Last year, most of the global village suffered severe trials from coronavirus infection (Corona 19). The pandemic of the century shook not only the threat to life, but also the health and sanitation devices and social security systems that humanity has made so far.
Many people’s hope this year is that effective vaccines and treatments will prevent and extinguish the expansion of Corona 19, but the in-depth changes in politics, economy, society, and culture following the Corona 19 crisis have already begun slowly. Whether that change of perception will lead to labor in order to open a new system or lead to cracks and regression remains a task of the times.
The international order is no exception. Health hygiene and social security are emerging as one of the most pressing areas of security in many countries with fatal weaknesses in large-scale infectious diseases. Vaccine development and acquisition has also become an important element of national competitiveness, and along with quarantine capabilities, they are positioned as part of a major national safety net.
American humiliation
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| ▲ Trump supporters intrude into the US Capitol Supporters of US President Donald Trump broke into the Capitol in Washington DC on the 6th (local time) and waved the stars and stripes in the rotunda. The Senate and House of Representatives were scheduled to hold a joint meeting that day to certify the victory of President-elect Joe Biden, but the meeting was halted due to the intrusion of protesters. | |
| Ⓒ Yonhap News/AP |
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In this context, in 2020, the United States experienced a year of turmoil that is rare in history. Four years ago, disillusioned with the Washington Elite League, Americans chose Trump, a political rookie, but the results were disastrous. In the field of foreign affairs and security, President Trump and his allies beat allies and rivals alike, but it was only US isolation that came back. The ultimate goal of isolationism they wanted wasn’t isolation, but the result was that.
The American people chose to change their regime, and in the next two weeks, a new owner moved into the White House, but the aftereffects of the Trump regime were more serious than expected. For his enthusiastic supporters, their beliefs were more important than the principles of democracy, and when their demands were not accepted, they turned into democratic destroyers.
On the 6th local time, Democratic and Republican lawmakers gathered at a joint meeting of the House of Representatives to confirm the election of Joe Biden, faced unprecedented in US political history. Trump supporters who infiltrated the Capitol took the hall by force, and the Senate and House members who gave up their seats had to urgently evacuate.
Trump supporters who broke into the Capitol were trampled across the offices of the Senate and House Speakers, and were suppressed in four hours only after armed public power was put in. Bloodshed occurred in the process of securing safety, and even deaths occurred. This day, which should be a festival of democracy, marks the day of the death of American democracy, and the Stars and Stripes raised by those who entered the Capitol are doomed to be early.
The United States, which set a humiliating record over 287,000 new corona19 confirmed on the 3rd, had to taste the humiliation that the heart of democracy was violated within just three days. How did the United States get to this point? The United States, which had been envy and respected by the world for decades until recently, has now turned into a mockery of the international community, and the dreams of those who planned a new international order under their own ones seem to have gone a step further.
Europe’s change of mind, China’s attack
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| ▲ On December 30, 2020, Europe fully agreed on a comprehensive investment agreement with China. | |
| Ⓒ Yonhap News |
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The rift of the alliance of the liberal regime centered on the United States has actually been detected everywhere. After the victory of the Second World War, Europe, which regarded the United States as the defender of democracy, is slowly stepping back to the United States 75 years later. The US, which has ended the Trump regime, is trying to embrace Europe, but it doesn’t seem easy to turn the hearts of Europeans. Trump’s four-year shock was too great for Europeans to do so.
On the 30th of last month, Europe fully agreed on a comprehensive investment agreement with China. It is said to have been discussed since 2014, but until now, Europe has delayed the agreement due to the alliance with the United States and China’s anti-human rights policy against democracy. However, Europe, which experienced the limitations of the US and its alliance system, ended the agreement that had lasted seven years.
China also did not miss the rift in the Atlantic Ocean. China, which had been troubled by the United States, which gradually confined the Indian and Pacific Oceans, reached out to Europe and opened their markets to a drastic level compared to previous investment agreements.
If the agreement goes into effect, European companies are subject to more favorable investment conditions than US companies. China also abolished the conditions for compulsory technology transfer by Chinese-invested foreign companies, which the US has pointed out so far. It also decided to further strengthen transparency regarding the subsidies payments from the Chinese government. Discrimination against foreign investors toward state-owned Chinese enterprises is also prohibited.
In the end, in this agreement, Europe has more to do than China. The purpose of China’s agreement is, above all, to neutralize the hegemony of the United States. China’s justification for this agreement is also multilateralism.
