According to conventional wisdom, the most important geopolitical battle of the 21st century will be between the United States and China.
In this context, the mainstream Western view portrays the United States as committed to defending and enforcing the so-called rules-based world order that Washington has created and led since its victory in World War II.
This rules-based order should be consistent with international law, which has been established in many treaties since the United Nations was founded some 80 years ago, but it is not.
At best, this rules-based order reflects a US/Western interpretation of certain aspects of international law, and at worst, it distorts international law to suit specific Western interests.
In both cases, the purpose is to serve Western geopolitical interests and legitimize its hegemony. Of course, the Western powers, blinded by their arrogance, believe that because these “rules” allegedly serve their interests, they also serve the interests of all humanity. They are wrong.
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The same mainstream Western discourse portrays China as the main threat to this rules-based order and argues that the Asian country has both the will and the ability to challenge and modify it.
That the United States and its allies have reached this conclusion demonstrates the devastating cognitive dissonance that characterizes the analysis and decision-making of Western leaders.
Diplomatic failure
It is extraordinary that Western prime ministers' offices are attributing such destructive intent to the Chinese Communist Party, which, in contrast to the United States, has not deployed troops overseas for nearly half a century (its last deployment was in 1979 during the Vietnam War).
Unlike the US, China has never interfered in any country or organized a coup. Unlike the US, China has never imposed unilateral sanctions on any country except those legally approved by the UN Security Council. Also, unlike the US, China has only one military base overseas (Djibouti) and its navy, again contrary to the US, mainly patrols the South China Sea, China's most important supply line.
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China's main claim is over an island close to its Pacific coast (Taiwan), which Washington has unequivocally recognized as part of mainland China through three joint US-Chinese statements since 1972. To remove ambiguity, the US doubled down on its claim by encouraging Taiwan's expulsion from the United Nations, giving a seat to Communist China.
If such highly restrained and responsible behavior renders China a threat to the rules-based order, how should the behavior of the United States and its closest allies, especially Israel, be viewed?
Another interesting criterion for determining whether the United States or China poses the greatest threat to the rules-based world order is the behavior of both countries in the most problematic region on the planet: the Middle East.
Since the end of World War II, the United States has claimed the exclusive role of promoting peace and stability in the region, a role it has called “Pax Americana,” but in recent years the situation has been anything but peaceful.
U.S. diplomacy once boasted great successes, from shuttle diplomacy after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, to the Camp David Accords in 1978 that secured peace between Israel and Egypt, to the 1994 peace accord between Israel and Jordan.
But over the past three decades, America's magical power in the region has almost systematically failed.
China and the Middle East
These failures include everything from the collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian accord in 2000, to the “war on terror” across the Middle East (including the re-invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003), the ignominious withdrawal from Kabul after 20 years, and the handover of Iraq to pro-Iranian militias since 2011.
It also includes the “Assad must go” policy in Syria in 2011, followed by Syria’s return to the Arab League and the reopening of Arab and Western embassies in Damascus, and the wise nuclear deal with Iran in 2015, followed by the Trump administration’s ignominious withdrawal from the same deal three years later.
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Further US failures include the biased Abraham Accords which only served Israeli interests, and ironclad and blind support for Israel's brutal attacks on Gaza, which led to indictments of genocide and crimes against humanity at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Then there is China, a late entrant into the Middle East.
Unlike the United States, China has no military bases in the region and has not deployed any troops there, apart from a few hundred on a United Nations mission patrolling and inspecting the vital Israel-Lebanon border.
For decades, China's primary focus in the Middle East has been on developing economic and trade ties with countries in the region and it has been successful in both. China boasts strategic economic agreements with Egypt, Iran and all of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member states, as well as good relations with Israel.
Recently, China's diplomatic efforts have achieved two major successes.
In 2023, he brokered a rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, the two most important countries in the region, pursuing a completely different political path from the one preferred by the United States, which seeks to isolate Iran and bring about regime change in Tehran.
Earlier this year, China successfully facilitated reconciliation talks between various Palestinian factions, particularly Fatah and Hamas, brokering another important agreement.
Honest Broker
This diplomatic achievement should not be underestimated, as decades of division among Palestinians have been a major obstacle to the success of the peace process.
Israel has long maintained that it has no credible partner to negotiate with, and of course since the 1980s, Israel has actively stoked divisions among the various Palestinian factions precisely to maintain that claim and continue to annex occupied territories.
If the Palestinian parties respect and implement the agreements reached in Beijing, this could be an important step toward a more credible peace process in the future.
The current rules-based order, as the United States and its allies often claim, is nothing more than wordplay to hide Western hypocrisy and double standards.
In other words, while the United States has provided staunch support for Israel's genocide by sending massive amounts of arms, covering up Israel's crimes in the UN Security Council, and attempting, so far unsuccessfully, to broker a ceasefire in Gaza and secure the release of Israeli hostages, China has laid the first foundations needed for a more credible and lasting peace process.
China could legitimately argue that by drawing the right lessons from history and taking into account the long list of US failures in promoting an Israeli-Palestinian agreement, its role as a mediator between Israel and Palestine is more likely to be successful.
One thing is certain: Beijing, as opposed to Washington, will be an honest broker.
If China is successful here, it could significantly strengthen the rules-based order, but a just order – one that respects international law and international humanitarian law. As the United States and its allies often claim, the current rules-based order is merely a rhetoric ploy to hide Western hypocrisy and double standards.
China is not challenging the rules-based Western world order: it is simply joining the rest of the world in demanding respect for international law, its consistent application to all nations without double standards, and the eventual abandonment of misleading Western terminology.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
