By M. R. Josse KATHMANDU: Writing in this journal a month ago, I had concluded: “Without doubt, as the United States and Europe hesitate or fumble, China is moving swiftly and adroitly to position herself not only as the global leader in the pandemic response, but also to shore up her international image as a caring and responsible member of the global community.”

COMMENTARY

Since then, if anything, that prognosis has been reinforced after absorbing a few thoughtful write-ups, including Kishore Mahubani’s sparkling piece entitled, “Has China won?” [Public Affairs, 2020]. Mahubani, distinguished fellow, National University of Singapore, and former U.N. ambassador, opens by reminding readers of these basic statistics: the population of the U.S. is 330 million; that of China is 1.4 billion; while that of the rest the world, living in 191 countries, is approximately 6 billion. Those living in the 191 countries, he avers, have begun preparing themselves for a U.S.-China geopolitical contest. LOOMING U.S.-CHINA CONTEST While readily admitting that very many of the world’s elite are hugely enamored by America’s abundant siren charms and are well aware of her awesome power - military and economic, not to mention her sprawling global reach - Mahubani is convinced that, ultimately, the governments of those 191 countries will decide which side to lean towards on this touch-stone: which one, the U.S. or China, will improve their citizens’ living conditions. He provides a veritable treasure chest of data on America’s protean, seductive attractions, but is sanguine that, at the end of the day, those countries would lump for China. For reasons of space, allow me to largely focus, as a sampling of the whole, on his insightful observations about Africa and their leaders, “who have learnt that trade, not aid, spurs economic growth.” Thus, he declares: “To boost free trade, within Africa, a first-rate infrastructure is needed. China is now the world’s infrastructure superpower building badly needed ports, railways, roads and power projects in Africa…When China convenes China-Africa summits, all African countries turn up.” He quotes Johns Hopkins Professor Deborah Brautigam’s 2019 report’s conclusion that most African countries that had received loans from China had signed on voluntarily and had positive experiences working with China. Furthermore, as Brautigam asserts, “the evidence so far, including the Sri Lankan case, shows that the drum-beat of alarm about Chinese banks’ funding of infrastructure across the BRI [Belt and Road Initiative] is overblown.” She continues, “…a large number of people have favorable opinions of China as an economic model and consider China as an attractive partner for their development…For example, in 2014, 65% in Kenya, 67% in Ghana and 85% in Africa’s most populous country, Nigeria, had favorable views of China.” Mahubani reminds that although Mahathir Mohammed protested against its terms when he became Prime Minister [of Malaysia] in 2018, the “deal was quietly renegotiated and Mahathir became one of the opening speakers of the BRI summit in Beijing in 2018.” Incidentally, he goes on to provide this revealing obiter dicta on the two countries’ responses to global disasters: “during the 2004 tsunami in Indonesia the U.S. was the first to arrive to offer help, with China offering very little.” In 2020, in the context of their respective responses to the current pandemic, he maintains, “their roles have been reversed.” DIVERGENT VIEW A sharply divergent viewpoint on the incipient America v. China geopolitical tussle is provided by the Heritage Foundation’s James Jay Carafano who, writing in The National Interest on the “Great U.S.-China Divorce”, argues the case for what he claims is America’s obvious “superiority.” A few insights from his prolix discourse are herewith provided. Carafano asserts that as “the U.S. is a global player with global interests and responsibilities, Washington isn’t about to cede any part of the world to Beijing.” In fact, this is what he envisages. “The vast majority of the world will, for the foreseeable future, be divided into three camps: the “free” world; the “balancers” or nations who recognize that the key to prosperity and security is engaging with both the United States and China; and “contested space.” This thesis, I would submit, is quite unexceptional. What is however debatable, in my view, is Calafano’s minimizing China’s indisputably growing international image and clout while exaggerating Beijing’s geopolitical and politico-diplomatic problems. Yet, interestingly enough, he has no qualms in acknowledging that “no one is going to stop doing business with China, least of all the United States.” Here are some of his other significant predictions/recommendations: “The U.S. isn’t going to give up Europe. Neither should Europe give up on the U.S. If Europeans want to keep their freedom, they can’t be neutral observers on the competition between the U.S. and China.” Calafano’s claims about American - European relations might sound out of whack, especially against the enormously different approaches adopted by the United States and China in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Most readers will surely recall America’s froideur and penchant for unilateralism in stark contrast to China’s ‘a-friend-in-need’ stance, much appreciated in many quarters, including in Europe. The Heritage Foundation scholar visualizes the U.S. v. China contest for influence playing out “in vast swathes of the world, including Latin America and the Pacific Islands.” And though it is probably correct that “America has home-field advantages in the Western Hemisphere”, more presciently he predicts that “one of the most active battlegrounds for the U.S. and China’s influence will be international organizations.” That, indeed, is reflected in the recent controversy over the U.S. decision to suspend funding for the World Health Organization (WHO) – and subsequent media reports that China, among others, will be stepping up her/their contributions to an institution so patently central to the current international endeavor to coordinate global policy to contain, and eventually defeat, the pandemic. A FAILED STATE? A hugely different perspective is offered by Calafano’s compatriot, George Packer - in the forthcoming June 2020 issue of The Atlantic - in his provocatively entitled