Abstract
The first chapter showed that IR theory, as an area of interdisciplinary research, is not complete unless the social, economic and environmental dimensions of this field of study are taken into account. The two great paradigms were appropriated to explain historical events of the political and military subsystems, but unappropriated for the explanation of phenomena and situations that are part of the socio-economic and ecological international subsystems.
World peace can not be achieved without creative efforts tantamount to the dangers it confronts. The contribution that an integrated Europe can give to civilization and peace is fundamental. But European integration will not be the result of a single undertaking but of concrete small steps addressed to promote a type of solidarity that goes beyond the secular opposition between France and Germany.
Schuman (1984: 268)
The main purpose of a politician is not to be right but for people to acknowledge that he is on the right path. A successful person is the one who lights the candle in the direction of the wind.
Adenauer (1984: 273)
Geopolitically, America is an island off the shore of the large landmass of Eurasia, whose resources and population far exceed those of the United States. The domination by a single power of either of Eurasia’s two principle spheres – Europe or Asia – remains a good definition of strategic danger for America, Cold War or no Cold War. For such a grouping would have the capacity to outstrip America economically and, in the end, militarily. That danger would have to be resisted even were the dominant power apparently benevolent, for if the intentions ever changed, America would find itself with a grossly diminished capacity for effective resistance and a growing inability to shape events.
Kissinger (2014: 813)
Latin America and the Caribbean can make important progress in the goals that each country has proposed, and as a region as a whole within the framework of the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development. This will make it possible to meet the goals established therein, based on a new paradigm of development, with a strong focus on rights of a participatory nature, promoting democratic governance as an essential instrument for peace.
Aravena (2017: 32)
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Notes
- 1.
But even in the case of Latin American regionalism, as can be seen in the social and political crisis of Venezuela, the neighbouring countries have not applied a realist balance of power conception. This explains why they have abstained from military intervention, despite the flow of three million refugees to Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Chile and the rejection of the political legitimacy of Maduro’s regime by Western countries and the Lima Group. And the hemispheric hegemon (the US) has not yet decided on military intervention, possibly because the Pentagon understands that the Russian and Chinese support for the Caracas regime is not a real geopolitical threat. Evidently, a peaceful way out of that crisis requires new elections (which could be organized – for instance – under the UN Security Council umbrella) and the installation of a genuine process of sustainable development by a democratic regime, not the military ‘solution’ implicit in those who are demanding the Interamerican Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (TIAR by its Spanish acronym) to be applied, to give another example. Thus, it is clear why a new approach to IR theory must include an environmental, social, economic and cosmopolitan perspective. Geopolitics and the realpolitik of recent history must not be the exclusive parameters of international security.
- 2.
According to Bela Balassa, economic integration has four stages: (1) The zone of free trade, a territorial scope in which the products of any member country can enter others without paying tariffs, as if they were sold anywhere in the country of origin. (2) The customs union that establishes a tariff that they will pay for products from third countries; this implies that the Member States form a single entity in the field of international trade. (3) The common market, customs union to which is added the free mobility of capital and labour, that is, of workers to the already existing mobility of goods and (eventually) services. These advances require the adoption of common trade policies, the coordination of macroeconomic policies and the harmonization of national legislations. (4) The economic union that consists of the adoption of a single currency and monetary policy, such as the Euro in the EU (cited by Malamud 2011: 221).
- 3.
For example, Hettne (2002: 956) argues that “It is understandable that the most advanced case of economic integration, the European one, is used as a paradigm to compare what happens in other regions, but in light of current regional experiments it is more important to look without prejudice to the formation of a region anywhere in the world and justify the peculiarities of the context. In addition, the moment has arrived to give entrance to a theorization of the new regionalism based on comparative studies and post-structuralist theories.”
- 4.
As previously seen, globalization does not respond to any malevolent conspiracy of the world capitalist elites; it is an economic phenomenon. However, the fall of the Berlin Wall provoked the absorption of the immense geographic area of the former Communist Bloc – including China, which had already embarked on Deng Xiao Ping’s economic reforms – into capitalism, and the increase in the globalization process was accompanied by the rise of new information technologies (internet, cellular telephony) and air and maritime transport facilities.
