CHATHAM HOUSE - "Competing visions of international order"
Responses to US power in a fracturing world
Research paper
02 China: Balancing the US, increasing global influence
M. Taylor Fravel
Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science; Director, Security Studies Program, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
China is actively seeking to balance US power and maximize its own international influence, through deep diplomatic engagement and global initiatives framed to exploit growing disquiet at the US-led world order.
Over the near to medium term, China’s vision for the future of international order is one in which the material power of the United States and the role of the liberal ideas it has championed are diminished relative to their position today. China’s vision, as held by China’s top leaders, contains three core elements. First, China articulates a Westphalian vision of order based on the primacy of states and on principles such as sovereignty, territorial integrity and non-intervention. In China’s vision, a state’s international influence should be commensurate with its capabilities – the logic of which confers special prerogatives on great powers with the greatest capabilities, such as China today. This vision bolsters China’s internal regime security and legitimates its own efforts to increase its international influence and occupy a leading position in the international system as it rises in power. Second, the main purpose of China’s vision of order since the end of the Cold War has been to reduce the influence of the US in an era in which liberal ideas along with US power have been ascendant. This enables Beijing both to decrease the ability of the US to harm or constrain China and to maximize its own freedom of manoeuvre and influence internationally. Third, China has pursued this vision of order much more actively and vigorously in the past decade, as its national capabilities have grown substantially and as its rivalry with the US has intensified.
One caveat is necessary. In today’s China, it is hard to identify open and stark differences among foreign policy elites, especially disagreements that might bear directly on the statements and positions of top leaders such as Xi Jinping, China’s president and general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC). Although one might be able to find signs of dissatisfaction with certain policies, it is hard to do so regarding foundational questions of foreign policy and grand strategy. Therefore, the analysis in this chapter assumes a consensus among Chinese foreign policy elites on China’s vision of international order.
China’s vision of international order
In early 2021, Xi described the US as ‘the biggest threat’ to China’s development and security.10 Chinese concerns about US power are long-standing. In the contemporary period, these began with the collapse of the Soviet Union and were expressed in the concept of pursuing a ‘new international order’ that reflected Beijing’s apprehensions about increased US power in the world. China viewed the material power of the US (including its network of military alliances) and its normative power (anchored in liberal norms and values) as threatening, although access to the US economy and global markets remained critical. As the dominant and unrivalled state in the international system in the post-Cold War era, the US was the only nation that could pose a long-term threat to China’s development and security. Thus, at its core, Beijing’s approach to international order has been about reducing its vulnerability to US power and increasing its own freedom of manoeuvre. Put differently, China’s approach to international order can be viewed as an attempt to balance US power and minimize US constraints on Beijing’s ability to exert influence and shape its external environment. It does this by emphasizing Westphalian ideas of sovereignty, territorial integrity, non-intervention and the formal equality of states, in contrast to liberal principles of openness, free markets, rules-based approaches and universal values.11
At its core, Beijing’s approach to international order has been about reducing its vulnerability to US power and increasing its own freedom of manoeuvre.
These beliefs about international order were present in efforts under CPC General Secretary Jiang Zemin to develop ‘a new security concept’ for the post-Cold War world.12 The basic idea was that countries should ‘rise above one-sided security and seek common security through mutually beneficial cooperation’.13 One notable example of China’s efforts to promote this new security concept was the 1997 Joint Declaration on a Multipolar World and the Establishment of a New International Order, issued with Russia when Jiang held a summit with President Boris Yeltsin.14 The declaration anticipated that growing ‘multipolarization’,15 created by the rise of the developing world, would weaken the position and influence of the US, and would enable the establishment of a new order. As laid out in the declaration, the core elements of the new order were unambiguously Westphalian in nature: mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression, peaceful coexistence, the right of states to choose their own development paths based on their circumstances, non-discrimination, the equality of states and non-intervention, and the peaceful resolution of disputes through dialogue. In this new order, military ‘blocs’ (meaning US alliances) were viewed as a threat to security and a source of regional tensions. This vision also emphasized the need to strengthen the United Nations, which was described as ‘the most universal and authoritative organization of sovereign States’ that would play an ‘important role in the establishment and maintenance of the new international order’.16
A vision of international order based on Westphalian principles advances China’s interests in two ways. First, the core norms of sovereignty, territorial integrity and non-intervention bolstered the regime security of the CPC after the end of the Cold War, when liberal ideas and US power were ascendant, by rejecting pressure for domestic political reform or regime change. Second, a Westphalian approach to order privileges the interests of great powers and the management of their interactions, thus providing a framework to legitimize greater influence by China as it accumulates more capabilities, regardless of its political system.
Xi’s concept of a ‘community of common destiny for mankind’ – now officially translated as a ‘community of shared future’ – has replaced Jiang’s ‘new international order’.17 However, many of the core principles remain: sovereign equality, the ‘democratization’ of international relations, common security, peaceful resolution of disputes and the centrality of the UN. In other words, Xi’s concept reflects the Westphalian principles that China has promoted since the end of the Cold War, as it seeks to balance US power and to legitimize its own interests, position and influence.
At the same time, Xi’s community of common destiny projects greater ambitions for China than Jiang’s new international order did. It has been formally written into the CPC’s charter (章程) and the constitution (宪法) of the People’s Republic of China. It also reflects Xi’s aspirations for China ‘to actively participate in leading reform of the global governance system’18 and ‘to become a leading state in comprehensive national strength and international influence’ by 2050.19 Between 2021 and 2023, China announced three new global initiatives – the global development, security and civilizational initiatives – to serve as the ‘strategic guidance’ to advance the achievement of the community of common destiny. Although the concept reflects a general sense of continuity with China’s vision of international order, it also displays a much greater desire to leverage and exercise China’s new capabilities to proactively advance the realization of this order, and to occupy a leading position within it.
The most expansive interpretation of China’s end goal is that it reflects a desire to create a Sino-centric global order, in which China replaces the US as the dominant state and reshapes the entire order according to its preferences.
Analysts diverge over what might be the end state of the community of common destiny or China’s ultimate goal within this vision of order. The most expansive interpretation of China’s end goal is that it reflects a desire to create a Sino-centric global order, in which China replaces the US as the dominant state and reshapes the entire order according to its preferences.20 Less expansive interpretations see ideas such as the community of common destiny as envisioning a partial hegemony in which China becomes the dominant state in some parts of the world, most likely in the developing world, essentially creating a bifurcated or bipolar order.21 Other analysts highlight the ambiguity in Chinese writings on the community of common destiny to suggest that the end state remains ambiguous, most likely by design, to maintain flexibility in the specific policies China pursues and to avoid alienating other states. And even if ambiguous, it remains useful for how China positions itself with respect to the US amid an increasingly competitive relationship.22 Divergent interpretations of China’s end goal also make it more challenging to assess China’s progress towards achieving its vision. Regardless, in the near to medium term, China will remain focused on balancing US power, especially in those areas that Beijing sees as most threatening to its interests.
China’s perceptions of US power
As suggested above, China’s perceptions of US power are negative – and have grown more so as the relationship has become more competitive over the last decade and has been framed increasingly by the US in ideological terms of democracy versus autocracy.
According to Fu Ying, a retired senior Chinese diplomat, China views the ‘world order’ as having three components: ‘first, American or Western values; second, the US-led military alignment; third, the UN and its institutions’.23 China opposes Western states imposing their values on other states, including itself, and opposes the US’s alliances as harmful tools of US power, but it supports the UN and its subordinate organizations. For Fu, ‘China is part of the international order’, meaning only the UN system.
Figure 1. Occurrence of keywords indicating Chinese perceptions of US hostility in the People’s Daily
— Source: Fravel, M. (2024), ‘China’s Global Security Initiative at Two: A Journey, Not a Destination’, China Leadership Monitor, Issue 80.
Offering an authoritative Chinese perspective, Fu’s characterization of international order also highlights the ways in which China’s vision of order has reflected concerns about US power and ideas. In the 1990s, Jiang’s call for a new international order and new security concept contained what are now quite familiar terms that capture Beijing’s concern about the role and influence of the US in the world, such as hegemony, power politics, a Cold War mentality and bloc politics. More recently, Chinese commentary on the community of common destiny and the three global initiatives are grounded in a clear counter-US framing that reflects similar concerns. As shown in Figure 1, Chinese perceptions of US hostility – as seen in the use of select keywords in articles in the People’s Daily, the newspaper of the CPC’s Central Committee – have increased significantly since 2018. In February 2023, for example, the day before China released a concept paper on the new Global Security Initiative, the Xinhua news agency released a lengthy report, entitled ‘US Hegemony and Its Perils’. It outlined US threats to global peace and stability that China’s initiative would address, thereby directly linking China’s vision of order with its concerns about the US. The September 2023 white paper on the community of common destiny was also framed directly in terms of growing global dissatisfaction with the existing international order and clear criticism of the US role in the world. The only possible way to interpret the white paper is as a desire to establish an alternative vision to a US-led order and justify China’s efforts to increase its international influence.
The counter-US framing in the community of common destiny and the related global initiatives serves several purposes. One is to delegitimize the US as a global leader to justify China’s own proposed vision, thereby weakening the ideational basis of the existing order by sowing doubts about Washington’s reliability as a partner. Delegitimization of the leading international role of the US is a key element of China’s approach to the rivalry between the two countries. Another purpose of the counter-US framing is to deflect growing US pressure and criticism of China as a threat to the international order by offering an alternative narrative about their rivalry. That narrative blames the US for the deterioration in ties and its global consequences, and portrays Washington – not Beijing – as the greatest threat to international order.
Pursuing the vision through deep diplomatic engagement
In pursuit of its vision of international order, Beijing uses all tools of statecraft and it has accumulated significant capabilities across them to do so, especially in the last decade.
Within the Asia-Pacific region, China uses all these tools – military, economic, diplomatic and information-related. Further afield, it relies most heavily on the last three. The economic tools extend far beyond the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), though the BRI is a prominent example, and include extensive trade, investment and financial ties with other states. The information tools include public diplomacy and persistent efforts to insert China’s preferred diplomatic slogans and language linked to its vision of order into diplomatic documents such as joint statements, as well as into UN resolutions and programmes.
China’s deep diplomatic engagement with the world enables it to pursue its vision of order through a latticework of international relationships. The first part of this engagement consists of bilateral relationships, given the intensive nature of China’s diplomatic activity and the robust presence of its diplomats in all states except those that recognize Taiwan and therefore do not maintain diplomatic ties with Beijing. Although more than a diplomatic endeavour, the BRI is an important example of China’s active bilateralism, in which it seeks to use infrastructure funding and direct investment to boost ties and increase its influence in the developing world.
As part of its approach to bilateral relationships, China has avoided pursuing military alliances or signing mutual defence pacts to promote its vision of order. In fact, it has not signed a mutual defence pact since doing so with North Korea in 1961. However, ‘partnerships’ with other states – defined variously as strategic, comprehensive strategic and all-weather strategic – play a significant role, especially with countries such as Pakistan and Russia with which China has close and extensive ties in all domains. These partnerships are variants of Beijing’s bilateralism and are tools to deepen ties with states that it prioritizes to promote its interests. As part of its ‘comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination’24 with Russia, for example, China has provided significant diplomatic and economic support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and for Russian defence industries.
The second part of China’s deep diplomatic engagement consists of its membership in regional and minilateral organizations. It participates in an increasing number of these, some of which, such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), it helped to establish. In Asia, China belongs to and seeks a leading role in regional organizations and cooperation mechanisms that include the Lancang-Mekong Initiative and the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia. Beyond the Asia-Pacific, it is a founding member of the BRICS group of regional powers (now the ‘BRICS plus’)25 and it seeks to exercise leadership
within it too.
Institutionalized interactions with regional organizations of which it is not a member and with regions beyond its own form the third part of China’s deep diplomatic engagement. These interactions could be described as ‘bi-multilateralism’ or ‘n+1’ platforms, as they formalize engagement with regional organizations as well as with their members. This can take several forms, such as direct and formal interactions with regional organizations, such as China’s dialogue with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (the ASEAN ‘10+1’). Beijing has similar institutionalized engagement with the European Union and the African Union. Another form of such interactions consists of dialogue mechanisms with other regions in the world, such as the Forum on China–Africa Cooperation, the China–Latin America and Caribbean States Forum, and the China–Arab States Cooperation Forum.
If no organization or mechanism exists for a group of states with which it wants to engage, China will create one.
If no organization or mechanism exists for a group of states with which it wants to engage, China will create one. One recent example is the China–Central Asian Summit (C+C5); earlier ones include the 17+1 grouping between Central and Eastern European states and China (now reduced to 14+1 following the withdrawal of three states). In the 2010s, China tried but failed to create similar groupings with European states, including with France, Germany and the UK; with the Mediterranean states; and with the Nordic states.
What is notable about China’s institutionalized engagement with, or participation in, different regional and minilateral organizations and mechanisms is that they are all forums in which the US is not a member or participant. This allows Beijing to shape their agendas in ways that maximize its interests and to pursue its priorities without direct US pushback.
With the exception of the ‘BRICS plus’, China’s diplomatic engagement tends not to use transregional mechanisms (that is, across multiple regions), but it often pursues sub-regional ones. For example, Beijing has dialogue mechanisms with Arab League members through the China–Arab Summit and with some members of the Arab League in a dialogue with the Gulf Cooperation Council. China has pursued engagement with the EU but, as noted above, has also pursued smaller groupings with select European states. In Central Asia, China engages regional states through the SCO as well as the more recent C+C5.
The last part of China’s deep diplomatic engagement is with international organizations that any sovereign state can join. The most important is the UN because of the principle of sovereign equality embedded in its charter, which places China on an equal footing with the US and allows it to rally support from many of the countries and regions with which it pursues the deep diplomatic engagement described above, especially in the developing world. China holds a critical position in the UN as a permanent member of the Security Council and uses the UN to advocate what it calls ‘true multilateralism’,26 which it contrasts with the US use of military alliances. It also uses its role to weaken the emphasis on liberal values and human rights in the UN and to strengthen the principle of absolute sovereignty.
China’s approach to rivalry with the US
China’s approach to this rivalry emphasizes balancing US power and diminishing Washington’s ability to check Beijing’s growing influence and its pursuit of its vision of order. The ways in which Beijing seeks to balance US power are multifaceted and comprehensive.
A primary objective for China is to further enhance its hard power through continued military modernization, so that the People’s Liberation Army can fight and win what it calls ‘informatized local wars’ and become a ‘world-class’ military by 2050.27 These modernization efforts emphasize a potential conflict over Taiwan, but they are also shifting the balance of military power in the Asia-Pacific. China seeks to enhance its military presence in other parts of the world too by increasing cooperation with other militaries through joint exercises and training and, more gradually, by establishing overseas bases.
Next, a key aim is to strengthen its economic self-reliance and indigenous innovation to reduce China’s vulnerability to external shocks and targeted sanctions. China also emphasizes the development of self-reliance in the frontier technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution that are seen as critical to increasing its national wealth and thus its influence in the coming decades – such technologies are also central to enhancing Chinese military capabilities. Part of this effort includes securing China’s supply chains for critical technologies, such as advanced semiconductors, and enhancing indigenous innovation in areas such as biotechnology, quantum computing and artificial intelligence.
Relatedly, Beijing seeks to increase other states’ economic dependence on China by deepening trade, investment and financial relations. Doing so raises the costs for countries to challenge Chinese interests and can increase policy alignment between China and these states.
Diplomatically, China will continue its efforts to delegitimize the US as a provider of global public goods and source of stability in the international system. The ‘governance deficits’28 that Beijing seeks to address through the community of common destiny and the three global initiatives are framed to tap dissatisfaction with the current order, and with Washington, in many parts of the world – and at least superficially to position China as a source of possible remedies. Delegitimization also includes efforts to discredit and divide US alliances, thereby weakening the US international position.
China will also further deepen ties with Russia. This is intended to enable China to concentrate its strategic resources against the US without needing to focus on securing its own northern border.
China will also further deepen ties with Russia. This is intended to enable China to concentrate its strategic resources against the US without needing to focus on securing its own northern border. Although Beijing and Moscow have quite different views of international order, Russia’s confrontation with the US diverts some US strategic attention from China, giving the latter more breathing space while also making available certain advanced military technologies and relatively cheaper commodities such as oil and natural gas. As stated explicitly for the first time in their May 2024 joint statement, China and Russia declared their intent to cooperate in many areas to weaken US power.29
China seeks as much as possible to divide Europe, or parts of Europe, to prevent it from pursuing closer ties with the US or US-favoured policies that target China. Beijing frequently calls for Europe to exercise its ‘strategic autonomy’,30 which is another way of asking it to reduce its alignment with the US and its support for US policies such as technology restrictions against China. However, Beijing’s deepening ties with Moscow and support for Russia’s economy and defence industrial base during the invasion of Ukraine have harmed China’s image in the region and undercut its ability to divide Europe.
Elsewhere around the world, China will deepen and improve ties in all domains with Central Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East and North Africa, and sub-Saharan Africa. These regions are the main targets of the three global initiatives, and they were previously the regions where the BRI was most widely embraced and implemented.
Finally, among international institutions, China seeks to underscore the centrality of the UN and, within it, an absolute notion of sovereignty to counter more liberal conceptions of partial sovereignty.
Although China is unlikely to fundamentally alter this basic approach to its rivalry with the US, how China may respond to the policies of the second Trump administration bears consideration. On the one hand, immediately after Trump’s election in November 2024, Beijing indicated a desire to maintain stability in its ties with Washington, underscoring four ‘red lines’ that the US should not cross.31 On the other hand, China is prepared to respond vigorously – and much more proactively than during the first Trump administration – to what it views as challenges from the US. To prepare for increased tariffs and other potential economic sanctions, China has developed a suite of policy tools such as export controls to impose costs on US firms and has endeavoured to boost growth at home and deepen economic ties with third countries.32 More generally, China is poised to exploit tensions that might arise between the US and other countries in response to Trump’s economic and diplomatic policies, giving China an opportunity to weaken US alliances, divide Europe and further boost China’s standing in the developing world. These tensions may also make it even easier for China to highlight the appeal of Xi’s community of common destiny by offering it as a remedy for the instability and disorder which ‘America first’ policies may cause in the international community.33
Conclusion
China’s vision of international order in the near to medium term reflects continued pursuit of Westphalian principles under the banner of the community of common destiny for mankind. Its pursuit of this vision has intensified in the past decade under Xi Jinping and is now intertwined with the US–China rivalry, as the country seeks to balance US power and maximize its international influence in an increasingly competitive context. Global implementation of this vision relies on all instruments of statecraft, but especially on deepening diplomatic engagement with the rest of the world.
