Review of World Affairs (RWA)
By Shashi P.B.B. Malla
Hope in the Nepali Congress is Misplaced
“Hope springs eternal in the human breast”, but it would be the height of folly to expect the Nepali Congress to start an internal campaign to reform itself.
First, Sher Bahadur Deuba, the ‘Tiger of Dadeldhura’ and his cohorts have triumphed in the recent party convention. It is too much to expect that he will now suddenly change his style of functioning.
The ‘leopard cannot change his spots’ and Deuba will remain the ‘man without charisma and personality’ – without compelling political attractiveness and charm.
He was thrust onto the national scene, but he will remain the provincial politician at heart, catering to his cadre of followers. He will not and cannot rise to the level of a statesman – the need of the hour for the nation.
Second, as a consequence of his re-elevation to the Nepali Congress presidency, the chances of reforming the party has now dropped to zero. It will remain the party of ‘wheelers & dealers’.
Third, there has been a lot of media hype about the election of ‘Young Turks’ in the higher echelons of the party apparatus. But being in the minority, they cannot aspire to become ‘movers and shakers’. There has not been a paradigmatic shift in the party. Another hope dashed.
Fourth, two senior leaders of the party betrayed the attempt to push the needle in favour of renewal and revival because of extreme selfish motives. There can be no hope for them in the future – they are cut from the same cloth as Deuba and not cut out for higher leadership roles whether in the party or the country.
Fifth, even senior leaders have indicated that they have given up the fight to reform the party. Ram Krishna Poudel, Dr. Shekhar Koirala and Dr. Manindra Rijal have thrown in their towels and others have fallen by the wayside.
Sixth, there was a great need for an intellectual discussion on the ideology of the party and the new path it should now take. But this has been shelved indefinitely.
Seventh, Deuba was and will remain a prisoner of the Communists and communal forces.
The question of the ratification of the American funded Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) has also been postponed sine die.
Opening for the RPP?
The complete disarray of the other political parties has opened up the political landscape for the National Democratic Party (RPP/Rashtriya Prajatantra Party).
The newly elected chairman, Rajendra Lingden seems to mean business and want to strike while the iron is hot. First and foremost, he will strive to strengthen the party within the nationwide community that believes in constitutional monarchy and the Hindu State (My Republica, Dec. 19).
He has also promised that the RPP will raise its voice from the streets in favour of change and development, demonstrating real people’s power.
Considering that political decay in the country is rampant, he will have to act fast, announcing a “Council of Advisers” (including former chairmen, technocrats and representatives from the intelligentsia) and an “Action Committee” (comprising activists) to plan/devise/organize street demonstrations and the like.
Right from the start, the youth should be involved massively. It goes without saying that the RPP should be a torch-bearer and make gender parity one of its ideological pillars.
The RPP must pull out all the stops and mobilize all its members, supporters and well-wishers at the local, district, provincial and national levels.
It must explore all the possibilities of information and communication and feedback. The print-, TV and social media should be fully utilized so that they will be the first to introduce digital democracy.
It should not shy from comedy and ridicule to make a laughing stock of the country’s incompetent and corrupt politicians at all political and administrative levels. Here the talent of the versatile Santosh Pant could be marshalled.
Sooner than later, the RPP should test its strength and popularity in demonstrations in all the major cities of the nation.
Sino-American Confrontation in East Asia
American Pundits’ Assessments
U.S. foreign policy currently revolves around the possibility of China moving resolutely to reunite the breakaway island of Taiwan with the mainland. After all, it has moved forcefully to push through its vital interests in the South China Sea and Hong Kong.
The U.S. establishment is convinced that China considers America a declining super-power and that the time is ripe to force the pace of unification with Taiwan.
In an opinion piece in Foreign Affairs (Dec. 13), Richard Haass (President of the Council on Foreign Relations) and David Sacks (Research Fellow at the same think tank) have argued for a more forceful policy vis-à-vis China. They write that while the Biden administration has embraced the long-standing policy of strategic ambiguity, what they have undertaken till now is basically flawed.
While China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has taken two and a half decades preparing for a conflict with Taiwan, the U.S. has done practically nothing. It cannot deter an increasingly assertive, risk-tolerant and wholly capable China.
The U.S. needs to massively shore up its capabilities in all sectors and explicitly signal to China that it would immediately respond to an attack against Taiwan with all the necessary means, including severe economic sanctions and military force. This would then be a policy of strategic clarity, indicating colossal deterrence and if that is ignored then – massive retaliation. Biden would have to immediately explain to Congress and the American people why it is vitally necessary to come to Taiwan’s defence.
In fact, there have been instances when Biden has categorically stated that the United States would indeed help defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese attack. However, administration officials have immediately walked back Biden’s clear statement. Haass/Sacks maintain that this had the effect of signaling a lack of will to China and at the same time unsettling U.S. allies and partners.
Haass/Sacks also plead for a two-pronged approach. The U.S. should complement massive military preparedness with diplomatic endeavours that would signify to China the terrible economic and political costs it would suffer if it indeed moved forward in its ‘final solution’. The U.S. should also state that it does not support Taiwanese independence, i.e. it is for the status quo.