- 5.
It was during this period that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was signed by Mexico, the United States and Canada in 1994. It was also in these years that Washington promoted the signing of a free trade treaty with the entire region, but the attempt did not prosper. Instead, Washington opted for the signing of bilateral treaties with different countries, such as Colombia, Peru, Chile, Central America and the Dominican Republic – the so-called DR-CAFTA.
- 6.
In the academic debate regarding these problems, some scholars maintain that there is no cession of sovereignty even in the supranational institutions of the European Union because what exist in reality are common policies “that mean management arrangements of some sovereignty but they are not cession ... an objective analysis of the EU shows a scheme not very different from the flexible and multidimensional regionalism of Southeast Asia” (Nájera 2017). For some analysts, this means that integration has ceased to be a way to advance towards political union or some kind of federalism (like the Swiss-style confederation suggested by Joschka Fisher) and is only a means to strengthen multilateral alliances on strategic matters.
- 7.
In Guatemala alone, according to data from the Banco de Guatemala in 2016, US $7,159,967 million entered the country with an annual growth of 13.9% compared to 2015. Maquila textiles, which constitute the second category for foreign currency income, generate a little more than a billion dollars.
- 8.
The Rio Group arose from this search for reaffirmation of the autonomy of Latin American states against the hegemonic power, which in those years sought to overthrow the Sandinista government of Nicaragua. As for the origins of CELAC, the Unity Summit (2nd CALC summit) held in Cancun in February 2010 approved the Cancun Declaration, whose operative clauses point to the creation of an entity such as CELAC. Its fourth clause states the need to: “Promote an integrated agenda, based on the assets of the Rio Group and the agreements of the CALC, as well as existing integration, cooperation and coordination mechanisms and groups, which together constitute a valuable regional asset that is based on shared principles and values, with the purpose of giving continuity to our mandates through a work programme that promotes effective links, cooperation, economic growth with equity, social justice, and in harmony with nature for sustainable development and the integration of Latin America and the Caribbean as a whole” (CELAC Internet Portal); at: http://www.sela.org/celac/quienes-somos/que-es-la-celac/la-calc-simiente-de-la-celac/.
- 9.
An attempt was made in the 1970s to establish a regional consultation and coordination body called the Latin American Economic System (SELA). It was supposed to be permanent and it was based in Caracas. Its purpose was to promote intraregional cooperation via a permanent system of consultation and coordination for the adoption of common positions and strategies on economic and social issues in international bodies and forums as well as before third countries and regional groupings. It was greatly influenced by the ideas of that time about the possibility of a “new international economic order” (NOEI), but SELA never managed to have a prominent presence in the Latin American scene, and in practice the coordination of policies has been absorbed by CELAC.
- 10.
However, according to a personal communication from the expert on Central American integration, Rubén Nájera, the programme of economic integration requested by the governments of the ECLAC region in those years preceded the foundation of ODECA by five months, and that explains why ODECA was never defined as an integration project. In Najera’s view, ODECA was more an associative model (“a small-scale UN”) that not only lacked the objective of integration but was originally conceived as “antidote to federalism”.
- 11.
SICA’s official internet portal; at: https://www.sica.int/sica/sica_breve.aspx.
- 12.
This reference to a “reasonable balance of forces” is curious wording that could be interpreted as an exception to the ideological predominance of the idealist paradigm in the SICA system (because it can only be understood as an expression of the classic realistic doctrine of the balance of power) and thus as a extrapolation of nineteenth-century Westphalian Europe to twentieth-century Central America (in a regional context where Costa Rica lacks armed forces). However, probably it just expresses a lack of knowledge of international relations theory.
- 13.
SICA’s official internet portal; at. https://www.sica.int/sica/sica_breve.aspx.
- 14.
