My Take | Just who stands to benefit from a rules-based international order?
- A system that has everyone at the table, but where only a select few enjoy a full-course meal, might not be as desirable as it claims to be
When Mahatma Gandhi was asked what he thought about Western civilisation, he reportedly quipped, “I think that would be a very good idea.” The same might be said about “the rules-based international order”.
Western leaders such as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken bang on about it at every opportunity. Leaders from the Global South, however, tend to roll their eyes at its mention.
Its advocates think it’s the greatest thing humanity ever came up with since the discovery of fire. Everyone follows the same rules, regardless of their being powerful and not so powerful. It’s the order that stands against chaos, or naked power struggle where the strong beat up the weak. Despite some flaws, it’s universally applicable and best for everyone.
That is, implicitly, the underlying assumption of a new essay titled “China Is Ready for a World of Disorder: America Is Not”, in Foreign Affairs. A similar assumption is behind the widespread claim in Western political discourse that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is an attempt to destroy that universal system. Therefore everyone should fight against what amounts to the threat of chaos, or if you like, evil Russia. Many Western supporters of Ukraine are genuinely outraged that people outside the West don’t necessarily consider the conflict as a fight between good and evil, and don’t consider their interests to coincide with those of the West.
However, many in the Global South are much less invested in the system, seeing it as no more than a camouflage for the rich countries to dominate the rest. Whatever advantages the latter might have been given, they are crumbs compared to the outsized winnings the great powers take home by designing the system, writing the rules and enforcing them to their own advantage, often arbitrarily. The West’s virtue-signalling looks like hypocrisy at its worst.
As with most of such debates, both sides have a point. Who wouldn’t want a fair system, and no country being bullied just for being weak or poor? At least that’s the theory but does it actually work out that way?
