China’s New World Order | Bigger than Five

thanks China and Russia vowed to create a new multipolar

world

order

, accusing the West of undermining global stability while both countries reject US hegemony following their major diplomatic breakthrough between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Could Beijing take on a new role? as a global mediator and power broker thank you hello and welcome to the show I'm Rita Fakhri China and Russia accuse the West of undermining global stability as Presidents Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin met in Moscow this week in a show of public defiance toward the United States . States with both leaders vying to work together to build a more just and democratic multipolar

world

order

based on international law and the principles enshrined in the United Nations charter as they conclude a three-day state visit to Russia, President XI said .

Sino-Russian ties are of vital importance for the modern world order and the destiny of humanity, while President Putin called the bilateral relationship the highest point in the entire history of the two countries. The Republican in Spanish foreign policy is Mitchell Reese, director of political planning. at the US State Department between 2003 and 2005. Mitchell Reese Beijing and Moscow are clearly showing a united front against the Western general and the United States in particular, their vision is clear: a new multipolar world, a new international world order without Allow Washington to continue dictating its terms to the world. Are we on the cusp of a new international World Order without the United States at the helm?

I don't think so, but I think there are certain challenges that we've seen that will make it more challenging for the world. The United States must lead, not dictate, but rather lead the international order it helped create after World War II. What we saw with China and Russia's visit last week was a very dominant China and a subservient Russia. Russia is clearly the junior partner here. They could not run the second pipeline through Siberia to compensate for part of the economic revenue lost by sending energy to Europe. The Chinese did not promise anything new. The United States is very clearly observing the supply of lethal weapons by Beijing, for example.

What Again, this is the culmination of trends where China is simply becoming more powerful economically militarily and now coming out a little more diplomatically on the world stage. Does Washington today have to accept that it is no longer the indispensable state it once was? That American exceptionalism. is coming to an end, well, I still personally believe that America is exceptional for many reasons. I think as long as there are lines outside American consulates around the world for people to get visas to visit the United States, that's one measure. about how attractive we are as a country, but it is a more complicated world now and we are learning that it is better to have friends and allies around the world, that is what we have been trying to do for the last few years and we have seen that not only in Asia but also the Europeans have united to help the Ukrainians, so I think again that this is one of the secrets of the success of the United States.

Build alliances. You don't have to fight alone. You don't have to engage in diplomatic negotiations. It alone has friends and allies and China does not, but the fact that the United States has to compete with Moscow for its close ally Saudi Arabia says a lot, doesn't it? I'm not sure it's a zero-sum competition. Or I think the Saudis have shown a tone-deafness and a sophistication in their diplomacy in the last six months of the year or something like that that we haven't seen before and I think what they're trying to do is a couple of things, I think.

First of all, they need to stabilize their neighborhood so that they can realize the vision for 2030 that Riyadh and the Crown Prince have laid out and articulated so clearly, and I think they also want to see if they can reduce their losses in Yemen and get it to that point. uh, that war and that humanitarian catastrophe, but the fact that some countries, including last year a staunch ally, Saudi Arabia, turned to Beijing and not Washington to negotiate a deal is a measure that the United States is not just declining their influence but also their lack of credibility when it comes to negotiating agreements, well unfortunately I think there may be a bit of that and American credibility I think took a hit in terms of perceptions in the region when we did not support Hosni Mubarak during the Arab Spring.

I think it then escalated when President Obama's red line was crossed with impunity in Syria and I think also the Saudis came under attack by Iranian cruise missiles in their oil fields and the Trump administration didn't respond to that, so I think there has been some decline in American confidence. credibility and trustworthiness, so the Saudis are hedging their bets, but it is not a major factor in this decline in US influence, your double standard that you served in the George W. Bush administration 20 years ago and this week We have just commemorated the 20th anniversary of the creation of the United States.

