By MR Josse
NEW YORK, NY: The ripple effects of ratcheting global competition between the United States and China seem not just increasingly manifest but obliging them to construct alliances to neutralize the other power.
Policy wonks back home must urgently monitor the dynamics of this phenomenon to design a foreign policy that successfully navigates the country through the potentially excruciatingly difficult choices ahead.
They ought not to forget that, in their very different ways, both the United States and China are vastly vital for Nepal.
COMPETITION
The knuckle-duster competition between the two Leviathans surfaced dramatically at the recent APEC summit in Papua New Guinea – and now threatens to disrupt the November 30 Group of 20 summit that begins in Argentina. It will be edifying to watch how this plays out.
But to recall: that apex economic forum, attended by Chinese President Xi Jinping and American Vice President Mike Pence, failed to issue a joint statement at its conclusion for the very first time since 1989.
While there have been conflicting versions of why that was so, what seems indisputable is that China is exhibiting a greater propensity towards assertiveness as Beijing challenges the United States’ dominance of the Asia-Pacific.
As per the New York Times (NYT), the Pacific is the biggest potential flashpoint for a future U.S.- China confrontation. For now, claims Edward Wong, “the most powerful military in the region is still the United States, which relies on its ability to have unfettered access to the South China Sea.”
He adds this caveat: China has become more aggressive in trying to assert its dominance over both the South China Sea and Taiwan, even while “its state-owned companies are making inroads in the islands of Oceania – from Saigon to Vanuatu – with infrastructure projects.”
Wong affirms that “the growing sense of confrontation is enhanced by American concerns that its ships and crews are on the defensive after 70 years of unquestioned power across the Pacific Ocean.” He then provides these figures: in 2017, China had 317 warships and submarines compared to 283 in the American Navy.
Another similarly pessimistic perspective was provided in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) which reported that “China is expanding its military cooperation with U.S. security partners in South East China, seeking to bind those countries closer to Beijing and lessen their long-standing defense ties with Washington.”
Readers were informed that the Singapore defense minister said drills between China and 10 South East Asian countries – including Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia – were in the works, while explaining that the drills “will allow our navies to build trust and confidence and interoperability.”
The influential Richard N. Haas, president, Council on Foreign Relations, in a WSJ piece entitled “The Crisis in U.S. – China Relations”, among other things, concluded: “The U.S. must figure out how to manage its competition with a rising China – or face the possibility of outright conflict.”
Revealingly, as per the NYT, the bipartisan Commission on the National Defense Strategy for the United States – created in 2017 by the U.S. Congress – asserted in a 90-page report, that: “America’s long-standing military advantages have diminished…The country’s strategic margin for error has become distressingly small. Doubts about America’s ability to deter and, if necessary, defeat opponents and honor commitments have proliferated.”
The report also said China and Russia were seeking regional hegemony and pursuing aggressive military buildups aimed at neutralizing American strengths. Additionally, it said threats posed by Iran and North Korea have worsened in recent years as both have produced more developed weapons .
MIXED BAG
Now follows a mixed bag of themes, including two examples of President Trump being traduced by tough critics, including Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts defending the independence and integrity of the federal judiciary, rebuking him for calling a judge who has ruled against his administration’s asylum’s policy “an Obama judge”.
The CJ said that was a profound misunderstanding of the judicial role: “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges…What we do have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them. The independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for.” Spot on!
The other instance is a telling remark by Republican Brad Sherman who slammed Trump’s current policy vis-à-vis Saudi Arabia: “It is one thing to sell them planes, but another to sell them nukes, or the capacity to build them.”
His most telling reported quote: “A country that can’t be trusted with a bone saw shouldn’t be trusted with nuclear weapons.”
The latter refers to U.S. plans – before the gruesome killing (including by bone sawing) of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul inside the Saudi Consulate – to help Riyadh to make its own nuclear fuel.
Incidentally, the above story claimed: “The Saudi government provided the financing for Pakistan to secretly build up its own nuclear arms, the first ‘Sunni bomb’, as the Pakistani creators of the program called it.”
BREZHNEV DOCTRINE
Now, an excerpt from Victor Sebestyen’s “Revolution 1989: The Fall of the Soviet Empire” on how Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev allegedly lectured Czech leader Alexander Dubcek after Soviet tanks crushed the Prague Spring of 1968:
“Your country lies on territory where the Soviet soldier trod in the Great Patriotic War. We bought that territory at the cost of enormous sacrifices and we will never leave it. The borders of our your county are our borders as well…”
As Sebestyen explains: “It was from this lecture that the Brezhnev Doctrine came to be developed…The Russians would not relax their grip on any of their domains. A threat to the political system in any of the socialist countries would be seen as a threat to the security of the Empire as a whole.”
Why, I wonder, should Brezhnev’s thuggish claims sounds so eerie, especially to a sensitive Nepali ear?
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