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- [00:01]
Vila Sinkonen
Welcome to the new books network.
- [00:07]
Bar Genz
This is the nordic asia podcast.
- [00:14]
Julie Yu Wen Chen
Welcome to the Nordic Asia Podcast, a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region. My name is Julie Yu Wen Chen, professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Today we have three guests with me to talk about international politics. So the million dollar question here is are we living in an era of competing international orders? There is a new book entitled Competing Visions for International Challenges for Shared Direction in an Age of Global Contestation. This book aims to address this ultimate question. So I have the honor to find three contributors of this book to come to our Nordic Asia Podcast today will allow me to briefly introduce our three guests and then they themselves can continue to introduce themselves further. So the first guest is Vila Sinkonen. He is working for the Finnish Institute of International Affairs. He is one of the editors of this book. Matipuranan he. He is also one of the editors of this book. He is working for the Finnish National Defense University at the same time a visiting researcher at the University of Helsinki in Finland. The last but not the least guest, Bar Genz, he is working for the Finnish Institute of International affairs as well as the International center for Defense and Security. They have contributed to this book. So I would like to discuss with them about the ambition of this new book and several key takeaways concerning particularly the role of the United States, China and India from this book. Apparently this book covers more countries than these three but due to limit of time I thought we can cover these very three important countries to begin with. And if you are very interested in this book you can check the website. Just Google competing visions for international order. Actually several of the chapters of this book are for free. You can download and read it yourself. All right, so I have done my introductions now. May I ask Willa to start with because you are a person who lead this project and you edited the project, could you briefly tell us about the vision or the ambition of this book?
- [02:34]
Matti
Thanks so much Julie for that kind introduction. Off the bat I really need to acknowledge and thank my co editors, Matti, who's who's with us today and then Vera Leine who's the third editor. So this was, this is very much a team effort like you mentioned. The book actually consists of 16 chapters. So we've got an intro and a conclusion and then we have 14 cases of which the US and China make up what we call the superpower contenders. And then we've got the eu, France, Germany, UK and Japan as the status quo powers. And then a broad category that we Call the post Westernizers or revisionists, which includes India, Brazil, South Africa, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Russia. So there's really something for everyone in this book, if you're an area expert. Why we undertook this project is really there is broad agreement in the research and ballistic community that we're on the precipice of an ordering moment. And this is various reasons. I mean, there's a shift in the global balance of power. We're dealing with various existential global challenges, whether you think of climate, energy, food or pandemics, ongoing wars and conflicts in places like Ukraine, the Middle east and Africa, divisions within societies over what actually is a good life, and then between states over the fundamental questions of global governance. So we thought that this would be an opportune time to really look at how all of these key powers think about international order. And of course, all of the challenges that I mentioned are really often framed in terms of challenges to the existing or receding liberal rules based order. So we really play with two concepts in the book, international order and vision. For us, international order really has four dimensions. So it has a relatively stable distribution of capabilities. And this creates, of course, hierarchies. And by capabilities we mean really military, economic, technological power, et cetera. These are. Orders are usually constructed through norms, rules, values and practices that are quite broadly shared. And there are certain accepted institutional flora that all the component parts of the order, all the states and actors partake in. And then these orders can actually vary across space and time. They can change. And these visions are actually a central component of that change. So ideas about what the order should look like in the future should, in our view, tell us something about the direction in which the order is going. So really this vision is a political vision that these different communities hold about a future world or their place in that world. And why we really want to look at these key powers when thinking about these visions is that they really have a big role historically in reordering the world when there is a rupture. And if we are indeed at a time of rupture, then then these visions should be an important component of how states will navigate this, this rupture. So this is really our, our, our starting point. And of course, then by looking at these visions, we can, we can think about how, how far apart or how, how closely they correspond with each other, which should also tell us something about the potential of, of finding a shared future understanding of international order if we are indeed at a, at a point in time when the old order is, if not collapsing Then at least slowly whittling away. So that was really our point in the book. The key question actually based on how we defined international order that we put to all of our authors is what are the distributional, normative, institutional and temporal parameters of the visions that their key power articulates? So we wanted them to think about the ideal distribution of power for their state. We wanted them to think about the norms and values that should inform an international order, a future envisaged international order. We wanted them to think about the kind of institutions that these powers think about when they talk about international order. And then we wanted to look at the dimension of time because clearly some of these visions are more forward looking than others. And this will come out in parts. And Makti's presentations, I'm sure. But these visions also draw from history because of course, none of these actors are detached from a long line of history and a long line of thinking about international order. So that was really the gist of what drives the project. And I think what we managed to do is actually through posing this question about these different dimensions of the international order to our authors, we actually managed to come up with quite a coherent collection.