The intentional ambiguity of U.S. policy toward Taiwan combined with faltering American credibility has fueled the potential for a dangerous Chinese miscalculation that could lead to armed conflict because China misjudges America’s intentions and capabilities.
Japan’s Solid Backing
In contrast to U.S. inconsistency, U.S. allies have been more forthright and moved towards their own versions of strategic clarity, goading the U.S. to do likewise. After all, the near-crisis is happening in their own front yard.
Last June, Japan’s then Defence Minister Nobuo Kishi stated that “the peace and stability of Taiwan are directly connected to Japan,” implying that Japan would indeed respond to a Chinese attack on Taiwan.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has argued that “the frontline of the clash between authoritarianism and democracy is Asia, and particularly Taiwan.”
Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who still wields considerable influence, has been the most forward-looking of all, bluntly warning “A Taiwan emergency is a Japanese emergency, and therefore an emergency for the Japan-U.S. alliance. People in Beijing, President Xi Jinping in particular, should never have a misunderstanding in recognizing this.”
Australia is Part of the Equation
Australia has just been as resolute. This November, Defence Minister Peter Dutton publicly declared that it would be “inconceivable” for Australia not to join the United States in defending Taiwan and warned that acquiescing to Chinese force would lead to a new regional order in the Asia-Pacific.
This unrestricted and unqualified support from two of Washington’s most important regional allies reveals just high the stakes have risen for all parties concerned – and those eavesdropping on the sidelines, including Russia and India.
Sino-American War would be Catastrophic
Another couple of American academics, Hal Brands (Professor of Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins University) and Michael Beckley (Associate Professor of Political Science at Tufts University) argue that the United States is preparing for the wrong war with China (Foreign Affairs, Dec. 16).
The Pentagon hopes to win a short conflict in the Taiwan Strait [if it remains restricted to that narrow zone] by blunting a Chinese invasion.
Chinese leaders, for their part, “seem to envision rapid, paralyzing strikes that break Taiwanese resistance and present the United States with a fait accoimpli.”
Brands/Beckley argue that both sides are terribly misguided about their premises and the outcome. Their preferred “splendid little war in the western Pacific” is, on the contrary, “likely to belong rather than short, regional rather than local, and much easier to start than to end.”
Washington, therefore, needs to immediately start preparing to wage, and then end, a protracted war now, in order to avoid a major catastrophe once actual hostilities start.
According to China’s military doctrine, a blitzkrieg with Chinese characteristics would “paralyze the enemy in one stroke,” and overwhelm Taiwanese resistance. Even before the U.S. was ready to react, the war would effectively be over.
The Danger of Going Nuclear
As Brands/Beckley point out, a Sino-American war over Taiwan would differ from previous hegemonic wars in one fundamental respect: both sides have nuclear weapons, which compound the dangers inherent in a long war.
Thus, instead of preventing a major war, nuclear weapons could catalyze one, whereby “blind faith in nuclear deterrence [on both sides] risks unleashing a massive conventional war” – the so-called stability-instability paradox.
Avoiding Armageddon
In order to prevent the worst possible outcomes, i.e. nothing better than ‘prepare for the worst and hope for the best’, from the U.S. perspective, the basic objectives would be:
- The United States and Taiwan must immediately “aggressively stockpile ammunition and supplies” and also accumulate the whole spectrum of weapons and distribute them in various locations in the entire Western Pacific.
- The U.S. and Taiwan must demonstrate that they can hang on for the long haul, including being prepared for hybrid warfare. The U.S. should dominate the escalation ladder, e. confronting China with the basic proposition that the longer a war lasts, the more devastation China would suffer – economically and militarily, not to mention the immense damage to the prestige of the Chinese Communist Party (CPC).
- However, controlling escalation will be essential. The U.S. will have to choose options that allow it to dial up the penalty without necessarily dialing up the violence. For instance, it could subtly demonstrate that it has the cyber-capabilities to cripple China’s critical infrastructure and domestic security system.
- The U.S. must define victory as a modest negotiated compromise, i.e. a return to the status quo.
This is all and good for the theory, but a war in and across the Taiwan Strait is fraught with too many imponderables. As the great von Goethe said: ‘All theory is grey’.
Once the war starts, it may indeed feed its own energy and nothing and no one would be in a position to control it, leading inexorably to mutually assured destruction (MAD).
The only reliable option is to find ways and means to avoid any armed conflict at all. This would distinguish statesmen from mere politicians and extreme nationalists. Give peace a chance!
China’s Standpoint
In fact, China has now signaled, albeit indirectly that it is striving for the path of peaceful reunification.
Speaking in Beijing, State Counsellor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said the cause of current tensions was the Taiwan government’s attempts to “rely on the United States for independence” and the United States and other countries trying to “use Taiwan to control China” (Reuters, Dec. 20).
“Taiwan is a wanderer who will eventually come home, not a chess piece to be used by others. China must and will be unified.”
Coming from the former head of China’s ‘Taiwan Affairs Office’, these words have great import.
Wang did not:
– Use bellicose words
– State a timeframe for reunification
And indicated that:
– Taiwan would eventually join the motherland of its own accord.
This also indicated that the ‘peaceniks’ had won the upper hand in Beijing – at least for the time being.
The writer can be reached at: shashipbmalla@hotmail.com
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