Feng Shaolei: Russia-Ukraine crisis and China-Russia relations and Global transformation
April 2024
Translated by Kemal Okur
Author: Director of the Center for Russian Studies, East China Normal University, Shanghai
BRICS and G20’s emerging countries which were once powerful powers in history have become key feature of the current international power structure, and their economic development contrasts with the relative decline of the West. What is particularly noteworthy is that from the conflict between Russia and Georgia in 2008, to the Crimean crisis in 2014, to the large-scale military conflict between Russia and Ukraine in 2022, in the face of this series of long-term conflicts, the vast majority of emerging and developing countries have adopted a non-aligned and neutral diplomatic line. They are unwilling to follow the European and American allies and confront Russia; at the same time, they are also clearly opposed to war and advocate the peaceful and political resolution of conflicts.
Overlooking the current development of world politics from the perspective of big history and long periods of time often allows people to form a deeper understanding of the significance of current events. We are experiencing the global transformation process at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries. This is a critical turning point in a grand historical process that has lasted for more than two centuries and more than 500 years. The current Russia-Ukraine crisis caused by the complex environment over the years, as well as the contemporary relations between major powers including China and Russia, are all based on the overall background of global transformation.
The Russia-Ukraine crisis, as the largest regional conflict since the end of the Cold War and which has lasted for two years, is like a “catalyst”, “oscillator” and “reflector”, which has profoundly reacted to global transformation, shaping the future form of foreign strategies and relations between major powers including China and Russia in a comprehensive, systematic and endogenous way. In this process, the complex interaction of relations between major powers such as China, Russia, the United States and Europe not only directly affects the prospects of the Russia-Ukraine crisis but is also bound to profoundly influence the connotation and direction of global transformation. It can be seen that we are facing an unprecedented moment of coexistence of challenges and constructions, which are intertwined with the past and the present, and intertwined with the inside and the outside. It needs to be explored and explained with profound theoretical research and creative thinking.
This article attempts to explore the relationship between the following three ongoing international phenomena: first, global transformation as a long historical process and its contemporary implications; second, the interaction between global transformation and the Russia-Ukraine crisis since the turn of the century; and third, Sino-Russian cooperation under transformation and crisis. I hope that this article’s preliminary exploration can provide new ideas for understanding global transformation.
Chapter 1. The debate on the issue of “cyclical evolution of international order” and its implications
Among all the studies on global transformation, the future direction of the international order is the focus of researchers. In the past half century, there have been systematic and groundbreaking studies in the fields of international political economics, sociology and history, which have also triggered thought-provoking controversies. It is necessary to briefly review the relevant explorations over the years. Generally speaking, there are at least three types of international studies that focus on the historical changes in the international order.
The first category of research is represented by Dr. Henry Kissinger, a world historian and international strategist with incomparable rich diplomatic practice experience. In his view, after the Thirty Years’ War in Europe, the Westphalian system that emerged in 1648 changed the traditional view of human society’s order based solely on “imperial unity” or “religious unity”. “The Westphalian concept takes diversity as a starting point and regards countries as objective realities, thereby attracting countries with different situations to jointly explore order. By the middle of the 20th century, this international system had covered all continents of the earth and remains the skeleton of the international order today.” [1] Kissinger explained why Europe was able to make “diversity a typical feature of the world order” in this way: “This is not to say that European monarchs were more able to resist the temptation of glory brought by conquest than monarchs of other civilizations, or were more persistent in an abstract ideal of diversity. European monarchs simply lacked the power to impose their will on others. Over time, diversity became a typical feature of the world order.” [2]
In Kissinger’s narrative system, although the subsequent evolution of the international order has not consciously achieved the “restraint” under the “pluralism” background of the Westphalian system, the practice of the construction of the international order from the Vienna Treaty in 1814 to the Yalta Agreement in 1945 until the end of the Cold War shows that the pluralistic and multipolar structure has indeed repeatedly avoided total war by maintaining balance. For example, although the Vienna system was not so “democratic” and was a “great power coordination” between the monarchical or semi-monarchical Eurasian powers, it avoided the outbreak of a war on a European scale and generally maintained what Friedrich Engels called “a century of peace.” Although the Yalta system experienced half a century of terrible Cold War, it still maintained the demarcation, confrontation, coexistence and coexistence between major powers with different social systems such as the United States and the Soviet Union. Even after the end of the Cold War, although the United States once dominated the world, after the trend of turning to multipolarity and pluralism at the turn of the century, people from all over the world still maintained their expectations for peaceful development on this basis.
