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It’ll remain to be seen whether a New Détente is even clinched at all, to say nothing of its modalities in that event (including speculatively secret clauses), but the scenario is credible enough to discuss considering China’s public signals of interest in seriously exploring its parameters. A lot can still happen to derail that trajectory, and it’s even possible that it wouldn’t perpetuate the bi-multipolar system in which they both have a stake contrary to their expectations, but it’s still worth thinking deeply about.
China pulled out of military dialogue with the US in August as part of its response to Pelosi’s provocative trip to Taiwan, yet Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Tan Kefei just said on Sunday that Defense Minister Wei Fenghe is ready to hold talks with his American counterpart. The proposed meeting, which the spokesman disclosed is already being discussed by “the relevant agencies of the two sides”, would prospectively take place during the ASEAN Defense Ministers’ Meeting-Plus in Cambodia this week.
This development signals China’s interest in further exploring the parameters of a possible New Détente with the US, which former National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger presciently predicted in early October. That globally renowned China expert’s foresight came several days after I asked whether “The Ukrainian Conflict Might Have Already Derailed China’s Superpower Trajectory”, in which case it would naturally follow that China would seriously countenance such a rapprochement.
I argued that the prior bi-multipolar intermediary phase of the global systemic transition to multipolarity could have remained in effect indefinitely whereby the American and (speculatively aspiring) Chinese superpowers would jointly manage world affairs, but India decisively intervened to offset this. It unexpectedly became Russia’s irreplaceable alternative valve from Western pressure and thus preemptively averted the scenario of its partner becoming disproportionately dependent on China.
Had Prime Minister Modi and his team capitulated to the unprecedented American pressure upon them to unilaterally concede on their objective national interests by abandoning Russia, then the latter would have become China’s “junior partner”, after which India would be pressured to become the US’. The New Cold War would thus likely have resulted in the formation of two rigid blocs across Eurasia respectively led by the American and Chinese superpowers, thus eroding all others’ strategic autonomy.
Instead, India’s policy of principled neutrality resulted in it carefully balancingbetween the US-led West’s Golden Billion and the jointly BRICS– & SCO-led Global South of which it’s now the voice, thus overcoming the prior bi-multipolar impasse in the global systemic transition. This moved International Relations in the direction of tripolarity, pioneered by the Russian-Indian Axis (which closely cooperates with their shared Iranian partner), prior to its final form of more complex multipolarity (“multiplexity”).
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