17+1 Mechanism in 2020 Global Flux
In December 2019 the pandemic of COVID-19 gave a new global face to Wuhan province and China, possibly tainting China’s otherwise unmatched strategy to take the global lead from the USA.
The start of 2020 has already encountered an abundance of competing global health and economic priorities, forced socio-cultural adaptation, and common freedoms suspended with undisputed but possibly short-lived public consent. The virus started the global domino-pandemic and sparked the upsurge of insecurities at all levels – from personal to national and international levels. The unprecedented information and misinformation overflow created its own – infodemic.
While the eventful beginning of 2020 maintains its own flair, in many aspects it resembles the international crisis occurring regularly approximately every 10 years throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, incepting the proverbial multifaceted planetary fishbowl.
Past pandemics teach us how to fight the virus, minimize the casualties, and recover public health-wise.
On the other hand, two world wars, both ignited in the 17+1 region, in many cultural-security aspects the cross-road of modern civilizations, illustrate how shock waves of impoverishment, political disruptions, and scapegoating may swiftly permeate global politics, economies, and societies, building on the most corrosive socio-cultural paleo-mechanisms.
The fact that SARS-CoV-2 virus originated in China may make all the difference for the 17+1 mechanism. After originally focusing on “flattening the curve”, the USA and Europe have continued sharpening their rhetoric towards China as suspicion has risen of China’s alleged foul play. The allegations that China has not fully disclosed the key epidemic data from the start, its alleged influence on the World Health Organization that may have impeded global anti-pandemic response, and suspected predatory foreign investment, merger and acquisitions of strategic assets as the world plunged into global economic lockdown, have been key arguments of the EU and the USA to request investigations, court proceedings and/or tighten protectionist legislation. China’s strategic plan Made in China 2025 that is to make China less dependent on foreign technology and critical products seems to generate further insecurities globally, reminiscent in some aspects of the cold war arms race.
From the perspective of some of the CEE countries, they remain reminiscent of similar developments and rhetoric from their particular 1990s crisis as the socialism and communism systems dismantled into the contemporary free market. At that time most of the major national companies and infrastructure were privatized through foreign direct investment mostly from the EU and the USA. This makes the choice of future alignment with the USA, EU, Russia, or China - easier for the 17 individual countries, but immensely more complicated for the situation.
Especially since to some of the 17+1 countries, and in the context of meandering Europe, it may seem that there is not so much more of national strategic assets to lose, while there is a potential of gain from the strategic partnership with the next world hegemon.[1]
In this tight-margin weighing of risks and benefits of various constellations for the CEE countries, the tipping point might lie with the cultural-security tools. They may provide persuasiveness and historical grounds that could facilitate reframing and reinterpretation of perceptions, narratives, and futures for the CEE, at both the national and human levels.
[1] K. Carstensen, F. Toubal (2003) Working Paper: Foreign Direct Investment in Central and Eastern European Countries: A Dynamic Panel Analysis, Kiel Working Paper, No. 1143, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW), Kiel