Domestic issues require Biden to stay focused

By: Azhar Azam

Since the September 11 terrorist attacks, foreign affairs and national security have loomed large in the U.S. presidential elections. The year 2020 marked the first year over the past two decades when the domestic concerns in the country ousted foreign policy and took the driver's seat in the campaign to run the world's biggest economy.

In a speech on November 7 at his hometown Wilmington-Delaware, the U.S. President-elect Joe Biden denominated his victory as Americans' mandate for putting the accent on the same internal challenges such as the coronavirus, economy, climate change, and systemic racism and promised to unite the blue and red states.

Biden's overriding priority upon assuming the office will indeed be to contain the rampant infection rate and revive collapsing Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which although leaped 7.4 percent from the spring lockdown, was still 4 percent below its previous peak and continues to stave off the jobs of millions of American workers.

Realizing no economic strategy could work unless the disease is defeated, the near-term president intends to use all constitutional powers, including the wartime legislation, Defense Production Act (DPA), to turn the ride on the pandemic. Unlike Donald Trump, he is prepared to listen to public experts and seeks to increase testing capacity, improve the ability to trace contacts, and surge equipment and supplies manufacturing before reopening the economy.

The COVID-19 doesn't distinguish between American and non-American. It has adversely affected the health and life of almost all rich and poor countries indiscriminately and stroked devastating shocks to both mature and immature economies across the world, urging all the global governments to act wisely and shield their people.

Along these lines, it might just be the right move to bring the economy back on track, buoyed up by the vaccine development and continued fiscal stimulus. But as the change of leadership can't beget a meaningful change in 2021 growth and it remains to be seen how bipartisan consensus is evolved in 2022 and 2023, the Biden administration would be ensnared in fixing the domestic issues for the next few years.

Climate change is the other major issue Biden says poses an existential threat to the U.S. environment, health, communities, national security, and economic well-being. His biodiversity approach vies with that of Trump, who downplays the scientific recommendations to strengthen the air pollution standards for soot (or PM2.5).

Former vice president's avowal to rejoin the Paris Agreement, assurance to achieve 100 percent clean energy economy and net-zero emissions by 2050 where stirred voters and took a significant step toward protecting the U.S. Wests from wildfires, his transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy could create millions of new jobs, only if he sticks to his promise.

In 2017, China invested three times more than the U.S. in clean energy. Biden wants to reclaim this principal advantage, which gave Beijing an edge on the technologies of tomorrow, generating pay-well jobs. If followed fairly, the environment-friendly and human-centered race between the two largest greenhouse gas emitters and leading economies would accelerate the pace toward a greener world and sustainable prosperity.

As the U.S. is lagging behind China and Europe in rail safety and speed, Biden's plan to provide Americans the cleanest, safest and fastest rail system could redraw the government's attention on the development of a nationwide infrastructure that is dangerously overstretched and require 2 trillion U.S. dollars by 2025 to fill the funding gap.

Yet Biden needs to redress his misconception that China, through its massive Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), is financing billions of dollars of dirty fossil fuel projects across Asia and beyond. With Beijing made a commitment to attain zero-carbon neutrality before 2060 and start cutting its emissions within the next 10 years, the American Enterprise Institute's data shows the non-fossil fuel investments in the first six months of 2020 had already dominated the overall BRI energy investments.

China is strongly committed to fighting global warming. Chinese investments and construction of more than 80 hydropower projects across the six continents, while implementing green development guidelines and setting high environmental protection standards, underscore that it is arraying all possible means including enforcing regulatory framework and taking voluntary initiatives to preserve the biodiversity in the BRI host countries.

Imran Khan – the Prime Minister of Pakistan, an important BRI partner and a leading recipient of the energy investments from China – in June warmly welcomed the construction of 1,124MW Kohala hydropower project of 2.4 billion U.S. dollars by a Chinese company. The staunch advocate of climate change said that "the country's biggest-ever foreign investment" would help Islamabad to focus on green and clean power generation and reduce dependence on fossil fuels.

Biden's bold statements during the campaign to move the U.S. away from oil and gas though enraged the strong fracking industry – believing the U.S. actually required hydrocarbon production for decades – but lent him a sweeping majority in the election. The crushing win must not be washed away as he is reportedly mulling over to pick controversial hires for the key posts, prompting protests from the public and climate activists.

