We examine and research the foreign policy aspirations of distant countries with a Western mindset, using Western terminology, through Western eyes - and often misinterpret them as a result.
Researchers have already written about the so-called Thucydides trap, whereby a war for supremacy between an emerging country and an incumbent country is inevitable. In the study of modern history, sixteen series of events have been identified in which the rise of a new power posed a strategic dilemma for the previously dominant major power. In twelve of the sixteen cases, war broke out between the “position-holder” and the “emerging” power.
The US is losing its hegemonic power as the “position-holder” country. Asian countries, as emerging economies, are going their own way and are undergoing economic emergence and significant technological development. While the US insists on the current unipolar world order, China and Russia have indicated their support for a multipolar world order on several platforms.
As Chinese President Xi Jinping told his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin during his state visit to Moscow in March: “right now there are changes, the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years, and we are the ones driving these changes together.”
Thanks to its successful diplomatic efforts, China has emerged as a major player in the Middle East and the Gulf region, seriously challenging the dominance of the United States. More and more countries are showing interest in the BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, not to mention the internationalisation of the renminbi taking place in parallel with the dollar's withdrawal from trade.
There is a high chance that, in the information bubble in the West the foreign policy moves of the Eastern countries are deliberately misinterpreted and demonised through the use of double standards.
One of the aims of Eurasia magazine is to step out of this Western information bubble and present the concept of Eurasia, the thinking, economic development, current domestic and foreign policy changes and culture of the countries of the region. In the wise words of the ancient Chinese strategist Sun Tzu : “...if you know the other and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles”. Let us discover Asia and Eurasia!
The author is Editor-in-Chief of Eurasia Magazine, Director of Eurasia Center at John von Neumann University and former consul general of Hungary in Shanghai.