03 Russia stakes global ambitions on regional dominance
Professor Alexander Cooley
Academy Faculty Member, The Queen Elizabeth II Academy, Chatham House; Claire Tow Professor of Political Science, Barnard College, Columbia University
Russia is using regional hegemony to secure its great power status, recasting the Ukraine war as a global conflict against the US-led international order. But whether Russia would thrive in a post-Western world is far from clear.
For more than two decades, Russia has viewed itself as a regional leader and a great power in an emerging multipolar world. It has assumed an increasingly assertive and aggressive revisionist stance towards the US-led liberal international order, with its elites framing the war in Ukraine as central to Moscow’s campaign to transform that order and to usher in a post-Western world. These regional and global ambitions are inextricably linked in Russian foreign policymakers’ minds: if Russia does not project enduring influence in its neighbourhood, its global aspirations cannot be realized. Accordingly, the local or regional war in Ukraine – beyond questions of territory, Russian identity and regional security – has been recast by Moscow as a global conflict about the very essence of international order and as an attempt to oppose US-led Western hegemony.
Russia’s vision of its place and role in the international order rests on three main pillars. First, Russia seeks to maintain leadership and control over the post-Soviet states, which it regards as forming its sphere of influence or ‘special zone of privilege’.34 It has exerted influence through a mix of coercion, creation of regional organizations under Russian leadership, support for breakaway territories to pressure the governments of Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine, and the maintenance of a strong network of security and economic ties across the region. Countering Western influence and engagement in these countries is also a strategic priority by extension.
Second, Russia aims to secure its global standing as a great power in a post-Western, multipolar world. Its regional hegemony provides the basis for its global great power status, while its elites view the waning of US hegemony and global leadership as a necessary step in institutionalizing a new order.35 Relatedly, on regional issues like Afghanistan and the Hamas–Israel war, or on global challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change, Russian officials reflexively point to Western policies, values and interventions as the drivers of regional instability and international non-cooperation.
Moscow regards its campaign to sow divisions in the West as the natural extension of its aim to promote a post-Western world order, and sees these efforts as the geopolitical equivalent to Western campaigns to promote democracy and liberal values abroad.
Third, Russia seeks to undermine Western political unity and foreign policy consensus. It works to erode support in the West for transatlantic institutions, allies and political communities, backing political elites and parties that oppose NATO and the European Union. Moscow also seeks to exacerbate political polarization and separatist movements in Western countries through disinformation operations. It regards its campaign to sow divisions in the West as the natural extension of its aim to promote a post-Western world order, and sees these efforts as the geopolitical equivalent to Western campaigns to promote democracy and liberal values abroad.
The impact of the war in Ukraine
Moscow opportunistically uses international crises and conflicts to promote its revisionist agenda. The war in Ukraine has turbocharged efforts across all three pillars of Russia’s international ordering strategy.
Moldova has been a strong supporter of Ukraine but other post-Soviet states have been divided, remained silent or maintained public neutrality when it comes to the war. Georgia, for example, has refused to follow the West in imposing economic sanctions on Russia. In Central Asia, public opinion on who is to blame for the war ranges from being relatively evenly split (in Kazakhstan) to strongly backing the Russian position and blaming the West, Ukraine and NATO (in Kyrgyzstan).36 Central Asian elites are concerned about a resurgent Russia’s broader territorial ambitions and disregard for sovereign borders. However, such wariness does not translate into openly aligning with the West against Russia but instead into increasing engagement with as many foreign policy partners as possible (such as China, Japan, South Korea and the Gulf states).
At the same time, rather than causing these countries to extricate themselves from their ties with Russia, the war in Ukraine has fostered new network connections and opportunities for population mobility across the region. Central Asian labour migrants continue to go to Russia in record numbers, while two waves of Russian emigrants, or relokanty (mostly displaced IT workers and conscription evaders), have boosted the Russian presence in capital cities across Central Asia and the South Caucasus.37 Most importantly, sanctions evasion is booming, driven by regional business and political elites who actively collaborate with Russian firms and customs officials to maintain the operation of re-export chains and routes.
Russia’s attempt to gain global support for its war has had limited success, especially in the first months when it framed the ‘special military operation’ as being necessary to ‘de-nazify’ Ukraine.38 Later, Russia pivoted to frame the conflict as a full-fledged proxy war against Ukraine’s Western supporters over the future of the international order. Moscow’s diplomatic efforts in the Global South have sought to generate solidarity with itself against US hegemony, interventionism and imperialism. Opinion polls beginning in 2023 have suggested that international support for Ukraine is diminishing, even among countries that initially voted at the UN to support its sovereignty.39 Most notably, in April 2023, Brazil’s president Luis Ignácio Lula da Silva not only refused to send military assistance to Ukraine but also stated that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was equally culpable for the war.40
Moreover, as the war has gone on, Russia has pragmatically bolstered its war effort with the support of several Middle Eastern or Asian countries. Since the autumn of 2022, Iran has supplied Russia with more than 8,000 Iran-developed drones, many used for long-range attacks into Ukraine, and has reportedly transferred the technology for their production to within Russia.41 Despite its official stance of neutrality, China continues to supply Russia covertly with dual-use goods and complete weapons systems. Perhaps most dramatically, after signing a mutual defence treaty, North Korea has sent more than 10,000 troops to fight on Russia’s behalf, beginning in the Ukrainian-occupied region of Kursk.42 As Western Europe has supported Ukraine, Russia has been increasingly backed by non-European allies and partners in a conflict taking place within the European theatre.
After an initial, intense period of stigmatization in the West that saw even Russia-friendly politicians quickly distance themselves from its actions, Moscow has cultivated a network of commentators and policymakers to pressure Kyiv into entering peace talks and to reduce Western support to Ukraine. In the run-up to the 2024 US presidential election, Russia continued to support a network of right-wing commentators, founded a number of authentic-looking local digital media outlets, and then, on election day on 5 November, it appeared to make a number of bomb threats to polling locations across several swing states. Moscow’s hopes appeared to have paid off: Following Donald Trump’s inauguration, the US president initiated direct bilateral negotiations with Moscow on the terms of a ceasefire that appeared favourable to the Kremlin, while threatening Ukraine with the cut-off from US assistance and intelligence-sharing.
Finally, Russia’s intelligence and security services are increasingly determined to infiltrate and to repress the activities of Russians who fled to the West when the war began.43
Russian perceptions of US power
For some time, Russia’s elites have openly asserted that the US is in decline as a global hegemon and that, consequently, the international system is unstable and undergoing a profound transformation. Many of them also say the war in Ukraine is the result of this instability and changing international dynamics. Still, most Russian elites, who had become accustomed to framing the West as fragmented, were taken by surprise by the degree of its initial unity, including over coordinated sanctions, the expansion of NATO membership to Finland and Sweden, and the supply of weaponry to Ukraine, as well as by the withdrawal of the Western private sector from Russia.
For some time, Russia’s elites have openly asserted that the US is in decline as a global hegemon and that, consequently, the international system is unstable and undergoing a profound transformation.
Russia’s elites routinely level a host of criticisms at US foreign policy, but three are especially resonant.
The first criticism is that the US liberal democracy agenda has long been a cover for forcing disruptive regime changes around the world. Russian analysts point to the Colour Revolutions that ousted post-Soviet rulers in Georgia (2003), Ukraine (2004) and Kyrgyzstan (2005) in favour of more Western-oriented opposition figures following street protests triggered by flawed elections. They regarded those events as geopolitical moves, rather than the product of domestic discontent. They believed that these protests were the direct result of the actions of the US or of US-backed external actors, such as democracy non-governmental organizations and regional donors. This narrative was reinforced during the Arab Spring in 2011, when the US similarly appeared to encourage the toppling of rulers across the Middle East, including long-time allies such as Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak. Russia’s elites commonly equate democracy promotion with regime change and point out that the result of US interventions is instability and chaos, citing Libya as a prime example.
The second charge is that the US’s alleged support for a rules-based order is acutely hypocritical, especially with US officials invoking the importance of rules, norms and international law only when convenient. In his address after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and in his speech that marked the annexation of four occupied provinces of eastern Ukraine in 2022, President Vladimir Putin made multiple references to Western hypocrisy and double standards (and even ‘triple standards’). From this perspective, the outbreak of the Hamas–Israel war has not only turned the global spotlight away from Ukraine; it has also allowed Russian policymakers to underscore how the US in its Middle East policy routinely ignores UN declarations, international law and global public opinion.
