The United States is re-focusing on the Asia-Pacific. This results partly from the need to prioritize America's defence requirements because of a declining economic and financial capacity to shape the global order (National Intelligence Council Report - Project 2025, November 2008). It also comes about as China is seen to be the biggest challenger to US dominance, particularly in the Asia-Pacific, following America's gradual withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s newly declared “America’s Pacific Century” is a thinly-disguised China Containment Strategy. Click here So are America’s recent efforts to forge a Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) excluding China.
These measures are reinforced by closer American military ties with countries within the environs of the so-called “first and second island chains” within and near the approaches to the South China Sea, including countries like Australia and India. The most strategic choke point for China is the Malacca Strait, through which the bulk of China’s energy and resource imports must pass, where US military dominance is unquestionable.
This apparently water-tight containment strategy, however, contrasts with the following developments –
(a) A great number of the countries in the South China Sea and beyond have become closely knit in a regional and global production and supply chain of which China is right at the centre. Indeed, a large number of countries already have China as their largest trading partner (including Japan and Australia) or second largest (e.g. India). So closer military and economic ties with the United States may reflect a desire to free-ride on American power as a hedge against a rising China rather than a willingness to be drawn into an anti-China bloc, least of all, into regional military conflicts these countries would rather do without.
(b) Through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), China (along with Russia) has cemented very close ties with Central Asian countries. Its members include Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, with Iran, India, Pakistan, and Mongolia as Observer members, Belarus and Sri Lanka as Dialogue Members and ASEAN, CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) and Turkmenistan for Guest Attendance. Afghanistan is being supported by Russia for inclusion as a Member. This powerful network provides a degree of insurance for the flow of China’s lifeblood of energy, resources and trade.
(c) China is building every closer ties with the Middle East (including Israel). Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao will be paying an official visit to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Qatar from January 14 to 19 2012 at the invitation of the respective Arab leaders. At a time when America’s popularity in the Middle East is at best strained, China is increasingly perceived in the Middle East not so much as a threat but as a gigantic, long –term energy customer.
(d) China has also been cultivating ever-closer ties with Europe which has become China’s largest trading partner and vice versa. In addition to trade, China is pursuing a grand high-speed rail link (for freight, initially) between China’s eastern seaboard to Europe’s ports and cites, including a two-day link between Beijing and London. If realized, this would be the largest infrastructural project in history. Click here
These multi-polar dynamics are partly captured in Trefor Moss’ article “America’s Mixed Asian Future” of 10 January, 2012 in The Diplomat, an international current-affairs magazine for the Asia-Pacific region. Click here
China’s foreign relations strategy has been rather consistent, based on non-confrontational win-win partnership as well as mutual trust and respect, preferring dialogue to confrontation, let alone coercion. In comparison, in furtherance of a benevolent hegemony, the United States’ propensity to resort to force and coercion to shape the international order after its own image is prone to provoke criticism and often resentment, if not hatred in certain quarters. (The Hegemon’s Dilemma in The Power Problem – How American Military Dominance Makes Us Less Safe, Less Prosperous, and Less Free, by Christopher A Preble, Cornell University Press, 2009).
This is not to say that overall, China has become a more attractive nation than America. By no means, at least not quite.
But while China is trying to build up a reservoir of goodwill, the United States seems to be sacrificing the fountain of her traditional soft-power, that of liberal generosity, compassion, open-mindedness, respect for diversity, dialogue and friendly cooperation to a propensity to military force and coercion, often hijacked by narrow chauvinism, fundamentalist bias, or vested interests.
To be sure, the world with its many under-currents of instability remains beholden to American power. But it depends a lot on when, how, and what power is exercised. To say the least, Uncle Sam seems to be less than adroit in working this out, if not at limes, as in Iraq, at risk of losing the plot.
Best regards,
Andrew
Comments