The United States with its sights set on Taiwan
The transitional period, between the end of one established order and the beginning of another, is usually marked by a series of wars. The current historical moment between US hegemony and the rise of Chinese power could end in another great war if the current agonising unipolar world order does not find a peaceful way to adjust to a new multipolar world order.
And it could start on any pretext: Russia's invasion of Ukraine; Washington's defence of Taiwan; a bullet in the wrong place or a missile in NATO territory. For a cargo ship's brush with a military vessel or a deliberate provocation.
On 4 July, two military vessels, one Russian and one Chinese, entered the waters off the Senkaku Islands under the confluence of Japan, but they are part of a bitter dispute over their possession with China. Tokyo sent a diplomatic note to Beijing with the notation "provocation" at a time of heightened sensitivity over sanctions against Russia.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine on 24 February has set nerves on edge and all previous tensions have been exacerbated without even concealing the fact that the Cold War 2.0 that has been talked about for the past five years can no longer be hidden. The world is heading towards a new arms race with two blocs that could once again be at polar opposites: that of freedom and democracy versus that of tyranny and autocracy. And with international bodies and institutions that are not serving as mediators or interlocutors.
The recent conclusion of the NATO Summit in Madrid, with the signing of the new Strategic Concept, implies a 360-degree vision and the return of the United States to European geopolitics with more weapons, more troops and more military equipment.
All 30 members of the Atlantic Alliance agreed to allocate more money to defence, a percentage close to 2% of GDP, and have also given their approval for the entry of Sweden and Finland, whose protocol of accession was signed on 5 July in Brussels, at NATO headquarters, by the Foreign Ministers of all the allies. All that remains is for each leader to sign and for their respective congresses to approve.
For the time being, more military spending is not good news because it means diverting resources needed for other sensitive areas such as health, education, transport and better infrastructure from the budget.
Last year, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the world spent $2.11 trillion on military spending. And it was the US, China, India, the UK and Russia that spent the most on their own defence, accounting for 62% of global spending. In the same year, the US spent 800 billion dollars on defence and armaments.
Will more military spending bring more peace? In this regard, I consulted two international experts who know both NATO from the inside and China on the ground, both of whom are aware of the geopolitical challenges that generate high tensions and obvious disputes.
In Javier Jiménez Olmos' view, there is a need for "a lot of education" on the issue of imminent rearmament because more weapons and more military alliances are not the way to ensure peace.
"I don't want to be radical, neither against nor in favour. I have been a colonel in the Spanish Air Force here in Spain and have served six years in NATO, so I know a little about how this organisation works," said Jiménez Olmos, who also holds a doctorate in peace and international security.
Jiménez Olmos expresses some doubts about the Alliance's recent decisions and insists that history itself shows the opposite when it resorts to armament as a guarantee of peace.
"He insists that history itself shows the opposite when it comes to arms race as a guarantee of peace. I have many doubts about this more aggressive strategy and by that I don't mean that the other side has not been aggressive because obviously Putin has invaded part of Ukraine... but I insist that I don't think that military responses are the most appropriate because all they do is increase violence and of course we, the citizens, pay the consequences", he said reflectively.
One bad decision can trigger a major war as it did in the First and Second World Wars....
I worry about the aggressive, warlike momentum reminds me of the period before the First World War when Western societies encouraged each other to go to war on one side or the other; that is, until soldiers went to the trenches and realised what war was all about".
More restless armament
Jiménez Olmos, a member of the Seminario de Investigación para la Paz de Zaragoza, comments on his concern about the direction things are taking in Europe after the invasion of Russian troops: "All this otanistic impetus scares me. I'm not going to justify Putin, but you have to look at what was happening in 2014 in the Donbas and review whether NATO has been constantly expanding, exacerbating the Russian perception of a threat. The US had that perception with Russian missiles in Cuba".
There is a sense of triumphalist jubilation here in Madrid with NATO member leaders saying we are winning the war against Putin. There is a mood of resurrection of the Alliance...
When the Berlin Wall fell, NATO lost its reference point. In 9/11 it found an enemy in Islam and had to arm itself; now there is another enemy, so all this has to be justified... I am frightened and worried about triumphalism.
Jiménez Olmos adds that societies are very manipulable: "the Minister of Defence, Margarita Robles, says that 85% of Spaniards support being in NATO, but we should first ask how they want to be in NATO and what kind of organisation they want it to be. If NATO should exist to serve American interests or if it should be much more European".
Will Putin win the war?
We don't know who is winning the war, but what I do know is who is losing it: you and I and everybody, because we have more inflation, we are paying much more for food, petrol, heating and so on. And of course, the thousands of Ukrainian and Russian lives that have been claimed.
The announcement of more military spending comes on top of all the arms contracts that are being signed by various countries willing to improve their defensive capabilities. Fear is the main watchtower.
