Ambassador Kazi Anwarul Masud
The recent dialogue in Singapore sponsored by British IISS, who has for decades delved into critical foreign affairs-related issues ,held its most recent session on 2-4 June 2023 in Singapore which highlighted the tension caused by the war-like attitude displayed by China, along with the global tension caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Is it possible that the US and China could fall into the trap of Thucydides’ miscalculation that in ancient times Sparta and Greece had fallen into resulting in a war causing death and despair to thousands of people? Foreign Policy Editor-in-Chief Ravi Agarwal expressed his view that in the June meeting US Secretary of Defense U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and his Chinese counterpart, Li Shangfu were talking at each other, not with each other.
Days earlier, Beijing turned down a White House request for a private meeting, citing U.S. sanctions on Li. In his speech at the conference hall, Austin criticized Li’s refusal to meet. “Dialogue is not a reward. It is a necessity,” Austin said. “I am deeply concerned that [Beijing] has been unwilling to engage more seriously on better mechanisms for crisis management between our two militaries.”
Li, who spoke the next day, slammed what he called a “Cold War mentality” and the formation of “small cliques,” referring to the United States’ growing security partnerships in Asia.
It is usual that when a country reaches its height both militarily and economically, which present-day China has achieved, it will seek its seat at the table that lays down the rules for the governance of the world. In the multipolar world of today, the days of the division of defeated Germany in World War II worked out at the Yalta Conference do not exist in the form of the division of Europe worked out by Franklin Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin, and Winston Churchill and China was at the mercy of Japan and the British. Today’s China is a permanent member of the Security Council and has challenged the so-called “rules-based” world that the Western countries want the rest of the world to abide by.
The question is who gets to write the codes—and whether the United States will live up to its own. Harvard luminary Stephen Walt points out the difference between the American and Chinese conception of the rules to be written that will be defined as a ‘rule-based” world. The Americans preferred a system based on multilateralism. But since the Yalta Conference the Americans formed rules that favored the US exemplified by the division of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund between the US candidate and the European candidate.
The US desire for a multilateral system is of very recent origin when it realized that by going alone was not possible without European support and particularly the induction of NATO and the European Union. In April 2023 European Union declared that the EU will continue to conduct its policy toward China in line with a more realistic, assertive, and multi-faceted approach. This approach will ensure that relations with this strategic partner are set on a fair, balanced, and mutually beneficial course.
China is, simultaneously, in different policy areas, a cooperation partner with whom the EU has closely aligned objectives, a negotiating partner with whom the EU needs to find a balance of interests, an economic competitor in the pursuit of technological leadership, and a systemic rival promoting alternative models of governance. This requires a flexible and pragmatic whole-of-EU approach enabling, not only a principled defence of interests and values, but also the achievement of concrete results, particularly in areas such as trade and investment, climate change, biodiversity, response to the Covid-19 pandemic, and international affairs.
In this regard, the EU will continue to conduct its policy towards China in line with a more realistic, assertive, and multi-faceted approach. This approach will ensure that relations with this strategic partner are set on a fair, balanced, and mutually beneficial course. China is, simultaneously, in different policy areas, a cooperation partner with whom the EU has closely aligned objectives, a negotiating partner with whom the EU needs to find a balance of interests, an economic competitor in the pursuit of technological leadership, and a systemic rival promoting alternative models of governance. This requires a flexible and pragmatic whole-of-EU approach enabling, not only a principled defence of interests and values, but also the achievement of concrete results, particularly in areas such as trade and investment, climate change, biodiversity, response to the Covid-19 pandemic, and international affairs.
In this regard, the EU will continue to conduct its policy towards China in line with a more realistic, assertive, and multi-faceted approach. This approach will ensure that relations with this strategic partner are set on a fair, balanced, and mutually beneficial course. China is, simultaneously, in different policy areas, a cooperation partner with whom the EU has closely aligned objectives, a negotiating partner with whom the EU needs to find a balance of interests, an economic competitor in the pursuit of technological leadership, and a systemic rival promoting alternative models of governance. This requires a flexible and pragmatic whole-of-EU approach enabling, not only a principled defense of interests and values, but also the achievement of concrete results, particularly in areas such as trade and investment, climate change, biodiversity, response to the Covid-19 pandemic, and international affairs.
By contrast, China favors a more Westphalian conception of order, one where state sovereignty and noninterference are paramount and liberal notions of individual rights are downplayed if not entirely dismissed. This vision is no less “rules-based” than the United States, insofar as it draws on parts of the United Nations charter, and it would not preclude many current forms of international cooperation, including extensive trade, investment, and collaboration on vital transnational issues such as climate change. China is also a vocal defender of multilateralism, even if its actual behavior sometimes violates existing multilateral norms. Nonetheless, a world in which China’s preferences prevailed would be different from one in which the U.S. vision proved to be more influential.”
It would, however, be fallacious to ignore the Sino-Russian entente as an innocent move in today’s complex world. The two countries want to display to the developing countries that their Orwellian system is better than the “democratic” system of the West. The Sino-Russian system can reach the necessities of the needy faster than Western democracies can. That in the process these countries risk their freedom being lost in translation.
China dangles its golden fleece (a goal that is highly desirable but difficult to achieve) through its Road and Belt Initiative by its financing of the infrastructure of developing countries which these countries can ill afford. In the process, some of these countries may fall into a “debt trap” as openly declared by Donald Trump’s Vice President Mike Pence.
Other examples can be given by Sri Lankan unease when they have to take a visa to visit Hambantota International Port which is within the boundary of Sri Lanka. The other example is the refusal by Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed of the Chinese offer of a loan which he regarded as a new form of ‘colonialism” by China in poor developing countries. Some African countries may face a similar fate in the future, Ethiopia being an example. Besides due to increasing tension of SINO-US relations the US has terminated the trade agreement-the African Growth and Opportunity Act from Ethiopia on 1 January 2022. Nearer home South Asians have to worry about the implications of Chinese incursion into this area. Stephen Walt assures us that we should not worry about Chinese hegemony in Asia.
The United States and its Asian partners want to maintain a balance of power in the Indo-Pacific, ostensibly to prevent China from becoming a regional hegemon there. … The Ming Dynasty appears to be their model, albeit in a more muscular manner, demanding other nations become tribute states, kowtowing to Beijing. … The implications of this view are troubling. If China is actively seeking to become a regional hegemon in Asia and the United States is dead set on preventing it, a direct clash between the world’s two most powerful countries will be difficult to avoid.
But are these fears justified? Although China might be better off if it could expel the United States from Asia and become a true regional hegemon, that goal is probably beyond its grasp. A Chinese bid for regional hegemony is likely to fail and do enormous harm to China (and others) in the process. The United States can take a relatively sanguine view of this prospect, therefore, even if it cannot dismiss it completely. Even as they strive to preserve a balance of power in the Indo-Pacific, therefore, the United States and its allies must ensure that their efforts do not convince China’s leaders that they must try for hegemony despite the obvious risks.”
Despite the apparent tension seen at the Shangri-la Dialogue it is understood that the spy chiefs of the US and China had talks as well as other countries intelligence chiefs. The US was represented by Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, the head of her country’s intelligence community, while China was among the other countries present, despite the tensions between the two superpowers.
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