are often mistreated and replaced by domestic favorites. And there are
conflicts with the US and other nations in the South China Sea and over
cyberwarfare and human rights. These are not matters on which
cooperation will be easy to achieve.
Fully recognizing these
difficulties, the US government should nevertheless make a bona fide
attempt at forging a strategic partnership with China. This would
involve identifying areas of common interest as well as areas of
rivalry. The former would invite cooperation, the latter tit-for-tat
bargaining. The US needs to develop a two-pronged strategy that offers
incentives for cooperation and deterrents that render tit-for-tat
bargaining less attractive.
The areas for cooperation may prove
to be wider than is obvious at first sight. Cooperating with China in
making President Xi’s financial reforms successful is definitely in the
common interest. Success would fulfill the aspirations of the
ever-increasing Chinese middle class. It may also allow Xi to relax some
of the restrictions he has recently introduced and that would, in turn,
increase the probability that his reforms will succeed and improve
global financial stability. The weak point of his current approach is
that both implementing and monitoring the reform process are in the same
hands. Opening up the process to criticism by the media and civil
society would greatly improve the efficacy of his reforms. This is
particularly true of Xi’s anticorruption campaign. And if China followed
this path, it would become increasingly attractive to the US as a
strategic partner.
Negotiations between the US and China could
not possibly be completed by October 2015, when the board of the IMF is
scheduled to consider the composition of the SDR basket. Realistically
it would take until President Xi’s state visit to Washington in
September to complete the preparations. But there is much to be gained
by extending the SDR deadline to 2016. China will then host the meeting
of the G20, and 2016 will also be the last year of the Obama
administration. The prospect of a strategic partnership between the US
and China would mobilize all political forces in favor of international
cooperation on both sides.
If a bona fide attempt fails, the US
would then be fully justified in developing a strong enough partnership
with China’s neighbors that a Chinese–Russian alliance would not dare to
challenge it by military force. That would be clearly inferior to a
strategic partnership between the US and China. A partnership with
China’s neighbors would return us to a cold war, but that would still be
preferable to a third world war.
The Trans-Pacific and
Trans-Atlantic Partnerships, which are currently being negotiated, could
offer an excellent opportunity for a two-pronged strategy but the
current approach is all wrong. At present China is excluded; indeed the
partnerships are conceived as an anti-Chinese alliance under US
leadership. The president has asked Congress to give him and his
successor authority for up to six years to negotiate trade agreements
under fast-track rules that would deprive Congress of its right to
introduce amendments. The bill has passed the Senate and at this writing
is before the House. If the House approves, President Xi may be
presented with an apparent threat on his visit in September. This is an
appropriate response to China’s aggressive behavior in the South China
Sea and elsewhere, but it leaves little room for an alternative
approach. It would, as a result, be difficult for President Obama to
make a bona fide offer of strategic partnership.
It is to be
hoped that the House will not authorize putting the bill on a fast
track. Instead of railroading the bill through Congress, it ought to be
taken off the fast track. In that case, Congress would have plenty of
time to correct the fundamental flaws in the proposed treaties that make
them unacceptable as they are currently written. And that would also
allow President Obama to make President Xi a genuine offer of a
strategic partnership with China when he visits Washington in September.
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