‘Our way of life is being challenged’: Why Putin, Xi, and Kim’s military parade matters
Rudyard Griffiths and Sean Speer analyze the striking images from China’s military parade featuring Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un marching alongside leaders from the Global South. They examine what this display of authoritarian unity means for the end of unipolarity and the growing bifurcation of the world into competing spheres of influence, with China building an alternative network to challenge Western liberal democratic capitalism.
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Program Transcript
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RUDYARD GRIFFITHS: Big day in geopolitics coming out of China. Images bouncing around the world of Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, and, yes, Kim Jong Un, the dictator of North Korea, leading 20 or so other leaders from the global South. What does it all mean to Canadian foreign policy, trade, America’s standing in the world? To help break it all down, I’m joined by Sean Speer, co founder and editor at large. Sean, great to be in conversation with you.
SEAN SPEER: Great to be with you, of course. Rudyard Griffiths: What did you make of this again, singular image. We’ll play some video for our folks on our YouTube channel just to capture what actually happened. This kind of, again, remarkable image of Kim Jong Un. Okay. The baddest of bad guys, the proverbial James Bond villain marching with Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin ahead of all these other world leaders. Sean Speer: Yeah. We’ve been talking in conceptual terms about the end of unipolarity and the Balkanization of the world and the fragmentation along these different lines with an American orbit and a Chinese orbit.
And that’s interesting. And of course, it has huge implications, but in a way, it’s really brought home in this video. You are, in effect seeing China building this network of countries that are subscribing to its conception of global trade, domestic governance, technology, and all the rest. And if, if, if anything, the images that we’re playing here ought to remind those in the White House and those in the west more broadly that we’re. Our ideas, our system of governance and economic organization, our way of life, in a way, is being challenged by a. By a real alternative.
RUDYARD GRIFFITHS: The presence, though, of Kim Jong Un at the forefront there with Xi and Putin surprised me. I mean, this is the proverbial hermit kingdom. He has brutally suppressed his own people. There have been events of mass starvation under him and his father, his family, again, runs this country like a kleptocracy. He’s acquired nuclear weapons, he’s threatened South Korea with them, and yet here he is at the front of the parade, so to speak, with Xi and Putin. I don’t know what that message that they’re trying to send here, because all of this, again, is carefully choreographed, carefully thought through. I think it’s one of three nuclear powers. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that he was the guy, Kim Jong Un, that was pulled from the pack to get up front with the two big bosses.
SEAN SPEER: Yeah, I think there’s something to that. A core to China’s economic and geopolitical strength is ultimately it’s, it’s defense advantage. Right. If it’s going to challenge the west when it comes to, say, Taiwan, or challenge the west when it comes to its dominance in the region. A big part of that is going to be a kind of brush back on these matters of defense and, and, and defense technology. But if I can pull back for a sec, I talked about the increasing bifurcation along these different lines. You’re in your 50s, I’m in my 40s. Most of our adult life has been spent in the era that you might characterize as the end of history. The sense that economic liberalization, democracy, global cooperation was on the ascendancy and that it was only a matter of time before a lot of the countries in that video essentially came on board to a kind of liberal democratic capitalism. It’s a reminder, of course, that history has come roaring back and these ideas, these systems, and indeed these technologies are being contested once again.
RUDYARD GRIFFITHS: Yeah, it’s a reminder, Sean, that this cleavaging of the world into two camps or groups, to me, became very stark over this weekend and to, I guess not too fine a point on it, that the kind of affrontness, I don’t know what the word I’m looking for, but the assertiveness of Xi and Putin to include Kim Jong Un in their group. You saw Lyschenko, the head of Belarus, another really bad guy. They seem willing, Sean, just to kind of flaunt their authoritarianism. And there are all these so called unaligned countries from the global south marching with them. And I don’t like this because it’s a flashback to other eras in our history that were unfortunately the prequels to wars where we had the Triple alliance, the Triple Entente, the Grand alliance, all these groupings of nations that then began to square off against each other both before World War I and before World War II. And this weekend, I felt we took an unfortunate step towards something that was more stark, that was painted more clearly in black and white terms.
SEAN SPEER: Yeah, I would push on that historical analogy because I think there’s really something there. I would also say that at different times over our collective history, the west, if I can put it that way, seemed more inclined, seemed to have the wherewithal to defend itself and defend its ideas and its system of governance and economic organization and understood itself as part of a kind of collective political identity, if I can put it that way. And it’s far from obvious that’s the case right now, at least in part, by Donald Trump targeting his allies, contesting his allies, instead of building a reliable and durable alliance to confront the baddies on our video screen.
RUDYARD GRIFFITHS: Yeah. Final point, Sean. This weekend also seemed like a real defeat for globalization. There had been a longstanding thesis that China could and should be brought into the world through trade, through liberalization, through the wto. It didn’t work. We ended up hollowing out a lot of our manufacturing and industrial base, handed that over to China. And we did that largely on a trade that we thought that that was going to build a better world, a more peaceful world, a world of reciprocity. And now we have images this weekend of China’s military might. They featured a new intercontinental ballistic nuclear missile in their military parade the first time that this new ICBM was previewed. Again, that’s a pretty harsh message.
SEAN SPEER: One of the phrases that I’ve adopted from you, having spoken to you so much over the past five years, is the theory of the case. And I think we have to understand what’s playing out here as these competing theories of the case that China of course, is motivated by economic and geopolitical advantage. I don’t want to minimize that. But at the backdrop of a lot of this is ideas. It thinks its system of governance, its way of organizing its economy, its relationship to these other countries is superior to liberal democratic capitalism. I think that’s wrong. I think history is on our side.
What worries me, Rudyard, come back to my earlier point is I don’t know if we have the wherewithal to defend our ideas, to advance our ideas in the way that we’ve historically had in the past. And that includes Canada, incidentally, Canadian society domestically has we’ve seen play out in recent years a series of different fissures, I think growing doubts about our identity. And so I think one of the reasons I’m happy to talk about these issues with you the past couple of days, because it ought to be a wake up call to leaders and the public alike in Washington, Ottawa, other Western capitals. The other side is organized, it’s animated, it’s galvanized, as you say, it’s prepared to kind of lean in in a way that in the past it’s been a bit more pensive. And I think we need to be, have be prepared to kind of match that type of energy and ambition and self confidence.
RUDYARD GRIFFITHS: Yeah. Just end on a lighter note. I mean, what is up with military parades? Why do you like the everyone marching like literally in goose step? It’s such a cliche, like watching this thing. We’ve been showing it to our listeners and viewers on our YouTube channel. It’s like I don’t know, it seems like it’s out of a Woody Allen film or something. This is what the dictator must do. It’s like a little set of boxes that they check off at the beginning of each calendar year. Have I had my big military parade?
SEAN SPEER: Exactly. But in a way at the risk of, of being too serious about it is it is a kind of metaphor. It is anti individualistic. Right. Like all these people, their individuality is sucked out of them and they become this system, if I can put it that way, which I think is the principal defect of these different countries and the way that they think about these issues. And so the question of course is are we up to the challenge? I hope that we are.
RUDYARD GRIFFITHS: Yeah. Well, great to have you in studio and to talk about seriously and a little bit lightheartedly about the spectacle that came out of China the last 24 hours. We’ll catch up soon.
SEAN SPEER: You bet.
