WIREDGOV

A veteran Singaporean diplomat and scholar reflects on today’s strategic uncertainties and enduring myths, appealing for calmer and more sober perspectives on the challenges.

One of the most common mistakes in the analysis of geopolitics is to respond to events without sufficient attention to the processes in which every event is necessarily embedded. This is particularly evident in times of more than usual volatility such as we now face. The consequent loss of perspective accentuates the volatility as we over-react or under-react and correct our reactions and then correct our corrections in a continual cycle of responses. So, here is a sense of the perspective which I think is missing in the present discussion about US-China relations and current events in the Middle East. Perspective cannot eliminate volatility but may at least narrow the range of oscillations in our responses.

A Loss of Perspective

In 2014, then US Secretary of State John Kerry criticised the Russian annexation of Crimea by calling it 19th century behaviour in the 21st century. There are many excellent reasons why the annexation of Crimea was unacceptable. But the reason advanced by Mr Kerry was not among them. In fact, it was absurd because the underlying assumption was that your adversary ought to share your values. But if your adversary shared your values, it would not be your adversary in the first place. Failure to recognize this simple fact and thus respond effectively, contributed to the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine nine years later.

In January this year, speaking at Davos, Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada called on middle powers who shared common values to work together to uphold an international order that he argued had ‘ruptured’ now that America was no longer willing to uphold it. The speech was widely acclaimed; Mr Carney spoke with the fervour of an Old Testament prophet sharing a revelation vouchsafed by God. But the content was trite, and his argument flawed by a fundamental internal contradiction.

The content was trite because although Mr Carney had apparently failed to notice, the countries of the Asia-Pacific had in fact already been doing exactly what he advocated for many years without the melodrama of evoking a world crumbling about their ears. The contradiction arose because among the values he espoused was, obviously, an order governed by rules. This was also what Mr Kerry meant when he talked about 21st century behaviour.

Rules, however, cannot operate effectively without a foundation of stability and stability requires deterrence and a balance of power. It is patently obvious that middle powers cannot by themselves either deter Russia or balance China, both of which in different ways are challenging the order whose rupture Mr Carney had lamented. So, if he was correct that America was no longer willing to uphold order, what middle powers could do would necessarily be limited in scope and could not uphold international order as he conceived it.

More than a decade – 12 years to be precise – separated the two statements. But the mistake made by Mr Kerry and Mr Carney was the same. This was to idealize and reify their idea of international order as if it had an objective reality.

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