(Pix © Larry Catá Backer 2019)
This post is the third of a series of four (4) posts in which the CPE WGE examine the question of paths to empire performed through the choices being made by the U.S. and Chinese leadership cores [领导核心] within the theater of the U.S.-China bilateral trade negations.
Part 1 focused on the meaning embedded in the text itself on a paragraph by paragraph basis, suggesting macro and micro strategies, challenges and opportunities in the emerging Chinese positions on global trade and its role in such systems. To that end it critically examined China's State Council [国务院] White Paper, entitled China's Position on the China-US Economic and Trade Consultations ; <关于中美经贸磋商的中方立场>; 原中国语言版本. The White Paper was distributed by the State Council Information Office on Sunday 2 June. Part 2 drew broader insights that suggest the contours and trajectories of China's geo-political strategies in general, and their application to its management of the relationship with the United States more specifically. Part 3 then critically considered the official response of the U.S. Trade Representative was short and dismissive. It relied substantially on the United States issued a 200-page report in March 2018 (Findings of the Investigation into China's Acts, Policies, and Practices (22 March 2018) along with the Chinese-Russian counter-thrust, in the form of the Development of the People's Republic of China and the Russian Federation Joint Statement of the New Era Comprehensive Strategic Collaboration Partnership [中华人民共和国和俄罗斯联邦关于发展 新时代全面战略协作伙伴关系的联合声明]
This Part 4 takes up the Sino-Russian Joint Statement in some detail. It suggests that accounts of Empire have failed to notice two differences between pre- and post-Westphalian forms of governmental organization: the average life-span of Empires; and Empires’ ability to form outside of models and templates traced following the contours of the past, and therefore potentially outmoded. And thus the pathos of conventional analysis--its insistence of looking at things in terms of the passing age makes it impossible to see the con tours of the trajectories of "new era" developments.
谁统治东欧, 谁就能主宰心脏地带;
谁统治了心脏地带, 谁就能主宰世界岛;
谁统治了世界岛, 谁就能主宰全世界
|
If by dull rhymes
our English must be chained,
And, like
Andromeda, the Sonnet sweet
Fettered, in spite
of painéd loveliness;
Let us find out, if
we must be constrained,
Sandals more interwoven
and complete
To fit the naked
foot of poesy;
Let us inspect the
lyre, and weigh the stress
Of every chord, and
see what may be gained
By ear industrious,
and attention meet;
Misers of sound and
syllable, no less
Than Midas of his
coinage, let us be
Jealous of dead
leaves in the bay-wreath crown;
So, if we may not
let the Muse be free,
She will be bound
with garlands of her own.
— John Keats, “On
the Sonnet,” 1819
|
The history of Sino-Russian
relations has gone through several ebbs and flows. The two countries are often
seen as tactical partners and strategic rivals – a perspective perhaps inspired
by the Geographical Pivot of History and its
easily memorized three lines stanza:
Who rules East
Europe commands the Heartland;
who rules the
Heartland commands the World-Island;
who rules the
World-Island controls the World
But, let us not
dig into the “cultural substratum” that fertilized the writings of Halford Mackinder Karl Haushofer,
and the founding fathers of geopolitics. More
important than rhymed, self-fulfilling theories has been the ideological
dimension of the Sino-Russian alliance. From the 1921 secret Shanghai meeting
between ‘Russian envoys’ and Chinese Communists,
to the Sino-Soviet split and beyond that dimension and its unfolding are
well-known.
The past, at times seething tension between the Soviet Union and China
however was not caused by their foresight into Halford Mackinder’s past
writings. The quotation from the Geographical Pivot of History became
popular in both countries only in the 1990s. Until that point in time, the
issue at stake was not where the Heartland and the World-Island were but
– much less interestingly perhaps – who could legitimately hold the scepter of
ideological orthodoxy. Because, as it has been explained here, until the advent of Deng Xiaoping
it was widely held that Communist ideology admitted of just one correct
interpretation.