In short, Kissinger began by recognizing and respecting the actual state of international “multipolarity” and “pluralism”, and through the application of a carefully crafted “balance of power” strategy, based on the concept of “the unity of legitimacy and power”, Kissinger sought to achieve peaceful coexistence among various aspirations of “different types of world order” in an international environment where “there has never been a truly global ‘world order'”. It is in this sense that Niall Ferguson believes that Kissinger is not only a realist but also an idealist. Although this statement is inconsistent with the meaning of traditional international political theory, this insight makes sense. [3]
The second category is the group of researchers who are regarded by the international academic community as engaged in the “modern world system” or “the evolution cycle of the world order”, including Fernand Braudel, a representative figure of the French Annales School, and Giovanni Arrighi, a representative scholar of the Italian “world system theory”. Although there are disputes within this group, I believe that this group should include Immanuel Wallerstein, the author of the four-volume “Modern World System” and an American left-wing historical sociologist.
The core view of this school of research is that at key moments in the many changes of the international order in modern times, the rise of a capitalist system with Western hegemonic countries at its core has occurred. The result of the “Thirty Years’ War” in Europe in the 17th century was not only what Kissinger called “diversification within Europe,” but also the rise of the Holland/Dutch Republic. The result of the Napoleonic Wars after the French Revolution was not only the coexistence of the great powers of the Vienna system, but also the rise of the British Empire. The Second World War created a UN Security Council with five major powers coexisting, but the United States not only achieved a more dominant world hegemony than the Soviet Union at the time, but also remained the most powerful hegemonic country today, even as the world moved towards multipolarity and diversity after the end of the Cold War. [4] In other words, the normal state under the change of world order is the coexistence of multipolarity and international power centers.
In the preface to the first volume of the 2011 English edition of The Modern World-System, Wallerstein made a self-confession: “I had a bad idea at the time that by studying how the ’emerging’ states ‘developed’ in the 16th century, we might be able to better understand the development trajectory of the ’emerging’ states in the 20th century. This was a bad idea because it assumed that all states would follow a similar evolutionary path…” [5]
Although Wallerstein later revised his old original idea, Wallerstein insisted on observing this issue from the perspective of the “world system” rather than from the perspective of a single country. Wallerstein criticized Max Weber’s sociological theory, especially the view that “the Protestant ethic gave rise to capitalism”. Wallerstein said: “The values involved occurred with the ongoing economic transformation, not before it. I proposed that only by examining the various countries in their relationship to each other can we understand why some countries become leaders in terms of productivity and wealth accumulation.” [6]
At the same time, Wallerstein recognized Stephen Mennell’s evaluation of the “world system” research. Mennell pointed out that this was “actually a major effort to historically refute the eternal ‘law of comparative advantage’ revealed by David Ricardo. It shows how small the degree of inequality in the interdependence between various societies and economies was at first, but how it was exacerbated over time, resulting in the huge differences between what is euphemistically called the ‘North’ and the ‘South’ today.” In addition, despite their differences, Wallerstein and Braudel both believed that “… they did not provide evidence to prove the autonomy of capitalist economic development or that it could be completely separated from the state and politics. On the contrary, they proved that state affairs and capitalist affairs are inextricably linked and are merely two aspects or parts of the same historical development process.”[7]
It can be seen that the views of Wallerstein and the French Annales School have caused controversy because they are no longer limited to the issue of the evolution and replacement of the world system. They have systematically and intrinsically questioned and challenged the most basic part of Western political economy theory. It is worth noting that Giovanni Arrighi inherited Braudel’s views and more systematically emphasized that every hegemony transfer will also experience the following phenomena:
First, a total war – such as the Thirty Years’ War that accompanied the Westphalian system, the Napoleonic Wars that led to the Vienna system, and the Second World War that gave rise to the Yalta system.
Second, from financial expansion to decline – here, it means that it is not like the traditional view that the entire capitalist system has developed from industrial capitalism, commercial capitalism, and then to financial capitalism over hundreds of years. In fact, from the Dutch Republic, the British Empire, to the American hegemony, every hegemony cycle has experienced the rise and fall of industrial capitalism, commercial capitalism, and financial capitalism to varying degrees.
Third, a powerful state based on territory – “The traditional view is that capitalism and market economy are more or less the same thing; state power is opposed to both. Braudel (author’s note: this should also include Wallerstein) believes that capitalism, from its emergence to its expansion, is completely dependent on state power and constitutes the opposite of the market economy” [8].
In fact, the Annales School’s idea that “market economy is not equal to capitalism” has deeply influenced China’s reform and opening up process. Giovanni Arrighi concluded that every change in the international order is the product of the “trinity” of the above-mentioned “total war”, “finance from expansion to decline”, and “powerful states based on territory”. There is no doubt that Arrighi’s historical summary of the changes in the world order points directly to the current global transformation.
It is particularly noteworthy that in 2009, in the afterword to his 1999 book The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power, and the Origins of Our Time, Arrighi pointed out that “while the possibility of a Western-led global empire remains, today, compared with 15 years ago, a world market society centered in East Asia seems more likely to be the result of the current global economic and political transformation… China has begun to replace the United States as the main driver of commercial and economic expansion in East Asia and beyond” [9].
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