The annual Munich Security Conference held since 1963 has provided a platform where significant statements have often been made, putting into words and pinpointing extremely important processes that have already begun to take shape.
In February 2020, “Westlessness” was the key word which took center stage in Munich, both in the program’s Munich Security Report put together by the organizers of this year’s 56th Conference and in the ensuing discussion of its key points.
Some of the relevant concepts today that the authors tried to “cram” into the term they coined were illustrated in a heated discussion which took place between representatives of the two main players in the latest level of the Great Global Game, namely: US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the American Secretary of Defense Mark Esper on one side of the East-West divide, and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on the other.
Let’s focus on two of these elements of meaning, which have in fact already been highlighted in public speeches made by politicians representing the major players in global politics.
Firstly, it is becoming more and more clear that the very concept of the “West” (which has always been rather vague) is losing any substance it may have had. It had some kind of meaning during the global conflict which lasted from 1946 to 1991, known as the Cold War. However, when the Cold War ended, the idea of the West rapidly began to lose even its most “definite” element of semantic meaning.
The Munich report talks about the “the decay of ‘the West’ as a relatively cohesive geopolitical configuration.” Concrete examples of recent “schisms” are given. The most telling of them are the disagreements noted between the key members of the “configuration” (i.e. between the USA and Europe) on topical issues such as their attitude towards Iran and the Nord Stream 2 project.
However, it seems that a rift in transatlantic ties (which remains a hidden crack for the time being) was predetermined back in 1957 in the Treaty of Rome, which paved the way for the creation of the European Union. The Maastricht Treaty adopted in the early 1990s, immediately after the end of the Cold War, allowed the EU to strengthen its “identity”. However, the EU also began to experience internal “corrosion” of a different kind. Alongside disagreements with the economic policy set out in Brussels, the strange “values” being imposed by trans-European structures are becoming increasingly contentious. For some reason, they are called “European” values, but they actually have nothing to do with Europe’s religious and cultural traditions. On the contrary, these so-called European values clearly stand in opposition and are incompatible with European traditions.
Disagreement with these (pseudo-)values not only creates tension in relations between individual EU member states with Brussels, but also within these individual states. European intellectuals in the “traditionalist” camp criticize EU policies. This issue was reflected in a passage in the same Munich Security Report: ‘The contemporary “spiritual disunity of the West” is due to the rise of an illiberal and nationalist camp within the Western world.’
If we consider the general consensus reached by the answerable “Western” government officials in Munich this February during their discussion of these issues and similar problems within individual EU member states, it looked more like collective session of calming self-hypnosis: “Yes, the situation is disgraceful. But we know what the causes are, and we are determined to put them right.” Moreover, external factors have played a significant role in exacerbating internal problems, and the biggest role has been played by “Russia: Putemkin’s State (another neologism)”.
Yet above the din of the hypnotic mantras being chanted in Munich, words of anxiety still broke through, filled with worry over the current state of affairs in the shared “West”. There is no other way to describe the following words spoken by NATO Secretary General J. Stoltenberg: “Any attempt to distance Europe from North America not only weakens the trans-Atlantic bond, but it also risks dividing Europe.” At times like these, people usually say, ‘it’s no use crying over spilled milk.’
The second important element of semantic meaning in the neologism “Westlessness” is down to the general “shift towards the East” (towards the Indo-Pacific) taking place as the new focal point of global political and economic life. Thus, in global politics and economics, the question of what is really going on there in the “West” is becoming less and less important.
If the United States were to be largely considered part of that same Indo-Pacific (Washington has long considered itself a part of the region, which it made clear by initiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership project a number of years ago), then at least three and a half of the world’s five major economies would belong to this region. Only Germany would be left out. In this regard, India very symbolically became the world’s fifth largest economy at the end of 2019, overtaking the old economic powerhouse for the first time.
Serious American political scientists could already see that this “shift” was beginning to take place in the late 1990s. In 2011, Hillary Clinton who was the US Secretary of State at the time finally spoke on the subject in an interview for Foreign Policy magazine. After almost another ten years, the former French president Nicolas Sarkozy spoke of the “World axis shifting from West to East”.
The same political scientists (who observed the shift at the end of the 1990s) pointed out the main driving force behind this “shift” is related to the prediction that China will become the world’s second largest power within the next decade. This prediction turned out to be perfectly accurate (including the timeframe), which Hillary Clinton also essentially stated in 2011.
It is China, and not any conflicting interests in transatlantic relations, that is the main cause of today’s US foreign policy (and economic) headaches. This became visible in the war of words which broke out in Munich between the Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and his two American counterparts.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reiterated the central mantra of the whole discussion in Munich, that “[free] nations are simply more successful than any other model that’s been tried in the history of civilization.” “We’re winning – and we’re doing it together,” he continued, dedicating half of his 16-minute speech to the “threat” coming from China. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper reinforced his colleague’s argument, who was quite obviously trying convince Europe to buy into the notion of a “Chinese threat”.
At the same time, it should be noted that the American press is shamelessly exploiting the story of how China has been hit by the coronavirus epidemic.
As has been repeatedly noted by NEO, however, the United States and leading European countries are increasingly expressing different attitudes towards China’s rise to become the world’s second largest economy. Unlike the United States, Europe does not believe that China’s rise presents fairly serious military and political challenges. Europe’s show of solidarity with Washington does not go any further than a few (increasingly rare) public statements about China’s “violations of law” in the Xinjiang region and Hong Kong.
In an interview with Reuters on the sidelines of the Munich Conference, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi stated that it is the United States that is threatening China, and “not vice versa”. Examples were also given of how the US Congress is increasingly meddling in China’s domestic politics, and how American warships and aircraft are conducting exercises near Chinese borders on a more frequent basis.
It must be acknowledged that the main message Beijing is sending out in foreign politics is an invitation it is extending to all countries without exception (and it is important to emphasize this) to take part the Belt an Road Initiative: “Fellows! Instead of arguing (mostly over nothing), let’s do something better that will benefit everyone.”
The overall impression we are left with after this year’s Munich Security Conference looks a little like this: a group of knights gathered in a parallel universe in the Bavarian capital to defend a pitiful (western) image, and they ended up tilting at windmills. The energy wasted on this could be put to better use, for the common good.
Vladimir Terekhov, expert on the issues of the Asia-Pacific region, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
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