A third critique is that of US-led economic imperialism and Washington’s coercive and geopolitical use of dollar diplomacy. Russia’s elites have been critical of the purpose and justification of US and Western sanctions on their country since 2014, and the more robust ones imposed since 2022 have spurred Moscow to take practical and diplomatic steps to alleviate their impact. Russian academics and analysts have a robust research programme on the evolution, purpose and forms of US and Western sanctions.44
Foreign policy instruments
In Western policymaking circles, Russia tends to be viewed as a declining or regional power, with neither the capabilities nor the global influence of China, the main strategic competitor of the US.45 This ignores the disruptions that Russia has caused for the international system and Western interests, as well as the evolution of its toolkit to effect change in several aspects of the international order.
Military force
The most important element of Russia’s toolkit is the use of force to achieve its political and strategic aims. Even before the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia had forcibly intervened in Georgia in 2008 and in Ukraine in 2014 by annexing Crimea and supporting separatists in the east of the country. Further afield, Russia’s intervention in Syria in 2015 to support the teetering regime of President Bashar al-Assad was initially successful, supporting the regime until its collapse in December 2024. Moscow has consistently promoted its global reputation as a guardian of political stability, especially among authoritarian regimes.
The first months of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 revealed significant weaknesses in its large kinetic operations, as the Ukrainian military repelled Russian advances, destroyed symbolic Russian targets in the Black Sea and regained some territory, most notably Kherson. However, since 2023, Russia’s military has proven more effective, including in halting the Ukrainian counteroffensive, and it has since achieved incremental gains as Ukraine’s munitions supplies have dwindled. The severe loss of troops has not changed elite thinking about the cost of the war or moved public opinion to oppose it.
Regional and non-Western organizations
Upon becoming president in 1999, Putin made re-engaging with the post-Soviet states a priority. For this purpose, Russia launched regional organizations to institutionalize its control over its neighbours, including the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and the Eurasian Customs Union, which in 2014 became the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). These organizations mimicked some of the institutional features of NATO and the EU, respectively, but Western policymakers mostly dismissed them as ineffective or politically not worthy of engagement.46
Since the start of the war in 2022, the relevance of these regional bodies has been mixed. The CSTO’s legitimacy has been threatened by Russia’s refusal to defend or intervene on behalf of its fellow member Armenia, which was ousted from Nagorno-Karabakh by Azerbaijan’s forces in September 2023. As a result, public opinion in Armenia has shifted against Russia and Moscow’s security guarantees have lost credibility. Just a few weeks before the invasion of Ukraine, however, Russia had achieved its greatest success when CSTO peacekeepers entered Kazakhstan at the request of President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, who was facing street protests, to defend symbolic targets and affirm Russia’s support for him.
By contrast, the frequently criticized EAEU has provided the legal architecture for much of Russia’s sanctions evasion and thriving re-export trade, allowing Russian businesses to reflag abroad, enabling the re-export of repurposed and dual-use goods (many from China) via Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, and facilitating Russian firms and citizens in opening foreign bank accounts.
Russia’s elites are strong backers of its membership in non-Western groups and organizations such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the BRICS group47 and of the expansion of these, which they view as building the fabric of a global governance that is not controlled by the West. Russia views these organizations as forums to criticize the West and to promote counter-ordering agendas in different regions.
International law
Russia’s membership in regional organizations also bolsters its broader claims to be a champion and guardian of international law. Moscow values and defends its permanent seat in the UN Security Council, but its interpretations of the applicability of international law have evolved as a function of its dissatisfaction with the liberal international order.48
The West’s unilateral recognition of Kosovo as an independent state in 2008 and the US argument that this would not set a precedent were particularly criticized in Russia, where this was viewed as a prime example of Washington only following international law when it is geopolitically convenient. The Kosovo decision also provided Moscow with a precedent to justify its recognition of the independence of Georgia’s breakaway territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia that same year.49
In 2015, the Constitutional Court of Russia ruled that it retained the authority to override rulings of the European Court on Human Rights (which Russia had previously regarded as binding) if it determined that the rulings were incompatible with the constitution.50 The local referendums preceding Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and in the four occupied eastern Ukrainian provinces in 2022 were obviously shams, but they were indicative of Moscow’s desire to justify its territorial grabs through some type of international legal process.
Counter-norms
Russia puts forth a constant critique of liberal democracy and the Western promotion of liberal causes. In 2019, Putin argued that liberal ideas are ‘obsolete’ and that ‘traditional values are more stable and more important for millions of people than this liberal idea, which, in my opinion, is really ceasing to exist’.51 Russia has consistently pushed ‘traditional values’ as a global counter-norm to liberalism, emphasizing the traditional family and promoting the role of state religion and, more recently, a pro-life agenda. Tellingly, in his 2022 annexation speech, amid his ranting about US imperialism, Putin also railed against the evils of gender-reassignment surgery.52 Championing traditional values has made Russia politically appealing to some right-wing and conservative movements in Europe and the US, including through new transnational networks formed by groups like the World Congress of Families. Russia’s elites have also promoted the norm of civilizational diversity that China puts forward and sought to emphasize the importance of sovereignty and security.53
Information warfare
Russia uses its information warfare capability to promote disinformation at multiple levels (local, national, regional and global) through a complex ecosystem that includes state media, content-sharing agreements, social media and the strategic use of fake media outlets. From targeting regimes and factions in African countries to promoting anti-Western vaccine messages across Latin America, to spreading disinformation about the 2024 US presidential election,54 Russia has developed an effective network designed to highlight the failures of the liberal international order and to promote political polarization in the West. Its information efforts are less focused on promoting positive views of Russia, although this is often used in the West as a standard for judging their efficacy, which mistakenly equates information warfare with ‘soft power’.
Providing public goods
Russia has repeatedly attempted to act as an alternative provider of public goods, but this is one area of international ordering where it has proven ineffective. For example, during the financial crisis of 2008–09, it unsuccessfully attempted to leverage emergency financial assistance to other countries to extract foreign policy concessions, including trying to get Belarus to recognize the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Russia also offered Kyrgyzstan an emergency loan with the demand that it close the Manas airbase, which the US used to stage troops in and out of Afghanistan. However, although President Kurmanbek Bakiyev announced the base’s closure, he later renewed the lease for a higher annual rental payment. Around that time, Russia similarly failed in its attempts to negotiate military access in exchange for emergency financing in such countries as Cyprus, Iceland and Vietnam.
Russia has repeatedly attempted to act as an alternative provider of public goods, but this is one area of international ordering where it has proven ineffective.
Simply put, Russia’s resources for providing assistance to other countries are not at the level of those of China or even of Saudi Arabia. Moscow has accepted that it is no longer competing in Eurasia with Chinese public-goods initiatives like the Belt and Road, and it now includes Chinese infrastructure integration projects in its concept of a Greater Eurasia.55
A more recent example of Russia’s limited success with regard to public goods was its efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic to leverage its Sputnik V vaccine.56 After announcing with great public fanfare that Russian scientists had developed the world’s first vaccine against the virus, Moscow mostly failed to deliver on contracted commitments to purchasing countries, becoming mired in regulatory difficulties and corruption procurement scandals, which made Sputnik V a more marginal player in vaccine geopolitics than its Western and Chinese counterparts.57
The liberal international order
Russia has a shaky record as a revisionist power leading global efforts to dismantle the US-led liberal international order. However, the assumptions of liberal internationalism about Russia have also been debunked. Most notably, the long-held assumption in certain Western countries that economic interdependence in areas like energy, information technology and consumer goods would change Russia’s interests or temper its revanchism has proven to be incorrect.
In the case of the Ukraine war, Russia’s opportunistic global messaging that it is the vanguard of anti-Western imperialism, while rightly derided by Ukraine and its supporters, resonates in other countries. This complicates Western debates about supporting Ukraine with local, regional and global considerations that seem far removed from the actual triggering causes of the war.
Even if Western support for Ukraine diminishes and the country is somehow forced into a settlement on Russian terms, it is not at all clear that such a settlement or a resulting post-Western world would be one in which Russia would thrive or retain the same international prominence that it enjoys now as the leader of an anti-US revisionist bloc. The historian Stephen Kotkin has argued that the least likely of all the possible scenarios for Russia’s future is the one predicted by its foreign policy elites, namely that the country will remain a great power with a regional sphere of influence in a multipolar world.58 It is more likely, Kotkin argues, that Russia assumes a global rogue status more akin to that of North Korea or becomes China’s vassal.
Navigating China–US rivalry
Discussions about Russia’s vision for international order rightly zero in on its relationship with China. Putin and President Xi Jinping have portrayed China–Russia relations as growing ever closer and as a ‘partnership without limits’. Three key points stand out in this regard.
First, the war in Ukraine, despite (or perhaps because of) Russia’s military difficulties, has brought the two countries closer. Although China remains officially neutral, it holds a pro-Russia type of neutrality that includes agreeing with Moscow’s position about the causes of the conflict and about NATO expansion, denouncing Western economic sanctions and the weaponization of the dollar, and opposing liberalism and democracy. There are also some interaction effects. For example, in May 2022, in reaction to individual sanctions by the West against Russian oligarchs, China barred its high-level officials and their family members from owning overseas bank accounts.59 Researchers have found that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has created a demonstration effect that may increase public support in China for using military force against Taiwan.60
Second, differences exist between China and Russia on certain matters, but these are not yet sufficient to change the overall emphasis on their strategic partnership. Beijing has proven to be a tough negotiator on important bilateral gas projects (such as the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline), and Moscow’s pivot to the East cannot make up for its loss of Western markets and investments. China has also warned Russia about the danger of using a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine. But, overall, there is little official public disagreement between them. Beijing also appears to acknowledge that the US would be focusing entirely on China if it were not for the war in Ukraine.
