Africa -China Review Africa -China Cooperation and Transformation
Published: October 05,2022
By Hamzah Rifaat Hussain
CFP
The President of Iran, Ebrahim Raisi’s expression of full support for the Global Development Initiative (GDI) proposed by China provides an important message for the international community. It indicates how apolitical cooperation with solid frameworks for peace can be critical for sustainable growth and collective prosperity to materialize.
While congratulating President Xi Jinping on the People’s Republic of China’s National Day, Raisi spoke of implementing universal solutions for the betterment of humanity, so that the globe can enjoy universal peace. The high receptivity of the GDI indicates that neo-colonial designs aimed at undermining state sovereignty and compromising development potential must be shelved permanently.
The truth is that the improvement of the welfare of citizens in the absence of unilateralism is the way forward for all states. The lingering shadow of war, pervasive insecurities and global polarization, are undermining the development of societies in the developing world. The collective interests of countries continue to be hijacked due to imperialism from the U.S. as has been the case with the Joe Biden administration’s policies in 2022.
Note that there has been no letup in promoting the Indo-Pacific strategy as a divisive tactic or leveraging states from the Quad strategic dialogue to adopt offensive doctrines. Relentless support for nuclear proliferation efforts has also gone into full swing by legitimizing AUKUS to counter China. Similarly in the Middle East, Washington’s lack of collective wisdom has haunted prospects for peace as pressing challenges ranging from terrorism, separatism, geopolitical divides and the souring of bilateral relations characterize its troubled landscape.
In contrast, the GDI advocates sustainable growth through consultations among all member states instead of pinning one sovereign state against the other as the right path forward. If the situation in the Middle East and North Africa is treated as a microcosm of the global security environment in 2022, it becomes clear that the American architecture for international stability has failed.
Instead of promoting collective prosperity as enshrined in the GDI, Biden’s policies have done nothing to address the long standing tensions among countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Morocco or Algeria. Similarly, the decades long Israeli-Palestinian crisis continues to linger on in the absence of conflict resolution with the U.S.’s transactional approach to the issue, only inflaming tensions in what the United Nations terms a “perpetual state of violence.”
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi attends a cabinet meeting in Tehran, Iran on July 13, 2022. /CFP
Globally, American neocolonialism stands equally on full display, as the Biden administration rallies defense ministers of Japan and Australia to strengthen the alliance system and undercut what U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III says is “China’s military activities in the Taiwan Strait.”
The complete absence of consultation proposals or de-escalatory frameworks, which are critical for human prosperity, necessitates a global architecture that is all encompassing and comprehensive. Countries such as Iran openly endorsing the GDI provides a roadmap for the international community to consider partnerships instead of alliances and dialogue instead of confrontation.
For far too long, regions such as the Middle East have been fraught with tensions due to a lack of consideration over legitimate security concerns of member states. Iran has witnessed such controversial policy making, where the U.S. has deliberately rallied countries across the Middle Eastern and Northern Africa region and beyond to pressur Iran instead of reaching out to the Tehran leadership. Such diplomacy prevents the indigenization of solutions to Middle Eastern problems where each country is treated as an equal stakeholder. Xenophobia, populist rhetoric and deglobalization will always be values that stand contrary to the spirit of the GDI.
The readiness of both Iran and China to work under multilateral frameworks as emphasized by President Raisi is a bright prospect, which other states can capitalize upon. It is imperative that areas covered under the GDI such as food security, poverty reduction and rejection of abusive sanctions are collectively addressed. No country should be left out or demonized and that is what the GDI brings in the face of neocolonialism.
Hamzah Rifaat Hussain, a former visiting fellow at the Stimson Center in Washington and former assistant researcher at the Islamabad Policy Research Institute, is a TV anchor at Indus News in Pakistan.
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