The U.S. is facing unprecedented domestic challenges hardly seen before. As the virus pegs health and life, slower economic recovery is threatening millions of workforce, the hot temperature has torched more than 4.1 million acres in California, and racism continues to strengthen its roots – the deafening crisis entreat Biden to keep an emphasis on these core internal issues and fulfill his promise to make America respected again in the world and keep Americans united at home. 

 *This is one of my opinion pieces that first appeared at "China Global Television Network (CGTN)":
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-11-22/Domestic-issues-require-Biden-to-stay-focused-VD5zfe6vrG/index.html

Indo-Pacific ties will test Biden

By: Azhar Azam

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga and South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Thursday phoned the US President-elect Joe Biden and discussed issues including strengthening bilateral ties, tackling the coronavirus pandemic, climate change and regional security.

Extending his commitment to Seoul’s call for bolstering relationship, denuclearization and peace in the Korean peninsula, Biden affirmed that Seoul was a “lynchpin of the security and prosperity of the Indo-Pacific region” and he would closely cooperate to resolve the North Korea nuclear issue.

Both Tokyo and Seoul, of late, have been trying to balance ties between Beijing and Washington. Although they rank their relations with the US very high, the two countries seek to harness the advantages from quick Chinese recovery, which initially got its economic growth stalled due to the Covid-19 outbreak but rebounded strongly.

Last week, the Japanese foreign ministry told Newsweek that China is the world's second largest economy with which Japan’s “relationship is one of the most important bilateral relationships for Japan" and vowed to thin out the bilateral issues in high-level meetings and visits.

Ever since Yoshihide Suga became the new prime minister of Japan in September, it was expected that he would keep his focus on economic reforms in the country and likely modulate posing Australia-India-Japan-US strategic grouping, the Quad, as a cohesive multinational military front against China.

While in a his speech to the Japanese parliament Suga abjured to describe “free and open Indo-Pacific” a strategy or vision to preclude giving it a China-containment look, his relatively a moderate pitch in Vietnam about creating “an Indo-Pacific NATO” against Beijing is being seen a balanced regional approach by the experts.

Notwithstanding Japan warned it isn’t going to pull out from decades-old territorial claims over the Pinnacle Islands in the East China Sea, still the response “Japan continues to deal with the situation in a calm and resolute manner” somewhat poured cold water on the American ambitious China-targeted plans in the backdrop of virus-hit Japanese economy.

As Beijing and Tokyo look to resume business travel between the two intertwined economies by mid-November and Japan’s export steadies including rising shipments to China for the third consecutive month in September – the improving economic indicators could beseech Suga to put off differences at some other time and keep his emphasis on accelerating trade with China to fast-track the country’s economic recovery.

The Republic of Korea (ROK) also struck a gallant tone, stating that the resumption of the historical bilateral exchanges in 1992 (with China) would pave the way “for forging friendly and cooperative relations for the future.”

Insinuating the outcome of the bilateral consultations between Beijing and Seoul and President Moon Jae-in visit to China in December 2017 leading into the normalization of the bilateral ties – the ROK foreign ministry said "Relations between the ROK and China continue to develop in a stable way with active high-level exchanges."

It sent a powerful message to the US that the ROK seeks to refresh its relationship with China. The statement carried more weight as Seoul continues to iron out differences with Beijing on the deployment of THAAD or any other US-led missile defense systems to ease off Chinese suspicions.

ROK conciliatory moves to China have strategic overtones for the US. As Seoul has been threatened by Washington over withdrawal of the US troops from the Korean peninsula vis-à-vis differences on the cost sharing agreement – the progressive change would weaken Washington’s campaign to check Beijing’s growing influence.

Seoul’s proclivity to Beijing has been on the rise for some time. ROK ambassador to the US Lee Soo-hyuck recently said "Just because Korea chose the US 70 years ago does not mean it has to choose the US for the next 70 years, too," noting that Seoul was recognizing the importance of its economic relationship with Beijing.

Again, it is the economic interests that turns out to be the main perpetrator in ransacking the primeval ROK-US alliance and Trump’s imposing instinct has incremented its pace. This paradigm shift, if invaded into the other American partners, could blow the final whistle on the global leadership bout, with end-result favoring China, beforehand.