- [07:27]
Julie Yu Wen Chen
Thank you, Vida. So now, well, the turn is to Matti, who is the, one of the editors of this book. So Matti being one of the editors of this book, and he also contributed to the China chapter. Matti, what is your key takeaway from this China analysis?
- [07:43]
Vila Sinkonen
Thanks a lot, Julie. You should know very well, because you were the second author of our chapter on China.
- [07:50]
Julie Yu Wen Chen
I tried to hide myself. Okay, all right.
- [07:54]
Vila Sinkonen
Well, the Chinese vision is, one of the great things about it is that there is actually a vision available that you can analyze. Basically everybody who's been studying or looking at China knows or has heard about this concept of the community of shared future for mankind. Because this is kind of the main grand scale vision that China has been pushing in every possible channel, you know, diplomatically, in its state affiliate medias and so on and so on for. For almost 10 years or over 10 years. So, so of Shared Future is kind of China's macro vision on how the international order should be, should be reformed, so to say, if we look at it through the dimensions that Bill just described, that served as a framework for our book when it comes to distribution of power. The Chinese vision, the Committee of Shade Future is envisions a multipolar order, of course, in which there would be no hegemonic great powers and all, all states, big and small, would have equal relations between each other. So this is kind of the distributional aspect of the order. Now institutionally, the Committee of Shared Future is content on the core institutions that we already have. So the United Nations, United nations affiliated institutions such as the World Health Organization or the climate regime, but also the economic institutions, the, the established economic institutions such as the IMF and World Trade organizations. These would serve as the core of the China led vision, but they would be supported by certain, certain institutions that China has been pushing itself, such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization or the brics. But this would not, you know, completely supplant the established institutions. Now normatively, I guess the bottom line of the Chinese vision that there would be no like hegemonic ideologies or values that every state group of have to be abiding by. So ideologically or normatively the community emphasizes that all the states have the freedom to choose their so called development paths and their domestic values and political ideologies based on their cultural distinctiveness. Temporarily, if you look at China's vision, it's connected to China's own domestic deadline of reaching this so called the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation by 2049. So I guess community shared future would be also in place by then. In our chapter we went a bit further and we, we chose to look at the Global Security Initiative, which is kind of the security arm of this community of shared future vision. And it focuses on kind of the hard security issues of all problems of the current order and how these problems could be fixed. The Global Security Initiative, or TSI for short, is based on six commitments and we don't have to go through them all. There's for example, a commitment to the UN Charter, there's commitment to common, comprehensive and cooperative conception of security. And perhaps most importantly, there's a commitment to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries. Their sovereignty would be highly valued in this Global Security Initiative vision. Under no circumstances would any types of interventions to their domestic affairs be allowed in this vision. So this is kind of a, you could say Westphalian reading of the sovereignty principle that is embedded in this vision. But this is interesting because at the same time the vision also has this so called commitment to indivisible security and to taking the so called legitimate security concerns of all states seriously. Legitimate security concerns. Now what are there, they are not really defined anywhere that precisely. But what this concept of legitimate security concerns seems to imply is that certain states and especially great powers, it seems they can have these certain legitimate security concerns which when violated can then allow certain, certain actions such as small scale or bigger scale invasions against possible security threats. So the logic here seems to be that this is not stated openly at the official level, I think, but the logic seems to be that, for example, not the expansion of NATO towards Russia, towards east after, after the end of the Cold War for Russia, it has been a legitimate security concern. And then Russia's invasion then against Ukraine, while it's definitely not legitimate in itself, is at least the default of NATO in the first place, the legislate secondary concerns kind of override Ukrainian sovereignty according to this reading. I emphasize this is not officially stated anywhere, but this seems to be what the concept means. So there's a major contradiction, you could say, between the commitment to sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries and the so called legitimate security concerns, which basically mean at least great powers can override the sovereignty of, of other states if these so called legitimate security concerns are not taken into account. And as long as this concept remains kind of fuzzy and not defined very clearly, who's to say that other great powers cannot use it as well to, you know, legitimize their own military adventures? Could the US government, for example, define Venezuelan narco terrorists as a legitimate security concern to the us? I don't know because the concept is not defined. It's time on independence. Legitimate concern. Legitimate security concern to China, probably, but we don't know because the concept is not that well defined. That's basically what we were digging up in our chapter on China. China has a really elaborate and detailed security vision, but there's a huge and major contradiction that can be found within it, which is, you know, between this Westphalian understanding of state sovereignty and so called legitimate security concerns.
