Ambassador Dr. Ragab Al-Suqairi
Almost a full year after the start of the war in Ukraine, many political analysts no longer have any doubt that the hot war that is still raging between Moscow and Kiev is a proxy war (see my article in this newspaper on September 16, 2022) being waged by the United States and its partners. In the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) against Russia, for several goals, the most important of which for Washington is to eliminate any possibility of Moscow’s return, whether alone or in alliance with China, to play a role on the world stage that is identical to the role played by the former Soviet Union during the Cold War, which will lead to If achieved, it will lead to competition with Washington over the leadership of the current world order, and even to the formation of a new bipolar or multipolar system, in which China or the Sino-Russian alliance will be one of its largest poles, and this may result in a new cold war and perhaps the decline of the role of the United States in the international arena to a superpower. of the second degree.
The urgent question here, in light of the foregoing, is: Is what is happening between the United States and China currently a cold war, or is it a form of competition between the two superpowers? The most pressing question is: Is world war possible? Is it really imminent?
Hot war in Ukraine
The hot war that the United States is waging (by proxy) in Ukraine has cost the American taxpayer so far, according to estimates by some sources, $55 billion, in addition to the $37 billion requested by President Biden recently and awaiting approval by Congress. The war has also cost Washington’s European allies severe economic crises, including The energy crisis, which was exacerbated by Russia’s cessation of oil and gas supplies to Europe, the failure of the sanctions imposed on Russia, and the political, social, and security problems that followed the war, became overwhelming Europe, in addition to the instability caused by the influx of Ukrainian refugees into neighboring countries, and the expectations that the war would continue indefinitely. , and even turned it into a devastating war with no ominous consequences, especially when it became clear that the United States was determined to defeat Russia and banish the specter of Washington’s decline into a superpower of the second degree. Russian lands, in addition to retaining the eastern regions of Ukraine that were occupied during the current war, and preventing Ukraine from joining NATO And because Russia considers this a serious threat to its national security. The insistence of both sides not to stop the war until after achieving its goals in full formed a state of impasse that made a peaceful solution to the crisis elusive.
The Cold War between the United States and China
Whatever the outcome of the war in Ukraine, whether Moscow won it or Washington won, Europe will be the most affected and must work to avoid a new cold war, as German Chancellor Olaf Scholz says in an article in the latest issue of the American magazine Foreign Affairs entitled:
The Global Zeitenwende ( turning point): How to avoid a New Cold War in a Multipolar Era
Whether we agree with the German chancellor or disagree with him about what the war in Ukraine may lead to or the shape of the new world order, the cold war between the United States and China (or between it and the Sino-Russian alliance) is inevitable and has even become almost inevitable. Most of its elements have become available, perhaps the most important of which is the ideological conflict (between communism and capitalism), the arms race between the United States and its allies on the one hand, and between China and Russia and their allies on the other, tensions, military maneuvers, and displays of force in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea, alliances and polarization (the United States held the Quad Alliance QUAD, which includes Australia, Japan and India. It also held the AUKUS triple alliance that includes Britain and Australia and aims to provide the latter with nuclear-powered submarines, in addition to the five-year alliance that includes Australia, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and Thailand. As for China, its most important alliances are with Russia and with the Organizing Countries. Shanghai), the deployment of military bases in different regions of the world, proxy wars, luring and pushing towards the edge of the danger of direct military confrontation Military and technological espionage, cyber attacks, economic sanctions, and diplomatic clashes in international organizations.
Perhaps the most important of the aforementioned elements that make up the Cold War are the tensions resulting from the maneuvers of the American and Chinese sides around the island of Taiwan and over its straits and in the South China Sea, and the alliances that resulted from these tensions, in addition to what happened during the past two days when Washington monitored the flight of what it called A “Chinese spy balloon” over the US state of Montana and then in the airspace of the states of North Carolina and South Carolina, which was shot down later, and until the hour of preparing this article, the concerned authorities are still collecting its debris that fell in the Atlantic Ocean several miles from the shores of South Carolina and will transfer it to the office laboratory Federal investigations, and the “Chinese spy balloon” incident led to the postponement of Secretary of State Blinken’s visit to Beijing, on which the two sides relied a lot in order to smooth the atmosphere between them and reduce the tension that aggravated following the visit of former Speaker of the House of Representatives in Congress Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan in the month Last August and the resulting reactions made the scene as close as possible to the Cold War. This balloon incident came to add another component of the cold war between Washington and Beijing, which is the mutual accusations of espionage.
It is worth noting that with all the elements of the Cold War referred to above and available in the American-Chinese scene, the United States still describes the relationship with China as competitive and avoids describing it as a Cold War. Rather, Washington sees China as its only competitor in all fields, political. And it denies this about Russia, according to the national security strategy launched by the Biden administration several months ago, about which I wrote three articles in this newspaper (on 20, 29, and 31 last October).
Is world war inevitable, and is it imminent?
Despite all the negative aspects of the presence of nuclear weapons in the arsenals of the five major countries (America, Russia, China, Britain and France) in addition to the arsenals of the four countries that produced nuclear weapons outside the international non-proliferation regime (India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea), despite all the negative aspects, on top of which is the threat of the annihilation of the human race, However, many political analysts see the existence of nuclear weapons as a stabilizing factor that curbs the outbreak of a world war, and that World War II (1939-1945) was the last of the world wars. It is true that the United States did use nuclear weapons against Japan near the end of the war, but it did so because it was the only one in possession of them. One of the evidences used by the proponents of the theory that the existence of nuclear weapons curbs the outbreak of world wars is that World War II broke out only twenty years after the end of World War I, while seventy-eight years have passed since the end of World War II, and no world wars have broken out despite all the conflicts. And the crises that occurred during about half a century of the Cold War that brought the world to the brink of the abyss (the missile crisis in Cuba in 1962), but the alternative was always either proxy wars (as happened after the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in 1979) or reaching a state of agreement between the superpowers.
Accordingly, the author of these lines does not believe that the Ukraine war will lead to a world war. If the arsenals of the superpowers were limited to conventional weapons, the Ukraine war might have developed into a world war, but the presence of about four thousand nuclear warheads in the United States and about six thousand nuclear warheads in Russia (in addition to what other nuclear states possess) could be a sufficient deterrent to proxy belligerents by avoiding the development of the Ukrainian war into a world war. The bottom line is that world war is not inevitable, nor is it imminent, and perhaps it is not possible at all, and God knows best.
Former Ambassador to China, Australia, United Nations / Geneva
Researcher in international relations and diplomatic studies
Source: Rai Alyoum