Thought, to put it in the Chinese way, had not been liberated yet. “Respect[s] [for] the paths and modes of development
chosen by different countries” had not yet been elevated to the
status of an emerging principle of global governance. The biggest common
denominator of international relations had not yet been separated from the
sphere of ideology. Therefore, the outward forms of governance tools closely
followed the prescriptions of “theory” (broadly understood). And Sino-Russian
relations could indeed be read as the relation between two strategic rivals.
But, that era has long ended. With these
considerations in mind, it might be useful to read the Joint Statement for the
results it has achieved, and keep an eye to its conformity – or the lack
thereof – to the tools States use to express their will and project their
power.
Upgrading the Sino-Russian Partnership to a New Level
In China’s understanding, the Joint Statement has “elevated bilateral ties” to a “comprehensive strategic
partnership” in the New Era. The
difference between ordinary bilateral ties and a strategic partnership might be
difficult to define with precision. Does a State need to establish a
“comprehensive strategic partnership” with China, before it joins the Belt and
Road Initiative, or is it possible to first upgrade one’s ties, and then decide
to sign a Memorandum of Understanding on the Belt and Road? At a time where
law-based governance is being quickly surpassed by data-based governance, these
questions are irrelevant, because they lean towards formalism.
Any regulatory text can come to life only through
interpretation. If the words coming out from the “mouth of the law” can and
should be predicted through an algorithm:
“(…) in the US and the UK, where judges appear to have accepted the fait accompli
of legal AI companies analysing their decisions in extreme detail and then
creating models as to how they may behave in the future (…)
then regardless of whether the judge is an
interpreter of the law, one of its creators, both (or neither), an algorithm
can yield equally legitimate interpretations, or produce equally legitimate
precedents. More important than the form of governance decisions are the facts
– facts about decisions’ consistency with statutes, precedential decisions, the
past behavior of the individual judge and so on. Law’s Empire then
appears to be based on facts, with new forms and new tools enabling these facts
to become visible and actionable. But, sometimes, the relative novelty of a
tool can make facts invisible to our eyes.
Comprehensive strategic partnerships are facts in
their own right, too. But, given the existence of objective (rather than merely
rhetorical) historical and political ties between Russia and China, that the
two countries chose to conclude a “comprehensive strategic partnership” is
unsurprising. Let us not be captured by yet a different kind of mold, and
instead look at what the Sino-Russian Joint Statement is not, and what it does.
What the Sino-Russian Joint
Statement is not
The Joint Statement does not seem to be a treaty, but it further develops the 2001 Sino-Russian Treaty of Friendship.
This document sets out the basic principles that will guide Sino-Russian
relations in the close future; defines the goals of the Sino-Russian relation,
and its scope. Little matters how the principles governing Sino-Russian
relations may seem ‘vague’. To function well under the guise of principles,
words in ordinary language must carry more than just a single meaning.
Differently, their interpretation – including throwaway interpretations denying
the nature of principles as principles based on their alleged
‘vagueness’ - is just not possible.
We obtained our knowledge of international relations – and the
conceptual and regulatory tools used to forge them – from the past. When we see
a joint statement that enhances and further defines relations between two great
powers, the question follows whether the current global governance regime may
already be premised on entirely different abstract and concrete tools:
different ideas, different bilateral or multilateral instruments. What is important, again, are concrete
results - the tools used to achieve them
merely being means to an end. By the same logic, even though the joint
statement is not a bilateral investment treaty, it references both the Belt and Road Initiative, and the Eurasian
Economic Union….which are not bilateral investment treaties. In the last fifty years or so a variety of seeds were planted
and sprouted. The trees that grew out of them, however, could not easily be
identified using existing taxonomies.
