Jul 10, 2023
In Great Power competition in geopolitics today, constant reference is made to Third Nations — those not themselves Great Powers — being asked to choose. In a talk delivered by LKYSPP Dean and Li Ka Shing Professor in Economics, Professor Danny Quah, at the Asia Society Northern California, he argues that such framing is unhelpful as it reduces the agency of these Third Nations to being merely that of siding with this Great Power or that, and belonging to this sphere of influence or that.
Should Third Nations then be implicitly drawn into a zero-sum game in an ongoing rivalry between the world’s two largest economies?
Well, to Prof Quah, choice should not mean merely alignment. If by doing so, it keeps Third Nations from asking, “What is really good for us?”
“Outside of zero-sum situations, for relationships to be positive, nations don't have to be friends or like-minded or contractual partners. They don't have to have explicitly collaborative agreements. It doesn't hurt of course when they do,” he said.
Not forgetting that 80 per cent of the world’s population does lie outside of this polarisation of extremes that is the US and China, agency is not only possible but vital.
“Third Nations should exercise agency in actively articulating what they want out of engagement with others on the international stage — perhaps national sovereignty, territorial integrity, a level playing field — and then actively seek coalitional arrangements that will deliver those conditions. Such groupings will be with nations who are elastic, i.e., whose wants are mutually compatible, and can accommodate the needs of all in the coalition,” he added.
For social scientists like Prof Quah, this is an opportunity to rewrite global intervention.
“To be clear on that agency and what it entails, I first need to tell you why, even if we don't do this consciously, many of us think the opposite, i.e. why many of us reckon that Third Nations matter for world order only in the most tangential of ways… Once we think Third nations don't matter, then it is irrelevant what they want. If I believed that to be the case, then the title of my talk would be not what you see behind me, but instead "Managing the New Economic World Order — the US and China, and the incredible irrelevance of the rise of Asia," he quipped.
Noting that the “linear landscape of power” is significant only for the political and economic complexion of the one or two nations arrayed at the very top, he challenged reconsideration of the following: Are the Great Powers democracies or authoritarian states? Do they favour national sovereignty for all, or do they instigate regime change upon others? What is their approach to multilateralism? What parts of the current international system do they seek to undermine and revise, which planks of current world order do they support? What policies do the competing Great Powers practice on speech and press freedoms, individual rights and social priorities, market intervention, globalisation, and Big Tech?
The perennial question heard from Great Powers is quite often “whose side will you choose?” This has been felt over the considerable time he spent in Asia. To which, his response is that the perspective on choice is irrelevant for Asia, as this is “not the agency we seek”.
He says, “Sure, such choices affect our well-being. However, in this perspective, our choices do not constrain, incentivise, or even slightly nudge the Great Powers on what actions they might undertake. That is why the probability distribution of outcomes in world order is invariant with respect to the actions of Third Nations. Or put differently, this view leads to the implication that Great Powers are inelastic.”
Taking what the Greek writer Thucydides described, 2,500 years ago, when he wrote, "The strong do what they will. The weak suffer what they must," Prof Quah added that the role of Emerging Asia really needs to shift beyond the central tendency of discussion on the US-China conflict.
“If we focus on just the issues of contention between Great Powers, little wiggle room presents itself,” he notes.
He adds that the hypothesis of Great Power is inelastic; that is, “unhelpful, misleading and inaccurate”. There is a need then, for a more enduring and stable international system, if Third Nations are endowed with agency. And no later than now, as country leaders are dealing with an unprecedented era when multiple critical challenges demand strong actions and a collective front.
“The way the Great Powers have cast some of their most central issues, the game is only ever zero-sum. When that is the case then no relationship or proposition is ever of mutual benefit, so of course the case for contention only ever heightens,” he said.
Citing what JFK called the "long twilight struggle" or what Hannah Arendt coined "the most ancient cause of all" as the lead examples, he adds, “The contention over ‘freedom and democracy’ on the one hand and ‘tyranny and totalitarianism’ on the other… The other side is demonised, and you are either for us or against us. The proposition is binary — 0 or 1; win or lose.”
He adds: “Who gets to write the rules of the game, and who is revisionist, seeking to undermine the international system?”
According to Prof Quah, rather than carve up the world into on the one hand, a Coalition of the Willing versus, on the other, the Alliance of Authoritarians, this leaves no room for compromise, no room for positive relationship.
“Great Power contention on such Arendt-Kennedy type issues calls for neither input nor help from Third Nations. Our signing up would mean we're just along for the ride. We are simply not natural stakeholders in these problem domains.”
On the other hand, he noted that how the Great Powers have historically presented themselves not to each other but to Third Nations, there is a surfacing of both elasticity and room for compromise.
And ultimately, the idea is this: “If between Great Powers we no longer have this kind of elasticity, then it might be that it is in relationships with Third Nations where Great Powers can find a way forward despite zero-sum thinking elsewhere.”
He added that if the Third Nations were asked what they want, and what price they are willing to pay the Great Powers for supplying what is demanded, four suggestions emerge:
1. Peace and prosperity
2. Multilateralism: A level playing field. Clear rules of engagement.
3. Market access
4. National sovereignty; territorial integrity; ASEAN centrality
For the building of a new world order that plays out well in favour of the majority that is beyond the 20 per cent of the world’s population, Prof Quah says the immediate payoff from the view he has advanced is that Third Nations will no longer be viewed as immaterial.
“Obviously, this matters greatly to us Third Nations,” he says, “but more than that, focusing on those domains where Great Powers can be elastic also lets the Great Powers themselves think about problem domains that are elastic more generally, and therefore where their own relationship can be positive, not just zero-sum.”