“LET a hundred flowers blossom, let a hundred schools of thought contend” — this ancient Chinese wisdom was evident at a recent Chinese People’s Association for Peace and Disarmament (CPAPD) conference from May 13-14 titled Universal Security in a Turbulent World: the Responsibility of Major Countries.

Nearly 40 speakers were brought together: a former deputy chair of Nato’s military committee, representatives from leading US think tanks, former defence ministers from Austria and New Zealand, mixed with those from the Rosa Luxemburg Institute, the South African Communist Party, and the International Peoples’ Assembly (Brazil). Others — the majority — were from the global South: scholars, researchers, former ministers including from the ANC, Vietnam and Ethiopia as well as military figures from Malaysia and Indonesia.

Liu Jianchao, Minister of the International Department, central committee of the Communist Party of China, opened: the world is undergoing a once-in-a-century transformation yet the basic norms of international relations are being challenged and the international system with the UN at its core is under threat. The consequences for global security are becoming very serious. Multilateralism needs renewal; an inclusive common security needs a foundation in development. China will continue to be a stabilising force — for peace, progress, and construction in a turbulent world.

Former UN undersecretary-general Pino Arlacchi saw the global South as a “testing ground” for peace and construction, contrasting with the EU and its “fatalistic mindset,” falling back into a destructive mode; tackling poverty, the cause of conflict, should be the priority, not chasing after enemies.

Andrey Kortunov, a former director-general of the Russian International Affairs Council, questioned whether the US, so deeply divided, could really be a responsible power; a new round of globalisation driven by continuous technological progress could create new opportunities for co-operation towards a true multilateralism.

Douglas Bandow of the Cato Institute and former adviser to Ronald Reagan, seeing a world in turmoil, looked to the G7 to take more account of the views of emerging powers — India, Pakistan, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Saudi Arabia — so as to share responsibilities. The US and China should draw lessons from history, he said, not fall into the abyss of war but adhere to peaceful coexistence, working through differences for the sake of a future prosperity.

ANC national executive member Zizi Kodwa argued that amidst global transformation — in technology, environment, with ongoing wars — how major countries act will have unprecedented impact: rather than seeking peace through dominance, they should serve as guardians of security pursuing responsible competition.

Over two days we explored the complex intertwining of traditional and non-traditional security threats globally: the impact of climate change, the pandemic, terrorism, the worsening conditions of poverty and population displacement driving conflict; uncertainty increasing with the spread of new disruptive technologies, cyberattacks, the rapid development of military technologies amidst threats of nuclear proliferation.

Small countries suffer most in the chaos; multiple crises threaten to set off a chain reaction. At a time when international co-operation and regulation is needed most, multilateralism is eroding as countries abandon values to maximise national interests, driving militarisation and global competition. Regional hotspots are at risk of exploding into wider war.

Multipolarisation without multilateralism is dangerous: major countries have to accommodate the rise of new powers, but how? Seen from the global North, competition between regional powers is intensifying — India-Pakistan in Asia, and the Middle East with Turkey, Iran, Israel and Saudi Arabia.

More critical views highlighted problems of underdevelopment, the drive for dominance, and how the global technology elite extracts value from economies without accountability; the capitalist pursuit of profit, leaving little for vulnerable. If emerging new powers disrupt the existing order does this also contain the seeds of global transformation?

The US and China were called upon to work harder to get along. But, came the question, can the US ever treat China as an equal? How can they co-operate, when they don’t agree on a single principle? The Americans present seemed dazed, evidently disempowered by Trump. US-China competition is likely to intensity, warned Chinese researchers, calling for risk control mechanisms.

On Europe, speakers disagreed. The former Austrian minister of defence advocated “peace through strength.” Europe was surrounded by conflict — eastern Europe, the Middle East, north Africa, the stability guaranteed by the US now gone. Conversely, it was claimed Europeans were completely lacking in self-understanding: the Ukraine war was the outcome of 35 years of failure of common security as, following the fall of the Berlin Wall, George Bush and Helmut Kohl agreed a united Germany should join Nato regardless of the views of Russia. How to change the European mindset?

Others observed that Europe, once a model of peace and prosperity, had squandered all its achievements of arms control, the OSCE, the Arctic Council and so on. Was ASEAN more effective, seeking parallel mutual actions rather than legally binding agreement? Now prosperity in the region was at risk of a US-China conflict impacting the entire world.

More threatening than India-Pakistan tensions, argued one Chinese scholar, was the Korean situation. With US-China co-operation failure, North Korea had gone nuclear, now a two-bloc rivalry was shaping up between Russia-North Korea and the US-Japan-South Korea. Maybe this could prove the turning point in US-China co-operation with China being essential to finding a resolution?

Could small groupings — mini-laterals — help rebuild multilateralism, escaping US-China competition to pursue a development agenda? Past groupings of middle powers had acted with a certain strategic autonomy, opposing the Iraq war for example, and advancing alternative ideas. Unlike these like-minded liberal democracies, Brics+ today has to manage diversity.

However, as one speaker argued, through the Belt and Road Initiative, Brics’ pursuit of China’s Global Development Initiative was being drawn towards the new-style international relations of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation following China’s Global Security Initiative.

With lack of development surely a breeding ground for conflict, does economic development depend on preconditions of peace? Security determines Europe’s economic agenda; for ASEAN economic integration and development comes first. China and India, for example, may disagree on Asian security but are nevertheless major economic partners. Then again, globalisation — the expansion of economic interconnectedness — has not made the world safer; rather, major power competition intensifies.

One researcher from the People’s Liberation Army (China’s military) argued the post-war cycles of capitalist crises were reaching a maximum and the situation is not just a repeat of bipolarity; China would no longer be dragged in, rather the international order was undergoing fundamental change. The former defence minister of New Zealand, in private conversation, considered all this somewhat exaggerated.

Summing up, Tao Tao of the CPAPD noted world peace and development are under serious challenge: all players should act to prevent war, building pathways to peace. From the left and right, there was unity in opposition to Trump’s unilateralism and the overall zero-sum “I win, you lose” approach. What is Trump’s endgame wondered, Kodwa: to destroy the UN?

I wonder about that too, said the CPAPD’s Yan Yinhua, but whatever, the Chinese government will continue to address the main contradiction between the country’s unbalanced and inadequate development and the people’s growing needs for a better life because that is what the Chinese people expect.

Pooling perspectives, suggestions, and lessons drawn from history, the conference challenged participants to face the bigger picture: some eyes were maybe opened, but it’s unlikely that any mindsets were changed. Many speakers called for peace through justice not force; many identified underdevelopment as the root cause of insecurity, a solid foundation for the global economy seen as the ultimate the pathway to peace.

Where there was universal agreement was on the importance of people-to-people exchange: inward-looking trends, in China as well as the US and the West, had to be reversed, otherwise future generations will not understand each other, will view each other with hostility so more easily to slide into war.

Jenny Clegg’s speech to the conference can be found on the Friends of Socialist China website — socialistchina.org.