Courtesy: Il Mattino
2018
The Joint Statement is not a Belt and Road Memorandum of Understanding but it expresses Russia’s support of the Belt and Road Initiative. It
also expresses China’s support to the Eurasian Economic Union. The “Silk Road
Economic Belt focuses on a straight path from China’s Central Asia, Russia, and
Europe (the Baltic Sea)” (丝绸之路经济带重点畅通中国经中亚、俄罗斯至欧洲（波罗的海）) - so states the Visions and Actions on Jointly Building the Silk
Road Economic Belt and 21st Century Maritime Silk Road. But the
Joint Statement goes beyond conventional documents on the Belt and Road,
because it creates a coordination between two distinct macro-regions.
The Joint Statement is not a defense
treaty, but it defines the terms of Sino-Russian
security cooperation in far greater detail than the 2001 Treaty. Security
cooperation goes beyond a strategic coordination of Sino-Russian national defence departments
and armed forces. It extends to the areas covered by existing universal
anti-terrorism and anti-drug instruments, and network governance mechanisms.
The Joint Statement is not a bilateral
investment treaty, but it defines the principles
that ought to regulate bilateral investment in a way the 2017 Russian guidelines on BITs and the 2006 BIT do not. Notion of “equality” and
“mutual benefit” are an exception of course. But those notions are part of the
standard language used in several BITs. By now they have been incorporated in
the BIR. And yet the joint statement goes beyond this, posing a set of
principles that are neither exclusively “Russian” nor with “Chinese
characteristics”, but shared.
The Joint Statement is not a White Paper, but it “represents the broad legal views of two permanent
Security Council members with respect to the overall architecture of global
order” except that it does not give the same kind of positive legal
justification as the 2016 Declaration on the Promotion of International
Law.
What the
Sino-Russian Joint Statement Does
More interesting than what the Sino-Russian
Joint Statement is not, is what this document does. The Joint Statement
regulates cooperation between the Russian and Chinese governments, included
“practical cooperation”. Next, presumably in order of importance (but not
necessarily so) are listed other aspects of the bilateral relation, and the
ways in which those should be governed.
Following the trade war – or friction –
between the US and China, it has become commonplace to think territory
as re-shaped by production chains, and divided into trade blocks. This is no
doubt true, but the reshaping of territory is going beyond the creation of
distinct trade areas. It is giving life to distinct governance macro-regions.
These macro-regions are articulated around ‘leadership cores’, divided by trade
tariffs, and yet they communicate through finance, and through
other channels.
History has provided us with only three examples of governance
macroregions: the great empires of the past, and institutionalized groupings of linguistically and culturally diverse
States connected by a shared historical and cultural heritage. Bound
by a treaty. Divided by rhetoric and narrow self-interest. A third example, has
been the attempt to project national power beyond the boundaries of the State.
This attempt was performed using the tools of public international law,
domestic regulation, and then trade, investment, and a variety of cultural,
“bottom-up”, “people-to-people”, and “leadership” initiatives.
Public international law as we know it,
however, is conceptually and practically distinct from all those initiatives
that – before creating a governance macro-region on paper, have already
built-up that macro-region in practice through the bricks and mortar of deeply
intertwined networks. These networks exhibit a specific structure, and one that
can furthermore change based on the persopective one adopts to look at them,
yet each one of them has a central node. That structure, to paraphrase a
certain proverb, wasn’t built in a day. And it may be far less vulnerable to
tariffs than it seems. The focus on tariffs then might obscure a much more
fundamental reordering of the principles, the structures and the very tools of
global governance. And their transformation.
The move towards a deeper Sino-Russian
integration is not the first attempt to construct a governance macro-region,
and it will not be the last. A governance macro-region might be understood
according to available templates. But, as fascinating as they may be, accounts of Empire have failed to notice
two differences between pre- and post-Westphalian forms of governmental
organization: the average life-span of Empires; and Empires’ ability to form
outside of models and templates traced following the contours of the past, and
therefore potentially outmoded.
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