Russia may not fully trust China but it will continue to cooperate and expand ties with its neighbour in its bid to oppose the US-led order, as well as to forge closer economic and security relations with countries that the US considers as rogues and rivals, such as Cuba, Iran and North Korea.
Third, the partnership between China and Russia follows a pattern seen for some time across Eurasia. The relationship may be asymmetrical in favour of China, but this does not prevent mutual accommodation, if only because the two share a common cause in opposing the US-led liberal international order. For example, they coordinated to deny the US basing rights in Central Asia during its withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, and they engaged with Afghanistan and its neighbours to advance their respective regional agendas. Russia may not fully trust China but it will continue to cooperate and expand ties with its neighbour in its bid to oppose the US-led order, as well as to forge closer economic and security relations with countries that the US considers as rogues and rivals, such as Cuba, Iran and
North Korea.
Another wrinkle in the geopolitics of the Beijing–Moscow axis is the second Trump administration. A number of Trump officials have emphasized that it is China, not Russia, that constitutes the main threat and strategic competitor to the US. Accordingly, settling the conflict in Ukraine and forcing European countries to assume greater responsibility for their security are viewed as critical for refocusing US resources and attention on China in the Pacific. Politically, polling indicates that most members of the US Republican base do not regard Russia, despite its invasion of Ukraine, as the main threat to the US, and it appears unlikely that Kyiv will again see the types of aid packages that the Biden administration assembled.61
Moreover, even if a US strategic reorientation towards Asia takes place, it is unclear whether Moscow will make any type of meaningful concessions to Ukraine and its Western backers to settle the conflict, such as allowing Kyiv Western-backed security guarantees. Three years after commencing the limited ‘special military operation’, the war has cost Russia hundreds of billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives. However, Moscow’s increasing networking and pragmatic cooperation with global partners and the prospect of eroding Western unity have emboldened its revisionist aspirations and agenda despite – or even because of – these sunk costs.
04 Resistance: the mantra behind Iran’s worldview
Professor Vali Nasr
Majid Khadduri Professor of Middle East Studies and International Affairs, School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University
After decades of both defying and attempting to coexist with the West, Iran’s rulers detect structural shifts in the liberal international order which they believe will reward their anti-US strategic outlook.
Iran is today a revisionist power that sees the liberal international order as inimical to its national interest. Iran proclaims its desire to revise that order, and in practice bypasses it where possible. This makes for an uneasy coexistence with the liberal international order, wherein Iran seeks advantage within that order opportunistically, but challenges it and looks to circumvent it. There is revolutionary ideology behind Iran’s attitude, but the country’s experiences with the liberal international order since the revolution in 1979 have reinforced its suspicions of the world order.
Iran’s foreign policy posture and its outlook on state, society and the economy reflect not only its ideological predispositions, but also how it views experiences such as the 1979 revolution, the 1980s war with Iraq and the collapse of the nuclear deal in 2018. Another factor is the difficulty for Iran of balancing its fundamental antagonism towards the world order with the imperative of working within it and contending with the West.
Criticisms of Iran’s strategic outlook and conduct abound in both academia and public debates. There are obvious arguments against the assumptions of Iran’s foreign policy and questions regarding whether its goals are achievable. The aim in this essay is not to reiterate those criticisms or judge the wisdom of Iran’s foreign policy thinking and behaviour. Rather, the chapter will seek to capture the country’s strategic outlook, how it sees its national interest, and how it then seeks to balance strategic proclivities with pragmatic choices in dealing with the international order. That balance is shifting as the nature of the world order undergoes profound change.
Revisionism informed and boosted by global events
Iran’s posture is not irrational genuflection by an authoritarian theocracy to outside pressure. It instead reflects a national security doctrine that is anchored in a particular view of national interest, one that has roots in Iran’s history. Iran’s current foreign policy outlook can be most readily traced back to the revolution of 1979 and the Islamic Republic’s founding Islamic ideology.62 Equally important, Iran’s understanding of the world order and its effects on Iranian interests has been forged by the Islamic Republic’s experiences since 1979. The most salient of these experiences have been its eight-year war with Iraq;63 the US-led containment of Iran since 1979; 9/11 and the War on Terror; US invasions of Iran’s neighbours to its east and west, namely Afghanistan and Iraq; Iran’s experience of a nuclear deal with the West and the ever-tightening noose of sanctions around its economy64 – and going forward, the lessons inherent in the recent regional conflagration following Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on Israel and the West’s response to it, culminating ultimately in the decimation of Hezbollah in Lebanon and fall of the Assad regime in Syria. These experiences have enveloped one another to shape Iran’s conception of its national security, and of how to protect itself within the current world order. As Ayşe Zarakol has argued, anxiety cinches the psychology of states, and that will in turn shape their conceptions of insecurity and status, and their approach to the world.65
In this context, global developments that have challenged or changed the established international order have been of particular interest to Iran’s foreign policy elite. For a period, the world order that Iran confronted appeared stable. Yet, the past decade has witnessed an acceleration of fundamental changes to the world order with direct implications for Iran’s strategic outlook. Iran’s rulers have noted the palpable decline in the salience and coherence of the current world order – a theme that peppers the speeches of the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and of the political and military elite. They have noted an end to US unipolar dominance over the global order; the receding footprint of globalization as the dominant international economic framework; the alienation of China and Russia from the liberal international order; and the rise of the BRICS.66
Iran’s rulers see validation of their own long-held worldviews, and even despite setbacks in the region, they detect long-run advantage and opportunity in structural shifts in the world order. Khamenei has gone as far as to claim credit for Iran’s role in altering the balance of power in the world order. Since 2018 Iran has increased its economic and strategic tilt towards China and Russia, seeking strategic depth in the de facto emergence of a contiguous Eurasian ‘axis of resistance’ to the US.67 Russia is now committed to opening a north–south trade corridor running via Iran and on to the Arab monarchies on the southern shore of the Persian Gulf – which once were impermeable to relations with Iran.68
Iran’s rulers see validation of their own long-held worldviews, and even despite setbacks in the region, they detect long-run advantage and opportunity in structural shifts in the world order.
There is strategic convergence between Iran, China and Russia. Khamenei recently opined that both China and Russia tried to realize their national aims by embracing the US-led world order only to discover what Iran has maintained all along: that the liberal international order is not an even playing field for all; rather, that it is an instrument of US hegemony, and that the path of other challengers to great power status will be blocked by the US. Having seen Iran’s perspective and now finding themselves in the crosshairs of the US, those great powers are moving in Iran’s direction (as much as Iran is moving in theirs).
The crisis facing the liberal international order is therefore giving rise to a strategic space at the global level that is aligned with and boosts Iran’s revisionism. That space will only grow as US conflict with China and Russia becomes more embedded in US foreign policy; it will to an increasing extent also shape the dynamics of the global order. For the first time since the start of the Iranian nuclear crisis in 2003, at the meeting of the Board of Governors of the UN International Atomic Energy Agency in June 2024, China and Russia broke with the US and Europe to join Iran in rejecting a motion to censure Tehran, embracing the notion that the UN agency was serving as an instrument of American foreign policy.69 However, in practice the promise of this strategic space has not lived up to the expectations that Iran’s most ardent advocates of a ‘look east’ policy have of it. China and Russia have provided Iran with strategic depth, but neither has provided the much-needed military support nor an economic outlet that could effectively buoy up Iran’s economy. So Iranians debate the extent to which the country should continue to rely on China and Russia, but this has not obviated their abiding suspicion of the liberal international order.
How resistance defines the ruling elite view of world order
It is commonly assumed in the West that Iran’s defiance of the US and the West is ideological – reflecting the anti-Western tilt of Islamism – and is a facet of the Islamic Republic’s theocratic nature. Although this explanation has validity in that the language of the state is Islamic, and ideology accounted for the Islamic Republic’s virulent anti-Americanism early on, the value of this perspective has waned over the decades.70
The mantra of Iran’s foreign policy today is ‘resistance’. This is an idea that draws on Islamism’s antagonism to the West but has been increasingly defined in strategic and national security terms. It is now less an ideological posture and more a national security doctrine for Iran. Even at the ideological level it does not reflect the religious stamp of the revolution as much as it does the Third Worldist view of its leadership. According to Iran’s Supreme Leader, who is the Islamic Republic’s chief strategist, resistance is a modern-day version of the anti-imperialism that was in vogue among the New Left in the 1960s and the 1970s. At its core, Iran views the US as a rapacious imperialist hegemon bent on world domination.71
Iran seeks to resist US imperialism, but its own aim is development and great power status, which are outlined in a grand vision for the state and the economy in national documents. Iran is adamant that development cannot be achieved in a state of ‘dependence’ on the US and acceptance of its hegemony. Echoing the decades-old ‘dependency theory’ in political science, Iran’s view is that development in a system designed to ensure the supremacy of the West and the subservience of the rest means perpetual underdevelopment. The path to veritable development must start by rejecting imperialism and the world order that supports it. The US, Iran’s Supreme Leader has argued, is blocking Iran’s path to development.72 That is the root cause of the conflict with the US, and why Iran must resist in order to develop in accordance with its own plans.73
There are few religious harangues and much nationalistic defiance in how Iran defines its resistance. In nationalist terms, resistance is cast as a continuation of Iran’s struggle for independence, heir to the nationalist movement of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in the 1950s to secure Iran’s right to its national resources. Mossadegh’s nationalization of Iran’s oil industry was undone by what Iran’s rulers believe was an American- and British-engineered military coup. Regardless of its accuracy, this is the operative historical memory that underpins the Islamic Republic’s worldview. Their latter-day resistance, argue the doyens of the republic, is succeeding where Mossadegh failed. In this they make clear that resistance to the US has roots in contemporary Iranian history, and in Iran’s struggle for national independence.
