The article analyzes two ongoing international processes, the rivalry between China and the United States and the Covid-19 pandemic. The concurrence of the two has led to further deterioration of multilateralism. For Latin America, the confluence of these situations increase its vulnerability, exposing it to an international scenario of growing uncertainty, demonstrating its limited margin for maneuver. The text presents an analysis to help understand these global dynamics, based on a theoretical reflection about the conflict between powers and its consequences for foreign policy and the future of multilateralism. It also addresses the impact of Covid-19 and of tensions in the liberal international order, from the theoretical perspectives of cooperation: complex interdependence and liberal institutionalism, in order to understand how discord wins over collaboration. All these trends have a negative impact on a Latin America that rejects collective action, in its relations with both the United States and China.

/pdf/covid-19-tensiones-entre-china-y-estados-unidos-y-crisis-del-1mqfmvskii.pdf

The Coming Post-COVID Anarchy: The Pandemic Bodes Ill for Both American and Chinese Power – and for the Global Power

Covid-19, tensiones entre China y Estados Unidos, y crisis del multilateralismo: repercusiones para AL

Since its launch in 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) quickly has become the cornerstone of foreign policy for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) under Xi Jinping’s leadership to project China’s new-found economic influence through networks of infrastructure, trade, and investment deals. Considerable scholarship about the BRI has focused on China’s motivations, domestic politics, strategic culture, policy instruments, and the perceptions, effects, and implications across various countries and regions. While competing IR paradigms and levels of analysis have been applied to analyze the BRI and its impact, little research has examined the complex causal mechanisms of the BRI in a comprehensively visualized and rigorous way. How, for example, does the BRI look in the context of power transition theory? Is this time-honored theory, which focuses on the dynamics of capabilities, able to explain the characteristics of BRI, notably its impact upon policies and outcomes at the regional and international levels? Through the prism of systemism, this paper seeks to answer such questions. The systemist approach, which emphasizes the graphic portrayal of cause and effect, is well suited to the task of comparing and evaluating theoretical arguments about developments such as the BRI. A visualization of power transition theory is used to obtain insights about the likely direction of China’s BRI in terms of the USA and China as leading states and rivals faced with the challenge of managing conflict short of war in East Asia. 

/pdf/all-roads-lead-to-beijing-systemism-power-transition-theory-3gi5ujq9.pdf

All Roads Lead to Beijing: Systemism, Power Transition Theory and the Belt and Road Initiative

This paper examines the possible ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic as they relate to changing American strategic posture and geopolitical dynamics in Northeast Asia. Since the spread of the pa...

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/25751654.2021.1902120

Cold War Discourse and Geopolitical Flashpoints in Post-Covid-19 Northeast Asia

The aim of the article is to identify the soft power winners and losers of the first wave of the global health crisis caused by COVID-19 (winter–summer 2020); to analyse the factors which have contributed to such outcome; and finally, to extract examples of the best practices, which can serve other states in the next stages of the pandemic. The article argues that there is a correlation between the quality of a country’s response to the global health crisis (both domestically and abroad) and a change in international public perceptions of that state. Moreover, the states that gained the most soft power in 2020, have not done so based solely on their political system or past performance. Instead, a key factor was the existing domestic and foreign policy collaborative culture, which resulted in the ability to get everyone behind a common response to the crisis at home, but also to promote global solutions to the crisis abroad.

/pdf/soft-power-in-times-of-the-plague-the-winners-and-losers-of-445dcbsd7u.pdf

The Coming Post-COVID Anarchy: The Pandemic Bodes Ill for Both American and Chinese Power – and for the Global Power

Citations

Covid-19, tensiones entre China y Estados Unidos, y crisis del multilateralismo: repercusiones para AL

All Roads Lead to Beijing: Systemism, Power Transition Theory and the Belt and Road Initiative

Cold War Discourse and Geopolitical Flashpoints in Post-Covid-19 Northeast Asia

Soft power in times of the plague: the winners and losers of first wave of COVID-19 (winter-summer 2020)

Related Papers (5)

The New American Cold War

Soft Power and European-American Affairs

Power Being’ and ‘Power Projection’ of Russia in Central Asia

International society and Central Asia

Global Terrorism: Problems of Challenge and Response