GSI, not de-risking

Freedom and equality are concepts that have characterized humanity. Whether a person is free or people are equal, and can it be both, are questions that the entire political philosophy can fit into at least from the French Revolution (and certainly before) onward, and they are key in both socialism and liberalism. The word of the 21st century is security. It may not be as lofty as the first two terms, but it is also very pragmatic.

If we look at the world around us, in the last twenty years everything revolves around security. Many will say that the turning point was the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 2001. Regardless of how far back in history we can follow that trail, today, terrorism is everywhere around us, in all segments, and not just the scourge of terrorism. The pandemic is an obvious example, but it is far from the only one. The safety of the food we eat and the supply chain, the safety of the water we drink and, especially, the safety of the air we breathe due to pollution, forced the world to undergo tectonic changes, so today even laymen are talking about decarbonization. The security of energy supply is an issue that is also relevant here in Bosnia and Herzegovina, especially in winter. Everywhere we turn, there is talk of interstate security due to potential bilateral conflicts, then state security due to criminal groups that trade in illegal means (drug cartels), and lately a lot has been written and talked about security in the online sphere (cybersecurity) which has raised many philosophical questions but also practical political consequences.

All these questions, and many others, are treated by the Global Security Initiative, which we have already written about in the Voice of China, but we are dedicating this issue to it, precisely because of its importance as a comprehensive answer to all the safe questions that concern humanity today. GSI, for those who deal with China in a scientific way, shows the Chinese concept of thinking and a comprehensive approach to solving problems in a global way, which is unfortunately different from the concepts currently offered by the West, such as decoupling (separation) and derisking (for lack of a better translation – risk reduction).

Both “de-” are concepts related to China in a negative sense, and treat China as the source of world problems, like some black and white Hollywood movie in which there is a good, positive person, and a bad, negative person. According to that narrative, if the West disengages from China, world will be a better place. How meaningless these concepts are, the texts in this issue of the Voice of China, and the data presented in them about cooperation and mutual interconnectedness of the global world, also show. It cannot be cut with some kind of false ideological sword in the midst of multiple intertwined knots. That’s why there’s no talk of decoupling anymore, because separation is pointless, and derisking will suffer the same fate. Those terms “dance for one summer”. The sooner the world realizes that the solution in the concepts offered by GSI – solutions on a global level with

Faruk Boric
editor-in-chief of “Voice of China”