Right versus Left in a polarised world

The China versus US competition, dubbed the new Cold War, is two branches of capitalism, viz. authoritarian and democratic, battling it out

Sreeram Chaulia

China and the US are themselves economically highly interdependent despite trade wars and attempts at decoupling and de-risking (AP)

Italian Prime Minister (PM) Giorgia Meloni has set the cat among the pigeons by floating a global Right-wing alliance which is coalescing to counter Leftist political ideas and movements worldwide. Her criticism of left-liberals for hypocrisy, double standards and frustration “because conservatives are winning” and “conservatives are now collaborating globally”, and her clubbing of American President Donald Trump, Argentinian President Javier Milei, Indian PM Narendra Modi and herself as part of a coalition that is turning the tables on the “global Leftist liberal network”, have brought questions of ideological contestation in international affairs to the forefront.

After the ideological tussle of the Cold War between Western capitalism and Soviet Communism ended with the victory of the former in 1991, the American scholar Francis Fukuyama had famously declared “the end-point of mankind’s ideological evolution” and the “universalisation of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government”. As the post-Cold War order unravelled over the next two decades, it became evident that history had not ended and that it was resuming its usual pattern of division and strife among competing ideological models and templates.

The biggest setback to the liberal international order under unipolar American leadership came with the rapid ascent of China to great power status. The manner in which an authoritarian State practising “capitalism with Chinese characteristics” ensconced itself in the centre of economic globalisation and grew to challenge the United States (US) over the past two decades eroded the triumphalism of liberals and provided an alternative model for emulation in the developing world.

Although present-day China is not a classic Communist State, it exports its values of extreme surveillance over society and State-guided economics through a mix of foreign aid, propaganda and military aggression. China’s influence and presence in every corner of the planet undermines supposedly universal liberal ideas of free markets, human rights and civil liberties. With democracy declining globally in recent years, the Chinese model has takers despite its intrinsic inhumanity.

For lack of a better phrase, the China versus US competition today has been dubbed as a new Cold War wherein two branches of capitalism, viz. authoritarian and democratic, are battling it out to prove their respective superiority. Seen from the ideological lens, this rivalry involves a Right-wing group of countries under American leadership engaged in a sustained tug-of-war with a Left-wing set of nations falling under the Chinese sphere of influence.

However, contrary to the original Cold War, the current division of the world is not neat, watertight or binary in nature. China and the US are themselves economically highly interdependent despite trade wars and attempts at decoupling and de-risking. There are also other rising power centres such as Europe and India, which are unwilling to subordinate themselves in the camps of either of the two great powers.

A further complication arises from sharpening ideological polarisation within the democratic world along the lines of liberals versus conservatives. Meloni’s heralding of a global conservative alliance is not a political crusade against authoritarian China or Russia but actually aimed directly at democratic regimes and leaders who espouse liberal values and policies. This internecine battle has intensified due to the rise of radical far-Right populists like Trump, who believe that the real enemy or the most dangerous Leftist is not the socialist or the Communist but actually the liberal.

Trump’s tendency to judge foreign leaders in democracies harshly if they are liberals and fondly if they are conservatives is instructive. He adores and praises anti-immigrant conservatives like Meloni, Hungarian PM Viktor Orban and Slovakian PM Robert Fico, but detests and gets under the skin of liberals like former Canadian PM Justin Trudeau and French President Emmanuel Macron. As an unapologetically transactional leader, Trump does get along with Left-liberal counterparts who mollify him on economic matters or deal tactfully with him, such as Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and British PM Keir Starmer, but his general inclination is to favour conservative and far-Right personalities.

Trump’s vice-president JD Vance’s ideological crusade against liberal European countries and his claim that the greatest threat facing them is not Russia or China but the threat from within, have reopened major fissures among developed democracies and narrowed the scope of right versus left enmity. For far-Right populists, overturning decades of liberal hegemony and prevailing over their main alternative political opposition forces within democracies takes precedence over standing up to authoritarian China or Russia. This selective populist ideological targeting is not confined to rich nations. In the developing world, from Brazil to South Africa to India, Trump and company champion far-Right causes and attack Left-liberal regimes and politicians.

Essentially, there are two parallel sets of ideological wars underway in contemporary times. The first one is defined by the China versus US great power competition, and the second one is the internal wrangling and rancour between liberals and conservatives within democracies. When Washington is under a liberal dispensation like that of Joe Biden, the onus is on waging the first form of ideological war against China and Russia. But under a radical populist like Trump, the focus tends to be on fighting liberals inside democracies through so-called culture wars.

The fragmentation of the West and of the western alliance system due to deepening fault lines between conservatives and liberals, benefit China. But with power oscillating like a pendulum in Washington every four years, the next cycle of ideological warfare after the Trump era ends could be a rebound of the classic Left versus Right struggle between the Chinese and American camps. Until then, a different ideological dust-up will be the main show in town.

Sreeram Chaulia is the author of Friends: India’s Closest Strategic Partners. The views expressed are personal