Belt and Road Initiative and Global Governance under Profound Changes Unseen in a Century
PANG ZHONGYING
Distinguished Professor, Institute for Ocean Development, Ocean University of China
BU YONGGUANG
Associate Professor, CPC Zhejiang Provincial Committee Party School
Although global governance was not a widely recognizable concept until the end of the Cold War, its practice can be traced back to the history of international relations as some of the countries had the experience in solving common problems through transnational coordination. At present, “profound changes unseen for a century” call for more effective common solution on the global plane, leading to growing demand for global governance on the demand side, which stands out as increasingly noticeable tension and paradox against the serious deficit in global governance on the practical level on the supply side. Against such a background of the times, it is necessary for the governance of “profound changes unseen for a century” on global plane to draw lessons from history, and to actively search for solution to global governance dilemma on the basis of full-scale learning of relevant experiences and lessons.
Historical Experience of Dealing with Profound Change by Global Governance
During 19th century in Europe, there were already the most essential connotations and forms of contemporary global governance. American scholar Jennifer Mitzen holds that global governance is the formation and maintenance of collective intent and a common commitment of all countries to solve problems together. In a century between the defeat of Napoléon Bonaparte and the outbreak of World War I (1815-1914), the Concert of Europe had played such a role.
The greatest challenge in face of 19th century Europe was the unsustainability of peace. When Napoléon was defeated in 1815, peace was not produced automatically, and what facing Europe were unprecedented profound changes. However, in nearly a century from 1815, Europe had been basically peaceful.
Why a Europe that had seen incessant wars since the 17th century should have enjoy such a period of peace in the 19th century? Researchers generally attribute this to the Concert of Europe as a keeper of the international institutions or the international order.
On the basis of examining the history of 19th century Europe, Karl Polonyi stressed that it was necessary for government to “embed” in market activities for political intervention of economy. Polonyi insightfully expounded on the “international financial system” that began to take shape in the 19th century, arguing that such conference diplomacy as the Concert of Europe had in fact resolved acute issues of the then international economic system, especially conflicts arising from great powers carving up spheres of influence and colonies. To phrase this view in terms of global governance today, it was the Concert of Europe that governed the conflicts of the European
powers. In his theoretical elaboration, Polonyi threw light on this logic: the process of conflict governance is a peace process, and peace is but the result of governance.
In the early 20th century, the Concert of Europe that had been so effective in the 19th century gradually declined. In the absence of governance like the Concert of Europe, World War I broke out. A rising United States (US) was involved in World War I and helped to launch the League of Nations after the war, however the country itself had never joined the League of Nations. The League of Nations established in 1920 seemed to have drawn lessons from World War I but was not the reconstruction of the Concert of Europe. After 1945, Europe reconstructed a partial Concert, and though in geographical terms the new Concert was limited to Western Europe, in terms of level involved and function, it far exceeded 19th century Concert of Europe. By constructing the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), the European Economic Community (EEC), and the European Community (EC), European integration achieved initial success during the Cold War. Undergoing a series of profound changes in the international pattern at the end the Cold War, the EC laid down the foundation for its elevation to the European Union (EU). In 1993, the EU was officially launched and attempted to advance regional governance and global governance by accelerating the process towards a more intimate union. In 2012, for turning Europe from a continent of war into one of peace, the EU was given the Nobel Peace Prize, a gigantic positive achievement obviously far exceeding the negative “century of peace” of the 19th century. Should the Concert of Europe be described as the primary form of global governance, then the EU could be taken for an advanced form of global governance on a regional plane.
Of course, there was quite a little dark side of the Concert of Europe, for instance all kinds of ulterior “secret agreements”. It was precisely this dark side that ultimately led to the failure of the Concert of Europe. In contrast, the United Nations (UN) and the international economic organizations that came to
life out of the ashes of World War II in 1945 had drawn on experiences and lessons facilitated by the thick and heavy history of the world (especially that of the Concert of Europe) and therefore to a large extent overcome the dark side of the Concert of Europe, and far transcended 19th century Concert of Europe in scope involved, connotations covered and global political influence.
However, over the four decades of US-Soviet Cold War, the UN had not realized its original designed purpose in full and had failed to govern the profound changes such as the Cold War and even had been marginalized by the latter. Not until the 1990s under the circumstances of the end of the Cold War did the UN begin to “reform”.
