Gatehouse Commentary

May 2022

It feels as if the Ukraine war is going to drag on, maybe for months longer than people are expecting. It will be destructive and barbarous, since the Russians have few alternative tactics. They will be pariahs for a generation.

Dangerous as the situation is with a self-cornered and nuclear-armed Russia, it is China’s response that will define geopolitics for the next decade: metaphorically, if Russia is a hurricane, China is climate change. With the Putin precedent now staring at us, I increasingly believe that Xi’s almost inevitable extension as General Secretary later this year will prove to be bad news for the Chinese. His management of China’s economy lacks subtlety. Growth figures of close to 5% for the past year have been heavily window-dressed, private sector entrepreneurialism has been repressed, debt remains at exceptional levels, and there is little prospect of an exit from the series of Covid lockdowns which Xi’s zero-tolerance policy has dictated. While there is no doubt that the CCP retains total political control, the omens for the next stage of China’s development are less propitious. The history of authoritarian leadership staying too long in power is a grim one, and Xi Jinping is about to write his own chapter.

All the sadder for China, therefore, that the era of international cooperation is coming to a close, because the Chinese benefitted hugely from it during their ‘peaceful rise’. The United States must bear much of the responsibility for this: American exceptionalism, derived from its hubristic ‘victory’ in the first Cold War, has struggled to adapt to a post-financial-crisis global reality. The chance to re-make the international institutions, reflecting the need to better accommodate the Global South, has been missed. The reluctance of the emerging economies to condemn Russia’s attack on Ukraine stems less from any real regard for Putin or Moscow than from the belief that the West, and especially Washington, is too keen on pushing its dominance eastwards and southwards. There is incredulity that the West might be trusted to establish a fairer and more equal international community.

Now that Russia is tarred with the sins that it accused the US and UK of committing over Iraq, China has an opportunity to shine by comparison. Assertive diplomacy and aggressive military posturing, including over Taiwan, are not the ways to take it. China understands the delicate policy combinations required to navigate the next stage of its growth. But internal political imbalances, and an increasingly difficult geopolitical backdrop, are clouding Beijing’s ability to deliver.

The point I am making is that the sharpening competition between the most active great powers – Europe remains too internally stressed to be seen in the same category – is turning into a struggle over who can fail the least. This worries me more than a rivalry over who can succeed the most.