The professor of International Relations at the University of Zaragoza Juan Luis López Aranguren (Pamplona 1982) does not hesitate to define the meeting that Donald Trump and Xi Jimpin are holding these days in Beijing as “the summit of the decade.” Not only because almost ten years have passed since the last meeting of the two main world leaders, but because the meeting clearly shows the “tectonic movement” that has occurred in recent years: Asia is becoming the new center of gravity of the planet, as this expert in Indo-Pacific geopolitics explains in his latest essay – ‘The axis of the coming world’ (Ariel).
How do China and the US get to this summit?
Things have changed a lot since 2017. The most striking thing is that the United States’ position today is much weaker than nine years ago and Xi Jimpin arrives at the negotiating table stronger than Trump, who has tried to delay this meeting to present himself with two victories and only has one: the capture of Nicolás Maduro. Not only has he failed to bring down the ayatollah regime, but he now depends on China to prevent Iran from becoming his Vietnam.
What cards does each one play?
In the short term, Trump hopes that China will help him unblock the Strait of Hormuz to have a half-dignified exit from the war. This was already seen in the Islamabad talks, in which Xi called the Iranians to ask for flexibility, among other things because they also depend on Persian crude oil. In the medium term, Trump arrives with a surprising proposal, given his recent erratic movements, which is to create a bilateral trade board in which both countries negotiate, in terms of bipolarity, issues such as exports and tariffs. They call it the Board of Commerce and it is proof that the US is not as strong as it was believed to apply tariff tools unilaterally and the recognition that it needs to count on China.
I imagine he has other plans…
For China, this is the summit of the three ‘Ts’. The first is ‘tarif’, that is, tariffs. He wants a commitment that Washington will not threaten them with more tariff wars. The second is technology. Beijing has large artificial intelligence projects and does not want Trump to limit their access to semiconductors again, as he did recently by forcing the Chinese to start manufacturing their own semiconductors, which are a couple of generations behind Western ones. The third te is Taiwan.
Complex and delicate issue.
Yes, it is the hottest geopolitical spot on the planet because it concentrates very conflicting interests. For China, Taiwan is indispensable because it is the last piece they need to put an end to what they call the cycle of humiliations, which began with the first opium war of 1839. Last year, the United States authorized the largest arms sale to Taiwan in history, which greatly angered Beijing, which now aspires for Washington to have a more passive and isolationist stance towards the island.
Taiwan is the hottest geopolitical spot on the planet. For China it is essential, it is the piece they are missing to put an end to what they call the cycle of humiliations
Will there be agreements?
The problem is with Trump, who arrives too weak and is between a rock and a hard place. It needs to reach agreements that will improve its situation in the face of the midterm elections, especially because of the issue of Iran, but if it gives in too much to China it will give a sign of weakness, which also harms it. It is a complicated appointment, but it is more so for Trump than for Xi, who is stronger.
His book explains how the weight of the planet has shifted towards Asia to the detriment of the Atlantic axis. This has been announced for decades, it seems like the story of the wolf. What has changed?
That the wolf has already arrived. Firstly, by demographics: two thirds of humanity today live in the Indo-Pacific, a region that already concentrates more than 60% of the world’s GDP and is where the middle class, which is the consumers of the future, is growing the most. But there is another issue that means that today the fate of the planet is more at stake in Asia than in the West, the military one.
What has changed in that matter?
The five classic nuclear powers are present in the region, if we take into account the French overseas territories and that the United Kingdom has a base on the Indian island of Diego García. But in recent years two more have joined, India and Pakistan, which are also in conflict over Kashmir, and North Korea has its own nuclear program and a war that is not completely closed with Seoul. It is an area full of conflicts and anyone can provoke a regional confrontation that ends up triggering a world war. Taiwan, without going any further, could be the new Sarajevo of the First World War. From a military, economic and demographic point of view, the fate of the planet today is decided more in Asia than in Europe, which is on its way to becoming an appendix of Eurasia.
Do you think that will happen?
There is a geopolitical prophecy, according to which the 19th century was European because of its large colonial possessions, the 20th century was American, because Europe was devastated after the world wars and the United States emerged as a great superpower, but the 21st is going to be the Asian century. We are experiencing the transition to that scenario. In reality, if we broaden our historical perspective, we would see that things are returning to where they were several centuries ago. Asia has always concentrated between 50 and 60% of Humanity and the wealth of the planet, but the industrial revolution generated an anomaly that allowed Europe, which is a peninsula full of peninsulas at one end of Eurasia, to grow in wealth and population. Now, globalization and the popularization of technology has corrected that imbalance and has returned the plan to the status quo it had, in which most of the growth is generated by Asia.
The 19th century was European because of its large colonial possessions, the 20th century was American because the US became a great superpower, but the 21st century will be the Asian century.
What will this tectonic change in geopolitics mean for Europeans?
It affects us in everything, no matter how much we believe that we live in a kind of ivory tower, oblivious to what is happening in the rest of the world. Europe has to decide what role it wants to play in the world and assume that it comes from decades of military dependence on the United States and that this situation is over. We saw it with Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, which left Europe in a state of shock that has increased when seeing that the American friend wants to withdraw its forces from its interests. This is a situation that we are not used to facing. We Europeans have to get our act together if we want to survive and know that the rules that have been built after the Second World War are being blown up.
And Trump, what meaning does he give to his figure?
Paradoxically, Trump is the main threat against the American empire that he seeks to enlarge. But his isolationist stance is not temporary, but rather the perception of the average American. Trump is often seen as a source of jokes, but in reality it is a consequence of where his country is today. The message it sells may sound populist and simple, but it is the reflection of a society that no longer wants to carry the weight of the empire it created on its back.
What is the new world order like?
After the collapse of the USSR we believed that conflicts were going to be asymmetrical, like those between a State and a terrorist group, but now we have returned to the classic logic of conflicts between States, and some aspire to redraw the borders. In Europe we believed the story that the world is based on rules, on moral authority. This sounds very nice when it is put in treaties, but it ignores that every norm needs a coercive force that forces it to be fulfilled. The geopolitical architecture that we inherited from the Second World War is collapsing and we are moving towards another in which coercive force will count more when it comes to organizing the board.
Is it a more military scenario, even warlike?
To follow the Chinese case, Beijing would not need a fleet of aircraft carriers if it were not going to dispute maritime hegemony with the United States. However, it does not stop manufacturing them. A war is not likely in the short term, but China is preparing for that scenario. After the fall of the USSR, China adopted capitalism, in its own way, but not democracy, and its citizens were told: you don’t have as many freedoms as in the West, but you are growing by 10%. However, today, China cannot continue growing at the rate it did and the Chinese population may begin to complain. A good incentive may be to recover Chinese pride. We already see this in Chinese productions, which are increasingly more patriotic. Taiwan can be that incentive.
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