Battle for Eurasia

The struggle to reshape the global order has replaced the ideologized era of the Cold War, although the East-West rivalry equation has changed since the time of the Soviet Union: the greatest competitor of the United States of America today is China, but that binary formula does not fully cover the realities of the modern world.

Joe Biden was not wrong when he promoted the global doctrine of the struggle between democracy and autocracy, between freedom and repression, between the rule of law and brutal force, but there are countries - from India that tilts towards the US and Pakistan that tilts towards China, through Turkey to the Gulf countries - which are trying to realize their own interests both in the autocratic Fortress of Asia ruled by Beijing and Moscow and in the free world.

GEOECONOMICS AS A TOOL

The battle for Eurasia is underway. China and Russia are not only trying to secure influence in that region, but are also forming strategic alliances (Iran, North Korea) along the vast expanse of the super-continent, trying to escape the control of the US Navy and the dollar. It's not yet a full partnership of autocrats, but it's certainly a bloc that's more unique and dangerous than anything the US has faced in decades. A joint Sino-Russian communiqué from February 2022 describes the two countries as defenders of their despotic systems against an American-controlled unipolar world. Iranian officials describe Eurasian cooperation as an antidote to US and Western hegemony. Presidents Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin talk about the necessity of defending "traditional values" from the "neoliberal elite".

China is considered a threat to the security of the US and the European Union for many reasons. China's impressive economic growth, accompanied by ever-increasing military spending, has greatly changed global power dynamics.

"The supreme skill is not to win every battle, but to defeat the enemy without a fight", is the ancient maxim of the writer The art of warfare Sun Tzu on whom the authorities in Beijing rely.

Geoeconomics is a more effective tool for the Chinese than geopolitics. Ever since the beginning of this century, the strategy has been to ensure self-sufficiency and establish your own club in which there is no game according to the West.

China was the key initiator of the formation of BRICS after the Great Recession and financial crisis of 2008. The group has made it clear that it is a rival to the Western G7 and monetary institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The Chinese, as the largest economic power in Asia, founded the Asian Bank for Infrastructure Investments in 2013. Despite Washington's negative campaign, 57 countries have joined the bank, including some of America's key allies.

The initial group - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa - is now expanding, a testament to China's growing ambitions that Beijing is realizing - through geoeconomics. Part of the plan, as seen at the last BRICS summit in the Russian city of Kazan, is an attempt to displace the dollar as a globally accepted means of account and payment. The Russians and Chinese already conduct a significant part of their mutual transactions in rubles or yuan, and Beijing and Tehran are experimenting in a similar way - although it is not realistic to expect that the global south will join it.

Another major Chinese undertaking, the Belt and Road Initiative, aims to connect 65 countries in Asia, Europe and North Africa with a combined population of 4,4 billion people. Ports are bought, airports, highways and railways, gas pipelines, electrical networks are built, optical cables are laid.

China is the largest trading partner of more than 130 countries in the world. Beijing is doing exactly what Henry Kissinger wrote: "They are maneuvering to put the enemy in a disadvantageous position from which escape is impossible."

Donald Trump thinks it's possible. China's strategic interventions, motivated by the intention to establish a network of global economic control, disturb the international balance of power and especially irritate the United States. In a rare continuity with the policy of the Biden administration, the new president announces an even tougher course towards China, which has been declared not only the biggest trade and economic enemy, but also the number one security challenge in Asia, the region of greatest interest to Trump.

Trump is threatening to impose tariffs of 60 percent on Chinese goods, which can be a risky move in the techno-economic conflict, considering that China is the largest creditor and creditor of the United States and the volume of mutual trade. We should expect retaliatory measures from Beijing, for example, in the sphere of critical minerals and semiconductor equipment in the electric car sector. A tariff war on clean technologies risks slowing down the green transition. It threatens the operations of Western companies operating in China, such as Tesla. Threatens Western exporters to China.

In order to reduce the damage, a trade and hi-tech détente is necessary. It mostly depends on Trump. If he knew how to shake hands with Kim Jong-un, why wouldn't he try with Xi Jinping? His plan to get closer to Putin and thus separate him from Xi sounds logical, but it is unrealistic to expect that he will be able to correct the strategic mistake of his predecessor, who at the same time opened fronts against Russia and China. Much will depend on diplomacy, which is not exactly Trump's favorite tool in dealing with the world.

"LET CHINA SLEEP"

The Chinese development machine is fueled by export orientation and state subsidies, but also reliance on clean energy. Last year, clean technology accounted for 40 percent of the country's growth, giving it a significant lead in the electric car market. Interestingly, Trump has repeatedly said that he would welcome Chinese companies making such cars in America.

China and the US are not giving up on supporting their own growth, but it would be better for everyone to refrain from trade and tariff wars that raise tensions and have the potential to ignite the South China Sea around Taiwan. A negative announcement cycle can do more harm than good – to the entire world. When America or China catches a cough, the rest of the planet gets pneumonia.

