Geopolitics After the Ukraine War

Singapore’s “undiplomatic diplomat” explains the new geopolitics. Most working journalists grew up in a historically anomalous period. Prepare to cover the new normal, advises Amb. Bilahari Kausikan.
by Sonni Efron, National Press Foundation

The Ukraine war poses major challenges for Chinese foreign policy. It has complicated U.S.-Chinese relations and confronted China with three irreconcilable goals, said Bilahari Kausikan, a former Singaporean ambassador to the UN and Russia. First, China has long cherished the principle that nations must not interfere in the domestic affairs of others, but the Russian invasion of Ukraine has shredded that principle into tiny pieces and thrown them out the window, he said. “The reason this is a problem for China can be summarized in three words,” Bilahari said. “Those three words are Taiwan, Xinjiang and Tibet.”

China will continue to side with Russia, but very cautiously. China is suffering through a period of slow growth with numerous internal problems and fears secondary sanctions, U.S. or EU penalties against third countries or companies who help Russian evade the sanctions, Bilahari said. Beijing has been “rather cautious, giving Russia a lot of verbal support but not too much material support,” he said. Over time – and Bilahari predicts the Ukraine conflict will drag on into a frozen conflict that could last decades –the balancing act Beijing must perform to assuage Washington and Moscow will only get worse. But “it will not abandon Russia. It cannot abandon Russia. It cannot abandon Russia for the very simple reason China has no other partner or anywhere near Russia’s strategic weight anywhere in the world. Look at who China’s partners are: Pakistan. Pakistan is as much a liability as an asset. In this region, Laos, Cambodia…. who are not in such a good shape. And go further to Africa? Who are their partners, strategically?”

Inflation will be a problem for the foreseeable future, but most so for the developing world. Rising food and energy costs will be unpleasant for all countries but will create political instability across the developing world, Bilahari said. Indebted African nations, and the numerous “failed economies” such as Libya, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, are at most risk, he said.

Putin and Xi Jinping have misunderstood Western political systems. Europeans will continue to quarrel, and their political systems tend to amplify such quarrels, but they will likely stand together against the Russians even as the cost of dependence on Russian energy frays relations, he said. “Mr. Putin, and Mr. Xi Jinping … fundamentally do not understand Western systems, because they come from political cultures where a good government is equated with strong central government,” he said. “But Western political cultures are based on a different idea, that too strong government is not to be trusted, and therefore power is to be distributed. There are many disadvantaged of this. It takes a long time sometimes to get your act together, but you can get your act together, as we can see in Ukraine, and you can hold that act together.”

Nations will miss their carbon reduction targets, but in the long run, the Ukraine war will hasten the clean-energy transition. In the short term, energy-strapped nations will buy coal and cheap Russian oil and will almost certainly fail to meet the carbon emission reduction targets agreed to in the Paris Accords. “But the longer-term effect of the war in Ukraine, if people think about it, and think of ways to make themselves less vulnerable, is going to hasten the transition to alternative energies,” Bilahari predicted.

Speaker: Bilahari Kausikan, Chairman, Middle East Institute, National University of Singapore

Takeaways, transcript and resources: https://nationalpress.org/topic/china...

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