In the past few months, the Trump administration has stroked a colossal damage to the US international credibility through its pointless policies. The president’s brazen and often-derogatory attitude has consistently pressed the historic American allies to rethink their ties with the US much earlier they would have thought.

With Tokyo maintaining the best relationship with China, ROK Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha refusing to shoulder the “structured alliance” and ASEAN alongside Australia, China, New Zealand, Japan and ROK gearing up to sign the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) – another daunting task would shortly test ability of the coming Biden administration, restore America’s trust across the Indo-Pacific.

*This is one of my opinion pieces (unedited) that first appeared in "New Straits Times":
https://www.nst.com.my/opinion/columnists/2020/11/642363/indo-pacific-ties-will-test-biden

Africa needs a balanced mix of military and economic support to thwart challenges

By: Azhar Azam

Africa has witnessed a geometric growth in population over the past five decades, increasing its headcount from 227 million in 1960 to more than one billion in 2018, half of whom will be below the age of 25 years by 2050. The continent's share in global population is projected to get off from 14 percent in 2018 to 23 percent in 2050.

Notwithstanding reporting relatively low cases of coronavirus, the world's largest free trade area and home to six of the world's fastest growing economies is set to register its first recession in a quarter-century. The expected decline of 3.3 percent in Africa's economic activity will likely cost at least $115 billion in output losses and push up to 40 million people into extreme poverty.

This fall will continue to take a huge toll on African economies and lives given the region accounts for only 3 percent of the global GDP. By better managing the population growth and enhancing integration into the global economy, Africa can still expand its middle class and raise total spending capacity to unwind the thorny predicament.

However, intensifying armed conflicts and insurgent attacks from terrorist outfits such as Boko Haram, Al-Qaeda, affiliates of Islamic State and separatist Tuaregs and organized crime pose serious threats to peace and stability. The devastating surge in radical spells could hold back Africa to truly tap its full economic potential.

Between January to August, Africa experienced 1,168 terrorist attacks at an accelerating pace of 18 percent compared to the same period of 2019. Whereas the extremists have grown their ability to launch and sustain military offensives, there is a need to disrupt their financial supply chain that helps them to extort money through illicit international networks, piracy activities, human trafficking and arms trade, etc.

The key goal to curb the resurfacing violent extremism can be achieved by strengthening the counter-terrorism initiatives like the African Union (AU) Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) and the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) against Boko Haram.

It is nevertheless crucial that any security assistance and military deployment in Africa should be implemented under an AU and a UN peacekeeping mission framework. As peace in the region is becoming a global challenge, it can only be ensured through international backing to prop up Africa's capability to fight the bloody strife.

More efficient governance, restoration of development aid and fixing climate change, which resulted in reduced arable land, increased local conflicts, can additionally ease off the continent's impasse and allow it to keep its focus on combating terrorism.

The other important thing is that Africa must not be used as a theater for regional influence to secure national security interests. Unilateral foreign interventions and mounting air strikes in the Sahel and Horn of Africa have killed a number of innocent civilians, triggering a backlash from the local population apart from pushing them to the terrorist groups for income and protection.

Aggravation of the peace situation in Africa is further exacerbated by collapsing economic numbers emanated from the COVID-19 pandemic. Since desertification, unemployment, lack of basic facilities and underdevelopment would make the conditions more vulnerable, the region can find itself in dire straits without resolving these grassroots problems.

Twenty years ago, China figured out Africa's riddle and established the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) to bring peace in the region through development and cooperation. The bilateral relation was further invigorated via infrastructure building, investment and lending under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

In 2019, the trade between China and Africa increased 20-fold to $208.7 billion with Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI) posting a 100-fold surge at $49.1 billion since entering into the FOCAC. During this period, Beijing built 6,000 km each of roads and rail networks, nearly 20 ports and more than 80 major power plants, and dozens of medical and sport facilities as well as schools in almost all African countries.

Other than these efforts, Beijing is encouraging Chinese tech and investment companies and business individuals to ramp up the two-way technological and investment cooperation. It is also supporting Africa to modernize its agriculture and industrialization drive and has pledged to work with the international community in Africa's integration into the global industrial and supply chains.