Xi's China and Trump's America have the same slogan: Make China Great Again, respectively Make America Great Again. Washington, like Beijing, wants control over Eurasia. Beijing has aspirations to soon become the strongest economic power in the world, and behind that lies the intention of the supremacy of the authoritarian Chinese model. Is it the way to an inevitable conflict? Many believe it is. In 1817, Napoleon said: "Let China sleep, when she wakes up, she will shake the world."

China has woken up and is gathering the global south in a strategic alliance with Russia in an attempt to free itself from American power and assert itself as the leader of the new world. But achieving hegemony today is extremely difficult, if not impossible. The bipolar world of the USA and China may seem realistic, but it would not be the most efficient and rational system because, apart from the two giants, there are a large number of ambitious, armed, powerful and rich players who have influence. Countries like Turkey, Saudi Arabia or India play a key role in this rivalry. Many of them are ready to play on both fronts, on one side of which is fortress Asia and on the other is the free world. This complicates the issue of balancing the Big Two and the struggle for leadership between Washington and Beijing.

A system in which only the USA and China would dominate is not to the liking of many. The European Union has been trying to take its place on the global stage for years, but despite all the potential it has, it is constantly lagging behind both America and China. The decline is obvious.

In 2008, the collective economies of the Eurozone were on par with the US, and last year the gross national product of the US was twice as large as the European one. In 1992, the EU was a geo-economic giant that owned 29 percent of global production. That share fell to 17 percent two years ago.

How did it happen that in the last half century the EU failed to create a company worth more than 100 billion euros when there are six in America that are valued at more than 1.000 billion dollars? The entire EU has only four of the world's 50 leading technology companies. The income of the average European is 27 percent lower than that of the American.

photo: ap photo

THE FALLING OF EUROPE

Mario Draghi, the former Italian Prime Minister and former President of the European Central Bank, made a gloomy diagnosis: if the EU does not increase production, it will cease to be a model of social welfare and an independent actor in facing global challenges - from wars to open rivalry between the US and China that threatens to lead the world into the Second Cold War, until the fight against climate change.

The economic decline has been accompanied by the rise of populist and nationalist Euro-autocrats, so Europeans miss the chance to be part of the quartet of the most powerful.

Russia firmly holds the position of the third vertex of the global power triangle - primarily and almost exclusively thanks to its nuclear power. The war in Ukraine put an end to Moscow's debate on where to go: the direction is Asia. At the same time, that war represented a small turning point in the relations between Moscow and Beijing. China is the dominant brother who came to the aid of the Russians at the time of Western sanctions, especially on gas sales to Western Europe. They provided an ally for the battle for Eurasia.

The Chinese are calculating. They remember very well that there was never any genuine cordiality between the Soviet Union and China. Moreover, in September 1969, the two communist countries fought a border war for several months. Beijing skilfully compensated for the weakness of Russia's position due to the Ukrainian war: not only does it buy Russian gas at a price significantly lower than that which Gazprom received from the Europeans, but it also made it clear to the Kremlin whose word is decisive.

Putin had no choice but to agree and present himself in photos with Xi Jinping as an equal partner in cooperation "for which the sky is the limit". Meanwhile, Russia is intensively searching for partners around the world. Everyone is more than welcome. Especially Viktor Orbán.

UKRAINIAN POLYGON

Moscow and Delhi maintain good bilateral relations. Although not allies, Russia and India have much in common that brings them closer together in a strategic partnership. Putin and Prime Minister Narendra Modi are cooperating even as Russia has forged relations of strategic closeness with China, India's historic rival. Delhi is trying to be a close partner to America at the same time. Russia has moved closer to Iran. China mediated the normalization of relations between Tehran and Riyadh last year. Nothing is simple, as the BRICS group would like to present, which behind the facade of trade is trying to push through the creation of a parallel world order led by communists from Beijing.

In order to preserve the impression of (un)reduced influence, the ruler of the Kremlin uses another training ground: the Ukrainian one. It mercilessly destroys its western neighbor who, despite heroic resistance, is faltering on the Donbas fronts. Threatens with tactical nuclear weapons. What will happen when Trump re-enters the White House with his promises of a peaceful solution "in 24 hours", an unspecified plan that, according to what is known, goes more into the hands of Putin's conquests than the intention of President Volodymyr Zelensky to expel the enemy who controls today 18 percent of Ukrainian territory?

The world is turning to the right. A lot of uncertainty is attached to one man - the new tenant of the White House. Will Trump withdraw America from NATO, how far is he ready to go in the confrontation with China, will he continue to belittle the transatlantic allies, will he seriously reduce aid to Ukraine, will he, as a proven hater of multilateralism, pull the USA out of UNESCO or Paris again agreement on the climate, what kind of revenge he has planned for the ayatollahs in Tehran, whether he will encourage the Israeli hawks to attack Iran's nuclear facilities, how he will punish the International Criminal Court that dared to betray warrant for the arrest of his populist brother in Israel, will he, in his well-known "take it or leave it" style, tell the President of Serbia that if he wants a partnership with the USA, he must end his "steel friendship" with China, or else will he repeat the iconic words from his former reality program: You are fired! You're fired!