Hira Bahadur Thapa

Countries seek status and prestige as they grow economically. With increasing economic strength, countries look for status in the international stage. Countries wield bigger power based on how advanced they are in economic and other fields. Technology too determines the countries’ external strength.
If we analyse the history, we may find that the nations have been engaged in competition with each other for the sake of their prestige depending on their achievements. As such a competition intensifies, the likelihood of conflicts goes up. Unless managed diplomatically, the increasing competition for power and prestige between nations leads to violent conflicts and even a war in worse situation.

Legitimate grounds
Almost a century earlier, the world witnessed a devastating World War I. There is evidence to prove that two powerful countries in the pre-1914 era in Europe were locked in bitterness when both felt that they had legitimate grounds to maintain their status and prestige. Then, the United Kingdom and Germany competed with each other through their economic and military strength.
Their fierce competition to gain primacy in global affairs created conditions for World War I in 1914. Generally, economic interdependence among countries reduces the chances of war. Had this hypothesis been 100 per cent correct, the European countries would not have been entangled in war. No countries elsewhere were as economically interdependent as they were. However, economic engagement does restrain countries from resorting to violent conflict.
As the trade and technology war intensifies between world’s two big powers-- the US and China, some analysts are concerned that the same might turn into a hot war if geopolitical contest between goes unabated. But some American thinkers are predicting optimistically that deeper economic engagement between them is likely to put constraints on their ambitions.
There are, however, others who display anxiety that the current rivalry between the US, the established great power, and China, the rising power, may create Thucydides Trap. It signals a scenario in the ancient Greece when two states resembling today’s US and China in terms of their race for big power status, went to war.
Historians draw an analogy between present troubled Sino-US relationship and the state of belligerence between the UK and Germany in the pre-1914 period. To them, today’s America is represented by the UK, the then global power, and Germany was the rising power like the present-day China. The UK felt that Germany was vying for equal international standing by enhancing its economic and military power. Moreover, the UK assumed that Germany was pursuing unfair trade tactics to accelerate its economic growth. Hence, it exacerbated their resentment of each other pushing them to the brink of war.
Nevertheless, political scientist G. John Ikenberry (Foreign Affairs, November-December 2020) opines that liberal international order espoused by the West will avoid the possibility of war and preserve peace. The professor believes that peaceful order can survive for many decades into the future, notwithstanding, China’s rise and the eventual decline of the US predominance.
His vision of optimism based on the spread of peaceful cooperation supported by the multilateral institutions like the UN, among others, is challenged because of two reasons. One is the changing international dynamics that counters the notion that the US is the role model for conduct of governance. The other is the rise of populism and illiberal democracy even in Europe. With domestic support for liberal ideas eroding, the champions of liberal order lose their power to mediate conflicts.
The absence of war between the great powers in the recent decades does not necessarily mean that there won’t be one in the future decades. Ominously, flash points for possible conflicts are visible in the Indo-Pacific region where the US is displaying its assertiveness by soliciting the cooperation of its traditional Asian allies. QUAD, the quadrilateral security dialogue encompassing Japan, Australia, India and the US, is gaining traction with foreign ministerial level meeting, which has raised alarms in China as the latter views that informal forum as a counterweight to its peaceful rise.
Due to her unique geostrategic location bordering India and China, whose bilateral relations have worsened following border skirmishes in the recent months, Nepal finds herself in a precarious position. At this moment she has to handle her relations with these neighbours as well as America, her important donor, in a balanced manner. She doesn’t afford to antagonise any one of them while securing her sovereign rights. It is her fervent hope that she is not forced to choose sides. Reasonably, Nepal remains sensitive to those countries’ interests.
The US-China relationship raises profound questions about the shape of the international order. Unlike during the Cold War when the Soviet Union and the US generally accepted each other’s European spheres of influence, ongoing Washington-Beijing competition is guided by their different views of who exercises control over the East China, South China Seas, and Taiwan.

Peaceful adjustment
The established power is too often arrogant and whether the US can peacefully adjust its relations and acknowledge China’s standing as its great power equal remains uncertain.
It is natural for big powers to compete and the strategic competition between the US and China needs to be managed in a way that they display capacities for cooperation. This will determine how the humanity progresses in addressing global challenges like, climate change, nuclear proliferation and today’s most pressing issue of the spread of infectious diseases.

(Thapa is a former foreign relations advisor to the Prime Minister from 2008 to 09. thapahira17@gmail.com)