The Brundtland Report was prepared by the former Prime Minister of Norway, Gro Harlem Brundtland, (and a team of international experts) at the request of the United Nations. The report criticizes the concept of economic development by proposing the alternative concept of environmental sustainability, thus rethinking economic development policies which tend to insert countries into globalization without care for the high environmental costs of industrialization and consumerism. It was in this report that the term “sustainable development” was used for the first time, defined as the kind of development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the needs of future generations (Brundtland 1987).
- 15.
At the COP 21 negotiations in Paris the government of Nicaragua refused not only to be part of a common regional association but even to sign the multilateral agreement on climate change.
- 16.
The various reports on the state of the Central American region (ERCA) have been financed by the BCIE and numerous experts from all countries participated in the creation of them, but the result is not “a photograph of reality, but a selective documentation of processes which specify and detail what a number of social, economic, political and institutional actors did in the recent past, and the footprints they left in the development of the Isthmus when seeking to re-establish [the appropriate way to deal with] the challenges and opportunities that transcend territorial borders between countries and to lay the foundations for processes of social and political dialogue to promote sustainable human development in Central America,” says the BCIE website; at https://www.bcie.org/novedades/eventos/evento/quinto-infome-estado-de-la-region-2016/.
- 17.
The German-French axis is the pivot of the EU because the whole integration process started in the 1950s due to the clairvoyance of statesmen like the French statesman Robert Schumann and the German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. The process started on the basis of solid economic foundations of the Franco-German (and Benelux) community of coal and steel (CECA) on the old battlefields of the Rhine region, and that is why peace is the best achievement of the European Union. However, the current European crisis merits quoting in extenso an analyst who does not share my optimistic view about this fundamental issue: “The old flashpoints of Europe, the Rhine Valley, the English Channel and the rest, remain generally quiet. Franco-German tension is growing but it is far from reaching a boiling point. But underneath the surface, the engine of conflict – a romantic nationalism that challenges the legitimacy of transferring authority to multinational institutions and resurrects old national conflicts – is stirring. The right-wing parties are just the tip of the iceberg, although they must not be dismissed in themselves, but beneath the surface, the generalized unease with the consequences of transfers of sovereignty in economic matters is intensifying. For the moment the flashpoints are on the frontier of the European Union, but that Union itself is crumbling. There are four European Unions. There are the German states (Germany and Austria), the rest of northern Europe, the Mediterranean states, and the states in the borderlands by Russia. The Mediterranean Europeans face massive unemployment, in some cases greater than the unemployment experienced by Americans in the Great Depression. The northern European states are doing better but none are doing as well as the Germans. The dramatic differences in the conditions and concerns of the different parts of the European Union represent the lines along which it is fragmenting. Each region experiences reality in a different way, and the differences are irreconcilable. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine how they may be reconciled. There are four Europes, and these four are fragmenting further, back to the nation-states that composed them, and back into the history they wanted to transcend. In the end, the problem of Europe is the same problem that haunted its greatest moments, the Enlightenment. It is the Faustian spirit, the desire to possess everything even at the cost of their souls. Today their desire is to possess everything at no cost. They want permanent peace and prosperity. They want to retain their national sovereignty, but they do not want these sovereign states to fully exercise their sovereignty. They want to be one people, but they do not want to share each other’s faith. They want to speak their own language, but they don’t believe that this will lead to complete mutual understanding. They want to triumph, but they don’t want to risk. They want to be completely secure, but they don’t wish to defend themselves. But there is another Europe, as there has always been – the landlocked mainland that is never quite defeated and never quite secure. The story of modern Europe began in 1991, when the Soviet Union died and the European Union was born. In 2014 Russia reemerged as the flashpoint between it and the European Union came alive, and history began again. It is striking how short-lived were Europe’s fantasies about what was possible. It is also striking that the return of Europe’s more dangerous flashpoints occurred in 2014, one hundred years after the First World War began, one hundred years since Europe began its descent into hell. It has emerged from that hell. But where Faust was willing to sell his soul for perfect knowledge, modern Europe wants perfection without paying a price. There is always a price, and nothing is more dangerous that not knowing what the price is, except perhaps not wanting to know…Europe is no longer the centre of the world, but a subordinate part of the international system…But the idea that Europe has moved beyond using armed conflict to settle its issues is a fantasy. It was not true in previous generations and it will remain untrue in the future. We already see the Russian Bear rising to reclaim at least some of its place in the world. And we see Germany struggling between its own national interests and those of the EU in a world where the two are no longer one. The Europeans are still human….They will have to choose between war and peace (Friedman 2015: 257–258).
