LAST week, the United States – China trade negotiators floated the term decoupling several times.
Basically, decoupling means that the US and China will no longer be economically integrated. There will still be trade and diplomacy but it will be to radically lower levels than seen in previous decades.
However, decoupling doesn’t just mean minimizing trade and interaction. Dive a little deeper and decoupling means a new Cold War, and that will require a new way of thinking about the world. China and the US will not just stop trading, they will be relatively hostile to one another.
But the important part is this. This time, there will be no non-alignment and this is for two reasons.
First, both the US and China will not permit it. A neutral country is a country that will be considered too much of a risk, and neither side will leave it alone.
Second, non-aligned countries will be cut off from technology, energy and a whole host of commodities. You can’t buy those unless you have signed up for membership. Sorry.
India and the European Union can theoretically do non-alignment, but looking at the real numbers, that is just not realistic. Furthermore, they will need to secure alternate suppliers for energy, tech and commodities, and both don’t have those. So like the rest of world, they must choose.
And that implies the end of the nation-state as a sovereign entity. Because most nation-states cannot be autarkic; because they need financial services, commodities, energy, and because those that they cannot produce on their own, they are not sovereign.
So who is sovereign? The one controls all these things, and those are the US and China.
Maybe things will change eventually, but as things stand that is where the world is headed. Countries must choose. Anything less is politically impossible./PN
