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U.S. Fails To Find Allies For Waging War On China
The U.S. wants to counter China's growing economic and political standing in the world.
The Obama administration had attempted a 'pivot to Asia' by building a low tariff economic zone via the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). It would have excluded China. The Trump administration rejected the TPP and withdrew from it. It launched an economic war against China by increasing tariffs on Chinese products, prohibiting high tech supplies to Chinese manufacturers, and by denying Chinese companies access to its market.
It has also tried to build a military coalition that would help it to threaten China. It revived the 2007-2008 Quadrilateral Security Dialogue and rebranded it as the U.S.-Australia-India-Japan Consultations Quad. The aim was to turn it into an Asian NATO under U.S. command:
The U.S. State Department’s No. 2 diplomat said Monday that Washington was aiming to “formalize” growing strategic ties with India, Japan and Australia in a forum known as “the Quad” — a move experts say is implicitly designed to counter China in the Indo-Pacific region.
“It is a reality that the Indo-Pacific region is actually lacking in strong multilateral structures. They don’t have anything of the fortitude of NATO, or the European Union,” U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun said in an online seminar on the sidelines of the annual U.S.-India Strategic Partnership Forum.
“There is certainly an invitation there at some point to formalize a structure like this,” he added.
But it turns out that neither Australia nor Japan nor India have any interest in a hard stand towards China. All look to China as an important trade partner. They know that any conflict with it would cost them dearly.
On October 6 Secretary of State Mike Pompeo flew to Tokyo for a meeting with the other foreign ministers of the Quad. He soon found that no one would join him in his militant talk:
In a meeting with foreign ministers from Japan, India and Australia in Tokyo, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urged on Tuesday that they strengthen their quartet of democracies to resist an increasingly assertive China.
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If, as it appeared, Pompeo was pushing other members of the Quad to take the U.S. side in a confrontation with China, he did not score any ringing public endorsements, and his remarks clashed with those of his host.
Pompeo aimed straight at the Chinese Communist Party in remarks before the four nations' top diplomats sat down to talk.
"As partners in this Quad, it is more critical now than ever that we collaborate to protect our people and partners from the CCP's exploitation, corruption and coercion," he said.
But Japan's chief government spokesman, Katsunobu Kato, insisted at a press briefing Tuesday: "This Quad meeting is not being held with any particular country in mind."
Australia and India were similarly reluctant to say anything that would potentially offend China.
Pompeo's initiative has failed. The former Indian ambassador M. K. Bhadrakumar explains why the Quad won't fly:
China cannot be beaten since, unlike the USSR, it is part of the same global society as the US. Look at the sheer spread of the US-China battlefields — global governance, geoeconomics, trade, investment, finance, currency usage, supply chain management, technology standards and systems, scientific collaboration and so on. It speaks of China’s vast global reach. This wasn’t the case with USSR.
Above all, China has no messianic ideology to export and prefers to set a model by virtue of its performance. It is not in the business of instigating regime change in other countries, and actually gets along rather well with democracies.
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The US created the ASEAN but today no Asian security partner wants to choose between America and China. The ASEAN cannot be repurposed to form a coalition to counter China. Thus, no claimant against China in the South China Sea is prepared to join the US in its naval fracas with China.
China has resources, including money, to offer its partners, whereas, the US budget is in chronic deficit and even routine government operations must now be funded with debt. It needs to find resources needed to keep its human and physical infrastructure at levels competitive with those of China and other great economic powers.
Why on earth should India get entangled in this messy affair whose climax is a foregone conclusion?
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China has no need to fight wars when it is already winning.
The U.S. also tried to incite its European NATO allies to take a stand against China:
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg warned Saturday that China's increasing influence had created a "fundamental shift in the global balance of power" that should not be overlooked.
In an interview with Germany's Welt am Sonntag newspaper, that was released in advance, the Norwegian official said that Beijing had the second-largest defense budget in the world after the United States, and was investing heavily in nuclear weapons and long-range missiles that could reach Europe.
"One thing is clear: China is coming ever closer to Europe's doorstep," he said. "NATO allies must face this challenge together."