- 18.
Vincenç Navarro is Professor of Public Policies at Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona) and a professor at John Hopkins University in the USA.
- 19.
Speaking about Brexit, the former German vice-chancellor Joshka Fisher said in an interview that for the EU it would be a storm but for the UK leaving the EU was going to be a hurricane “with a grim outlook for Britain”. For Fisher the vote at the referendum in 2016 was “all about emotions and kicking the ruling government in the ass”. He added that, as emotions are always unpredictable, it is important to be aware that referendums are always a risk for democracy: “What we see now is that one of the most dynamic economies, a flourishing economy, one of the biggest economies in the world was crashed against the wall for no real reason. And the guys who are responsible of this misery have disappeared in a miraculous way. It is a political drama. To accept that Britain is not any longer a member of the EU is very hard”; at: https://www.euractiv.com/section/euro-finance/interview/joschka-fischer-stabilise-the-eurozone-to-defuse-hurricane-brexit/.
- 20.
Both were ministers of the Social Democratic cabinet of Gerhard Schröder (1998–2005). Oskar Lafontaine was Finance Minister and resigned to show his disagreement with the measures of neoliberal structural reform mentioned in Navarro’s analysis, founding his own party Die Linke (The Left). Fischer was the federal Vice-Chancellor and in that capacity held the post of Foreign Affairs Minister in the coalition government.
- 21.
According to the economist and Harvard professor Rodrik (2014), the “inescapable trilemma” of globalization resides in the fact that democracy, national sovereignty and regional integration are incompatible. You can combine any two of those elements but not have all three simultaneously. Nation states in the age of globalization face a stark choice. They could pool their sovereignty in an integration process like the one of the EU, tailoring their politics to the needs of the regional market and the supranational institutions of Brussels, Strasbourg and Frankfurt. However, precisely that “pooling of sovereignty” of the EU members has been the source of the political reaction of the nationalist and conservative extreme right, for whom electoral support is increasing. However, in my view, deepening democracy through citizens’ participation in the European Parliament, for instance, in favour of a return to the welfare state could give the leverage needed to national government and that could be the way out of that “inescapable trilemma”. Of course, if neighbouring countries with a shared cultural and historical inheritance like those of the EU struggle to integrate, what hope is there for integration processes on a global scale? Another option, according to Rodrik, is that nation states could retain their sovereignty but make the pursuit of regional integration their over-riding policy objective, to the exclusion of other domestic goals. But that seems incompatible with the practice of democratic politics, which is all about making trade-offs between competing aims or goods. In my view, the remaining course of action would not be to sacrifice some measure of regional integration in the interests of sovereignty and democracy (as Rodrik suggest), but on the contrary, to forsake the neoliberal model and deepen democracy through social policies that could provide support to governments genuinely committed to regional integration.
- 22.
Sanahuja explains the Rodrik ‘trilemma’ as follows: “In a well known approach Rodrik (2014) says that in the context of globalization State actors face a ‘trilemma’ between deep economic globalization, nation states and democratic policies which it is not possible to solve because these three goals cannot be satisfied simultaneously and therefore the only way out is to combine just two of them. The financial crisis has shown that in conditions of deep globalization and with nation states as centres of political power its agency is weakened and governance only seems possible if they accept the demands of global markets, postponing electoral mandates related to social rights that are part of advanced democracies” (Sanahuja 2018: 42).
- 23.
For instance, the already mentioned movement called DiEM (Democracy in Europe Movement) organized by Yanis Varoufakis, the former Greek Minister of Finance.
- 24.
