After the fall of the Berlin wall in November 1989, Washington along with its Western allies was clueless of what would happen next. They had developed their whole systems to rival the Soviet Union, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was no longer worried about the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (KGB), almost overnight the Gosbank State Bank of the USSR and Comecon were gone and the IMF had no opponent, the just ended U.S Agency for International Development (USAID) had a free reign because the Vneshconombank and Soviet Committee for Solidarity with Asia and Africa were no longer in place to further soviet foreign aid programs. For the last three decades, America/West has had no motivation to direct its global influence.
NATO without the opposition of the Warsaw Pact went to a senseless expansion that led to a hot war with Russia in 2014 with Ukraine being the battleground; the security organization accompanied Washington to Iraq and Afghanistan in military campaigns that cost about $ 8 trillion including long term veteran care, interest on the loans and the reconstruction pledges, funding that could have built 6 China’s Belt and Road Initiative. As the United States is leaving Afghanistan and Iraq one thing is clear: all those dollars bills were for nothing because they lost both the wars from a tactical and strategic point because all they did was to lead to deaths of millions of people.
How the west has behaved in the last three decades has only hastened its decline, and diminished Washington’s global influence as Nnando Kizito Sseruwagi a senior research fellow at Development Watch Centre put it in his “A better deal: Why Africa is turning to China for development” pointing out how empires that have tried to dominate the world have all ended up falling. The reality is that as Americas’ decline happens there is a gap being created, a gap to reshape the world order.
The undertakings of Trump 2.o are all being a catalyst to the decline of the west, he has officially decided to put an end to USAID after its 6 decades throwing away what looks like Washington’s biggest soft power tool. It’s becoming more and more evident that the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) will not survive as commercial diplomacy is being President Trump’s path of international relations. Washington through its America first policy is rolling out Tariffs even towards its long standing allies like Canada, a member of NATO and G7 an indicator that AGOA is in its last days.
President Trump has always been unconventional and in his first term in office he went ahead to meet the North Korea leader for talks that never materialized into anything, he also negotiated the withdrawal of the American and NATO troops from Afghanistan and handed the country back to the Taliban an event that showcased America’s weakest point. Lately Israeli news outlets broke the news that Trump was in direct talks with Hamas, an organization that Washington officially considers as terrorists. In his many unconventional approaches to diplomacy he has sent a letter to Iran’s supreme leader regarding a deal on Iran’s nuclear program after he withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that had seen Iran only use its nuclear program for peaceful purposes at the same time opening up the country to the world. Everyone knows the Iranians can never negotiate from a position of disrespect as though they are selling their country in a real estate deal. During his campaign to return to the white house Mr. Trump on the Joe Logan Podcast said America got nothing from protecting Taiwan, he linked the whole situation on how the Mafia offer’s its security, his commercial diplomacy then took the Mafia diplomacy outlook. It’s the approach he has taken to the Ukraine situation, after the shouting match in the oval office with the Ukraine president, Washington froze it’s military support to Kiev and further went ahead to stop any intelligence sharing with Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government until a deal promising $ 500 billion rear earth minerals to USA is signed. He is basically setting NATO to Auto pilot and the European Union knows it has to step up on its security. On security the African version of NATO AFRICOM survived being axed during Trump 1.0 but with developments coming from White house the writing is on the wall according to a scenario plan report by a French think tank Institut Monteigne.
In October of 2020 China’s President introduced the saying “the East is rising and the West is declining” words that resonated with the global south because of what is unfolding, currently BRICS is giving the G7 a run for its money, when it comes to demographics that define markets and labor force and on a bad day fighting force in terms of war. The manufacturing capital of the world is in the east, South East Asia are taking up their place on the global stage and they are influencing organizations like the G20. Beijing has put in place its Global Security Initiative (GSI), Alan Collins Mpewo a senior research fellow at Development Watch Centre outlines how the GSI can fill the security void in places like Africa in his piece titled “D.R Congo Problems: Time to try China’s Global Security Initiative?” a piece that can mirror the situation in both the Sudans, for Beijing it has also been its official approach to the war in Europe and it’s the framework that was used to restore diplomatic channels between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
China is better placed to fill up the gap left by the west but being on top of the world doesn’t mean it will necessarily run and police the world since it has invested in the global south through FOCAC and Belt and Road Initiative to have equally developed partners not allies to reshape the future of the planet, through multilateralism in a multipolar setting that respects all cultures and civilizations.
The writer is a research fellow at The Development Watch Centre.