In turbulent times of shaping a multipolar global scenario, the role, creation and speculation about new military blocs overshadow economic integration initiatives, in clear contrast to the beginnings of the post-Cold War era, when commercial alliances set the tone. geopolitical.
Joe Biden’s recent visit to Asia illustrated the trend, as security issues dominated the agenda, under the shadow of the meeting, in Tokyo, of the Quad, a group led by Washington to, in the security aspect, contain Chinese influences.
Biden had in his bag the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, a broad trade agreement to regain weight, especially in an Asian universe shaped by China’s dynamism. The Democratic project, however, faded in the face of the high temperature of debates on American support for Taiwan in a possible Chinese invasion of the island.
Focuses and emphases of the Bidenista tour of South Korea and Japan represent the “zeitgeist”. Talking about a military bloc, in an era marked by the tragic invasion of Ukraine by Russia, has unfortunately become a sign of current times, far from the conversations almost monopolized by commercial competition, a concept that supplied the diplomatic world throughout the 1990s.
At the time, the unipolar world dominated by the USA, after the disintegration of the USSR, prevailed. Washington was celebrating the victory in the Cold War, and its ideologues propagated the predominance of “American values”, with defenses of the market economy supported by the option of none other than the Chinese Communist Party to embark on capitalist mechanisms.
Economic competition, therefore, will replace ideological disputes, it was then asserted. A race was launched for the formation of commercial blocks, with the objective of integrating and expanding markets.
In 1989, a pioneer of the trend came up with the name of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, a massive project to unite 21 nations like the USA, China and Russia. The creation of the free trade area never took off, but for years, leaders would meet to, in addition to taking pictures in typical host country attire, promote a relevant diplomatic forum.
In an eagerness to reduce tariffs and customs barriers, blocs such as NAFTA, in 1994, with the USA, Canada and Mexico, and Mercosur in 1991, with the founders Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, proliferated. In 1992, integration in the old continent intensified and a treaty was signed to be called the European Union.
Military arrangements obviously remained. NATO expanded, intervened in wars of Yugoslav disintegration and sent troops to Afghanistan after 11 September 2001. But the most frequent acronyms in the news were economic treaties and trade disputes.
Today, while still the undisputed hegemonic power, the US is witnessing the rise of China, the new global weight of India, the challenges of Russia and the revitalization of the European Union. These are signs of the new multipolarity.
And, in this shaping scenario, military and security alliances, such as NATO, Quad, Aukus (Australia, UK and USA) and the Collective Security Treaty Organization, with six countries under the leadership of the Kremlin, are back in the spotlight. And there are those who bet on the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, bringing together Russia and China and six other members, as the embryo of a possible war-like bloc.
Several historical readings point to the inevitability of turbulence and instability in the transition from a unipolar to a multipolar scenario. But let global leaders not forget that, more than ever, diplomacy is the only way out.
