- Superpowers keep behaving in old ways, though the pandemic has changed the world
By: Jamshaid Rehman
There is a cliché that the road to power is full of casualties and hypocrisies. Superpowers never failed to surprise the world with new and innovative ideas. One state is busy in threatening the world with non-traditional security threats, while the other finds itself leaning towards the traditional security threats. One has spread the pandemic while others are busy in testing their hypersonic missiles. The question of humanity remains still unanswered. The USA and Russia are constructing hitech missiles but failed to save their peoples from covid-19. Unfortunately, the USA death toll of virus victims has surpassed the fatalities of the Vietnam War.
It is the responsibility of the hegemon to bring peace in the world but, in contemporary circumstances superpowers had failed to do so. Instead they are the reason behind instability in various regions of the world, just so as to achieve their malign objectives. There is no need to delve into the details because everything is so apparent that how the coronavirus has mushroomed around the world but, in a nutshell, the Chinese have caused stability to deteriorate while the repercussions of this virus are alarming. This has increased the rate of unemployment; made states’ economies collapse and the casualties of innocent people are making humungous numbers. Most importantly, it has changed the economic and military strength of great powers.
Russia had tested its first ship-launched ‘Triskon (Zircon)’ hypersonic missile on 27 February. Unfortunately these missiles with a tremendously high speed failed to detect the coronavirus, but achieved a huge success to maintain deterrence and enhanced capability to protect its territory instead of its common masses who are suffering at the hands of the pandemic. Currently they have over 200,000 confirmed cases and the number is increasing. On the other hand the USA is not lagging behind, they had also tested the hypersonic missile on 21 March, which proves its ability in an arms race with Russia, and it has further aggravated the strategic stability.
The post-pandemic world will bring a new version of cold war with it because both China and the USA are damaged. Wars have been turned from battlefields to homes because times have changed the modes of destroying each other. In the contemporary world, media and artificial intelligence are the most lethal weapons or abilities that can be used to destroy anything, and people’s data is what matters today. However, these great powers are gathering every byte from social media either it is online classes or entertainment, and applications will be used for manipulation as a soft power and to construct the minds of people to serve their best interests respectively
Turning to another side of the coin, the outbreak caused more than more than 80,000 causalities and more than 1.3 million cases are confirmed, but a piece of land is more important than human life and humanity. Now, both states are discussing the mysterious arcana of strategic stability and arms race after testing hypersonic missiles. This statement explains the situation of the USA and Russia: ”Two great powers may be compared to two scorpions in a bottle, each capable of killing the other but only at the risk if its own life”.
Suffice to say, human nature is power hungry; in this anarchic world, every powerful state wanted to cripple the less powerful states to gain hegemony. Realist scholar Hans Morgenthau, who set out approaches that emphasized power over morality, argued that morality should be, and could be, avoided in policymaking and every action must be directed towards increasing or demonstrating power because those policies which are based on morality or idealism lead towards weakness. These are the fundamental principles on which superpowers premise their foreign policy choices. Human beings became immune to everything after some time, and thus; powerful states started constructing their minds and perceptions according to their interests.
According to constructivist scholar Nicholas Greenwood Onuf, ideas are socially constructed, and powerful states construct events with respect to their interests and objectives because actors continually shape or sometimes reshape the very nature of international relations through their actions and interactions. Constructivism sees the world as socially constructed. That is how superpowers constructed the understanding of the people that testing hypersonic missiles in such a dire circumstances would not be a great deal for them.
The USA has faced failure in its strategies pertaining to Afghanistan and Iraq. Withdrawal from Iraq after destroying the infrastructure without succeeding in its objectives and now from Afghanistan is lesson for it in multifaceted ways, such as its technology failed in the fierce terrain of Afghanistan which made the psychological health of the Army personnel severely deteriorate. The USA announced its withdrawal under the flag of the isolationist policy, leaving chaos behind. US assistance towards India for containing China seems like a utopian riddle. However later on Pakistan came to the forefront and helped end the Afghan quagmire for the USA by the role it played in helping the peaceful negotiations between the USA and the Taliban.
This outbreak proved as a blessing for states like Syria, Yemen and Palestine because terrorist activities reduced to a great level. The reason is professed superpowers who occupied Middle Eastern states are now busy saving their own people, even IF they are not so successful in achieving that objective. However, the Kashmir valley is still under the ruthless barbarians of the region, ruled by the extremist followers of fascism. The world is busy fighting covid-19 but the Indian Army is focusing on border violations, cross-border skirmishes, and cutting off the medical and health facilities to Kashmir. They are blaming religion for the cause of outbreak; lynching and oppressing innocent Muslims in their own country. China is doing the same with Uighur Muslims in their hundreds of detention centres and the West is promoting the concept of Islamophobia. Muslims are labeled as terrorists, but terrorists other than Muslims are called lone wolfs. This is the level of prejudice of this enlightened secular world.
It is a heartrending spectacle for the Muslim world. India, being an active ally of great powers is on the same path, ignoring human rights. Now, the question is why they would slap sanctions or take notice on violation of human rights because it is not in their best interest and referring to themselves as leaders of the free world, even though they have left the indelible reputation of incapability of tackling their own crises.
The post-pandemic world will bring a new version of cold war with it because both China and the USA are damaged. Wars have been turned from battlefields to homes because times have changed the modes of destroying each other. In the contemporary world, media and artificial intelligence are the most lethal weapons or abilities that can be used to destroy anything, and people’s data is what matters today. However, these great powers are gathering every byte from social media either it is online classes or entertainment, and applications will be used for manipulation as a soft power and to construct the minds of people to serve their best interests respectively.
