The sabre-rattling over Ukraine, between Russia and NATO, matters to Malta in a way that, eight years ago, Russia’s annexation of Crimea did not. That has to be right, irrespective of whether the current tensions fizzle out or grow deeper.
A lot has changed since 2014. When the then US president, Barack Obama, threatened Russia over the Crimean takeover, this column predicted it wouldn’t change a thing, even though what was happening within Ukraine was vile.
Vladimir Putin was tidying up some of Russia’s borders, creating a buffer against NATO states, while envisioning a future alliance of energy-rich states stretching all the way to Iran. Obama’s words wouldn’t change that.
A US president elected, like Obama, with a popular vote in favour of restraint abroad wouldn’t go to war over Ukraine. Even NATO allies and advisers recognised that some of the tension was due to a legacy of broken and misleading promises to Russia back in the 1990s.
What has changed since then is not down to the new US president, Joe Biden. It’s a new kind of world. What happens in Ukraine today matters for Eastern Asia, too.
Since 2014, China has become more militarily assertive in its region. In 2022, it is unambiguously a great power – greater than Russia. Among US allies in Asia, the fear is that if the US doesn’t back its allies in Europe, then US guarantees elsewhere are worthless. Averting war in Europe, by having the US back down, could give the green light to war elsewhere. Say, in Taiwan.
Ukraine is far from Malta; the South China sea is even farther. How do the dominoes of the Ukraine game end up affecting us?
We’re back to being a bipolar world and that affects how Malta operates. The US is still a superpower but the world has a new great power, China, with the potential to become a superpower.
Some analysts would add Russia to the mix (others would even add India). But there’s a difference.
Russia is a great power whose aggressive actions are designed to manage its decline. The US and China are great powers seeking to get the world to serve their expansive interests and their respective interests are in conflict.
For Malta, this new great power competition is significantly different from that of the Cold War. This time round, Malta has long-standing friendly relations with both rivals. We didn’t have that with the USSR.
If (or when) the tension between the two escalates, will Malta’s friendships with both survive? Will we need to choose? Do we have long-standing national interests that will dictate our red lines? Or can we make reasonable trade-offs?
So far, independent Malta’s foreign policy has been flexitarian. It’s based on having friends and partners rather than allies, who are bound to each other’s defence. Within the EU, we have followed a similar policy of shifting partnerships based on issues.
A US-China rivalry will require us to think harder about the issues that concern us most. The conflict will get closer to us as Asian politics penetrates Mediterranean politics even further than it has already.
Maybe the best we can do is to wait for things to develop. That, however, is a decision in itself. We can’t just drift into it- Ranier Fsadni
China has important strategic interests in sub-Saharan Africa and those interests could potentially affect northbound migration, for better or for worse.
China’s dependence on Gulf oil is also growing. It’s already the second-largest consumer of Saudi oil: 16 per cent of Saudi exports, which indicates a growing mutual dependence. Qatar now supplies over 20 per cent of China’s imported gas.
China is already the largest buyer of Middle Eastern oil and it’s expected that, by 2035, its strategic relationship with the Gulf will be even tighter. How could that affect the Arab Mediterranean?
Since 2011, the Gulf states have seen North Africa (Tunisia as well as Libya) as countries whose regimes they need to shape, if their own are to survive. Would a strategic alliance with China exacerbate or reduce such involvement?
These are far-reaching questions. It’s by no means determined that China’s rise will continue.
Maybe the best we can do is to wait for things to develop. That, however, is a decision in itself. We can’t just drift into it.
Our institutions, academic and policymaking, should be doing some hard scenario-thinking. Even flexitarian states need to study their options.
Somebody is bound to mention the need to revisit our constitutional neutrality and update it. I’d agree but would also concede that there are political advantages to having constitutionally binding words that no longer make sense: our governments can make them mean what they want them to mean, if they wish to resist pressure from other governments.
But our governments would still need to know what they should be aiming for. What direct significant investments – by this global power or that – should they welcome and which they should resist for strategic purposes, no matter how economically favourable and politically opportunistic it would be in the short term?
You can’t take strategic decisions without an informed assessment of your long-term interests.
Cynics will say that there’s a fat chance of that happening when we can’t even agree on our obvious short-term interests.
Perhaps. But agreement on our long-term interests might be easier to secure precisely because they’d transcend the political cycle. And if the politicians won’t start the conversation, others can.