On one side, the steps to jack up trade and tweak infrastructure would help to address Africa's critical structural inequalities including poverty; on the other, the agricultural, economic and industrialization measures will protect Africa from overpowering impacts of climate change, uplift its GDP and contribute to peace and stability by blocking youth bulges from joining terrorist organizations.

A balanced composition of military and economic resources therefore can deracinate Africa's deep-seated ethnic and religious divide. While the continent's counter-terrorism operations would gain a boost from a holistic international approach, African development and integration into the global economy will be handy to mitigate the risks of the imminent economic crisis, adolescence drift toward extremism, food insecurity and internal migration.

*This is one of my opinion pieces that first appeared at "China Global Television Network (CGTN)":
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-11-15/Africa-needs-military-and-economic-support-to-thwart-challenges-VqKjWtCUpO/index.html

Indo-Pacific is drifting away from the US

By: Azhar Azam

In a push to further balance Tokyo’s ties with Beijing, the Japanese foreign ministry last week told Newsweek that China is the world's second largest economy with which its “relationship is one of the most important bilateral relationships for Japan" and vowed to thin out the bilateral issues in high-level meetings and visits.

The foreign ministry of the Republic of Korea (ROK) also struck a gallant tone about its bonds with China. Recalling its relations with Beijing spanning over thousands of years, it said resumption of the historical bilateral exchanges in 1992 would pave the way “for forging friendly and cooperative relations for the future.”

Surrounded by a neurotic and uptight regional environment heading for an escalation among the Indo-Pacific nations, the statements signaled Tokyo and Seoul were chasing away Washington’s push to stand up to Beijing and looking at unwinding the tense situation.

Ever since Yoshihide Suga became the new prime minister of Japan in September, it was expected that he would keep his focus on economic reforms in the country and likely modulate posing Australia-India-Japan-US strategic grouping, the Quad, as a cohesive multinational military front against China.

While in a his speech to the Japanese parliament Suga abjured to describe “free and open Indo-Pacific” a strategy or vision to preclude giving it a China-containment look, his relatively a moderate pitch in Vietnam about creating “an Indo-Pacific NATO” against Beijing is being seen a balanced regional approach by the experts.

Although Japan warned it isn’t going to pull out from decades-old territorial claims over the Pinnacle Islands in the East China Sea, still the response “Japan continues to deal with the situation in a calm and resolute manner” somewhat poured cold water on the American ambitious China-targeted plans in the backdrop of virus-hit Japanese economy.

As Beijing and Tokyo look to resume business travel between the two intertwined economies by mid-November and Japan’s export steadies including rising shipments to China for the third consecutive month in September – the improving economic indicators could beseech Suga to put off differences at some other time and keep his emphasis on accelerating trade with China to fast-track the country’s economic recovery.

Similarly insinuating the outcome of the bilateral consultations between Beijing and Seoul and President Moon Jae-in visit to China in December 2017 leading into the normalization of the bilateral ties – the ROK foreign ministry said "Relations between the ROK and China continue to develop in a stable way with active high-level exchanges."

It sent a powerful message to the US that the ROK seeks to refresh its relationship with China. The statement carried more weight as Seoul continues to iron out differences with Beijing on the deployment of THAAD or any other US-led missile defense systems to ease off Chinese suspicions.

ROK conciliatory moves to China have strategic overtones for the US. As Seoul is threatened by Washington over withdrawal of the US troops from the Korean peninsula vis-à-vis differences on the cost sharing agreement – the progressive change would weaken Washington’s campaign to check Beijing’s growing influence.

Seoul’s proclivity to Beijing is on the rise. ROK ambassador to the US Lee Soo-hyuck recently said "Just because Korea chose the US 70 years ago does not mean it has to choose the US for the next 70 years, too," noting that Seoul was recognizing the importance of its economic relationship with Beijing.

Again, it is the economic interests that turns out to be the main perpetrator in ransacking the primeval ROK-US alliance and Trump’s imposing instinct has incremented its pace. This paradigm shift, if invaded into the other American partners, could blow the final whistle on the global leadership bout, with end-result favoring China, beforehand.

