26 November 2021, NIICE Commentary 7516
Sourav Dahal
Gone are the days of unipolarity, the United States’ reign as the sole hegemon for almost three decades is over. The ongoing power struggle between the US and China is eerily reminiscent of the cold war days. Perhaps, the new cold war has begun. China’s communism is strictly nominal, and this fact alone makes the ongoing great power rivalry remarkably different to the last one. It’s not an ideological contestation between the two per se but is, in essence, Thucydides trap at play. The anarchical nature of the international system implies that a state prioritizes national interests over its ideological identity. Despite those irreconcilable ideological dichotomies, the first cold war too was driven by superpowers’ conflicting interests – opening-up of the US to communist China with an ulterior motive of containing its main rival USSR is a case in point. Yet contrasting characters of the US’s democracy and China’s authoritarian system have kept ideological element alive even this time around – democracies, specifically the fledgling ones, are bound to bear the brunt of great power rivalry.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was hailed as the definitive liberal triumph. By then, China had undergone economic liberalization, and had been a tacit US ally against the USSR for almost a decade. Both the subsequent administrations – Clinton’s and Bush’s – opted to further integrate China into the global economy. The belief was that economic prosperity would propel democratization at home and make China peacefully coexist with fellow democracies abroad. On the contrary, China has further undergone the authoritarian path at home, all the while exhibiting belligerence and hawkish proclivities in the conduct of its foreign affairs. It is only obvious that a would-be hegemon behaves as a revisionist state and seeks to reconfigure the balance of power in its favour. As China is driven by interests, so is the US. When deemed necessary, the US doesn’t shy away from discarding the Liberal International Order (LIO). The principles of the LIO couldn’t restrain the US from forming strategic alliances with authoritarian regimes, be it Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Shah’s Iran or Hussein’s Iraq. In instances of convenience though, the LIO is billed as the guiding principle – both the QUAD and the AUKUS are now touted as alliances of like-minded, rules-bound liberal states.
The ongoing rivalry too is being shaped primarily by superpower’s interests – alliances will get formed based on strategic needs, not ideological identities. China doesn’t yet have capacity or resources to get indulged in the hegemonic pursuit of deliberately exporting its governance model beyond borders as it is enmeshed in security and economic competition. Yet such is the circumstance that democratic backsliding still seems inevitable. The rise of China has offered an alternative to the Washington Consensus. The Chinese model of governance could appear as an attractive option for developing nations. This is because China has achieved meteoric economic progress – eightfold growth in gross domestic products over two decades – along with an unparalleled state capacity. The transformation could have been catalysed by an authoritarian form of governance, yet this Chinese story is equally about economic liberalization in the 80s, subsequent integration into the global economy and demographic dividend. Those countries joining the Beijing Consensus under temptations of authoritarian miracles are, therefore, unlikely to experience such economic progress, if any.
Perhaps, strong and mature democracies will resist authoritarian temptations – the ones who ought to pay a heavy price are rather fledgling democracies, particularly that of Asia. China aims to be the sole Asian hegemon, as is the US in the Western hemisphere. Now that the theatre of Great Power rivalry has shifted from Europe to Asia, fledgling Asian democracies find themselves in a precarious position. It’s not merely authoritarian temptations though – these democracies could fall onto the authoritarian bandwagon through the interplay of internal authoritarian uprisings with external Chinese influence.
Immature democracies with weak democratic institutions are, by nature, vulnerable to authoritarian threats from within. Regime change is an internal process but those domestic forces seeking to overturn democracy could rely upon China for international legitimacy and foreign aid. China is now the foremost purveyor of foreign aid and loans among all donors by many accounts. If need be, aid recipient nations could switch to China abandoning western democratic donors. Adherence to liberal values is the string attached to aid by democratic donors when it comes to strategically non-significant recipients. These recipients can’t dictate the terms of aid and are vulnerable to donors’ pressure. Chances are that aid gets rescinded if they turn authoritarian. When Fiji’s PM Laisenia Qarase was overthrown in a military coup d’etat in 2006, the US immediately rescinded aid over democratic concerns but didn’t do so when Egyptian President Mohammad Morsi faced a similar military coup d’etat in 2013. Egypt is strategically significant to the US while Fiji isn’t. Now that China is a reliable alternative donor, authoritarian recipients can resist western donors’ pressure, if any, switching to China instead. Besides aid politics, China is seeking to create an entire economic ecosystem with itself at the centre through ambitious projects such as the Belt and Road Initiative and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. China can use its newfound economic and political leverage in assisting authoritarian forces, should that be in its strategic interest.
If the recent developments are anything to go by, China seems keen on scoring goals against the US even if it would have to incur some risks in doing so. When the Taliban took over Afghanistan, China immediately expressed willingness in engaging with the extremist Islamic force. The downfall of the US-implanted democratic regime in its backyard after two long decades is perhaps a welcome development for China. Such a dramatic turn of events in Afghanistan, however, had posed security challenges to China itself. Myanmar’s Suu Kyi’s government lately had a cordial relationship with China but cherished a much closer tie with the West. Ergo, despite being perceived as China-sceptical, Tatmadaw – military force which overthrew the Suu Kyi government – is enjoying Beijing’s tacit support. These two events are microcosms of what waits for fledgling democracies.
If China’s rise induces an authoritarian wave, the balance of power would tilt against the US. The pre-existing Sino-Russian alliance is already a cause of much worry for the US. China-led alliance of pre-existing strong authoritarian states of the likes of Russia and Iran along with those newly turned ones would make the US’s worst fears come true. It’s not just that the US-led world order would be in peril, but that the US would be subjected to unprecedented security and economic challenges in Asia and beyond. It is, therefore, in the strategic interest of the US to check democratic backsliding. Interest-driven superpower rivalry will inadvertently take an ideological turn if the US moves in the direction of containing authoritarian bandwagon. Whether or not, the US-led camp could successfully undertake this seemingly insurmountable task is to be seen if and when those events unfold. However, as China inches towards the goal of Asian hegemon, the authoritarian threat looms large at the fate of fledgling democracies.
Sourav Dahal is a graduate from Ashoka University, India.
