This is one of my pieces, which originally appeared in China Global Television Network (CGTN) website:
https://news.cgtn.com/news/3d3d514e35556a4e33457a6333566d54/index.html)
Until 2016, the policymakers in the White House and the Pentagon believed that despite its growing economic, political, and military influence in the Asia Pacific (APAC) – China is not predestined to become a competitor to the United States.
The Department of Defense (DOD) logged that although such Chinese activities pose a significant challenge to American’s position in the vital APAC region but the US envisions an expanded China’s cooperation on regional and global security challenges.
In 2017, it lined-up Beijing in the queue of potential adversaries however still didn’t perceive any immediate threat from Beijing. The Pentagon went all-out at China in 2018, accusing it for using ‘predatory economics’ to seek ‘Indo-Pacific hegemony’ and the displacement of the United States to achieve global preeminence in future.
Now almost pleading to the US Congress for a whopping $750 billion defense budget request for FY2020, the DOD faintly conceded that the United States lost its cold-war era military dominance to China and Russia.
It impugned that several damaging trends like budget instability, the decades-long anti-terrorism campaign, and unfocused strategic vision allowed China and Russia to undermine US global influence and to narrow DOD’s military technological advantages through increased spending in war-fighting capability.
Pentagon’s newer ‘strategy driven budget’ now focuses to find new partners and strengthen alliances with Australia, Japan, and South Korea as well as through agreements and bilateral engagements with India, Vietnam, and Indonesia to generate decisive and sustained military advantages against China in the Asia Pacific region.
Refuting January’s US intelligence report that warned about expanding Chinese and Russian global influence, particularly in Middle East and East Asia – the fresher DOD strategy backs its program to reduce forces in in Middle East and departure from the two-war construct.
The DOD also ignored to weigh the US intelligence assessment, which noted that some of the US allies and partners are seeking greater independence from Washington in response to their perceptions of changing US policies on security and trade and are becoming more open to new bilateral and multilateral partnerships.
The recent developments show a major policy shift in the US foreign policy – apparently forfeiting Middle East to China and Russia and focusing more on China’s growing influence in Asia Pacific that accounts for about 55% of the global population and nearly 43% of the global GDP.
Through exploiting the border and territorial disputes between China and its neighboring countries – Washington is pursuing a ‘greater plan’ to circumscribe Beijing through its regional allies, eventually to blight Beijing’s economic and strategic interest in Asia and the Pacific.
But gallingly to the United States – China is the largest trading partner of Australia, one of US close allies, in terms of both imports and exports. In last financial year, roughly 34% of the Australian exports went to China while its imports from China accounted for 22.5%. So, falling to Washington’s trap could jeopardize the much higher Australian economic stakes.
At the same time, the historically strained relations between China and Japan have significantly improved after last year; the Sino-Nippon agreed to play-down the differences and agreed on everything from currency swaps to ocean rescue. Also in 2018, Abe became the first Japanese prime minister to visit Beijing after seven years.
On the other hand, even though the US-Korean ties survived the deterioration pinch followed by cost-sharing agreement between the two countries on keeping 28,500 US troops in South Korea, but the tensed Japanese-Korean relations continue to remain a hitch for the success of the US bigger plan to form a trilateral alliance against China in the region.
While THAAD has been a stick diplomatic issue between Beijing and Seoul, the US-China trade war is dolling blows to already struggling South Korean economy. As South Korea relies heavily on semiconductor chips exports (26% of the country’s total exports) to China, Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods have slashed the demand for its electronic items in China by 14%. And if the US-China tiff ripens into a ‘full-blown trade war’, it could incur a loss of up to $37 billion to the trailing economy.
Washington has long hoped that Japan and South Korea could sort out their conflicts and help it to control China’s unstoppable economic and strategic marches; nevertheless the bonds between the two nations have repeatedly crawled from one to another.
While Washington fails to forge US-Japan-Korea alliance against China, instead a counter China-Japan-Korea alliance is evolving. On December 6 and 7, the three nations held fourteenth round of negotiations on free trade agreement (FTA) in Beijing and discussed the progress on Regional Comprehensive Economic partnership (RCEP).
Parenthetically, the 16-membered RCEP includes all of US allies – Australia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, India, Indonesia, and Vietnam – it is counting on to check China’s streaming strides across the region and beyond.
Earlier this month, the trade ministers from all sixteen nation-states including China agreed to resolve issues – such as tariffs, intellectual property, and transfer of information technology – with the aim of reaching a comprehensive agreement by the end of the year.
In these rapidly changing global proceedings, the United States could quickly fall short of allies to execute its strategy ‘to compete, deter, and win’ over China and might have very soon be craved to revamp it in an age of ‘great power competition’.