- [14:03]
Julie Yu Wen Chen
I think you summarize it very well. We can see that the Chinese vision is well elaborated and very forward looking. Yeah. Looking also at the international system as a whole, despite several caveats. And now, you know, thinking about China that has a long civilization history, another country that is of interest here is India, similarly having a long history and civilization. So I wonder if Barr can share with us the findings of your chapter on India.
- [14:30]
Bar Genz
Thank you, Julie, and thank you very much for having me on this podcast. So if we have a look at India and to start with, let's say, broader context, I think it's fair to say that there's absolutely no doubt that India sees the world as entering into a new paradigm, a paradigm that's defined by of course, China's growing presence, also a relative pullback of American power and basically a world that's much more multipolar. And also having a much more uncertain international environment. Here we can take a quote from India's Foreign Minister Jai Shankar and he has said that the world now looks like a global marketplace with fewer preconceptions and more transactions. In that environment, India feels like it has the confidence and certainly also the ambition to claim what it sees as being its a rightful place as a rising power. What does India's world ordering vision then look like? I would say that in terms of the dimensions that were just outlined by Ville, we can break it down into four key concepts. That would be multi alignment, civilizational state forum, shopping and future focus. So the first key concept for me is multi alignment. I think it's quite clear that since 2014 especially India has moved away from a cold war era doctrine of non alignment. Instead at the moment it is practicing multi alignment, meaning that it's engaging simultaneously with multiple major powers, even when those powers, you know, don't get along with each other. So India wants to avoid to have to choose between the us, China and Russia. And for them that's totally normal and natural in a world of multiple poles. And in that world, you know, countries can converge on some issues but not on, on other issues. For them it's a world of so called frenemies. Cooperation and competition coexists. In this context I think India's approach is also quite deeply shaped by a post colonial identity. So it sees the idea of a single western led world order as quite outdated. Instead India talks about multiple orders and it promotes the civilizational idea that well, the world is one family. And this worldview, it influences India's relationships across the board with the us, Russia, China, the eu, Middle east and also especially with the global South. The second key concept I would say is domestic, but it has major foreign policy implications and that is that India sees itself as a civilizational state. India is extremely diverse in terms of geography and administration and also it has a population that's quite divided by languages, caste, religion, customs and also regional identities. For decades India has presented itself as a civilization that has blended and bridged cultures. But I think over the past decade there has been a shift towards the idea of India as a civilizational state, a much more unified and more culturally defined entity that is rooted in Hindu ness or Hindutva as they call it. I think this shift is very visible in the growing use of the name Bharat for India, which carries quite deep historical and cultural meanings. And it's also very visible in the government's current emphasis on, you know, these ancient knowledge systems, cultural Revival and also national cohesion. So India still promotes this idea of unity and diversity, but it's increasingly as a, as a model that is shaped by a very strong and dominant cultural core. Then the third dimension, or key concept is what some scholars have called forum shopping. So this is what India itself calls multi engagement. So India belongs to quite a wide range of international groupings that have very often overlapping or even contradictory military memberships. And it uses these memberships to maximize flexibility and its own influence as well. For example, India is part of the BRICS plus for South South Cooperation is part of the Quad together with the us, Australia and Japan. But at the same time it's part of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the SEO, which is a Eurasian grouping that also includes Russia and China. So some of these groupings, they complement the US led system, while others say they challenge it. The point is not so much about ideological alignment, it's all about strategic autonomy. And India, well, basically wants options and not obligations. And of course linked to this, India is also very strongly still pushing for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, saying that its size and economy and global role basically make that indispensable. And then the final key concept I would say is forward looking and it's some summed up under the slogan Vixit Bharat 2047. So Vixit Bharat basically means developed India. It's the government's long term vision for 2047, which is the year that India celebrates its 100th anniversary of independence. And this is not an economic plan, it's much more. It's a national mission that combines economic ambitions with social development, technological innovation and also civilizational pride, based on that history that you already referred to. So basically India wants to be a global growth engine, a leader of the global south, and also a major diplomatic and military power. And I would say that India certainly has the fundamentals to back that ambition. As we all know, it's now the most populous country in the world and it has a very young and educated workforce. The economy is over US$4 trillion, growing at a rate of 6.5% every year. India is central to global climate change mitigation efforts and it also has the world's fourth most powerful army, coupled with the world's fifth largest defense budget. And in addition to that, I think the fact that we, the longer the more talk about the Indo Pacific rather than Asia Pacific, I think that also in combination with all the other factors kind of reflects India's RIS strategic weight. So just to sum up, when we Talk about India today, I think we're not just talking about a rising power. We're talking about a country that it sees itself, the long and the more as post Western, post colonial, multi aligned and multi engaged, and also increasingly civilizational. So basically a country that wants to shape the rules of the international system and not simply adapt to those rules. So that I think helps explain why India and its world ordering vision or visions, why it matters so much in today's global politics.
