Politics

Gérer un monde de grandes puissances

Nov 30, 2015 Javier Solana

MADRID – La compétition entre grandes puissances est aujourd’hui une réalité : les États-Unis sont en concurrence avec une Russie de plus en plus active et une Chine en plein essor. Le Moyen-Orient, la mer de Chine méridionale et l’Ukraine ne sont que trois des théâtres dans lesquels se manifeste cette nouvelle réalité.

En relisant le livre de l’ancien secrétaire d’État adjoint américain Strobe Talbott, The Great Experiment, j’ai eu l’impression que les racines de certaines dynamiques en cours aujourd’hui remontent à plus d’une décennie. L’ouvrage décrit une conversation intervenue en décembre 2000 entre le président sortant Bill Clinton et George W. Bush, récemment élu. Clinton dit que d’après la campagne électorale de Bush, les questions de sécurité qui semblent le préoccuper le plus sont Saddam Hussein et la mise en place d’un système antimissile de grande ampleur. « C’est tout à fait juste » lui répond Bush.

Ces questions furent mises en suspens lorsque survint une tragédie inattendue, sous la forme des attentats terroristes du 11 septembre 2001 aux États-Unis. Ces événements entraînèrent une période de coopération internationale durant laquelle la solidarité contre le terrorisme prédomina. Ce fut l’époque où nous étions tous Américains dans l’âme et où Bush disait de Poutine qu’il était « très franc et digne de confiance ».

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0 Comments on this paragraph, 7 Comments on this article

jagjeet sinha Dec 3, 2015

World Economic Geography is always in a flux.
The Top Table emerged out of the successful creation of The Anglosphere - in 1945, the seats changed.
The British Exit - from Europe's embrace - in 1588, had created a remarkably spectacular World order.
America replaced Britain - but the transition was perhaps palatable given the continuity and commonality of values.
Europe's challenge to reclaim the agenda - from The Anglosphere - began on 15 August 1971, formalised by the Euro in 1999.
Meanwhile The Pacific option - that was incubated after the DeGaulle/Nixon 1971 spat - resulted in resurgence of The East.
And Moscow always seeking a European Home, was not to be left behind.
The transitions in The Top Table always creates collateral damages - territories face irredentism during transition.
The challenge has to be overcome in an age where direct head on collisions can decimate the whole world.
The attempt to carve Economic Geography that marginalized Great Powers often ends in tears.
The World is at a cusp - the next seats at The Top Table cannot be decided by Siege-n-surrender.
Russia is not Greece, China is not India, Turkey is not Indonesia - hence the challenging conundrum.
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j. von Hettlingen Dec 3, 2015

