Item — HN Reader

“First, the era ended slowly, and then it ended all at once. It ended slowly as China rose in power, in wealth. And then it ended all at once with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the sharp revitalization of the NATO alliance, to some degree of a Western identity in response.” — Ezra Klein.

“this is not just about a world of power politics. There is also the question of, how much have the liberal ideas, practices and institutions that have been built up over the last century, how much have they changed the world so that it’s not zero-sum? To what extent have we created a world of interdependence, commerce, capitalism, travel, contact, values, that mean that we shouldn’t just be applying this power political set of ideas to the world?” — Fareed Zakaria.

2 comments

“China and Russia are very different in this way. Russia benefits from international instability. It’s an oil state. Oil prices go up. It seeks to undermine international institutions and cooperation.

China, as a general principle, does not do that. It benefits enormously from international stability, from international order, even from international institutions. What it wants is to become powerful within them, so powerful, that you cannot violate its sovereignty. China’s number one principle for the last 20 years, and what it criticizes the U.S. for, is state sovereignty, the inviolability of state sovereignty. Which is why this whole business with Russia invading Ukraine has been so awkward for Beijing. So what they want is to grow powerful within the world as it exists.

You can see this in the fact that they want to become powerful in the U.N. They want to become powerful in the I.M.F. They want to become powerful in the World Bank. They don’t want to overturn these institutions.” — Fareed Zakaria.

But sovereignty is a matter of perspective too. Just frame it in a way that Ukraine belonged to Russia in the first place and the contradiction vanishes. This position is even more harmonic in relation to politics towards Taiwan.

Russia has been invading its neighbors for 15 years by now. It’s just that the West never reacted to it.