- [21:42]
Julie Yu Wen Chen
Yeah, thank you Bar for sharing the chapter on India. The book we are talking about is called Competing Visions for International Order. Challenges for Shared Direction in an Age of Global Contestation. So we have already talked about the China chapter and the India chapter. Both share a forward looking kind of vision of the world. And now I inevitably we have to go back to the United States and visa. You are the expert on the US politics. So how does the United States vision the world order vis a vis China and India?
- [22:16]
Matti
I think this is actually a super interesting question at this point in time because what I argue in my chapter is that the US did have a vision of international order. It was a vision of a US Led order and it really informed US engagement with the international arena for the first couple of decades after the Cold War. And some called this deep engagement, some called it liberal hegemony, some called it primacy. But the vision really entailed four dimensions. So first, deterring the rise of hostile regional powers with a global military presence in essentially all key theaters of the world, an open international economic order, support for and development of the key institutions of what has been called the liberal international order. And also doing the same with respect to the US Global alliance network. And then also a commitment to promoting liberal democratic norms and values. And I really think that this vision has been challenged in the past 10 years or so, which is the time span for the book. It's been challenged on the level of foreign policy elites and also the American public. And this is various reasons, to name a few. Economic dislocation that's at least partly been caused by globalization, deepening political polarization in the United States, the US Getting bogged down in the greater Middle east for decades in what was originally called the war on Terror. And then of course this broader global power shift and especially the rise of China therein. So what really my chapter is about is it's a story of a lost vision. The story of how a declining superpower is struggling to find a vision for the world that would inform then its own engagement with that world. And in all of the dimensions, you can kind of see that. And my caveat is that the chapter stops at the end of the Biden era, and it doesn't account for the last, latest twists and turns of the Trump administration. But I can say a few things about that as well. In terms of power, the US really never acknowledges, unlike Bart mentioned for India, the advent of what, what is called oftentimes the multipolar world. Instead, the US during both, like the, the especially the first Trump era or the first Trump administration and the Biden era, it talks about great power competition, that the world is a competitive place and the great powers are the key actors. But there's really no deep thinking on what that world would look like after this era of great power competition comes to an end. What kind of a shared understanding the great powers can find in terms of the future of international order, in terms of American values or Western values or liberal values? There's been some pulling and hauling across the past few administrations. I mean, Biden obviously was very vocal about this being a contest between an authoritarian and a liberal conception of the world, this great power competition. But then Trump uses very different language also in his first term and in his second term. They talk about civilizations, they talk about sovereignty and patriotism, they don't talk about democracy and human rights. So clearly that consensus has also kind of fractured. And the same goes for institutions. Even during Democratic administrations, the Obama and the Biden administrations, the U.S. was not as wedded anymore to this kind of broad, large scale multilateralism. Instead, they went for these issue based coalition. And of course, this is an even bigger issue in both the first Trump term and the second Trump term, where the US Is openly hostile to international institutions. And in terms of how these administrations think of the dimension of time for like Obama and Biden, it was obvious there was a sense of urgency in seizing a moment when the US still has paramount role as the leading power in the international system and doing things to kind of prolong that. Whereas for Trump, he really talks about going back to some kind of a golden age for America, if you, if you read his speeches. So this is the kind of contestation that is going on over America's role in the world and America's vision for international order. And really great power competition is the obvious common ground. But it's very unclear what that would then ultimately amount to in terms of a future international order. Now what the current Trump administration is doing is really just sort of adding to that tension over differing visions of what international life should look like on the sort of left side of the American politics versus the the right side of the American politics. So clearly for Trump, this old vision of international order has been discarded and they're trying to articulate something different in its place. But it's unclear whether that new articulation is actually going to become the new hegemonic understanding of what the international order should look like and what the United States role should look like in that order. I think that's the key point. The US Vision is in flux. There is no sort of across the board shared understanding of where the international order should be going and how the United States should conduct itself in order to achieve some future conception of the international order.
- [27:45]
Julie Yu Wen Chen
Thank you Vida. If I can conclude, basically we can see the Chinese and the Indian vision are more forward looking while the United States one seems to being shaped all the time and we need wisdom to avoid really a tragic race to the bottom. So this is something very important and if you are interested, definitely you need to check out this new book. Thank you very much Villa Matti and Bar for sharing your new book with us. You are listening to Nordic Asia Podcast with me, Julie Yuwen Chen at the University of Helsinki.
- [28:18]
Matti
You have been listening to the Nordic Asia Pod, Sam.