China

No, America’s war with Iran is not about China

philmullan Changing world order, China, Geopolitics, Rivalries, United States

Since the United States-Iran war started, experienced commentators have been trying to make sense of it. A common claim is that the war on Iran is really about China.

It is understandable to want to make sense of an increasingly unsettled period in geopolitics. The old US-led world order that began in 1945 is over. The form that any stable replacement world order might take is unknowable. Negotiating the complexities of today’s international interregnum isn’t easy. In such uncertain times, people are more susceptible to wanting to endow occurrences with meaning. But we should avoid making up narratives about developments – like Iran-is-really-China – that offer over-simplistic and misleading explanations.

There isn’t always a neat story behind messy reality. Sometimes it is the arbitrariness of events, the absence of a strategic plan, which is their significance. Making too much “sense” of haphazard actions can cloud what is happening. Worse, it can reinforce false stereotypes about the greatest dangers to peace. This distracts from focusing on the immediate and substantive threats.

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The West needs a reckoning with America’s decline

philmullan Changing world order, China, European Union, Geopolitics, Rivalries, United States

Despite Donald Trump proclaiming that a ‘framework of a future deal’ had been agreed on Greenland, it is still unclear how his demands are likely to be resolved. In any case, the fracas over this icy island is about far more than just the unpredictability and narcissism of the White House incumbent.

The Greenland saga has exposed the shortcomings in geopolitical nous of the West’s leaders – Trump included – and just how hazardous this can be for everyone. International flashpoints are more likely to get out of hand when traditional statecraft is replaced by kneejerk, megaphone diplomacy.

This danger is compounded by the fact that world leaders should already be grappling with a perilous situation: a potential Thucydides trap. But they are refusing to do so.

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The fall of China? Don’t bet on it

philmullan China, Economic growth, Geopolitics

For years Western experts have been talking of China being on the verge of financial and economic ruin. So far it has survived. But China’s uneven post-Covid recovery has brought Western gloom about its economic prospects to new heights this year.

This dismal thinking draws on real economic problems. China slipped into price deflation in July, as growth in retail sales and industrial output slowed. And in August, Country Garden, a major property developer, missed payments on some of its debt. To cap all this off, Beijing announced last month that it will stop publishing youth-unemployment figures, after reporting record highs – a sign that the authorities are keen to bury bad economic news.

So, might the dire expectations from Western economists finally come true this time? Certainly, economic growth has slowed substantially since those heady days during the 1990s and 2000s, of growth rates of more than 10 per cent per annum. But since China has survived all the previous portents of ruination, it would probably be wise not to hold our breath. Gloomy predictions of China’s imminent economic collapse say more about the West than they do about China.

Read the full article here.