Javier Solana says "the United States now competes with an increasingly active Russia and a rising China." More appropriately the US is seeking to defend its hegemony, like a world heavyweight champion in an attempt to defend his title. But the world is no longer unipolar! China and Russia has each stepped in the ring and tried to knock the US out. The fight veneus are located in the Middle East, the South China Sea and Ukraine.
In particular Solana saw Pax Americana, the US-led world order at a critical juncture in sommer 2008 when three key events placed geopolitics on a trajectory, which had altered the path of history.
In August China "dazzled the world as host of the Olympic Games." When it overtook Japan as the world's second largest economy in 2010, it reinforced "its status as a significant international player." Since then it has stepped up its military presence in the East and South China Seas, and among others laid claims to islets and outcrops, while raising tensions in the areas .
Russia’s invasion in Georgia - "in the midst of the Games" - marked the beginning of its aggressive and expansionist policy, which repeated itself in March 2014 with the annexation of Crimea. In Syria Putin plays the wolf in sheep's clothing.
In September 2008 the collapse of the US investment bank Lehman Brothers had triggered a global financial crisis "from which the world economy has yet to recover fully." China doesn't admit that it had been spared. Beijing maintained it was hit fairly hard by the global recession generated by the financial crisis. It suffered a huge drop in exports, and these effects on the economy were only partially offset by China's huge stimulus programme.
Solana says "the seeds of some of the dynamics at play today were sown some time ago." It happened when the newly elected George W. Bush told Bill Clinton in 2000, that Saddam Hussein and the "construction of a large-scale antimissile defense system" were his main concerns. The US invasion in Iraq removed Saddam Hussein, but it has also opened Pandora's box and unleashed a series of sectarian conflicts. After the 9/11 attacks, Bush withdrew from "the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, in order to build an antimissile defense system to protect itself from a potentially nuclearized Iran. This did not go unnoticed in Russia."
The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty was a landmark agreement between the US and the former Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War. The main purpose of the ABM was to constrain the parties from deploying nationwide defences against strategic ballistic missiles. Putin spoke with Bush and re-affirmed the Russian position, that the agreement was a cornerstone of arms control and should not be abandoned. The US insisted on its need to pursue plans for a missile defence shield, which was banned under the treaty. Putin's criticism towards US invasion in Iraq, his objection to "US plans to expand antimissile defense systems to Europe" and on top of all NATO's eastward enlargement, seen as "an act of aggression toward Russia" were the beginning of resentments and hostilities, that hang like a Sword of Damocles over the US-Russian relationship. Solana's key message is that we live in a multipolar world, and "well-executed, tenacious diplomacy still holds extraordinary power to resolve conflicts." It is true that it "remains the best instrument to produce those cooperative outcomes that confrontation effectively impedes." Let's hope that the message won't fall on deaf ears!
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Zsolt Hermann Dec 2, 2015

Unfortunately diplomacy alone is not enough any longer.
A whole paradigm shift is necessary. The previous polarized, fragmented worldview, "friends/allies/enemies" framework doesn't work anymore.
We evolved into a globally integrated and interdependent world where we all interconnect as cog wheels whether we want it or not.
We can see the results in the completely incomprehensible, chaotic and volatile geopolitical scenarios playing out.
In this new global, integral world all of us, from the greatest to the smallest cog wheels we have to learn mutually complementing cooperation.
We have to learn making calculations for the whole collective ahead of individual or national calculations.
This is not based on some political ideology or philosophy, it is real evolutionary, survival necessity for all of us.
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M M Dec 1, 2015

Whichever country of the P5 at the UN that is not willing to play by the rules (these rules are very clearly laid down in the UN Charter), the specific country should relinquish its seat on the P5 and sit on the side-line. Simple…no more wheeling dealing and no more lies. The world population has paid a very heavy price since the financial crisis of 2008 (and the US since 9/11), it is about time that the current world leadership realises and admits publicly that it has failed miserably. History, in any event, will judge them, accordingly.
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Petey Bee Nov 30, 2015

Very nice. Not sure how anyone can conclude that 9/11 "put on hold" Bush's ambition to open up the can of worms in Iraq... Unfortunately, this is just historical trivia now. Minor episodes of amnesia aside, diplomacy remains the way to go.
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Cary Fraser Nov 30, 2015

The actions by China in creating the AIIB, the P5+1 process in the negotiations with Iran, the role of Russia in the Syrian conflict, and the strategic engagement that has emerged around the restructuring of EURASIAN trade routes by way of land-based corridors to promote economic growth and diversification, represent the underpinnings of a Great Power condominium that will require tacit accommodation as well more formal structures of governance.
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hari naidu Nov 30, 2015

Try to convince US Congress the gist of your last para..,after 9/11 US in fact turned inward & became bellicose not only against Islam but now uncompromisingly against Putin's Russia & China.
GOP candidates for WH are ALL invariably up to their best performance at masterminding the decline & fall of America!
What gives?
Meanwhile, since WTO entry, mainland China has used globalization as an entry card to the table of great powers; and, post-Mao's China looks and sounds more and more like Mao's concept of *permanent revolution*.

Tell me who in America really understands what's up inside Politburo of CCP? Peaceful co-existence with post-Mao China is possible; but under whose or what conditions?
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