Both the beginning and the end of the Cold War gave rise respectively to far reaching changes of the international pattern, accompanied by the founding and the reform of the UN, seen as the outcomes of both changes on the international pattern “created by circumstances”. However, as the most important mechanism of international governance at the end of World War II, the UN has never played the role of “creating circumstances”, nor that of governing the profound changes. To date, the UN reform, under the banner of global governance, is a mission yet to be accomplished.
At the crossroads of the end of the Cold War, there were people advocating and practicing a “unipolar world”, that is to have the “sole superpower” the US to rule this planet, and others standing for “global governance”. “Unipolar world” and “global governance” are two entirely different world orders. Some of us once neglected the huge differences between the two outlooks of world orders of “unipolar world” and “global governance”, arising either from deliberate confusion or inadvertent overlook for obscurity in understanding, which led many people to take it for inevitable and even natural phenomenon that the US occupied a special position in global governance and had a special role to play.
More often than not, history has a strong sense of sarcasm. The “unipolar world” was soon proven to be nothing but a mere “unipolar moment”. The global financial crisis of 2008 has profoundly changed the US and the world, with Neo-Liberalism that had continued to expand in the post-Cold War being historically challenged while domestic political polarization being on the increase. The Obama presidency attempted to cope with the crisis by conducting domestic reform and enhancing US-led international cooperation but failed to attain noticeable effect owing to piling resistance. Since taking office, President Trump has put into practice “economic nationalism” and the “America First” policy and continued to withdraw from an array of existing processes of global governance. At the same time, protectionism and nationalism have risen forcefully worldwide, seriously impacting the practice of global governance.
At the end of the Cold War, the US called the world order it was building a “liberal world order”. Since Trump came to power, the “liberal world order” has fallen into serious crisis and even come to an end. The foreign policy of the Trump Administration may not necessarily mean that “the US has abandoned world leadership”, but it is clear that under Trump presidency, the “unipolar world” is almost not existent any more. It has become a subject of the times concerning the future of the world and destiny of mankind how to adapt to the impact of a changed US relationship with the world and to govern the profound changes unseen for a century on global plane.
Key Points of Concert Being Rediscovered by Learned Society
In face of the profound changes unseen for a century, including China’s rise, some of the influential researchers in the West have become once more interested in the historical experience of the Concert of Europe and the theories of international relations produced on the basis of such a historical experience, believing that a new “concert” may be an effective route to govern 21st century profound global changes.
In the Asia-Pacific region, Australian scholars called for 21st century concert of great powers relatively earlier. In 2012, Professor Hugh White of Strategic Studies at Australian National University took the lead in making an important proposal that the US should be in concert with China in his book The China Choice: Why America Should Share Power, which triggered off a debate over relevant issues among the international learned society. In White’s view, facing China’s rise, it is the only sensible choice for the US to actively share power with China and set up a concert of Asia so as to control possible antagonism between the two countries and on this basis to build the concert between both countries in all areas on regional and international planes. Only by doing so can mankind continue to enjoy peace and prosperity in the 21st century.
In Europe, Harald Muller, a wellknown German scholar of international relations, presided over a “European project” titled “21st Century Concert of Powers: Multilateralism of Powers and Avoidance of a World War”. The project was one of the ten major projects on “European and global challenges” funded by three celebrated European private foundations, aiming to construct a “Global Concert of Powers” based on the “great power multilateralism”. In view of Muller and cohorts, alterations and shifts of power in the international system tend to be accompanied by conflicts, and on the basis of drawing on 19th century historical experience, it is necessary to replace bilateral dueling mode in the theory of power shift with the framework of a broader concert of powers, and further to construct a brave new set of unofficial multilateral security mechanisms.
In the US, such research institutions as the well-known strategic think tank the RAND Corporation and the old American brand named the Council on Foreign Relations have made major studies in this regard. The RAND Corporation in its report published in 2017
called for the US to learn from 19th century experience of the Concert of Europe and to take the initiative in bringing into place an international concert on the basis of respecting current rules and order, and further to construct a new world order that is stable and sustainable. Richard Haass also considered the Concert of Europe by far the most successful case of constructing and maintaining the international order, and strongly advocated a new concert in meeting the challenge facilitated by the collapse of the current US-led world order.