Why Iran is at odds with the liberal international order
This surly view reflects a deep distrust of the West that has been reinforced by the Islamic Republic’s experiences since 1979. All revolutions challenge standing international orders, and Iran’s revolution was no exception. One of its defining events was the defiance of international law when American diplomats were held hostage in the US Embassy in Tehran for 444 days. However, as revolutionary zeal gave way to bureaucratic behaviour during its first decade, and the Islamic Republic increasingly approximated the Weberian legal-rational state, opposition to the international order moved beyond mere ideological posturing. That opposition then reflected more and more the lessons of Iran’s harrowing eight-year war with Iraq in the 1980s. During that war Iran’s rulers concluded that the liberal international order provided no protection to Iran, nor did it serve the country’s interests. To the contrary, at every turn its rules were deployed to ensure Iraq’s advantage and block Iran’s path to victory. Even the UN was biased and protected Iraq.74 The world body did not acknowledge or condemn Iraq’s invasion and occupation of Iranian territory. Economic sanctions then prevented Iran from buying arms while European countries armed Iraq.75 The US provided Iraq with battlefield intelligence to dull Iranian offensives. When Iraq used chemical weapons against Iranian troops, first in 1982 and then threatened to do so against Iranian cities, Western powers and the UN remained silent.76
Iran concluded that it failed to defeat Iraq because the US and Europe supported Iraq militarily, US regional allies bankrolled Iraq, and international organizations failed to condemn Iraq. Those conclusions led Iran to view the liberal international order as a tool of the West and a cudgel to be used against Iran – it was an adversarial order, one which Iran had to live with but defy if it were to realize its national aims.
More recently, Iran has viewed the liberal international order as deeply biased towards Israel in the Gaza war.
This dark view of the world order has persisted and has even gained greater currency in Iran since the 1980s. President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2018 and the imposition of severe sanctions on Iran confirmed the belief in Tehran that international agreements hold no value and provide no protection; they serve merely as instruments of convenience for the US to further its own interests. The argument that Iran should not give up hard national assets like a nuclear programme for the promise of a deal in accordance with rules of the international normative order has grown louder in Tehran since 2018.
More recently, Iran has viewed the liberal international order as deeply biased towards Israel in the Gaza war. However, this time Iran sees a larger swath of the Global South arrayed against selective application of international norms. Iran sees vindication in this.77 Tehran argued that it decided to retaliate against Israel with a barrage of drones and missiles in April 2024 only because the UN failed to condemn an Israeli attack on Iran’s consulate in Damascus. That justification is indicative of Iran’s mindset towards the liberal international order and its institutions, and why Iran sees the weakening of that order as a strategic gain.
Iran and the end of globalization
Before Russia invaded Ukraine, Iran was the most sanctioned country in the world, and it certainly continues to be among the countries that have been under sanctions for the longest and subject to the most severe economic pressure.78 The goal of economic sanctions against Iran has been to deny it access to global trade and financial networks – the pillars of globalization. As a result, Iran has developed its economy by circumventing sanctions and deliberately violating the rules governing global trade and financial transactions.
Yet various international developments have boosted hopes in Tehran that economic possibilities outside the Western-led world order will expand – and that a growing number of countries will share Iran’s worldview and trade with it. Factors spurring those hopes have included the recent populist revolt in the West against globalization, as evident with Trump’s presidency in the US, Brexit and the electoral successes of populist parties in Europe; the proliferation of economic sanctions across the world alienating more and more countries from the West, allowing Iran to make common cause with them; and the implications of the US economy decoupling from China.
The imposition of economic sanctions on Russia and China has expanded the share of the global economy that is now subject to US economic pressure that is exerted using the mechanisms of the liberal international order. Strategic common ground now exists between Iran and the expanding list of countries impacted by US sanctions, and this presents the possibility of circumventing sanctions more effectively. Iran’s economic strategy of working around sanctions and finding space to grow despite them has developed allies around the world and has gained greater resilience to oppose the US-dominated international economic order. Iran now sees the emergence of a continent-wide Eurasian zone encompassing itself, Russia and China which is large enough to counter US economic pressure and to pose as the base for an alternate global economic order.79
Over the past four decades and especially since the imposition of ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions, Iran has been forced to restructure its economy. Reduced oil revenue has compelled greater reliance on taxation as well as direct control of the manufacturing and services sectors. This process has expanded the state’s reach into the economy and society – and particularly has expanded the deep state security apparatus. The process has unfolded in tandem with greater reliance on black market trade and financial networks. These channels circumvent regular global economic networks. As such, the viability of Iran’s economy is now dependent not on the dominance and health of the global economic order, but on a growing number of economies grappling with the impact of US sanctions, the availability of loopholes in its networks, and the willingness of a growing number of states and actors to violate its rules.80
The retrenchment of globalization and the factors behind it have given Iran the belief that its so-called resistance economy will be viable and will find room to grow. The overuse of sanctions by the US will degrade their effectiveness as an international economic regime.81
Although Iran sees a convergence of interests with China and Russia, the three countries do not always see eye to eye. Iran came close to signing a strategic partnership with China, but Tehran found the financial terms onerous, whereas Beijing saw limits to how much it could invest in Iran given the scope of economic sanctions on the Iranian economy. Both China and Russia have sought to balance their ties with Tehran with their economic interests in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. Both have supported the demand of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) that Iran settle its dispute over three islands that Iran appropriated from the UAE in the 1970s as Iranian territory. That support has irked Tehran, but such discord does not override the large convergence among the three. Importantly, Iran has been persuaded by both Beijing and Moscow to improve ties with its Arab neighbours – and conversely Beijing and Moscow have shown Tehran that they can override the standing US policy of containment of Iran to persuade GCC states to normalize ties with Tehran. Iran has seen the greater roles played by China and Russia in the Persian Gulf as a sign of declining US influence there and a source of potential benefits.
Although the promise that China and Russia will compensate for Iran’s exclusion from the world economy holds much allure, so far the reality falls short of expectations.
The tightening of US sanctions has effectively ended Iran’s trade with the West. Chinese manufacturing and supply chains have replaced European suppliers, and Iranian trade routes increasingly run north to Russia, east to China, and to neighbours around Iran.82 In 2023, the Iranian government estimated that in five years the revenue earned from its trade with Russia (also under Western sanctions) would exceed Iran’s revenue from oil sales. It is not just state revenue that has become increasingly divorced from economic interactions with the West. The Iranian private sector, which was previously rooted in trade with the West, now also has vested interests in Iran’s ties with China, Russia and regional trade. This economic reality has reinforced Iran’s ‘look east’ strategic posture.
Although the promise that China and Russia will compensate for Iran’s exclusion from the world economy holds much allure, so far the reality falls short of expectations. The same is true of the hope Iran has placed in a more rapid and fruitful shift towards a multipolar world system. The realization of this has stoked the debate over how far Iran should tilt to the east and become dependent on Russia and China, and whether it is instead prudent to maintain at least a semblance of coexistence with the liberal international order. The election of a reformist to the presidency in 2024, and the return of diplomats who oversaw the 2015 international nuclear deal, suggests that Iran recognizes that it must find some accommodation within the existing world order and balance its ‘look east’ stance with coexisting with the West.
The end of the unipolar moment
The Islamic Republic has come of age contending with US containment. Since the 1990s Iran’s most serious security threats have been from the US. In refusing to bend to US will, or to change course and abandon its resistance, Iran has anchored its national interest in defying US containment, and in weakening the US position in the Middle East. Iranian rulers have said that Iran can only achieve its national goals by defying US policies and forcing America to abandon the Middle East.
The Iran nuclear deal was a single occasion when Iran signed a major international agreement. Although not a treaty, it was nevertheless given the status of an international agreement by the UN – which Iran was led to believe would protect the deal. By unilaterally withdrawing from that deal, and then preventing other signatories from abiding by it, the US convinced Iran that there was no value in international agreements or protection under the liberal international order. In the best tradition of realpolitik, Iran is now open to transactional deals with the US, but no longer takes seriously the liberal international order, the UN, or agreements under the purview of international organizations.