United States illegal invasion of Iraq To what extent would the invasion of Ukraine have occurred if the invasion of Iraq had not gone well? First, this is your characterization of America's involvement in the Iraq War, not mine. I'm not sure that's the one. It has something to do with the other. I think you're arguing that there was an erosion of international norms that the United States led on the part of Iraq, and therefore it follows that Putin had an easier time invading Crimea in 2014 and then Ukraine last year. The war was not sanctioned by the United Nations, that is correct, that is correct, and neither was Putin's invasion nor are there many wars and conflicts around the world, it does not necessarily mean that there is a causality between one and the other, but Do you agree that the invasion?

It was illegal, therefore the fact that there were no consequences could have led us to the situation we are in today. Many people have made a link between the two. Well, I think the United States felt it had a legal justification for going into Iraq. It didn't get the second UN resolution we wanted again. I think it's easy to draw analogies between the two, but I don't see them as similar at all. Is it wise for Washington to say the time has come? It is not ripe for a ceasefire to continue throwing weapons into this conflict instead of actively trying to find a diplomatic solution.

Well, again, the United States has a role to play, but ultimately it will be up to Moscow and him to decide when or if. They want to stop fighting right now, there doesn't seem to be a will on either side to stop and unfortunately the war continues, but the fact that the United States has warned China not to sell weapons to the Russians as long as we continue to see this huge flow of American weapons to kyiv is there not at least some hypocrisy here? No, I think that the Ukrainians are clearly victims of Russian aggression and therefore it is natural that the United States and not only the United States, all European countries are also helping the Ukrainians and the Japanese, so I think that there is a fairly broad coalition.

It's not the United States against China. You say here that there is a broad coalition, but according to a recent survey by the economist intelligence unit, support for Russia in developing countries. In reality, the world has grown. More and more countries are siding with Moscow in its war against Ukraine. Countries representing around 33 percent of the world's population and more and more countries are taking a neutral stance. They represent 31 percent of the world's population. It is not necessarily so. They support the invasion of Russia but seem to appreciate that the conflict is not between good and evil, it is not black and white, well I think they are entitled to their opinion of course that is not the way we see it I think that some Some of the more astute governments are trying to pit both sides against the middle to try to position themselves so that they can take advantage of cheap Russian oil and energy, like the Chinese and the Indians are doing.

That doesn't necessarily mean they don't. Supporting Russia simply means that they are taking advantage of a situation, so I'm not sure I can draw any

bigger

lasting conclusions from that. Mitchell Rhys, former director of policy planning at the US Department of State, thank you very much, it's a pleasure, thank you. In a deal brokered by China earlier this month, Saudi Arabia and Iran agreed to resume diplomatic relations after decades of tensions and open hostility, and Saudi Arabia's King Salman this week extended an invitation to Iran's President Ibrahim Raisi to visit Riyadh, the agreement between the two regional rivals.

Announced in Beijing on March 10, the unexpected diplomatic tour de force that has thrust China into a new role as a global mediator took the United States by surprise. The development follows a meeting last month in Beijing between President Xi Jinping and Iran's President Raisy, who had also met with Saudi leaders in Riyadh in December and at the same time publicly welcomed the deal, the White House rejected the notion that Beijing's growing political influence in the region could replace Washington's waning influence. So how have China's growing economic ties with countries in the region shaped its role as a mediator?

It is the second largest economy in the world and represents 18.5 percent of global GDP the United States' share is almost 13 percent India accounts for almost nine percent since 2010 Beijing has replaced Washington as the largest trading partner of Middle East with energy at the center of the region's trading relationship accounts for almost half of China's oil imports, most of it from Saudi Arabia in 2020 Beijing imported crude oil from the region worth $176 billion At the end of 2021 the bilateral trade volume was worth $87.3 billion, a more than 200-fold increase since diplomatic relations were established more than three decades ago.

In 2021, 27 of Saudi oil exports went to China. . China has been Iran's main trading partner since 2010. In 2021, the two countries signed a 25-year strategic agreement to strengthen economic and security cooperation. Iran's trade with China reached nearly $16 billion in 2022, up seven percent from the previous year. China's crude oil imports from Iran reportedly set a new record last year. Saudi Arabia was China's largest oil supplier in 2022, selling more than 87 million tons of crude. Russia overtook Saudi Arabia to become China's top oil supplier in the first two months of 2023. So what does Beijing's role in bringing together two of the region's main geopolitical adversaries and political enemies say about the dynamics and the changing strategy of the region?

