DR. JOHN C. HULSMANJune 18, 2021 23:20344
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Albert Einstein perfectly summed up political risk thinking when he said: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” The best analysts understand there is an absolute need to explain a planet of infinite complexity in accurate, relatable terms that captures the essence of what is going on. However, there is an accompanying great danger that the drive toward elegant simplicity intellectually morphs into a shallow caricature of the world that fundamentally misleads.
At last week’s G7 meeting in Cornwall, US President Joe Biden’s theory of the world was found wanting; proving to be an oversimplification of a very complicated place. Faced with a new era with two discernible superpowers (the US and China), the new president is rightly aware that they key to ultimate success in this bipolar competition is which superpower crafts genuine alliances with the great powers just below it in order of importance (the Anglosphere countries, the EU, Japan, India, and Russia).
Biden, correctly condemning the outgoing Trump administration for not doing enough to curry favor with these great powers — which, unlike during the US-Soviet Cold War, now have a great deal of latitude in setting the trajectories of their respective foreign policies — sees a geostrategic opening here based on ideology. He correctly points out that the great democratic powers are all more pro-American than they are pro-Chinese, while Russia is closer to China. This, Biden is certain, is the basic new strategic division in the world.
It is here that Biden’s worldview slips from simple to simplistic. Of course, Biden hopes that this democracy versus autocracy theme has intellectual legs (fawning US commentators have even labeled the new idea “the Biden doctrine”) as it suits America’s geostrategic position. With the Anglosphere, India, Japan and the EU all firmly on America’s side (with only Russia supporting China), it is likely to retain its preeminent global role into the new era.
The G7 meeting served as a perfect experimental template for Biden’s thesis, as its membership comprises most of the other great powers in question: The EU (Germany, France and Italy), Japan, and the Anglosphere countries (the UK and Canada). Surely all these democratic allies would easily coalesce around a common position balancing China?
Of course, they did not. Beyond the abundant flummery of the G7 meeting — by far its most important initiative, the plan for putting a common floor on global taxation of multinationals (Amazon, Google, Facebook, etc.), was worked out well in advance of the photo ops in Cornwall — almost nothing of substance was agreed about how to commonly deal with China, which is easily the single most important foreign policy challenge faced by the democratic grouping.
The G7 countries did agree to yet another World Health Organization (WHO) investigation into the causes of the pandemic. However, given the WHO’s appalling recent track record on this issue, I wouldn’t hold my breath. Neutralist EU leaders Germany and Italy (plus European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel) — seeing China as much as a market opportunity as an existential geopolitical threat — blocked the US, UK, Canada and France from criticizing Beijing’s human rights record.
Beyond the abundant flummery of the meeting, almost nothing of substance was agreed.
Dr. John C. Hulsman
Pathetically, an earlier specific reference to these human rights violations was omitted in the final draft, with only a pallid, generic reference to the global evils of forced labor included. Tellingly, such was the state of G7 disunity over Beijing that China itself was not mentioned in the group’s final communique, despite it having emerged as the dominant topic of the leaders’ discussions.
The real-world G7 diplomatic failure stands as an intellectual rebuke to Biden’s putative doctrine. This is because, in his oversimplification of the world, the Wilsonian president has assumed that just because the democratic states have similar values they are bound to have similar interests. The ineffectual G7 meeting showed up this gross oversimplification. At present, as the meeting attests to, Japan, India and the Anglosphere countries are lining up firmly in the American camp on the need to balance against China. However, both Russia (though certainly tilting toward Beijing) and the EU (tilting toward Washington) are instead struggling to maintain more of a neutralist stance independent of either superpower.
The Kremlin, fearful of its subordinate position in any Sino-Russian alliance, with a regime founded on the principle of Great Russian nationalism, is wary of being swallowed whole by the Chinese whale. The EU, chafing for decades under US domination and beguiled by the perceived riches of the Chinese market, is tempted to not fully commit to the American camp.
Leaving out the complexity that the great powers today can pursue independent neutralism as well as align with either superpower led Biden to naively believe that all the democratic great powers would be with him; the G7 decisively proved otherwise. To emerge victorious in the great Sino-American competition, such intellectual oversimplifications must be avoided at all costs. Otherwise, expect an endless series of G7 meetings amounting to nothing.
- Dr. John C. Hulsman is the president and managing partner of John C. Hulsman Enterprises, a prominent global political risk consulting firm. He is also senior columnist for City AM, the newspaper of the City of London. He can be contacted via chartwellspeakers.com.
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source Biden’s oversimplification of the world highlighted by G7 | Arab News
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