That initiative will sink in Europe just as fast as the Quad initiative has sunk in Asia and for the very same reasons. China is not an ideological or military danger to Europe. It is an economic behemoth and relation with it need to be carefully handled. They require respect and talks and not saber rattling.
China has overtaken the U.S. as the EU's biggest trading partner:
In the first seven months of 2020, China surpassed the United States to become the biggest trading partner of the European Union (EU), said Eurostat, the EU's statistics organisation.
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The EU's imports from China increased by 4.9 per cent year-on-year in the January-July period, noted Eurostat.
According to the Federal Statistical Office of Germany, the largest economy in the EU, China, Germany's biggest trading partner since 2016, surpassed the United States for the first time in the second quarter of this year to become Germany's largest export market, and Germany's exports to China in July have rebounded almost to last year's level.
It is time for the U.S. to look into a mirror and to awake to reality. It is highly indebted country with a way too expensive but ineffective military. Over the last decades its economic role in the world has continuously declined. The constant militant positions and 'do as we say' attitude has alienated its allies. Without allies the U.S. has no chance to defeat China in any potential conflict.
What the U.S. still could do is to honestly compete with China. But that would require humility, a strong industrial policy and a well paid and competitive work force.
Neither of that is in sight.
I would suggest not to underestimate the US Empire, especially due to the large numbers of vassals willing to prop it up.
Anti-China hatred has increased in Europe, as per recent surveys.
Germany, France, Belgium and the UK banned Huawei, and Germany led recent attacks against China at the UN.
High tech cooperation on semiconductors and sattelites was recently blocked by the Netherlands and Sweden.
You also saw that Europe has clearly defined itself as enemy of Russia, joining the US. Something that many did not expect.
What many people fail to realise is how much vassals are willing to prop up the US Empire, and the amount of internal degeneration in US vassal states.
They themselves want to prop up the Empire. They have a battered wife syndrome.
In response to the US decline, the Anglosphere and the EU are trying to prop up the US Empire even harder.
There is no attempt to break free. For them, the western vassals, the US Empire is the alpha and the omega. The beginning and the end of everything. They can not live without it. They want it themselves.
The whole culture of western countries is rotten, which turns them into eager and willing puppets of the Empire.
Then there is the issue of India being a spoiler to China or the US putting puppets in most of Latin America, including in Brazil.
And then, recently, thre were two bad news on the economic front.
The Covid crisis has ultimately hit non-western countries harder than Western countries (except China), as measured by potential economic growth lost.
That is, growth over the next 5 years will be lower than potential growth for developing countries and thus the decline of the West will slow down.
What happened is this (an example):
Before Covid:
Western Economies 1.6 % GDP growth
Emerging economies 5 % GDP growth
Net gain 3,4 % for emerging economies.
After Covid (next 5 years):
Western Economies 1.3 % GDP growth
Emerging economies 4 % GDP growth
Net gain 2,7 % for emerging economies. Net gain decline for emerging economies. Thus they end up losing more from the pandemic, and the pace of western decline slows.
The fact is, money printing of the reserve currencies has been very useful to the US and the EU, as it is money printing that allowed them to have lower losses than developing countries (except China), who simply can not afford to print money without massive inflation, in response to the crisis.
Even with far bigger pandemic, the US will register better growth than, let’s say, Canada, that had a mild pandemic. This is the result of trillions of dollars being printed, of the reserve currecy, which means that the whole world pays for that. To prop up the US.
Potential russian growth was hit too. If before Covid, russian gdp growth would be larger than EU and US growth, after Covid, russian gdp growth is estimated to be similar to the US and the EU.
Again, a result of the fact that Russia can not print trillions of dollars.
The second bad news that happened is that the International Comparison Program (ICP) that estimates PPP GDP (everybody uses their data) downgraded the Chinese economy by 17 %, blaming improper PPP measurement of the earlier PPPs from 2011.
So basically China dropped, in let’s say 2019, from being 1,27 times bigger than the US in PPP GDP to 1,09 times bigger than the US in PPP terms.