Could China's advance in the Middle East lead to other diplomatic successes by uniting? Me now to discuss this is Shan Chang Zhao, professor of international relations and president of the Asian Studies Research Council at American University, and Zuri linersky, researcher at the Eurasia Group Foundation, Professor Xiao, how surprising was it for you to see China as an intermediary in this rat rash. between Iran and Saudi Arabia, these two archenemies, what was the main factor that led to this successful diplomacy? In your opinion, I would like to say yes or no, in fact, because I would say that a four-day secret negotiation in Beijing no one knows.

That case surprised me a little bit seeing the development, but on the other hand we know that China has been involved in the Middle East for a long time before Xi Jinping visited Saudi Arabia and met with leaders and also invited the president of Iran to Beijing, had a long negotiation and conversation, so in that case China is in a good position to be a mediator for the two Middle East and also China as a big risk in the Middle East not only economically but also politically and strategically diplomatically. France, the deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran was supposedly two years in the making. with the secret talks taking place in Iraq and Oman and you could argue that the United States inadvertently laid much of the groundwork, but at the end of the day, did China have something that the United States lacked before all parties, which It is greater credibility, without a doubt, the United States is increasingly seen as a middleman in the region, its policies towards Israel, those that have been declawed in the region due to the Abraham Accords and then its long-standing policies towards the isolated and sanctioning Iran put it in a position where it cannot exert the same influence throughout the region, not even in the Abraham Accords, which normalize ties between Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco, not they extend to Saudi Arabia, so it's unclear how the United States could have actually pressured these two. actors together, although he has been advocating for reducingtensions in the region for some time, so there is a lack of credibility on the part of the Americans, do you agree that the Chinese government, the Chinese leader, felt that credibility gap that the United States could no longer be? seen and could not be seen for quite a few years as an honest broker in the Middle East and now in Ukraine and in the Asian context, as well as in the Asia Pacific situation in Taiwan, that is exactly the case, that is, it has been decreasing in terms of credibility of the United States simply because it cannot be a reliable partner for everyone because if you want to be a mediator you have to have the trust of both parties, in this case how could you expect Iran to trust the United States and its mothers and China, on the other hand, had the practice of not intervening in the internal politics of other countries and also mainly participating in economic activities, so in that case China gained some credibility, which is the basis of this moment of success for China, Of course, it is important to have stability in the region because it increases its current special ties with many important countries, not to mention the energy dimension of all this, but Looking back, Zuri, the Nixon Kissinger Doctrine was to keep the Soviet Union out of the Middle East propping up Iran and Saudi Arabia at the time, after 10 years, the United States lost Iran.

Iran became an enemy. Is Washington now losing Saudi Arabia as an ally? It's a great question and I think the answer is probably no. I think it's becoming clear that the Saudis are playing a double game: They're pitting China and the United States against each other to get everything they can. In terms of trade and investment, China is incredibly valuable to the Saudis, but at the same time the United States is its security guarantor, while the Chinese have an incredible arsenal of weapons that they could sell to the Saudis (currently the Saudi government and the The Saudi military relies almost exclusively on American-made equipment, despite the drone base, drone facilities, and military facilities that the Chinese will build, so I think we're seeing a sort of distribution of influence emerging from a more multipolar system or uh in which there are multiple actors in the region and the Saudis are exerting their own influence and their own agency the Saudis are clearly balancing their security pitting the United States against China, is Washington now accepting this new reality of that it is no longer the only indispensable actor in the region and any type of pressure on Iran will now have to take into account Beijing's interests.

