Geopolitics in the era of Cold War 2.0

Amid rising geopolitical tensions and escalating international conflicts, North Korea has successfully launched its first ever ‘Spy Satellite” into space to monitor the military activities of its adversaries—the US and its allies—in the Korean peninsula in real-time. More importantly, it would help in making its nuclear plan more precise. Earlier, Pyongyang closed dozens of its embassies, including in Nepal. North Korea has recently pledged to support Hamas in its war against Israel, while the US has blamed it for supporting Russia in the Ukraine war. North Korea is perhaps preparing for a nuke war with the US by claiming that the US could enter the Korean Peninsula with a ‘war-mongering’ attitude following the inducement of chaos in Eastern Europe and the Mideast. The US has deployed a ‘guided-missile submarine’ (nuclear submarine that can contain Ballistic Missile and Cruise Missile) in the Mideast with a message to Iran to not get involved in the Israel-Palestine war. If the flames of the Mideast war, unfortunately, spread to the Arab World, the Korean Peninsula, and to Taiwan, finally, the turmoil will exponentially outstrip beyond imagination or control of any of the superpowers.

While President Xi Xinping and President Joe Biden met face-to-face in San Francisco this week, as two largest economies and great powers of the world, China and the US should not only focus on their bilateral relations, but also think about global issues, including international peace, stability and the world order.

Previously, when the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Vostochny Cosmodrome near Vladivostok, the Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro met Chinese President Xi Xing Ping in Beijing, while both Xi and Putin avoided the recent G20 meeting hosted by India. North Korea has been close to China and Russia and is constantly threatening the west, particularly the US, by repeatedly testing modern ballistic missiles. The G20 nations were contentious to logically end the Ukraine crisis, while the summit officially remained reluctant to condemn Russia that could have boosted Putin’s morale to further strategize the war. Putin is perhaps optimistic regarding the outcome of US election-2024 hoping that the incoming administration in the White House would revise the US strategy on Ukraine—that could favor him winning the war in Ukraine. China, on the other hand, is widely garnering support for its global political march, while the US is desperately making alliances to counter China. The nuke and superpower’s irrational competition on illicit supremacy is inducing global disorder.

Equally, various terrorist organizations are contributing to making the international system more anarchic and fueling social disorder. Samuel P Huntington remarked in The Clash of Civilizations 

that “Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault-lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future”, which remains relevant even today.

The diplomatic sneering between Saudi Arabia and the US in the past following the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi perhaps played a key role in altering the diplomatic courses in the Gulf. Subsequently, the Arab World got united after China brokered a diplomatic deal, thereby solidifying its presence in the Mideast. The flaring tension in bilateral relations between India and Canada following the killing of Canadian Sikh Hardeep Singh Nijjar could now change the “politico-diplomatic strategies” in the Indo-Pacific, while the said intelligence sharing by the US ambassador to Canada regarding the killing of Sikh separatist leader Nijjar could not only deteriorate India-US relations, but could also dilute the US presence in the region by jeopardizing the future of the Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS). This could subsequently help reinforce China’s clout in the region and beyond.

Bilateral matters are internal affairs of nations, but the “hate crimes”—embedded in religious beliefs—can have spillover effects and cause ethnic war, instigating huge losses to human civilization, if not handled with utmost sense of rationality.  The religious radicalism—that is emotionally rooted to socio-cultural belief—could not only divide communities, but also largely rift humanity. It could also create space for the emergence of additional terrorists and criminal groups. The historical records or incidents of various civilizational clashes show that religious conflicts have always resulted in lose-lose outcomes. 

Conversely, both the states and their regimes want to cash in on ethnic nationalism for immediate political gains. However, both the state and their democratic strength suffer in the long run. 

South Asia is highly sensitive to religious or ethnic violence because the region is believed to be a Hindu-dominated civilization along with mixed minority religious groups, including Muslims and others that have been often witnessing domination from the former since ancient times, blame the critics. The minority groups sometimes outburst with grievances, ego or prejudice and encounters with the majority ones, which subsequently could escalate to civilizational clash leading to ethnic cleansing.

India, Pakistan and Bangladesh have been constantly witnessing ethnic violence or terrorist attacks that are deep-rooted to religious radicalism. Nepal has also been witnessing instances of social and ethnic differences, particularly hatred sentiments or pursuits against Hindu beliefs or Hinduism, in recent times. Some internal and external actors are trying to sow the seeds of social disharmony in the Nepali society in the name of globalization of culture, perhaps, with shrewd hidden interests. On the other hand, social order is being constantly challenged due to social irresponsibility of some so called communally recognized individuals including people’s representatives, social frontrunners and Opinion makers. Various studies show that the major source of knowledge or information to the new generation has become ‘short clips’ or ‘posts’ from social media— that rarely have depth of information, facts or evidence, data or statistics, and data analysis regarding the content. Likewise, some Opinion makers in mainstream media dig deeper only into the problems just by criticizing, blaming and inducing negative emotions to the general public for the sake of immediate popularity, instead of identifying possible solutions, ideas, innovations and sense of socio-emotional cohesiveness by incorporating facts, data, discussions, critical analysis and integrity. Accordingly, the inheritance of superficial knowledge or disinformation could induce misperception leading to adverse incitements in the mind of young readers, which could result in substantial ‘knowledge deficit’ when knowledge is transferred from one generation to another. Consequently, this could weaken ‘national knowledge power’ causing huge loss to the nation in the long run.

Nevertheless, the innovative technology, advanced society or antique democracy alone cannot bring significant transformation in human life, civilization or political affairs, a “conscious and responsible behavior” is essential in every human being including tech users, technocrats, policy makers, social and political actors. The tech, diplomatic and political policies and strategies should reflect democratic values that advance liberty and humanity, and respect human rights as well as people’s personal sovereign dignity. The AI, big tech and social media first need to be democratized so that they can contribute to a democratic order. Most importantly, a trustful multilateral (diplomatic) channel should be established so as to enable countries to develop responsible and ethical technology, while honest and ethical use (or practice) of AI technology, social media, or cultural beliefs will indeed advance people’s life, society, democracy and state-to-state relations. Technology however has brought about great transformations in human life, economy and the state of affairs; social media undeniably is one of the momentous entities of liberal world order when it complies with ‘ethical norms’, ‘comity’ and ‘civism’.

Primarily, domestic issues are entirely sovereign internal affairs of nations, while no foreign nationals or government can perhaps raise objections against their domestic laws and constitutional provisions. Yet, the concerns—tech, social and democratic—are highly sensitive due to the impact they may have on the region and beyond. Thus, it’s high time to restore trust and harmony among nation-states and nationals of distinct communities by initiating “rational civic dialogue”. The stronger and cohesive the social accord in a country, the higher the prospect of political stability, economic prosperity and democratic enlivening. 

Essentially, nation-states require truthful, collaborative and cooperative action among governments, civic community, multilateral organizations, universities, NGOs, think tanks and creative individuals to inject a specific ‘gene’ consisting of ‘harmony, humanity and civility’ into political leaders in the generations to come. 

The leadership endowed with this gem of a gene, let’s hope, will be able to course through a complex techno-socio-democratic order.  

This is the last piece of a three-part series

The author is a geopolitical analyst