Neither Washington Nor Beijing Can Prevail in an Age of Global Disorder |
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The relationship between the United States and China has become one of the most consequential of the twenty-first century. It is no exaggeration to suggest that its trajectory will play a decisive role in shaping the emerging global order.
The most recent US-China summit in Beijing was significant not only because it offered a tentative roadmap for managing bilateral tensions through the strategic concept of “constructive relationship of strategic stability”, but also because it has generated a wave of commentary on what this relationship means in an era increasingly characterised by global disorder. Much of the mainstream analysis tends either to focus on the personalistic dimensions of the relationship or to treat it as a largely diplomatic exercise between two great powers.
What is often missing is a sustained engagement with the structural undercurrents shaping this transformation in the international system. It is these deeper dynamics that condition the behaviour of both states and, ultimately, the contours of their interaction. To understand this, it is worth revisiting the largely overlooked work of the Spanish journalist Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, a figure whose insights, while rooted in Spain’s democratic transition, offer unexpected analytical purchase for a global relationship far removed from Spanish domestic politics.
The origins of the idea of a ‘correlation of weaknesses’
Vázquez Montalbán was a perceptive and critical observer of Spain’s post-Franco transition. Reflecting on the process in a 2003 interview, he argued that when Franco disappeared, Spain did not experience a “correlation of forces”, but rather a “correlation of weaknesses”. By this he meant that none of the actors involved in the transition was in a position to impose its maximal political project; instead, all were constrained to negotiating within the limits of their respective vulnerabilities. Each side, in effect, sought to have its weaknesses recognised and managed within the emerging settlement.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.
In practice, this meant that the Francoist regime could no longer reproduce itself in its previous form, but neither could the democratic opposition impose its programme of “democratic rupture”. The result was a negotiated transition that bore the hallmarks of what Antonio Gramsci........