Faith in UN Security Council Reform

Picking up from the end of yesterday's entry, Witkoff Revisited, let's imagine for the moment that President Xi Jinping does not want to impose a blockade on Taiwan, and that Taiwan's President William Lai will not say or do anything on May 20th that changes Xi's mind (cf. Mass Protests in Taipei | Neutrality Studies). The Mearsheimer thesis is that Trump should free America from entanglements in Europe and the Middle East to instead focus on the containment of China as a prospective rival regional hegemon (cf. Professor Mearsheimer on India, China and the Thucydides Trap). I disagree with Mearsheimer. I support equitable reform of the UN Security Council, including the regional group system, on the road to world federalism - at least for the security sector. From my perspective, Trump should be seeking to right-size military spending by all permanent members of the UN Security Council and across all regional groups in accordance with a parity principle (cf. A New U.S. Grand Strategy: The Case for Multipolar Pluralism, With Stephen Heintz | CFR; Unprecedented rise in global military expenditure as European and Middle East spending surges | SIPRI; Why ‘Overmatch’ Is Overkill | The Nation).

It's possible that President Xi Jinping and President Putin have already achieved functional unification between China and Russia. Will Xi and Putin announce a mutual defense treaty like NATO on this upcoming Victory Day? Are China and Russia committed to an overmatch doctrine of their own? Continuing along the same optimistic line of imagination with which I started this entry, let's assume that President Xi Jinping does not want to replace US hegemony with Chinese hegemony. Let's assume that President Xi is genuinely committed to multipolar pluralism (cf. Xi calls for multi-polar world, inclusive globalization ahead of G20 Summit).

From this plane of faith, perhaps President Xi can find a way to help Russia and Ukraine reach a 30-day ceasefire on the way to a peace agreement. Does it start with a reciprocal Ukrainian 3-day ceasefire? That might be a victory for President Zelensky, too. Either way, this statement from the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs fortunately does not sound like a stinging rebuke of NATO.