Illustration: Xia Qing/GT

By Jiang Shixue

Everyone at the recent session of the United Nations General Assembly talked about war and peace, from UN Secretary-General António Guterres to Chinese Vice President Han Zheng, from US President Joe Biden to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Indeed, war exists in every historical stage of mankind. Therefore, Chinese President Xi Jinping has emphasized many times that we must strive harder to build a global community of shared future. A world of perpetual peace is one of the most important components of this global community.

For building a world of perpetual peace, all countries must stand together through thick and thin and take the following measures in the face of adversity:

First, the central role of the UN in international affairs must be strengthened. The UN Charter expresses its strong determination for mankind to pursue peace: "We the peoples of the United Nations [are] determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind." To achieve this ambitious goal, it calls upon all nations "to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbors, and to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security…" It also states, "The parties to any dispute, the continuance of which is likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security, shall, first of all, seek a solution by negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, resort to regional agencies or arrangements or other peaceful means of their own choice."

However, the UN Charter has been violated frequently. Therefore, as China's top diplomat Wang Yi said in 2021, the United Nations should be a defender of equity and justice rather than an onlooker of hegemony and bullying, a major platform for practicing multilateralism rather than an arena for superpower games, and a doer of the action to tackle challenges rather than a talking shop full of empty words.

Although the US considers itself a "defender of international law," it often brazenly violates the UN Charter. As American writer Margot Patterson put it, "Diminishing respect for international law can be linked to the rise of the United States as a military power after World War II…"

China maintains that the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries should be respected and protected and the purposes and principles of the UN Charter abided by in real earnest. Wang Yi expressed this position soon after the Ukrainian crisis broke out in February 2022. "This position of China is consistent and clear-cut, and applies equally to the Ukraine issue," Wang Yi said.

Second, a new type of major power relations based on mutual respect and cooperation must be established. The policies of the great powers not only determine the well-being and fortune, or misfortune, of their own people, but also affect the fate of all peoples across the world. Therefore, to a certain extent, whether a new type of major power relationship based on mutual respect and cooperation can be realized is no trivial matter.

The definition of a great power is varied. Some say that population size, land area and economic scale are the necessary conditions for a great power; others believe that great powers are those capable of pursuing superpower status, such as the US, China, Russia, the European Union and Japan; still others argue that the test for a great power is the test of its strength to win wars.

In February 2012, then Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping pointed out in a written interview with the Washington Post before his trip to the US that the vast Pacific Ocean has ample space for China and the US. In his meeting with then US President Barack Obama in June 2013, President Xi Jinping proposed the establishment of a new type of great power relations for China and the US.

However, the US is not willing to accept this type of relationship. In recent years, the US has been escalating its efforts to contain or even wishes to de-couple with China. As Henry Kissinger said in 2021, US-China tensions would threaten to engulf the entire world and could lead to an Armageddon-like clash between the two military and technology giants.

Third, we must forcefully oppose hegemonism. Hegemonism can mean an ideological position or a foreign policy act. By advocating the "law of the jungle" and unilateralism, hegemonism ignores the sovereignty of other countries, frequently wields the stick of sanctions through the so-called "long-arm jurisdiction," and does not even hesitate to use force to implement regime change in other countries.

Hegemonism has a long history. As early as the age of geographical discovery, European powers used hegemonic means to carry out brutal colonial expansion around the world. In this process, vast amounts of wealth from Asia, Africa and Latin America were plundered by the colonialists and countless lives of the local people were lost. Since it became a superpower after World War II, the US has frequently relied on its powerful military superiority and economic strength to implement hegemonic policies and even wage numerous wars against its opponents.

In an April 2019 speech, former US president Jimmy Carter noted that the US had not fought a war for only 16 of its more than 240 years of history, making it "the most warlike nation in history of the world." Christopher Kelly and Stuart Laycock said in their book, America Invades: How We've Invaded or Been Militarily Involved with Almost Every Country on Earth (Book Publishers Network, 2014), only three countries in the world (Andorra, Bhutan and Liechtenstein) had not experienced US military intervention. In their paper titled "Introducing the Military Intervention Project: A New Dataset on US Military Interventions, 1776-2019", published by Journal of Conflict Resolution (August 2022), Sidita Kushi and Monica Duffy Toft calculated that between 1776 and 2019, the US carried out nearly 400 military interventions around the world, more than 200 of which took place after World War II.

Fourthly, security of one country should not be attained at the expense of others. There is no doubt that only by achieving security can we ensure that the sovereignty and territorial integrity of a country are protected from external aggression. Toward this end, some countries have formed military alliances through treaties and other forms. For example, on January 1, 1942, 26 countries at war with the Axis Powers signed the Declaration by United Nations, marking the formal formation of the world anti-fascist united front and further demonstrated the justice and progress of the anti-fascist war.

But there are also military alliances that are unjust. For example, NATO, which is controlled by the US, has not only repeatedly used illegal force against other countries, but also continuously expanded under the influence of the Cold War mentality and realist theory of international relations. So far, NATO has expanded eastward five times, increasing its membership from 16 to 30, advancing more than 1,000 kilometers eastward to the Russian border.

To deter Russia militarily, NATO even tried to offer membership to Ukraine. This angered Russia. On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a special military operation against Ukraine, and currently no one can predict when and how the crisis will end.

NATO even points its finger at China. Senior NATO officials like its Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg claimed that China poses a challenge to NATO's interests, security and values, and that NATO members must work together to address China's "systemic challenges." This is total nonsense.

In conclusion, if we wish to build a world of perpetual peace, we must uphold the central role of the UN in international affairs, create a new type of major power relations based on mutual respect and cooperation, forcefully oppose hegemonism and make sure that the security of one country should not be attained at the expense of others.

The author is a professor at the College of International Relations, Sichuan International Studies University. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn