Top diplomat Wang Yi has said China “will continue to explore the correct way to get along with” the US.
One possibly correct way is by becoming a big-power imperial broker in the service of key disputants, a role the UK could have played (rather than anticipating war and preparing for it) during the first decade of the 20th century. There was no longer a possible broker in the late 1930s either, because by then the UK had lost both the appearance and the reality of great power.
“Correct” China now has the appearance, and perhaps at least a believable future based on an optimistic reading of its recent past, one of great-power persuasiveness. It is not unreasonable to hypothesize that China could, by means of active albeit neutral brokerage, permanently establish itself as a stabilizing international force. Such a status would make China’s ambitions for growth to grand leadership more likely than will its current statecraft.
Above all, an internationally acceptable broker cannot be on one or another side of any debate that is in need of arbitration and compromise.
Unlike what existed prior to 1914, most of the “First World’s” developed nations are successful; they thrive economically, socially and morally. The current outliers – North Korea, Iran, a number of places in Africa, and Syria – do not represent the degree of threat to world order that was the case prior to the two-part struggle known as World War I and World War II.
A nation that hopes to establish itself as a respected member of and broker for the international community, and is therefore welcome as a trading partner, investment opportunity and friend to progress, will wisely imitate the strategies that have led to such success.
To be acceptable, brokerage machinery must be decentralized and dispersed across players. Moral indignation emanating from one central player will not work. A brokerage institution (remember, it would operate internationally, not so much domestically) could give the current governmental plan some flexibility, not unlike the “grease for the wheels” provided by magistrates and merit scholars who moderated power held by the emperor.
A broker can’t take sides, especially not in a struggle that has no possible stable win-or-lose outcome.
Stance on Ukraine
China’s current foreign policy is inconsistent with brokerage: Its support, albeit largely diplomatic rather than military or otherwise practical, for Russia’s actions in Ukraine will prove to be, in the “middle run,” productive of more costs than benefits.
Ukraine was socially, historically, politically and culturally Polish for 700 years. Despite Vladimir Putin’s claims, Ukraine is not merely a former appendage to Russia.
How can Russia win the peace if the Ukrainians mount a guerrilla war after they are officially defeated?
In respect of Ukraine, oddly enough, this will be revealed to be true, even though the Russian-expected long-run outcome is “victory” for Russia: a pyrrhic victory, since the winner gets only ashes and desolation. (If I can’t have it, nobody gets it.)
The Ukrainians can’t win peace either, since Russia can always come back after years of waiting for an unguarded moment.
Proof that China’s support for Putin is a mistake is subtle. Superficially the support policy makes sense. Ukrainian resistance and Western unity in support of the Ukrainian side have made it a war of attrition. If attrition goes on long enough, Russia will win.
Ukraine’s prewar GDP was less than US$200 billion. The population was about 42 million. To make up the total war effort, the Ukrainians and their president supply the valor, but the West sends in the hardware. This strategy runs down arms inventories at an unsustainable rate.
The factories that originally filled the arms warehouses have not been “turned back on.” Such a major change to the West’s industrial foundation would require substantial investment, planning and a multi-year commitment from government buyers as well as widespread support from public opinion.
The Ukrainians cannot, or will not, bomb the resupply assets deep on the Russian side, and the Americans, to say nothing of the Europeans, will not accept the manpower losses that would accompany a deeper and more permanent on-the-battlefield arms presence.
In contrast, Putin’s domestic popular support for the Ukraine war seems adequate to insure him against a domestic uprising, even less so any broadly based case for withdrawal. Indeed, it could be true that Russian domestic pressure for a more aggressive effort in Ukraine does exist.
Middle East diplomacy?
China could create a “better-than-now” position for itself in the Middle East were it to operate there as a broker.
Its relative silence in the face of Hamas’ actions suggests a moral insensitivity most unattractive to the very nations with which China must remain respectable.
The more that is known about the attacks of October 7, the more impossible it is to remain aloof from condemnation of Hamas.
Some say the real issue in Central Europe is the same as it is in the Middle East: morality. But moral force in argument and moral indignation as motivator is notoriously ineffective in determining foreign policy. National interest, say pragmatic thinkers, is a more certain guide and standard for foreign policy.
A consequence of the sort of success the world’s serious nations have attained, in contrast to the state of things in, for example, the 1930s is the possibility that national interest should be, and perhaps really will be, constrained by moral consideration.
So it seems to me that a possible – however unlikely it may seem at first glance – solution is two armistices, one in Central Europe and the other in the Middle East, brokered by that unexpectedly benign big-power peacemaker, China.
What is the national-interest pay-off China might earn from taking on a brokerage role in disputes such as are discussed here?
Observe the consequences of the actions that were not so long ago undertaken by the old enemies, equally benefited by US aid and brought together in mutual planning sessions chaired by the US, their broker-rebuilder. A suddenly created “family of nations” lived together peaceably, and their benefactor came out in pretty good shape as well.