That is not to say that everything happening is bad (the rise of the yuan has a good reason for it – that is – China is outperforming everybody this year and the next).
But the problem is also that there are serious setbacks for the multipolar world and the overall result is that the relative decline of the West has slowed.
So its not all roses situation. There is serious fight going on and the West is trying to stop the decline, mainly not by fixing its situation, but by stealing from the World by printing the reserve currencies and by attacking and harming others, pushing for negative sum games, where everybody loses, but the point is to get the other side to lose more than you.
Posted by: Passer by | Oct 14 2020 23:01 utc | 48
@ Posted by: Passer by | Oct 14 2020 23:01 utc | 50
Yes – when we use the term “American Empire”, we’re automatically including its sphere of influence: Canada, Latin America (minus Cuba and Venezuela), Africa, European Peninsula, Oceania, the Middle East minus Iran, Japan, South Korea, the island of Taiwan, and much of SE Asia.
During Bill Clinton, the American Empire was at its largest extension, as it also included Russia, Belarus and the Donbass (“New Russia”). After Bill Clinton fell (2000), George W. Bush would lose Georgia (war of South Ossetia and Abkhazia) after they lost Russia to Yeltsin’s collapse of 1999 (1997 Asian Tigers Crisis) and Venezuela after the ascension of Chavismo (1999). Obama lost the Donbass (New Russia) in 2014 and Syria in 2011. Djibouti was also lost sometime during Obama’s reign. Obama also kind of lost Turkey, after trying to assassinate their president (Erdogan) in 2016 – as a result, Turkey became more of a client state and less of a province.
Trump risks losing more provinces of the Empire. For starters, he may lose Taiwan to conventional warfare if he’s reelected. He may also lose small Oceania (Oceania minus Australia and New Zealand) through Chinese co-opting (treaties). Other significant nations from SE Asia may also be downgraded to client states (Philippines). He also literally wants to lose Afghanistan and may lose Pakistan also to treaty (with China). To compensate, he’s trying to win back Russia (through treaty) and is trying to win India (also through treaty, but maybe to convert it into a province with the Quad). He may also try to convert Taiwan into full provincial status through conventional warfare (if he wins the war). He was also trying to convert North Korea into a client state through treaty (which may have been an attempt to win the Nobel Peace – a honorific title that, over time, became customary to successful POTUSes during the post-war period). If he wins back Russia, not only the American Empire will go back to nearly its greatest extent (1999), but would also win, by default, Donbass and the lost territories of Georgia.
Of the provincial regions, Latin America is the most secure, as all of its regional (comprador) elites are firmly in American hands. Africa is the second most secure, as it is a wasteland that nobody cares (North Africa is not considered as part of Africa in geopolitics; it’s part of the Middle East). The European Peninsula is the third most secure provincial region, as it is home to NATO, therefore it is fully occupied with American troops and nukes. The Middle East comes fourth because of Iran and the fact that it is the province of contact between both China (BRI, imports oil) and Russia at the same time, plus it is the most volatile. SE Asia is the least secured provincial region, as it is home to Vietnam (socialist brother), where there is a strong tradition of bilateralism (therefore, it’s a region where China can count of each nation’s pragmatism to negotiate) and it’s the nearest region to China, therefore the main contact region with China alone. I don’t know where to put Oceania, but I think it is one of the most secure regions to the Americans (on par with the European Peninsula).
Little known region is the Arctic. When the Arctic was frozen solid, it was an estuary of the North Atlantic, thus putting the region firmly under American supremacy. But now, thanks to global warming, the Arctic is melting down, thus opening a huge flank for Russia to harass the USA and Canada by conventional means. Russia has the best icebreaker technology, and has the upper hand both in Arctic warfare and economic exploitation (the estuary is rich in oil and gas). Also, the Arctic is one of the main reasons Russia and China cooperate economically, as China enters with the money and Russia enters with the means. It is possible the Arctic, if it really continues to melt down, to become a “Russian Lake” in the near future.
Posted by: vk | Oct 15 2020 1:00 utc | 63
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