At the lowest point

Relations at the highest level have fallen to the lowest level. Perhaps even below the level to which we mere mortals have been reduced by distractions from above.

Just when the world was expected to unite in the fight against a pandemic that spares no one, the great powers have engaged in increased mutual blaming. Although they persistently promote themselves as responsible for the expansion of international cooperation, they almost launch raids against each other as perpetrators of all kinds of wrongdoing.

Sometimes they have reasons for such behavior, but no one even dreamed that the American president would label his Russian colleague as a murderer or that insinuations would be served from Moscow that the head of the White House was demented. Nor that the officials of Washington and Beijing will violate diplomatic protocol, and that in front of the cameras, confirming the thesis that they perceive each other as the biggest enemies. Nor that Europe will find itself between a rock and a hard place.

Instead of a quadruple that would pull the world out of the crisis with harmonious swings, a quadruple was composed that increases the already growing national and international anxieties. Relations in that quadrangle are estimated to be at their lowest point in recent history, a characterization that has grown into a strategic refrain.

Almost every hour, on various occasions and from various quarters, it is warned that these relations are at an even lower point than in any of the previous moments, so the doubt spreads with trepidation as to whether one day it will hit the bottom and cause a planetary earthquake of unprecedented proportions. Unless it turns out, as here, that you can fall from bottom to bottom indefinitely.

The current lowest point was reached due to Joe Biden's effort to erase the lowest point in international relations that Donald Trump had brought. He sharply improved the shaky relations with traditional, democratic allies, and worsened them with strategic, autocratic rivals, who were "coddled" by his predecessor.

At the very start, he also deviated from the mannerisms of Barack Obama, to whom he was vice president, and who tried to reduce tensions with China and Russia by deciding to "show his muscles" to both. He estimated with his team that in the meantime both Beijing and Moscow had "become too strong" and began to perceive America as a power whose "time is running out", so that the time has come to quickly and forcefully let them know that they are wrong.

Those called out indicate that it is over with the unipolarity of America and that it should accept multipolarity with more decision-making centers on the fate of the world. And when he does not deny such tumbling, Washington tries to keep the changes under his control, and not just adapt to heated rivals.

He sees the main opponent in China and its rapidly growing influence on the international scene. Therefore, he determined the approach towards her in a very nuanced way, which was most succinctly defined by the head of American diplomacy. Our relations with China will be competitive when we need to be, partner when we can and rival when we have to, said Anthony Blinken. The same would be true, one would say, for Russia.

The new transformation of the world, which is undeniably underway, takes on at least one characteristic of the Cold War - the division into West and East. America, for example, has labeled China and Russia as revisionist powers that harm the world order, while they claim that it is subversive.

Official views in the style of East Blooms and West Withers are also broadcast from Beijing. During the visit of Sergey Lavrov, it was shared on both sides that China and Russia are "examples of constructiveness that is hindered by the destructive West".

Sanctions are just pouring down. The West seduced them to China (Europe for the first time after the Tiananmen massacre in 1989) because of the oppression of the minority Uyghurs and the suppression of the democratization of Hong Kong, and to Russia, with the sanctions for the amputation of part of Ukraine, now also because of the findings of the poisoning of the dissident Alexei Navalny, who was then arrested. Beijing and Moscow retaliated by accusing America of violating the rights of blacks. The skirmishes led to genocide, which America sees in the extermination of the Uyghurs, and China and Russia in the extermination of the Indians...

Against the ominous signs of tightening, and even possible open confrontations, is the fact that all of the aforementioned people who are running into each other are hard to imagine without each other. For now, this can be seen publicly in the behavior of Europe, which cares about strengthening the alliance with America through joint sanctions, but not giving up lucrative deals with China and Russia. And which systems would they maintain by developing cooperation with the overpowering West, whose flag bearer is America, which without all of them, to one degree or another, cannot achieve solutions on the global stage, from the Balkans through the Middle to the Far East.

A knot has been tied that, I would say, will be untied in the interest of all parties, even with painful persecutions and inevitable doses of injustice, than cut to all-round damage. One of the training grounds for trying this kind of unraveling could be the Serbian-Albanian knot. If even in this case, which is not as complicated as it seems, the great powers do not show that they are really great in finding a way out of the impasse to which they both actively and passively contributed quite a bit, it will be another proof that relations are at the highest world level, let me repeat , turns to the lowest level. Even below the level at which we gained more rights to object to them than the possibility to wean the nobles here at least from arrogance...

(novimagazin.rs)