Until 2016, the policymakers in the White House and the Pentagon believed that despite its growing economic, political, and military influence in the Asia Pacific (APAC) – China is not predestined to become a competitor to the United States.
The Department of Defense (DOD) logged that although such Chinese activities pose a significant challenge to American’s position in the vital APAC region but the US envisions an expanded China’s cooperation on regional and global security challenges.
In 2017, it lined-up Beijing in the queue of potential adversaries however still didn’t perceive any immediate threat from Beijing. The Pentagon went all-out at China in 2018, accusing it for using ‘predatory economics’ to seek ‘Indo-Pacific hegemony’ and the displacement of the United States to achieve global preeminence in future.
Now almost pleading to the US Congress for a whopping $750 billion defense budget request for FY2020, the DOD faintly conceded that the United States lost its cold-war era military dominance to China and Russia.
It impugned that several damaging trends like budget instability, the decades-long anti-terrorism campaign, and unfocused strategic vision allowed China and Russia to undermine US global influence and to narrow DOD’s military technological advantages through increased spending in war-fighting capability.
Pentagon’s newer ‘strategy driven budget’ now focuses to find new partners and strengthen alliances with Australia, Japan, and South Korea as well as through agreements and bilateral engagements with India, Vietnam, and Indonesia to generate decisive and sustained military advantages against China in the Asia Pacific region.
Refuting January’s US intelligence report that warned about expanding Chinese and Russian global influence, particularly in Middle East and East Asia – the fresher DOD strategy backs its program to reduce forces in in Middle East and departure from the two-war construct.
The DOD also ignored to weigh the US intelligence assessment, which noted that some of the US allies and partners are seeking greater independence from Washington in response to their perceptions of changing US policies on security and trade and are becoming more open to new bilateral and multilateral partnerships.
The recent developments show a major policy shift in the US foreign policy – apparently forfeiting Middle East to China and Russia and focusing more on China’s growing influence in Asia Pacific that accounts for about 55% of the global population and nearly 43% of the global GDP.
Through exploiting the border and territorial disputes between China and its neighboring countries – Washington is pursuing a ‘greater plan’ to circumscribe Beijing through its regional allies, eventually to blight Beijing’s economic and strategic interest in Asia and the Pacific.
But gallingly to the United States – China is the largest trading partner of Australia, one of US close allies, in terms of both imports and exports. In last financial year, roughly 34% of the Australian exports went to China while its imports from China accounted for 22.5%. So, falling to Washington’s trap could jeopardize the much higher Australian economic stakes.
At the same time, the historically strained relations between China and Japan have significantly improved after last year; the Sino-Nippon agreed to play-down the differences and agreed on everything from currency swaps to ocean rescue. Also in 2018, Abe became the first Japanese prime minister to visit Beijing after seven years.
On the other hand, even though the US-Korean ties survived the deterioration pinch followed by cost-sharing agreement between the two countries on keeping 28,500 US troops in South Korea, but the tensed Japanese-Korean relations continue to remain a hitch for the success of the US bigger plan to form a trilateral alliance against China in the region.
While THAAD has been a stick diplomatic issue between Beijing and Seoul, the US-China trade war is dolling blows to already struggling South Korean economy. As South Korea relies heavily on semiconductor chips exports (26% of the country’s total exports) to China, Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods have slashed the demand for its electronic items in China by 14%. And if the US-China tiff ripens into a ‘full-blown trade war’, it could incur a loss of up to $37 billion to the trailing economy.
Washington has long hoped that Japan and South Korea could sort out their conflicts and help it to control China’s unstoppable economic and strategic marches; nevertheless the bonds between the two nations have repeatedly crawled from one to another.
While Washington fails to forge US-Japan-Korea alliance against China, instead a counter China-Japan-Korea alliance is evolving. On December 6 and 7, the three nations held fourteenth round of negotiations on free trade agreement (FTA) in Beijing and discussed the progress on Regional Comprehensive Economic partnership (RCEP).
Parenthetically, the 16-membered RCEP includes all of US allies – Australia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, India, Indonesia, and Vietnam – it is counting on to check China’s streaming strides across the region and beyond.
Earlier this month, the trade ministers from all sixteen nation-states including China agreed to resolve issues – such as tariffs, intellectual property, and transfer of information technology – with the aim of reaching a comprehensive agreement by the end of the year.
In these rapidly changing global proceedings, the United States could quickly fall short of allies to execute its strategy ‘to compete, deter, and win’ over China and might have very soon be craved to revamp it in an age of ‘great power competition’.