In the past few months, the Trump administration has stroked a colossal damage to the US international credibility through its pointless policies. The president’s brazen and often-derogatory attitude has consistently pressed the historic American allies to rethink their ties with the US much earlier they would have thought.

With Tokyo maintaining the best relationship with China, ROK Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha refusing to shoulder the “structured alliance” and ASEAN alongside Australia, China, New Zealand, Japan and ROK gearing up to sign the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) – another daunting task would shortly test ability of the coming Biden administration, restore America’s trust across the Indo-Pacific.

*This is one of my opinion pieces (unedited) that first appeared in "News24":
https://www.news24.com/news24/Analysis/analysis-indo-pacific-is-drifting-away-from-the-us-20201114

Will Biden’s strategy in South Asia be any different than Trump’s?

By: Azhar Azam

Over the years, the regional conflicts have enormously rolled a pitch for the US to overly practice a cryptic or spooky diplomacy – manipulate territorial disputes and other flare-ups to nurture American defense industry, advance national foreign policy objectives and shift the balance of power in its favor.

After mincing Soviet Union under the auspices of Afghan Mujahideen and Pakistan intelligence, the United States piggybacked on a victory and claimed the status of matchless global superpower in a war that barely involved its military footprint in Afghanistan.

Washington is once more on toes to rewrite history by sparking off a new rivalry against Beijing, which it labels as a US strategic competitor that could erode its power projection and the longtime US dominance of the world. In order to make its effort a success, the US again needed Pakistan, this time to inject life in its anti-China campaign.

Unsurprisingly, Islamabad defied joining Washington’s newfangled crusade against its ironclad ally, Beijing. Naturally, the US then had to rely on India to oil the wheels of its Sinophobia. This American South Asia strategy, despite the change of administrations in the White House, would likely continue with slight fine-tuning under the President-elect Joe Biden.

It would be the same approach that the US Secretary of Mike Pompeo disseminated in India during his recent trip, in a bid to pluck out China’s growing tentacles in South Asia with Indian support while barging in on the “China threat” as well as trying to play on the Beijing-New Delhi Himalayan border standoff.

Although, the US would have doubts on Indian ability to undercut the dragon but in the absence of any other option in the sac, Washington will be throwing its full diplomatic and military support behind India vis-à-vis bilateral political arrangements and defense contracts.

The US interests, therefore, in India are largely commercial and its new defense pact – Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement (BECA) on Geospatial Cooperation – with India is only targeted to wring regional disputes for American advantage, notwithstanding the degree of grave risks the treaty on sharing satellite and map data could pose to peace and stability in the “nuclear deltoid,” comprising three regional atomic powers.

BECA has been pending for more than 15 years as leftists in the past coalition government were strongly opposed to maintaining close ties with the US. Indian security forces too had fears “on protection of classified information and access to classified laboratories in India.” Like its descendant, the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA) previously prompted anxieties about turning India into an American military base.

Even Indian experts dub the Modi government’s “mindlessly suicidal extreme step” of signing the defense agreement could be a costly bargain and opine India has potentially mortgaged the digitized capability of its air, ground and naval forces to the US as its “kill-chains (sensors-to-shooter networks)" would be under American control.

Remarks by a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute Tanvi Madan – “Arguably without Doklam and Ladakh crisis, India would not have got to yes on COMCASA (Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement) or reportedly BECA – unequivocally ratify that the US is sharply using its “military diplomacy” to redeem China-India row for its offensive territorial goals.

No matter how effective BECA will be in strengthening the Indian-American strategic and defense cooperation, one definitive conclusion can be drawn from the agreement. While trying to outlast in bordering nodes with Beijing, New Delhi has exposed a whole lot bigger national sovereignty to Washington.

After deliberations with India on forging a consensus response to jointly “thwart (China) threats”,” Pompeo had reached in Sri Lanka and Maldives to iron the two Indian Ocean nations on cutting their economic, infrastructure and investment ties with China.

In Colombo, his unrestrained criticism of Beijing and its mega Belt and Road Initiative was given a cold shoulder by Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. Rejecting Pompeo's perspective that China was attempting to trap the nation into debt, Rajapaksa pointed out Beijing had played a key role in developing the country's infrastructure since the end of the separatist war in May 2009. America’s “debt trap” idea was additionally rebuffed by a Sri Lankan diplomat who said that 90% of the country’s debt was, in fact, owned by western and other international multilateral institutions.