Iran’s rulers believe that the US will never accept the Iranian revolution or be reconciled to its great power status in the region. The US will block Iran’s path at every turn, but more worryingly for Tehran, Washington seeks to weaken Iran and topple its regime. The US invasion of Iraq in 2003 alarmed Tehran and led to the consensus among Iran’s rulers that the Islamic Republic would be safe only if the American project in Iraq were defeated and the US pushed out of the region. Iran’s rulers were convinced then that the US would shift the war in Iraq into Iran. Concern over US intentions fuelled the drive by Tehran to bog the US down in a quagmire in Iraq, and to acquire advanced nuclear capability. Iran’s nuclear posturing and its regional strategy of asymmetric warfare against the US and regional allies both have their roots in the post-9/11 policies pursued by the US in the Middle East. US failures in Afghanistan and Iraq have redoubled Tehran’s efforts. The Supreme Leader has bragged that Iran should be credited with forcing the US to shrink its regional footprint, and even with its decline as a global power.
Iran’s rulers perceived their handling of the US in Iraq to be a success in terms of deterrence and protection of their country’s security against the US. As a result, the idea of ‘Forward Defence’ – that is, protecting Iran’s interests through asymmetric means inside the Arab world – became rooted in Iran’s security doctrine.83 Between 2003 and 2024, Iran aggressively pursued building a regional axis (to encompass Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen) to exert regional influence and further reduce US presence in the Middle East. The strategy exacted a great cost: tens of billions of dollars of investment in allied militias, which happened as the Iranian economy was retrenching and social misery inside Iran was rising. The Forward Defence strategy suffered a major setback in 2024, with Israel battering Iran’s allies in its regional axis, Hamas and Hezbollah, and with the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria in December. Forward Defence did not survive the test of direct confrontation with Israel. The fate of the strategy is now being debated in Iran, and as recent exchanges of drones and missiles between Iran and Israel have shown, Tehran is increasingly reliant on those tools to manage its regional security goals.
It is too early to determine the direction that Iran’s regional policy will take, and if Iran’s rulers are ready to change their outlook on the world order. All evidence suggests that it is unlikely that Iran will easily revise its posture towards the liberal international order. Iran will respond to tactical defeats with tactical adjustments, but a strategic shift is not imminent. Setbacks in Lebanon and Syria have not disabused Iran of its belief that the larger trends in the Middle East and the world are moving – and will continue to move – in its desired direction, and that the wars in Gaza and Lebanon that began in 2023 have accelerated the decline of the liberal international order.84 Iran’s calculation is that the pressure it is enduring will not last, and as with a J-curve, the nadir point will be followed by a sharp ascent.85 Iran will have to survive in the short run to reap the benefits it expects in the long run.
05 India: A non-Western, not anti-Western, worldview
Dr Chietigj Bajpaee
Senior Research Fellow for South Asia, Asia-Pacific Programme
Email Chietigj
X
Google Scholar
India seeks greater recognition on the world stage and changes to the international order, but not through disruption – instead it sees itself as a bridge between the West
and the Global South.
Like other emerging economies, India seeks a more equitable distribution of power in an emerging multipolar international system. It is often labelled a middle power, but India sees itself as a rising power and also as an aspiring major power.86 This view is reflected in the ambition to become a developed country (Viksit Bharat – ‘Developed India’) by 2047,87 and has prompted a push for greater status and recognition on the world stage.88 India wants to have a seat in key rule-making global institutions, including a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. In parallel, it has also been an architect of new regional and global initiatives. In some cases, such as the I2U2 grouping (of India, Israel, the United Arab Emirates and the United States) and the India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor, these complement the role of the US in the international system. In other situations, such as the BRICS89 group encouraging the de-dollarization of trade, they seek to challenge the US-led global order.
However, unlike other powers such as China, Iran and Russia, India seeks to promote a non-Western, but not an anti-Western, worldview. Reflecting this, when External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar was asked about India’s position on relations with the West and Russia/China following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, he responded: ‘[W]e are a democracy; we are a market economy; we are a pluralistic society; we have positions on international law and I think that should give a fair part of the answer.’90
India is a reformist rather than a revisionist power in that it seeks changes to the international system but not through disruptive means. In doing so, it also sees itself as a bridge between the West and the Global South – prompting some to refer to the country as a ‘southwestern power’.91 New Delhi has thus referred to itself as a Vishvamitra (‘friend to the world’). This became evident during India’s G20 presidency in 2023 with the admission of the African Union to the grouping, which came amid the country’s efforts to project itself as a voice of the Global South.92
Underpinning India’s worldviews are three ‘grand strategic prescriptions’ that have defined how the country’s foreign policy has evolved: Nehruvianism, neoliberalism and hyper-realism.
Underpinning India’s worldviews are three ‘grand strategic prescriptions’ that have defined how the country’s foreign policy has evolved: Nehruvianism, characterized by non-alignment and solidarity with the developing world (or Global South); neoliberalism, with an emphasis on economic interactions and mutual gain; and hyper-realism, which emphasizes the importance of the military and the balance of power.93
The three streams operate simultaneously, as illustrated in the foreign policy of the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi that assumed power in 2014.94 The Modi government’s proclivity for strategic autonomy (an updated version of non-alignment) through engagement with all poles of influence in the international system indicates the continuation of elements of Nehruvianism. The push to attract foreign investment to facilitate India’s development demonstrates the stream of neoliberalism. Finally, emphasis on internal balancing (by strengthening the capabilities of the military) and external balancing (through working with states with a history of difficult relations with China, including Japan, the US and Vietnam) shows the persistence of hyper-realism.95
At the same time, the Modi government has sought to reframe the core principles that drive India’s foreign policy. A resolution adopted in 2015 by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) noted that the key pillars of foreign policy had changed to Pancharmrit (referring to five cornerstones of foreign policy), which replaced Panchsheel (or the Five Principles of Peaceful Co-existence, expressed in the 1954 Sino-Indian Agreement).96 So far these changes have been largely symbolic. They include referring to India as Bharat; references to Akhand Bharat (Greater India), which alludes to a so-called Indian sphere of influence; the use of terminology to promote the country’s civilizational identity, such as India as a Vishvaguru (‘world teacher’) and Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam (‘world as one family’); and attempts to project soft power through India’s cultural attributes such as yoga and Ayurveda.97
However, there is often more rhetoric than substance to claims that Modi’s rise to power marks a unique strain of India’s strategic culture, as many of the principles of the BJP’s Hindutva worldview can be subsumed under the three ‘grand strategic prescriptions’.98 The BJP has been more active in using civilizational identity as a tool of foreign policy, but it is not the only political party to do so. For example, India’s ‘Buddhist diplomacy’ can be traced to several non-BJP governments, from India playing host to the International Buddhist Conference in 1952 to efforts to revive the ancient Nalanda University in 2010.99
Therefore, despite claims of a distinct ‘Modi doctrine’, there is more continuity in India’s foreign policy.100 The real source of change has come from the stronger mandate of the Modi government, which has fuelled a bolder foreign policy, coupled with a more favourable international system in which India is seen as a potential beneficiary of a more acute rivalry between China and the US. The external geopolitical environment marked by more pronounced US–China strategic competition is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future. However, the domestic political environment is showing signs of change: the 2024 elections saw the BJP return on a weakened mandate, and Indian politics appears to be reverting to the norm of coalition governments that preceded Modi’s rise to power in 2014.101
India’s perceptions of US power
Closer relations with the West (and the US in particular) have been a key component of Indian foreign policy since the end of the Cold War. Economic imperatives have been a key driver of the Indo-US rapprochement. Oil-price shocks triggered by the first Gulf War prompted a foreign-exchange crisis for India in 1991. As a result, New Delhi received an emergency bailout from the IMF and accelerated its economic liberalization reforms. The loss of preferential access to markets following the Soviet Union’s collapse also led India to reorient its external relations, which included rapprochement with the US.102
Closer relations with the West (and the US in particular) have been a key component of Indian foreign policy since the end of the Cold War. Economic imperatives have been a key driver of the Indo-US rapprochement.
In an address to the US Congress in 2016, Modi proclaimed that India and the US had ‘overcome the hesitations of history’ in deepening their relationship.103 He was alluding to the fact that the relationship was strained for much of India’s post-independence history and particularly during the Cold War. This has been largely overcome, with strengthened cooperation in strategically important areas, including defence, technology and energy. This cooperation has been facilitated by India becoming increasingly enmeshed in a growing web of bilateral initiatives with the US (for example, the Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology, which has been renamed the TRUST – Transforming the Relationship Utilizing Strategic Technology – Initiative under the Trump administration) and in multilateral ones with countries with similar perceived values (for example, the Mineral Security Partnership and the Artemis Accords).
There has also been a values-based dimension to the India–US relationship. Unlike the United States’ relations with countries such as Vietnam or Saudi Arabia, which are more transactional and rooted in shared interests, there is a perception in the US that its relationship with India is rooted in shared values (in addition to shared interests). This perception has supported India’s efforts to partner with the US and other democratic states in minilateral initiatives (such as the Quad grouping of Australia, India, Japan and the US), with the aim of upholding the rules-based international order.
