The year of the masks
During this overflowing annus horribilis of the COVID-19 pandemic, with its economic and social consequences at home, the powers and many partners, politically exposed in their Eastern repression and Western chaos, are having a less complicated year internationally.
The US, polishing its wounded prestige with a vaccine in record time, encircles Iran by bringing Arabs and Israelis closer together, seeks to corral China with India, Australia and Japan, while letting Turkey play dangerously between allies and rivals. Moreover, he reinforces the Monroe Doctrine through the Inter-American Development Bank and Joe Biden will presumably polish diplomacy with other satellites; this is ambivalent Pax Americana on automatic.
Russia, entangled in the grand post-Soviet scenario, is content with the honour that comes from its action in the Caucasus and the survival of its allies. It could also be a politically fruitful year for Europe with a more redistributive management of resources, where a more central France is turning outwards from its social problems and Germany seems to be encouraged to unshackle its historical image a little.
The European Union is disempowering itself, but it has even allowed size not to be a constraint on its work: the Latins defend solidarity, the Netherlands firmly represents frugality, and Poland and Hungary have not renounced their "illiberalism". For its part, the United Kingdom has just recovered its insular solitude in a world quite different from the one it left.
China, proving unstoppable, is trying to cloud its health responsibilities and authoritarianism: it has signed the world's largest free trade agreement with 14 neighbours, an endorsement of multilateralism and trade liberalisation, as it aims to lower tariffs to 90 per cent. However, its final scope falls short of initial expectations, as India decided to withdraw from the negotiations and the approved text does not address investment or environmental and labour issues.
Japan, South Korea or the ASEAN countries could use this agreement as a counterweight and to sort out the benefits obtained, that is, to take advantage of the Asian giant's strength as the shark does with the shark.
There is also hope that the trade war will change its current form. However, between a zero-sum game geopolitical cold war and a fiery gradual geo-economic confrontation, a tepid competition will continue; the containment of part of Rimland by Rimland is here to stay.
The masks, covering only half a face, symbolise a contradictory and peculiar era: a crash course to remind the Russians that the world is not a chessboard with rules as fixed as in chess, the Chinese that nothing comes back as directly as the ball in ping-pong, the Americans that trying too many touchdowns can be bad for the head, and the Europeans that they must continue to strengthen the midfield.
Augusto Manzanal Ciancaglini. Politólogo/ The Diplomat