China recently launched its new state-of-the-art aircraft carrier the Fujian, type 003, bringing the number of aircraft carriers to three; Spain has spent 2.043 billion euros to buy 20 Eurofighters from Airbus Defence and Space; and in Germany, the Bundestag amended the Constitution to add a fund of 100 billion euros to allocate 2% of its GDP to defence, after more than two decades of pacifist vocation and minimal military spending.
The war occupation of Ukraine has marked an exante and an expost in the world order, and for the Murcian, certain interests prevail that make people polarised.
"Solutions must be sought through cooperation, peace agreements and dialogue. To see Boris Johnson, an immoral man, disqualified by his own actions, express himself mockingly, as he did in a very high-level meeting at the G-7, about Putin, makes you think about who are the ones who are deciding that we should have more weapons", reflected the writer, from the clash of civilisations to the alliance of civilisations.
It's not Ukraine, it's China
More than a few international analysts see the invasion of Ukraine as a laboratory for what might happen if, at some point, China decides to invade Taiwan.
On 23 May, at the height of Russia's military manoeuvres on Ukrainian territory, President Joe Biden said in Japan (to a point-blank question from the press) that the US would defend Taiwan in the event of an attack by China. "Yes, we are committed to that".
Biden also dropped other pearls of wisdom, such as indicating to Beijing that the path it would suffer would be the same as that suffered by Russia with a bombshell of economic, financial, diplomatic and political sanctions.
China is always in the US interest. It has been their obsession since 2001, three months after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, when China joined the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and its take-off was unstoppable.
The Galician Xulio Ríos, director of the Observatory of Chinese Politics, wrote in 2012 China Calls for Change and his more recent book The Metamorphosis of Communism in China, both of which analyse how the Asian giant has become what it is today.
Ríos explains to me that in 2012, when Xi Jinping began his mandate, at that time China was asking for a breakthrough and would end up making its way around the planet and on all continents with significant expansion and influence.
According to the expert on Asia and China, with respect to the recently concluded NATO Summit in Madrid, rearmament also has to do with the hegemonic prevalence of the United States and the West as a whole.
"In the next five or six years, let's say that these are still the predictions of most international analysis centres and more official multilateral institutions, and China could surpass the United States in absolute terms by 2031 or 2032 at the latest, and this will have a psychological impact and an impact in terms of the expansion of its influence at the global level," he pointed out.
It's not all about Ukraine. What has been at the heart of Washington's interests for years is China, to such an extent that the Indo-Pacific is among the Pentagon's priorities. It is the new dispute.
China has been tried to be stopped in various ways, as Ríos explains:
"The strategy that has been set in motion by the United States and is now infecting Europe and Asia in the sense that it is necessary to mobilise actively to prevent this scenario from being consummated in some way, and for that there is the economic, commercial and technological war".
The specialist and writer adds that this trident is completed with a military pressure that will increase significantly in the coming years around China, which is why the military AUKUS Alliance between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, signed on 15 September 2021, has arisen, with the Indo-Pacific as its main focus.
How do you interpret the NATO Summit?
In general terms, I would say that it is a very important sharing of the visions and interpretations that the United States is putting forward with respect to the most important future challenges for the Western world in the coming years; that vision that took shape with Donald Trump and that Joe Biden has continued to a large extent. At one point it seemed to drive the United States and Europe apart, but this summit seals any rift and establishes a strategic understanding - whether or not it will hold up over time with Europe remains to be seen.
Ríos believes that there will be very complicated years ahead at the international level, with the United States interested in preserving its hegemony, and although China says it does not aspire to replace the United States, it proposes an evolution towards a multipolar order with actors such as the European Union (EU) and the BRICS formed by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
There are analysts who argue that China would never invade Taiwan...
As for Taiwan, China has said it a million times, actively and passively, it is a red line. Although China is the world's leading economic power, the country's modernisation process will never be completed until all the problems linked to the country's reunification are resolved. The case of Hong Kong and Macao, the case of Taiwan, which are big words for China, remain unresolved, but the main leadership challenge remains peaceful reunification. If China were to opt for military reunification, it would be a tragedy for Taiwan, for China, for Asia and for the whole world.
The Chinese leadership, Ríos continues, is well aware of the risks posed by the military route, but there are two key obstacles to a peaceful solution.
"The first is the rise of sovereignty in Taiwan, where secessionism governs with the Democratic Progressive Party and is likely to continue to govern for the next decade, which would make dialogue for a negotiated solution to this problem more difficult; and secondly, the United States, which has always been very aware of the high level of sensitivity that the Taiwan issue has for China and for the Chinese Communist Party, is in a certain sense playing the Taiwan card to create a compromising situation with China", the specialist stressed.