ANALYSIS International relations in 2021

analysis

THE WORLD IN 2021 ”ARE YOU BETTER OFF THAN YOU WERE A YEAR AGO?”

BY TAMÁS MAGYARICS

In fact, the original rhetorical question was used repeatedly in the U.S. presidential elections in the late 20th century with ”four years” instead of ”a year” – and the answer could be decisive in the choice of the voters. We are not supposed to vote right now, but it is a legitimate question, though, to ask whether we are better off now than we were a year ago. Jumping to conclusion, the answer is likely to be overall negative – the most important outstanding issues have not been solved yet, and in a number of questions we cannot really see the light at the end of the tunnel either. International public discourse is still dominated by the pandemic – and it does seem that COVID-19 and its mutations are here to stay for some time. The pandemic, besides its direct health hazards, has deep impact on the nations’ economies, on migration patterns, and on political processes too as handling the pandemic by the individual governments has been extensively politicized. It definitely influenced the presidential election in the U.S. in November 2020, but the lockdowns generated political backlashes elsewhere in the world as well.

More continuity than discontinuity in the U.S.

It is a conventional wisdom that a historically consequential political change happened in the U.S. in November 2020. But did it? Candidate Joe Biden promised practically a U-turn in foreign and security policy: in place of President Trump’s unilateralism and bilateralism a multilateral approach to international affairs; regular consultation and coordination with the allies; bringing back ’values’ in U.S. foreign policy; and the like. However, what we have been seeing in the past months is more continuity than discontinuity in the foreign affairs of the U.S. As veteran diplomat Richard Haass put it: ’America is Back’ is simply a polite version of ’America First’. In point of fact, the abrupt withdrawal from Afghanistan or the conclusion of AUKUS (Australia, UK., and U.S.) may have fitted into the playbook of the Trump administration too. No meaningful shift can be observed in such key areas as the Iranian nuclear issue, the relationship with China, and even the verbal belligerency of the Biden administration hides a sort of containment policy as pursued by the previous administration.

Nice speeches, outlandish ideas

Tackling climate change has remained high on the agenda, but not much has been done in reality. One has already seen this movie: a large international conference (this past year in October-November in Glasgow), nice speeches, a few commitments (the verification and/or the enforcement of their compliance is another matter), with the major polluters (Brazil, China, India) staying away – and so on. At the same time, it will be interesting to see how some utopian elements of the progressives’ (a.k.a. the far left of the Democratic Party) Green New Deal in the U.S. or the similar – in some cases – even more outlandish ideas of the Ampel Koalition in Germany will play themselves out in the next few years. They may play havoc with the economies of these countries, as well as trigger social and political backlash if these programs get out of control and the Green Jacobins/Taliban have their own ways. Merkel era end and Brexit complications

The Bundestag elections in Germany in the fall of 2021 put an end to Angela Merkel’s 16-year long chancellorship. Chancellor Merkel’s legacy is full of contradictions: while staying in power for so long a time is a proof to her skills and political talent, some of her most important policies, including her Willkommenskultur and reducing the popularity of the CDU to historic low, are more than controversial. Moreover, she had her share in the outcome of the Brexit referendum in the U.K. in 2016, if not directly, but indirectly by letting Brussels alienate large segments of the British population with its repeated attempts at power grab and centralization – the latter especially does not sit well with the Anglo-Saxon peoples in general. It is stating the obvious that the complications buried in the agreements between the U.K. and the EU over the Brexit will be living with us for some time to come. This past year, it was the commercial, but ultimately the political relations between Great Britain, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland that had come to the foreground. London’s unilateral interpretation of the Northern Irish protocol does not go down well in Brussels. In a broader context, the fear is that a unilateral reinterpretation of an international agreement may become contagious, especially within the European Union. Besides the Northern Irish question, such relatively minor issues as the migrants and the fishing rights caused repeated frictions between the British and the French.

Complicated world order

These problems may be seen as minor ones in the light of the tension between the West and Russia over Ukraine – the worst-case scenario is an armed conflict, a Russian invasion of a portion of the territory in eastern Ukraine. Hopefully, things will not get out of control, and the current belligerent statements are parts of a verbal warfare – in fact, some of the more extreme pronouncements may be intended for domestic consumption on both sides. In reality, Russia is not in a position to be able to wage and finance a major war, while there are very few Americans, if at all, who would be willing to die for Kyiv or Luhansk. The other ’800-pound gorilla’ in international life besides the U.S., China, continued its time-honored strategy: trying to project power regionally, especially in the South China Sea and the East China Sea while doing its best to strengthen its conventional and non-conventional military capabilities on one hand, and expanding its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) into the soft ’underbelly’ of the Atlantic community and into areas which have been neglected recently by the West, such as Africa and parts of Latin America, on the other one. Its reluctance to become a ’responsible stakeholder’ (Robert Zoellick) is not new either; tackling the problem of global warming is one of the best examples of this kind of behavior of Beijing’s. Donald Trump’s bilateral and transactional approach to China did not bring too many fruits; it is an open question whether the Biden administration’s preference for multilateral approaches, in this case the coordination of the Atlantic community’s and Pacific allies’ policies towards China will be a game changer, or these efforts will peter out on account of the different interests of the individual nations involved.