Principal Beats Principle in the World Order The new communists appeal to the world’s poor by promising to make them rich. By Walter Russell Mead

Posted By on May 9th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/principal-beats-principle-in-the-world-order-global-south-china-growth-human-rights-ee2cfbe9?mod=opinion_featst_pos1

Sunday’s Arab League vote to readmit the blood-stained Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad should be a wake-up call for Washington. Longtime American allies such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates have flipped from backing the U.S.-led effort to isolate and ultimately overthrow Mr. Assad to supporting the Sino-Russian goal of reintegrating him into the regional order.

Many factors go into such decisions, but the Arab League move is part of a wider trend that Washington can’t afford to ignore. It isn’t only nondemocratic countries like the Gulf Arab states tilting toward Russia and China these days. Democracies like Brazil and South Africa are rejecting American pleas to rally behind democratic Ukraine against autocratic Russia. Across the so-called Global South, few countries, democratic or not, are rushing to enlist in President Biden’s anti-autocracy crusade.

Winning friends and influencing people in the Global South was a challenge for American strategists during the Cold War. It will be more difficult this time around. If Washington policy makers and the broader foreign-policy community don’t understand the new challenge, American diplomacy will face setbacks and frustrations.

Chinese communists today aren’t only better at economics than Mao and the Soviet chowderheads; they are also smarter politically. The old communists wanted to conquer the world by alliances with the underdogs and the poor. Today they align with the rich.

During the Cold War, the rulers of most countries feared nothing more than a communist takeover at home. If local communist parties took power, they would murder or exile their opponents, confiscate their wealth and throw their supporters in the gulag. In Mao’s time the Chinese Communist Party similarly promoted communist insurgencies or communist parties, in Vietnam and across the region.

Today’s communism wears a very different face. No social revolutions, no fanatical armies of revenge-minded peasant guerrillas storming the presidential palace. Instead, as Russia sells weapons, China will sell the high-tech security and surveillance systems that can help rulers everywhere crush workers or peasants who dare challenge the status quo.

Sino-Russian support comes without lectures. Kleptocracy, money laundering, human-rights violations, drug cartels: No questions will be asked of rulers willing to align with the new system. Enrichissez-vous! Make yourselves rich is the message China and Russia broadcast today to the world’s rich.

The old communists sought to mobilize what they categorized as oppressed classes against existing elites. Today’s adversaries want to mobilize existing elites against a global status quo that, they argue, favors yesterday’s Group of Seven powers and rich countries over the rising powers of the Global South.

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The American response in East and Southeast Asia, where the competition is fiercest, has been to stress the danger of Chinese hegemony and territorial claims to neighboring states while playing down American commitments to such controversial topics as human rights in sensitive countries like the Philippines. Their national interests, Washington tells local governments, are joined to those of the U.S. If China becomes too dominant, their security, their territorial integrity and even their independence could be at risk.

This argument often makes a powerful impression. But in the world in which we live, not all ruling elites are patriotic. Many prefer the private interests of their families and friends to something as abstract and idealistic as the national good. The country that offers the greatest economic advantages and political security to powerful rulers and elites is likely to have a great deal of political and even strategic pull.

In other parts of the world, like the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, Washington’s core arguments resonate less with elites. China and Russia pose no security threat to countries like Brazil, Saudi Arabia and South Africa, and the revisionist powers seem to offer a way to check what many in the Global South see as the overbearing power of the U.S. and the rest of the G-7.

What elites and ordinary people in the Global South want is something that makes many greens and progressives in the G-7 countries unhappy. They want economic growth, they want lots of it, and they want it now.

Wired and connected as never before, ordinary people all over the Global South can see how people live in the rich world, and they want that for themselves. Their rulers know that their power depends on delivering the goods such growth brings.

To win over both popular and elite audiences in the Global South, the U.S. must embrace the politics of growth. Our world order must be, and must be seen to be, the surest, fastest path to raising living standards all over the world. That’s what we did after World War II. We must find a way to do that again today.

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