The complete series of referenda with their respective percentages (on the number of participants) is as follows: in 1992, 50.7% of the Danish people voted against the Maastricht Treaty (although the consultation was reopened to obtain their approval). In 2001, 53.9% of the Irish voted against the Treaty of Nice. In 2005, 55% of the French and 61% of the Dutch rejected the European Constitutional Treaty. They were not invited to vote again (it was too risky), but in a new consultation – which eliminated the most controversial aspects of the Constitutional Treaty – the Lisbon Treaty was approved. In 2015, 61.3% of Greek citizens voted against the austerity policies promoted by Germany, although without effect because Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and his party had to bow to the demands of Brussels. In 2016, 61.1% of the Dutch rejected the EU Association Agreement with Ukraine, which effectively prevented the opportunity for the Ukrainian government to continue insisting on what was, de facto, a casus belli with Moscow. In 2016, in the Brexit referendum, 51.9% of Britons voted to leave the EU, preciptating the resignation of Prime Minister David Cameron, and that same year 59.4% of Italians rejected a constitutional reform that touched on issues related to the EU, causing the resignation of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi.
- 25.
Indeed, this separatist movement could also result in a sort of ‘Catalexit’ from the European Union, because Madrid could hardly accept an independent Catalonia as an independent member of the Union.
- 26.
This is the balance of the wars that hit the entire region: in Afghanistan after fifteen years of war and 230,000 dead the Taliban have not been defeated, insecurity prevails and democracy is absent. It was n this country that Al Qaeda was born, which gave rise to American intervention (via NATO) after 9/11/2001. Despite the capture (in Pakistan) and extrajudicial execution of Bin Laden, the organization still exists. In Iraq after thirteen years of the illegal war started by the Administration of George W. Bush and more than a million dead, the country is divided between Kurds in the north, Sunnis in the centre – many of whom became terrorists – and the Shia who rule in Baghdad and in the south of the country. where they are the majority. The conditions of life and the situation of violence and insecurity are, of course, much worse than during Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship. As for the countries that experienced the Arab Spring, Libya has been submerged in chaos for over nine years, with more than 40,000 dead and living conditions much worse than those under Gaddafi, with the additional aggravation of the chaos resulting from the destabilization of sub-Saharan Africa by the Libyan crisis. Egypt returned to dictatorship and Yemen continues to be submerged in civil war, while in Syria after eight years of war and more than a quarter of a million dead, needless to say the general situation of the country is a thousand times worse than before the rebellion that pretended to overthrow Bashar El Assad, a rebellion that could have not prospered without the support of the US, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and some other Western powers. The only case in which there has been a relatively successful democratization result of the Arab Spring seems to be that of Tunisia.
- 27.
Bauman cites a promoter of globalized capitalism in whose opinion a corporation belongs to “people who invest in it” and not to their employees, suppliers or the town where it is located. It is important to realize that the term ‘belonging’ is used not in a legal sense but in the sense of space. The underlying meaning is that “...employees come from the local population that are held back by family duties, home ownership and other related factors and therefore can hardly follow the company when it moves elsewhere. Suppliers must deliver their merchandise, and the low cost of transportation gives locals an advantage that disappears as soon as the company moves. As for the locality, it is evident that it will stay where it is, it will hardly follow the company to its new address. Among all the people called to have a voice in business management, only the ‘people who invest’ – the shareholders – are not at all subject to space; they can buy shares at any stock exchange and from any broker, and the proximity or geographic distance of the company will probably be the least of their considerations when making the decision to buy or sell. In principle, there is no spatial determination in the dispersion of the shareholders; they are the only factor authentically free of it. The company ‘belongs’ to them and only to them. Therefore, they are responsible for moving it where they discover or anticipate the possibility of improving dividends, leaving the others – who are tied to the locality – the tasks of licking wounds, repairing damage and dealing with waste. The company is free to move; the consequences cannot – they remain in place. Whoever has the freedom to escape from the locality has it in order to escape the consequences. This is the most important booty of the victorious war for space” (Bauman 2017: 13–15).
- 28.
Just imagine what the policy of the former Soviet Bloc Communist states might have been without the moderate ‘overpower’ of the EU regarding democracy and human rights. Victor Orban, the authoritarian leader of Hungary, can give us an idea.