Despite the highly polarized political environment in the US, India was among the countries least concerned by the outcome of the presidential election in November 2024, as Indian elites believe that the long-term trajectory of the India–US relationship will not change. To be sure, there are likely to be areas of specific friction in the India–US relationship under the second Trump administration – most notably in the areas of trade and immigration.104 Donald Trump’s inclination to see foreign policy in transactional terms may also weaken the narrative of a shared ideological affinity between the world’s oldest democracy and the world’s largest democracy. However, the US image of India as a bulwark against the rise of China remains unchanged and is a strong driver of a deeper bilateral relationship.
There is also a high degree of consensus across the political spectrum in India regarding a deepening of the relationship with the US. Those who do oppose closer engagement with the US and the West are largely fringe elements, such as the country’s communist parties. However, a much more prominent contingent of the foreign policy elite, while supporting a deepening relationship, also endorses India’s commitment to maintaining strategic autonomy.105 This position is rooted in India’s tradition of non-alignment dating back to the tenure of its first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. The stance has made India reluctant to take sides in great power conflicts in the belief that the country should be an independent pole of influence rather than a swing state in the international system.106
As such, limits on the degree of India–US alignment may strain this relationship, especially given the challenge of maintaining strategic autonomy in a climate of growing geopolitical polarization and bifurcation. As relations continue to deteriorate between the US and other countries in the West on the one hand, and between the US, China and Iran on the other, India may yet be forced to choose sides. At present, it is likely that India will become increasingly estranged in organizations such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which promote an overtly anti-Western agenda. Forums that straddle this divide will be where India faces increasingly difficult choices; for instance, India is the second-largest shareholder in the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and an Indian national was the first president of the BRICS New Development Bank. India is also among the leading recipients of loans from both institutions.
Therefore, while India will position itself closely to the US, this will remain well short of an alliance. This is not least because of India’s strategic realities – such as economic dependence on China and military dependence on Russia – but also because its ideological affinities are embedded in the commitment to maintain strategic autonomy in foreign policy. These pressure points will be exacerbated under the second Trump administration. A more insular US that is less interested in global leadership will create more space for other countries, including India, to step up. This will help India to fulfil its long-standing ambition to play a leadership role in an emerging multipolar global order. At the same time, a more erratic US foreign policy under Trump will complicate India’s relations with the US (as it will for other partners, allies and adversaries of Washington).
India and the liberal international order
India is a supporter of the rules-based international order, but it maintains a more ambiguous position on the liberal international order.107 While it supports the principles of state sovereignty, international law, the peaceful resolution of international disputes and an open international economy, it also seeks to scale back emphasis in such areas as human rights, liberalism and interventionism.108 This becomes evident when looking at India’s position on several legal principles and issues of global governance – including freedom of navigation, climate change, the right to development and the responsibility to protect – where the country often appears to be more in sync with China than the US. External Affairs Minister Jaishankar has acknowledged this: ‘For all their issues with each other, India or China have at the back of their mind a feeling that they are also contesting an established Western order.’109
Moreover, while it supports the rules-based international order, what role India seeks to play in upholding that order is unclear. It has supported efforts in the provision of global public goods in selected areas, such as contributions to UN peacekeeping operations, naval deployments in the Indian Ocean to protect commercial shipping from piracy attacks, and digital public infrastructure. However, India is also often regarded as non-committal or ambivalent in other areas.110 This is apparent in its limited role in mediation efforts in global conflicts from Ukraine to Gaza, where its actions are largely dictated by self-interest. In this context, India’s conception of the rules-based international order is not universal but selective, based on pragmatic considerations and the limitations of its ambitions and capabilities.111
On the liberal international order, India’s limited affinity with the West is evident in the global democracy debate. The country has not been averse to leveraging its credentials as the world’s most populous democracy as part of its bid for leadership in key international institutions. Embedded within this tendency to promote its democratic credentials is the belief that India is well placed to offer lessons to other countries in the Global South by challenging an alleged trade-off between development and democracy.112 India has also sought to employ its democratic credentials to undermine China’s competing ambition to lead the Global South.113
Democracy has also emerged as an important pillar of India’s engagement with the US. Their shared democratic credentials have also undergirded the claim that India and the US are ‘natural allies’.114 This narrative has been sustained across administrations in Washington. For instance, the 2022 US National Security Strategy stated:
As India is the world’s largest democracy and a Major Defense Partner, the United States and India will work together, bilaterally, and multilaterally, to support our shared vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific.115
Deepening Indo-US relations have made India a stronger advocate of democracy. Speaking in 2005, India’s then prime minister, Manmohan Singh, noted: ‘Liberal democracy is the natural order of political organisation in today’s world. All alternative systems, authoritarian and majoritarian in varying degrees, are an aberration.’116 The same year India and the US were founding members of the Global Democracy Initiative and the UN Democracy Fund.
India’s democracy agenda has continued under the Modi government, which has referred to the country as the ‘Mother of Democracy’ and a ‘pole star’ (dhruv tara) among democracies.117 Under Modi the democracy narrative has shifted amid a greater emphasis on governance through the ‘democratization of technology’ and digital inclusion via digital public infrastructure.118
However, regarding claims of common ground between the West and India on the democracy debate, a gap remains between rhetoric and reality. New Delhi rarely promotes democracy as part of its foreign policy. Its emphasis is rather on upholding the principle of state sovereignty and maintaining relations with all countries, whether democracies or non-democracies. New Delhi’s model of democracy promotion tends to focus on supporting democratic processes rather than principles; for instance, by providing training in constitution drafting and election management.119 In this context, India’s democracy promotion activities will usually be confined to providing top-down technical assistance rather than bottom-up support for civil society. India is also apprehensive about including democratic transition as a criterion of its development aid, unlike the West.
New Delhi will generally only promote democracy where this matches other geopolitical objectives.
As a result, India’s foreign policy is often not aligned with that of Western democracies. While India is not unique among them in prioritizing pragmatism over principle, on non-democratic and weak democratic regimes it is often more aligned with China. New Delhi will generally only promote democracy where this matches other geopolitical objectives. This means that New Delhi will not push for democratic change where an authoritarian regime does not have a hostile approach towards India (for example, Iran or Russia) or where a country is seen to be supporting India’s national security concerns (for example, Myanmar or Bangladesh under the previous Sheikh Hasina government).
Another problematic issue arises from India’s pursuit of a bolder foreign policy. To be sure, this has generated positive outcomes as India seeks recognition as a responsible global power. For example, during its G20 presidency, New Delhi offered so-called Indian solutions to global problems such as climate change, digital public infrastructure and global health.120 However, should India seek to be exempted from global rules and norms because of the country’s self-perceived exceptional status, this will become a source of concern. Evidence of such behaviour can be seen in allegations of Indian complicity in recent assassination plots in several countries, including the US.121 New Delhi’s push to adopt a bolder foreign policy could become more problematic under the second Trump presidency as Indian foreign policy elites will challenge any criticism on the grounds of hypocrisy, noting that Washington is increasingly abandoning the order it helped to establish.
Indian positioning on the China–US rivalry
One of the pillars of the India–US relationship is the perception of India as a balancer against the rise of China. As New Delhi’s and Washington’s relations with Beijing have deteriorated, this narrative has strengthened. Moreover, as India and the US have deepened their relations, they have also developed a more collaborative approach on issues of regional security and global governance, where they have voiced common concerns about Chinese behaviour.122
India has long had a difficult relationship with China. This is rooted in their territorial dispute along their land border and competing visions of regional order: New Delhi favours a multipolar regional order while Beijing has a Sino-centric conception for one. This explains India’s long-standing aversion to China-led regional and global initiatives, including the Belt and Road Initiative. Tensions were exacerbated by a border flare-up in 2020, and have since set the tone of relations.123 In October 2024, the situation seemed to de-escalate following the conclusion of a border agreement. Despite this, however, India is no longer willing to shelve the border dispute while deepening cooperation in other areas, which had been the practice since the late 1980s. China’s ‘all-weather’ relationship with Pakistan and engagement with other countries in South Asia have also been sources of tension in the relationship.
Following the deterioration of its relationship with China, India has become less apprehensive about participating in US-led regional and global initiatives that previously it would have seen as offending Beijing. From an economic standpoint, Indian elites see their country as a beneficiary of the effort to de-risk or diversify supply chains away from China. On the security front, collaboration with the US is more ambiguous given there is a lack of clarity over the role India would play in a potential China–US conflict over Taiwan, for example.124 This has not prevented greater defence cooperation between New Delhi and Washington, with the US becoming India’s leading partner for joint military exercises and an increasingly important supplier of defence equipment. India has also become more willing to call out China’s acts of assertiveness, from the South China Sea to the Taiwan Strait.
Yet, ambiguities remain in the India–US relationship when it comes to China. India’s commitment to strategic autonomy makes New Delhi reluctant to be part of any US-led initiative that resembles a military alliance.125 Moreover, the limited overtures by both the US and India to China trigger sporadic concerns about strategic abandonment in New Delhi and Washington alike. New Delhi fears a return to a G2-type great power condominium between the US and China, while Washington fears the adoption of the ‘Asia for Asians’ concept that has been proposed by Beijing.126 This shows that there remains a gap in how India and the US perceive each other, stemming from India’s position of strategic autonomy and solidarity with the Global South on the one hand, and the US prioritization of its alliance relations and the liberal international order on the other, although the US commitment to upholding these priorities is being eroded under the second Trump administration.
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