First, I agree with Zuri's argument that there is a marquipole structure in the region. Secondly, Iran and other Middle Eastern powers are getting closer to China compared to decades ago, simply because not only China has enormous economic power, but also the other Middle Eastern countries also developed economic partnership with China as with one so big. How will that affect US pressure on Iran? Well, I would say that the United States had to do it because the Middle East is also a key region for the United States' strategic interests, although with all its elements now reduced, but that would say that with making Washington reconsider is the Middle East policy and in particular how to deal with different powers and talking about how to deal with different powers Zuri, we focus a lot on the United States, but the other big loser when it comes to the new relationship between Saudi Arabia and Iran is Israel and Washington. have the luxury of continuing their blind support for the Israeli government that is positioning towards the Palestinians given this new reality, so I think there are two points that need to be made here, first, that there is an open question about how Israel views this;

It is not clearly bad for Israel for this. The deal has been made because it could actually make it easier to move forward with a relationship with the Saudis now, at the same time, it really complicates things in the kind of broader geopolitical struggle between Israel and Iran and the unfortunate consequence of this deal. between Saudi Arabia and Iran is that the Palestinians are, in fact, the biggest losers because it has become very clear that peace between Israel and its friends and Israel and its neighbors will not include the Palestinians and many, and it has become more evident. that many of the regional players like Saudi Arabia are relatively out of time and out of patience with the Palestinian Authority and have more time to work with Israel, which is a major economic power, as Abraham demonstrated, but the Israeli government.

Presumably the government can't be happy about this given the way it feels about the Iranian government, the fact that it has put so much pressure all these years on the US government to take an aggressive stance toward Iran. I think it's a mix, I don't. I don't think they are happy, but I also think they see an opportunity and at the same time we have to remember that their security is linked to that of the United States and that in 2025 Israel is expected to receive KC 25 refueling tankers that in actually facilitate a possible attack on Iran, so this is really an interesting moment in the geopolitics of the region Professor Zhao, how do you see the emergence of Beijing as a peacemaker?

Will we see Beijing attempt a peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians? I mean, we, as you mentioned. Previously, Beijing wants to see more stability in the region, at least to increase its trade with the region and ensure its access to oil and gas. I think so, Beijing because it had long-standing stable relations with both sides, just like Beijing has been doing. It is not the first time, but at the same time it is also a very complicated issue, so it may take a longer period because it is obviously not a one-time opportunity, but in the same way, Russo Ukraine can be seen making a peaceful proposal now, so you know, China is trying too. to play a role, did you expect President XI to succeed in mediating between the Ukrainians and the Russians?

I would say that this is just the beginning, in fact, it is a good time, you need a good environment and you need good people and good people, what I just mentioned really has to be a Both parties trust, so now we know that Jalinsky is going to have a video conversation with Xi Jinping. Well, at least that's what was reported, which means that China began to actively participate. I'm not sure the outcome is uncertain. Zuri China as a global mediator between the two Israelis, Palestinians, Ukrainians and Russians, what do they think about Israel and Palestine.

I would have to say no, no, he has been a bit skittish in the conflict, he has no active interest in the conflict, there is no financial benefit. to the conflict and, realistically, does not contribute much to any of the Palestinian parties even though it is involved in the South-South conversation and the empowerment of the global South, which can present a fairly convincing argument that the Palestinian state in to the extent that it exists it is a member of the global South so there doesn't seem to be any incentive for China to get involved and more importantly I think it has interest in other places like Ukraine and I also think it is half-hearted because While China was Ukraine's number one trading partner before the war, it has a more abiding interest in making sure its relationship with Russia endures, and if you look at the text of the peace plan, it's not really a peace plan. , um, and it's not clear. that the United States or Ukraine are ready to engage the Chinese in this dialogue, okay, so thank you both very much for coming, thank you for having me, it's a pleasure, thank you, thank you, her and Putin's carefully choreographed diplomatic display had as a backdrop. from a growing chorus on the international stage a rejection of Western hegemony or US-led imperialism, as it was once called Putin warned that the architecture of security and international cooperation is being dismantled, while warning that there would be no Order World where the decisive word belongs. to a single country Now, after decades of unchecked American political dominance and military adventurism, a growing number of developing countries appear to agree with her and Putin, and several of them, including Washington's allies, are seeking membership in the BRICS, the political group that includes Brazil, Russia, China and the South.

Africa

five

countries representing 40 percent of the world's population and almost a third of its land mass this is today's geopolitical reality that's all from the team here in Washington thank you for seeing us until the next time abroad