In general, as the Concert is being rediscovered by the learned society and discussed in the new context of global governance, it has realized a renewal in connotations in the process of integrating with the element of the times: 19th century concert of powers was mainly limited to the European region, whereas the scope of the new concert is expanded to the global plane, where Asia becomes the new center of gravity of an international concert under study of the scholars. As more states and non-state players like international organizations are involved in the international affairs, the participating principals of the new concert have become plural; exponential increase of global issues greatly expands the agenda of the new concert; and the development of democratization of international relations raises new demand on the representation and legitimacy of the concert, calling for the mode of concert to move away from secret meetings of great powers and power arbitration toward an equal consultation in greater scope up to being global. However, it is still difficult to replace the key role of great powers. And the issue of concert between two major countries China and the US has become a focal one for the learned society.
US Withdrawal and the Future of Global Governance
Since taking office, President Trump has taken a series of actions to the opposite of global governance, including withdrawal from some of the important international organizations like the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and crucial multilateral agreements
like the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. On regional level, the US has withdrawn from the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) and so on. The attitudes and actions of the Trump Administration on the issue of global governance have further exacerbated the predicament of global governance.
However, it is necessary to correctly understand US “withdrawal” under Trump presidency in order to avoid misunderstanding in judging the relationship between the US and global governance. In spite of US withdrawal, US elements have in fact still penetrated into most of the processes of global governance. With those international organizations and multilateral agreements the US has pulled out or has never been in, the US relations remain complicated. For instance, the US has not entered into the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), but it “recognizes the UNCLOS as a codification of customary international law. As such, it does what it can to go by the UNCLOS and wishes other countries to do the same”. After US withdrawal, its relation with the Paris Agreement is similar to that with the UNCLOS.
In the aforesaid cases, what is particularly worth noting is the complicated role the US has played in the process of global negotiations on climate change and its evolution. Even though the Trump Administration has withdrawn from the Paris Agreement , it has not detached itself from the process of UN governance on climate change: in 2017 when Trump declared to withdraw from the Paris Agreement , some of the governors of the US formed the United States Climate Alliance, continuing to support the Paris Agreement ; US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who had regarded climate change as “current existential threat”, led a US congressional delegation of 15 Democratic congress people and senators to attend the UN Climate Change Conference in Madrid held in December 2019; and at the eve of the Madrid Conference, the US decided to send a government delegation headed by State Department official Marcia Bernicat to attend the conference. Even though the Trump Administration has changed US climate policy, the US still plays a certain leading role in global governance on climate change.
In spite of this, the aforesaid cases inspire people to think about such a question: in the absence of the US can an international concert be sustained and give rise to global governance without the US? Put in plight by the US, some of the countries and international organizations have been actively exploring such a possibility. In the absence of the US, countries like Japan and Singapore have replaced the TPP with the Comprehensive Progressive TransPacific Partnership Agreement (CPTPP) , as an outstanding example of regional governance without US participation; to cope with the crisis facing the WTO Appellate Body, Canada and the EU co-sponsored an ad hoc agreement, attempting to play some replacement role; on the issue of climate change, as the US pulled out of the Paris Agreement , there have been quite a few views on the EU or China playing the leading role. The EU’s ambitious aspirations standing in sharp contrast with the fatigue of the international community there, it is reshaping its leading role of global governance on climate change.
Conclusion
As shown by historical experience, the profound changes in the world more often than not mean that when a long existing world order is coming to an end, and a new order is still full of uncertainty, the world is in a very complex and perilous situation. At this moment, should there be absence of effective collective governance on the profound changes, this worldwide danger would very likely continue to be amplified and seriously exacerbated, and even trigger off a historic world catastrophe. The longer the global governance crisis, or the absence of global governance continues, the more likely disputes, chaos and disorder will lead to greater conflicts, including structural disruption of the world economic system.
Only by reviewing the past can one see better the present and be prepared for the future. The present profound changes unseen for a century can be dealt with by enhancing global governance. The historical experience of the past two hundred years on promoting global governance through international concert needs to be drawn upon seriously. By participating in major new-type international cooperation such as the G20, the BRICS Cooperation Mechanism, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and the ASEAN Regional Forum, and by launching the Belt and Road Initiative, China has significantly contributed to making up for “global governance deficit”. Alongside other like-minded countries of the international community, China is engaged in the common cause of “safeguarding multilateralism and improving global governance”. If global governance can be practically and effectively sustained and strengthened, 21st century world may enjoy longstanding peace and prosperity.
19th century concert of powers was mainly limited to the European region, whereas the scope of the new concert is expanded to the global plane, where Asia becomes the new center of gravity of an international concert under study of the scholars.