Nicholas Ross Smith: To lead better in an era of rival powers, the US needs to listen more

Chinese President Xi Jinping, left, and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Photo / AP file

OPINION

President Xi Jinping’s visit to Moscow is being touted by some as further evidence that the end of the so-called liberal international order is nigh.

Certainly, the show of unity between Xi and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has major implications for international order, particularly as Xi stated that China is ready “to stand guard over the world order based on international law”.

The Xi-Putin “bromance” – which has undoubtedly overcome some fairly strident tests over the past year – has long elicited fears around a new epoch of international relations emerging where alternative orders to the previously dominant United States-led order materialise as challengers.

Leading International Relations scholar, Amitav Acharya, has described this as a “multiplex world order” in which the “elements of the liberal order survive, but are subsumed in a complex of multiple, crosscutting international orders”.

The war in Ukraine offers a glimpse at the potential contours of a new multiplex world order as a clear division is emerging between those that want to punish Moscow and those that want to find a pragmatic solution with Russia.

As Timothy Garton Ash and Mark Leonard note, the war in Ukraine demonstrates that “the West has never been more united [but] nor has it been more isolated”.

This is especially evident in the majority of the countries outside the West comprising the Global South which have, so far, refused to go along with the West’s desire to admonish and punish Russia for its belligerence in Ukraine.

Rather, it is China that has emerged as the leader of the Global South, evident in its recent release of a 12-point plan to mediate in the war in Ukraine.

However, blaming Xi and Putin for the apparent demise of the liberal international order would be a mistake because the seeds of this demise have largely come from within the West and, in particular, the hubristic actions of the US which reached a zenith in the war it waged in Iraq.

Given that the 20th anniversary of the Iraq war has just passed, there has been a significant amount of re-appraising of the original arguments for the conflict and the steps taken after the initial phase of the war was complete.

Those still defending the decision to intervene in Iraq should be routinely dismissed as neoconservative ideologues as 20 years later it is clear that Iraq was the height of US hubris and went completely against the liberal international values and norms that the US claimed to stand for.

It is impossible to defend the US’ decision to wage war against Iraq when the facts are considered.

Firstly, the cited “just cause” for intervening – that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction – was completely fallacious and only a fool should buy the line that the US simply misinterpreted their intelligence reports. Secondly, the war, unlike the intervention in Afghanistan, was not sanctioned by the United Nations and was met with strong global opposition. Yet, the US went ahead anyway.

The US was able to unilaterally intervene in Iraq because at that point it was frankly a hyperpower without a rival within its stratosphere.

But, while this incredible power supremacy afforded the US the ability to wage war against Iraq without any significant costs at the time – and indeed, the initial phase of the war was very successful – the “strategic narcissism” such power created was ultimately the root of its demise as the unquestioned arbiter of international order.

George W. Bush’s triumphant announcement of “mission accomplished” six weeks after the invasion was initiated is a fine illustration of this deep-seated hubris as it demonstrated that the US simply had no inkling of the hell that Iraq would become.

Nicholas Ross Smith is senior research fellow at the National Centre for Research on Europe, University of Canterbury. Photo / Supplied to NZ Herald with a dialogue column.

Rather than mission accomplished, the war in Iraq continued officially for another eight years and from the ashes of that conflict emerged Isis (Islamic State) and ongoing sectarian violence, which in total has, according to the Watson Institute’s Costs of War data, resulted in the deaths of 300,000 people (the majority civilians).

The global cost of the US’ decision was that its international reputation and standing were dealt a blow that it may never recover. Rather than a benevolent provider of global public goods, the US became more associated with warmongering and hypocrisy – charges that are hard to defend.

Subsequently, Joseph Biden’s 2020 campaign promise to return the US to a position of global leadership was met with very little fanfare and his subsequent efforts to whip up a united global response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has struggled to find any fertile ground outside of the Global North.

Ultimately, it is not hard to see why the global setting seems ripe for the emergence of a multiplex world order.

Yet, one should refrain from buying the imminent threat that a Sino-Russian tandem poses as a challenge to the liberal international order because beyond harnessing the global dissatisfaction for the US, China and Russia don’t seem to have much to offer (certainly nothing like the public goods that the US provided).

It is also much easier to be in opposition than to lead – recall that China already fumbled its efforts to lead the global pandemic response.

Therefore, the liberal international order is not necessarily doomed as despite all the aforementioned issues, the US still has more to offer than China or Russia, especially as both are uninspiring totalitarian states.

But, if the US is serious about leading again it needs to break free from the confines of its strategic narcissism and that starts with recognising the hubris and folly of Iraq (and other misadventures). It also requires that they listen to those countries in the Global South that are clearly dissatisfied.

However, judging by the way many in the US are remembering the 20th anniversary of the Iraq war, it seems such a breakthrough is not imminent.

- Nicholas Ross Smith is senior research fellow at the National Centre for Research on Europe, University of Canterbury.