- 29.
Some argue that since the collapse of the USSR, Russia has ceased to be a global power and that its role has been reduced to that of a regional power. I do not agree with these opinions. Russia is one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and, as such, has global responsibilities. Furthermore, its nuclear arsenal is the only one in the world comparable to that of the US, hence it is the only power capable of confronting the US, to the extent that, from the perspectives of the world military subsystem and nuclear power, it could be said that we continue to live in a bipolar world. Moreover, due to the war in Syria, Russia continues to be a major player in the Middle Eastern conflict, so it is easy to imagine that the analysts of the US ‘intelligence community’ worry permanently about the role played by Moscow at world level. This is also true at the American level, as can be seen in the turmoil provoked by the investigation into the alleged Russian intervention in the 2016 US election. Finally, in another example, the role of Moscow and the Russian presence in Latin America continue to be a matter of permanent concern in US foreign policy, especially when the Russians provide armaments to countries like Venezuela, which has become an ally in Putin’s geostrategic designs.
- 30.
The mobilizations in Maidan Square in Kyiv began with a protest against the refusal of the Yanukovych government to sign the Association Agreement with the European Union.
- 31.
Moscow was extremely disappointed with the expansion of NATO. For some analysts of Russian foreign policy, the concept of ‘civilizational realism’ is a way to oppose the US’s Mackinderian drive towards the East and search for multipolarity: “An even more decisive shift in Russian foreign policy thinking, however, took place after Putin was re-elected president in 2012. At his annual meeting with leading Russia specialists in Valdai in 2013, he went beyond his usual criticism of unipolarity and, for the first time, explained what values Russia stood for. Echoing the remarks of 19th century Russian foreign minister Alexander Gorchakov, Putin said that Russia was returning to its core values, while remaining open and receptive to the best ideas of both East and West. These core values were rooted in the values of Christianity and other world religions. More importantly, the unipolar and increasingly secular world that some in the West seek to impose on the rest of the world, Putin argued, is ‘a rejection … of the natural diversity of the world granted by God’. Russia, he intoned, will defend these Christian moral principles, both at home and abroad. Since then, the war in Georgia and the ongoing tragedy in Ukraine have reinforced negative stereotypes both in the United States, where many blame Russian intervention; and in Russia, where many see the same events as the culmination of Western policies targeting regime change in the former Soviet Union. Since the chances of resolving the Ukraine issue are virtually non-existent, influential observers like presidential advisor Vladislav Surkov have recently suggested that Russia’s attempts to become part of the West may now be over. The values-based contours of the present East-West conflict are thus clearly defined. Russia opposes the very idea that Western cultural values are the standard for international behaviour. It regards such rhetoric as nothing more than self-serving unilateralism, and believes that a multipolar world order based on pluriculturalism (diversity among nations) is preferable. Focusing on values sheds a rather different light on some widely held Western assumptions about Russian foreign policy. The first is that Russia rejects the post-Cold War international order. This is not quite correct. Russia fears global chaos and believes that America’s efforts to preserve its global hegemony are leading to such chaos. Far from rejecting the international system, Russia believes it is stabilizing it by working against hegemony within the current framework, while also seeking to expand it to include new actors. A second erroneous assumption is that Russia is determined to undermine the ‘liberal US-led order.’ In fact, Russia expects the US to remain the leader of the liberal, western model of global development, but argues that it must also learn to co-exist with other models. As Russia sees it, in the future, there will be multiple centres of power, each believing itself no less moral than any other. Notions like ‘American exceptionalism’ only serve to isolate the United States, says Russia, and while US leadership will no doubt fade as the world becomes more pluricultural, liberalism need not be dragged down with it. How, then, does Russia define itself? Russia defines itself as that part of the West that has understood the futility of liberal fundamentalism, and that seeks to establish a framework for global leadership around the values that the West shares with non-Western states. Russian political theorist Boris Mezhuev calls this ‘civilizational realism’. Civilizational realism differs from classical realism, in that it embraces the importance of values in international affairs. It also differs in that it sees value in the diversity of cultural communities, as well as individuals. Russia’s approach should therefore be described not as opposition to liberalism, but as a different form of liberalism, one that is divorced from Western hegemony, and open to non-western traditions and influences” (Nicolai 2018; at: https://jia.sipa.columbia.edu/online-articles/russias-mission).
