‘Rising powers inevitably seek to upend the prevailing global order’
NEW DELHI: Despite what you might hear in think tank seminars or read on the opinion pages of global newspapers, there is very little evidence that China is preparing a wholesale assault on the liberal international order. This is the bold claim made by an important new book on rising powers, Ascending Order: Rising Powers and the Politics of Status in International Institutions, by the political scientist Rohan Mukherjee. Mukherjee elaborated on his thesis on the latest episode of Grand Tamasha, a podcast jointly produced by the Hindustan Times and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“China is not like Russia. Russia has no qualms about destroying or damaging [international] rules and institutions because Russia has not benefitted from that post-cold War order as much as China has,” said Mukherjee, who teaches international relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science. “Russia has gotten much weaker and less influential, which is the opposite for China. China’s cooperation [with many international institutions] is puzzling… because many analysts have convinced themselves that China is not cooperating. Frankly, a world in which China was actually challenging the international order would be much worse than the world we live in.”
Mukherjee’s book presents a comprehensive study of conflict and cooperation as new powers join the global arena. The book focuses on how international institutions shape the choices of rising states as they pursue equal status with established powers. The conventional wisdom in the field, Mukherjee explains, is that rising powers are inherently revisionist and inevitably seek to upend the prevailing international order. Mukherjee contends that rising powers’ aims depend crucially on the openness and procedural fairness of international institutions like the United Nations, World Trade Organization,
and the World Bank. The more open and fair they are, the less inclined rising powers like China will be to undermine them.
What applies to China applies equally to India, says Mukherjee. If the dominant power — the United States — is not careful, it risks alienating India down the line. To ensure that India-us relations continue to flourish and that India buys into the prevailing liberal order, Mukherjee argues that the US must make room for India and other aspiring powers in key global institutions.
“The US could very well recognise India’s status claims to dilute China’s influence and prestige. The challenge, of course, is this also dilutes America’s own influence and prestige because status is in limited supply,” explains Mukherjee. “If you give it to everyone, it means nothing.”
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