Multilateralism was the cause that China consistently argued against the United States under the Trump regime. China, in need of international support, was doing its best to imprint itself as a defender of multilateralism against US bilateralism.
Europe, which was looking at the conclusion of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (ALSEP, RCEP) including China and Japan last year, began to visualize a strategic and active approach to the Asian region. Excluding political stability and cultural homogeneity, Alsep is the market size that overwhelms the European Union in terms of economic scale. For Europe, it is a mouth-watering market.
It remains to be seen what kind of strategy the United States of Biden, which will be launched on the 20th, toward China and Europe. Once the check has come in, it will not approach Europe and China with the same speed and intensity as before. And above all, for the time being, it is urgent to overcome the political divide inside the United States.
“Now a 4-pole system”
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| ▲ US President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping met at the G20 in Osaka, Japan. | |
| Ⓒ Yonhap News=AP |
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European prestigious non-profit research organization at the end of last year Project Syndicate has released a report claiming the necessity of a four-pole system that is neither a’U.S. single superpower system’ nor a’US-China bipolar system’. This report, titled, sharply points out the loopholes of the bipolar regime in the US, China.
In the world to come, civic power will exert stronger power and should be so. However, the American and Chinese citizen classes are significantly insufficient to meet the needs of such a future society. Rather, according to this report, the two countries are eager to control and monitor citizens through algorithms. If the diagnosis is correct, it would be on the premise that it does not matter whether the subject of surveillance is the state or the enterprise.
The report points out that the weak foundation for human rights and democracy is also a common weakness between the United States and China. America has long been regarded as a sacred place for democracy. However, as time goes by, the cultural gap between the elite and the underprivileged is widening, and the civil society, which should become the central force, is becoming exhausted. Changes in the younger generation are perceived little by little, but a lot of time is still required before it leads to actual social change.
Finally, the report points to the blunt response of the two countries to climate change. One of the most important challenges in the post-corona era is an active and forced approach to the global environment. However, the US and China are already ranked first and second in greenhouse gas emission countries, and they have not shown strong will to improve them.
This reality is becoming an important and serious reason for the inability to surrender the global village to the US-China bipolar regime. Europe is already preparing another axis that is not absorbed by the US and China anodes. The’comprehensive investment agreement’ agreed with China is also part of such an arbitrary European step in a broad sense. Here, the high growth rates of emerging economies show that they can be another axis.
Of course, there is no definite guarantee that a four-pole system will be created in the near future as this report shows. And, as this report points out, the four-pole system is not a panacea. However, what is clear is that there is a high probability that the conditions for solving many problems facing humanity will be secured in a multilateral system.
Korea’s changed status
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| ▲ President Moon at the G20 video summit President Moon Jae-in attends the Riyadh G20 summit held by video conference at the Blue House on the afternoon of the 22nd and listens to his comments. A photo of a composite of the leaders of 20 major countries can be seen behind President Moon. 2020.11.23 | |
| Ⓒ Yonhap News |
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Even Korea, which has to deal with the rapidly changing world and slow paced powers, cannot adhere to the countermeasure strategy so far. Brand Finance, a UK-based independent corporate evaluation consulting firm, publishes annual rankings of national brands based on competitiveness. In this ranking, Korea has been competing for number 9 and 10 with Italy for several years.
According to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), last year, Korea’s gross national income per capita (GNI) was higher than that of Italy. This is the first time that gross national income per capita is higher than that of the G7 countries. Of course, there is a reason that Italy’s performance plummeted due to the influence of Corona 19, but it is also a disproving that Korea successfully carried out quarantine.
President Trump tried to invite South Korea to last year’s G7+α meeting, but it failed. Although the conference itself was canceled due to Corona 19, the fact that Russia was included among President Trump’s first countries drew opposition from other G7 countries. On the other hand, Japan expressed opposition to the invitation to Korea.
This year’s G7 is the UK. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is said to be invited to this year’s G7+α meeting in 10 countries excluding Russia and include Korea. After Brexit, the UK, which has to fill the gap in the European Union, is showing its intention to strengthen relations with overseas economic powers such as India and Korea.
Korea already has more competitiveness than we know in various fields of politics, economy, society and culture. In the midst of last year’s Corona 19 crisis, Korean passports became power passports at airports around the world. In particular, Korea’s national competitiveness in the global village towards a multipolar system can itself contribute.