- 32.
Without the mediation of France and Germany in the Ukrainian conflict, the Minsk Agreements establishing the ceasefire in the conflict zone could not have been reached.
- 33.
In his classic book on geopolitics this scholar of Polish origin argues that Ukraine is a pivotal country of European security policy, and predicts the actions of the Americans in relation to Kyiv and against Moscow (Brzezinski 1997).
- 34.
The first time I heard this idea was in the 1980s during a conference presentation by Attali (2006), then counsellor to the French President François Mitterrand, in Mexico City.
- 35.
In a curious anecdote of the US presidential debates of 2016, when the Republican candidate accused the Democrat administration of Obama of implementing incorrect foreign policies that allowed the surge of China as a world power, the Democrat candidate (Hillary Clinton) reminded her opponent (Donald Trump) that China was already a great civilization a thousand years ago, when America as a continent was not yet discovered, and that the US as an independent state was only born in 1776.
- 36.
Thomas Wright, an expert at the Brookings Institution, explains the interests of Russia and China in Eurasia in the following manner: “In Donald Trump America has a rogue President who has a 30 year track record of opposing key elements of the (liberal) order, including free trade and alliances. Vladimir Putin wants to overthrow the order because he believes it poses a direct threat to his regime. Xi Xinping’s China benefits from the open global economy but he would dearly like to replace the United States as the pre-eminent power in East Asia” (cited by Serbin 2018: 15).
- 37.
As already stressed, the Asia Pacific basin is not precisely a ‘region’ in terms of integration theory, and that is why, after quoting Thomas Wright in the article cited above, the Argentine scholar Andres Serbin mentions that in the November 2017 APEC summit in Da Nang (Vietnam) the three different narratives of globalized regionalization combined with different geopolitical and geo-economical approaches and priorities were presented respectively by Trump, Putin and Xi Xinping. According to Serbin, the US narrative promoted an ‘Indo-Pacific’ group of states (the US, Japan, India, Australia) as a counterweight to China and its OBOR, RCEP and FTAAP strategies, while Russia referred to the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). Serbin adds: “In March 2017 during the meeting in Beijing of the first international forum of the ambitious OBOR Project – a Project that reactivates the commercial corridor of the silk route after 300 years of its dissolution and reconnects China with Europe – in spite of the emergence and current primacy of Asia Pacific, a new geostrategic world parameter has developed with the reactivation of Eurasia as a potential factor of economic dynamism and a key geopolitical pivot of the international system. While the strategic maritime presence and the influence of China grows in the Pacific and particularly in the South China Sea – deepening the security concerns of the US and countries of the zone – the OBOR initiative is more complex and ambitious in its continental projection, overarching several regions and including Europe” (Serbin 2018: 13). It is interesting to remark in passing that, due to these differences in approaches and narratives within the Forum, the November 2018 APEC summit in Port Moresby (Papua New Guinea) was not even able to produce a common statement (and Trump did not attend), a fact that, undoubtedly, was positive for Xi Xinping as the ‘rising star’ of the meetings of APEC.
- 38.
The delay was due to difficulties regarding the realization of a referendum in both countries requesting the acquiescence of the citizens to take the case to Court. Guatemala held its referendum in April 2018 and Belize followed suit afterwards. At the time of writing, the process is taking place at the ICJ.
- 39.
In 2018 the ICJ decided not to accept the Bolivian claim on the grounds that the government of Chile is not obliged to negotiate the establishment of a sovereign port for Bolivia in the Chilean coastal territory bordering the Pacific Ocean.
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Padilla, LA. (2021). Integration: A Means to Transcend the Westphalian Order and Go Beyond Geopolitics. In: Sustainable Development in the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene: Politik—Economics—Society—Science, vol 29. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80399-5_2
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