piece, “We are living in a Failed State”. Packer’s lengthy write-up is, at its crux, wholly in tune with Mahubani’s categorical affirmation: “The six billion people outside the U.S. and China are genuinely shocked to see the sharp contrast between the competent responses of China and incompetent responses of the United States” – in the wake of the terrible COVID-19 pandemic. Packer’s central, pessimistic prognosis is that today’s America has become a “Failed State”. While his article been superbly and passionately argued, for our purposes here it may be enough merely to quote just a few evocative paragraphs. Packer claims America’s condition when COVID-19 arrived is best summarized thus: “Chronic ills – a corrupt political will, a sclerotic bureaucracy, a heartless economy, a divided and distracted public.” In his angry disillusionment he lashes out, thus: “While the pandemic demanded responses that were swift, rational and collective, from the President came only blindness, scapegoating, boasts and lies.” His cri de coeur is nothing if not startling: “There was no national plan, no coherent instruction; while cities/states were into bidding wars that left them prey to all price gouging and corporate profiteering.” He excoriates the present U.S. administration reminding that, “Russia, Taiwan, and the U.N. sent humanitarian aid to the world’s richest power – a beggar nation in utter chaos” and accuses President Trump for viewing “the crisis almost entirely in personal and political terms.” By the way a recent Associated Press (AP) news story out of Washington, D.C. claims that the coronavirus pandemic has “shaken the conceit of ‘American exceptionalism.’…A nation with unmatched power, brazen ambition and aspirations through the arc of history to be humanity’s ‘shining city on the hill’ cannot come up with enough simple cotton swabs despite wartime manufacturing and supply powers assumed by President Donald Trump.” CHINA ENVY Shyam Saran, former Indian ambassador to Nepal and ex-foreign secretary, in a write-up in The Indian Express, argues that Beijing’s response to the pandemic that broke out from Wuhan “proves that the world needs democracy.” Arguing that the claim that China succeeded in limiting the spread of the contagion within China only through drastic measures, Saran then takes a quantum leap to affirm that all that was a calculated effort by Beijing “to prove the superiority of the Chinese one-party state.” That, of course, is quite absurd: China, unlike India, is not in the business of lecturing others on the merits of its political system, leave alone attempting, whenever and wherever possible, to hoist her version of governance upon all and sundry. As far as anyone with an open mind could make out from Kathmandu, the Chinese simply implemented policies/measures they believed were urgently called for to confront the unprecedented public health catastrophe at hand. Being a one-party state, Beijing naturally took recourse to strict or even drastic measures that were possible, and wholly legitimate, within the framework of China’s national polity – after admittedly making costly mistakes in the initial stages following the outbreak of the pandemic. I refer to Saran’s write-up, among other reasons, because India, once a proud leading member of the ‘non-aligned’ comity of nations, has now been assiduously straining every sinew to be ‘aligned’ with the United States and her strategic interests. As such, Saran’s commentary smacks of what can only be termed ‘China envy’. As to his lecture on how the pandemic could be handled far more efficaciously than it has been by Beijing, through a multi-party system, I have basically two fundamental observations. The first is that India, with a history of interfering and intervening in the domestic domain of all neighbouring states for geopolitical advantage - including in Nepal by using the Maoists and others as their battering ram - is hardly in a moral position to plead the democratic cause, internationally. The other: the fact that Italy, Spain, Germany, the U.K., France, and Belgium - to mention just a few European states severely mauled by the contagion - are multi-party democracies that didn’t apparently make their response to the pandemic any more successful than China’s! Japan, with a multi-party system, has fared no better. Neither, for that matter, has the United States, as already made plain. Incidentally, Saran complains on the shoddy quality of Chinese medical supplies, while his government has no qualms in receiving generous quantities of the same from that authoritarian “one-party state”! Whether Saran likes it or not, China is an acknowledged superpower as India strives valiantly, a la Sisyphus, to be recognized as a regional power. Nothing that I can see, at least in the foreseeable future, is likely to alter that basic power differential. The relevant point here is that, rather than cribbing or carping, it is high time to look ahead, particularly in the search for an effective, viable vaccine and for a consensus on the best form of treatment for the disease, in a massive global effort to contain and eradicate this awful pandemic. NEPALI PERSPECTIVE So, what is Nepal to do? As far as I am concerned, the response to that query is lucid: Nepal should not at any cost take sides in the geopolitical contest between the U.S. and China that clearly looms. Two fundamental considerations - geopolitical and historical - should be borne in mind: (a) that China with a 1.4 billion-strong population is Nepal’s immediate neighbor, while the U.S. with her 330 million population is physically a whole world away; and (b) that, as recent history has demonstrated, America has a disturbing propensity of withdrawing into her shell, almost as often as going in the opposite direction! Besides, those twin caveats, I’d underline the imperative for Nepal not getting entangled in any camouflaged anti-China stratagems, whether it is nebulously described as an Indo-Pacific strategy/’quad’ grouping – or as something equally innocuous-sounding. What is beyond doubt is that a fierce geopolitical contest, between the world’s two hyper-powers, hovers just over the horizon. It is only commonsensical, therefore, that Nepal should choose not to get caught in the barbed maws of that struggle. We simply don’t have a dog in that fight. (The writer can be reached at: manajosse@gmail.com)