Pompeo announced to open an embassy in Male. This move doesn’t intend to bolster bilateral relations; it is an attempt to counterbalance China’s presence in Maldives. In so doing, the Secretary publicly revealed his mala-fide intent to cramp Beijing-Male ties through a forthright intervention in internal affairs of the Island nation.

China has invested billions of dollars in Sri Lanka and Maldives through BRI to build seaport, airport, port city, highways and power stations, which would help the two developing nations to improve their economy, boost trade and generate employment. In comparison, Pompeo landed in the two countries with empty promises and pressing demands.

Washington should reassess its “alpha-dogging” toward the sovereign nations, which is sinking its trust in South Asia. Rather than seeking to chop off countries from China and flock them into an Indian orbit, the US needs to demonstrate the same eagerness to resolve the Kashmir dispute, a nuclear flashpoint between India and Pakistan, as it has been showing to end its Afghan stalemate.

But since Biden would follow the footsteps of Trump in the region and continue to irk Pakistan by downplaying its contributions against war on terror while pressing Sri Lanka and Maldives to ostracize the Chinese investments without offering any economic substitute – bulges of South Asian nations are likely to keep themselves at a distance from the new US administration as well, what will be an outright dismissal of American orthodox regional approach.

*This is one of my opinion pieces (unedited) that first appeared in "Global Village Space":

https://www.globalvillagespace.com/will-bidens-strategy-in-south-asia-be-any-different-than-trumps/

One side prevailing in US-China rivalry

By: Azhar Azam

​In 2011, the US proposed its version of regional development initiative, The New Silk Road. It sought to bolster peace and stability in Afghanistan and across the region by resuming traditional trade routes and reconstructing broken infrastructure links, connecting the battle-scarred country to Central Asia, Pakistan India and beyond.

But the four-pronged initiative, which construed creating a new North-South transit and trading routes that compliment a vibrant East-West connections across Eurasia, never took off the ground and was dubbed a “misfire” by observers who believe that the project was under-funded and under-resourced and lacked Pacific-to-Atlantic scope.

The US concept to evolve an efficient and hardheaded regional infrastructure network also summed up to naught over Americans’ cardinal conundrum that Afghanistan could still convert into a kindergarten for terrorists, posing a threat to its national security. And then, there were of course worries that the triangular anti-American, China, Russia and Iran, could use the US-built linkages to inflate their influence in the region.

A couple of years after the launch of the US regional plan – China in 2013 shook the world by its trans-continental project – Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – that suggested to revivify the ancient trade routes connecting China to the Mediterranean via Eurasia for centuries through land-based Silk Road Economic Belt and oceangoing 21st century Maritime Link Road.

Billed as a Chinese vision, strategy and foreign policy – the initiative, within five years of its kick off, established its worth by signing up more than 150 countries and organizations covering over 60% of the world population, in addition to scooping the trade volume between Beijing and BRI nations to $6 trillion, more than 30% of the world GDP.

China says by 2019, Chinese investors had founded about 44,000 companies in over 80% of the countries and regions. It further said at the end of the last year, China was the third-largest foreign investor globally behind the US and Netherlands with cumulative overseas investment of $2.2 trillion, creating 2.27 million foreign employments and contributing $56 billion in taxes to the host countries and regions.

Realizing impact of the BRI on global economy and China’s transition from a manufacturing assembly hub of the world to an economic powerhouse, the Geneva-based United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNSTAD) in August noted that nations can draw on significant lessons from the China experience to structurally transform their economies.

Without getting down to the nitty-gritty or probing the Chinese statistics, the BRI partners are keen how any major country can help to improve their infrastructure, increase trade, pour investment, alleviate poverty and upheave the virus-hit economies.

Nations would be least concerned whether Beijing observes the BRI a transcontinental chef-d'oeuvre or it is an “authoritarian world order” for Washington that is characterized by “debt-trap diplomacy,” fraught with “bribery, resource extraction, and opaque financial and commercial agreements” and “modern-day colonialism.”

Most developing nations would see the rivalry between the two economic heavyweights as a strategic competition or the great power competition in which Washington fears that Beijing is trying to dethrone its global leadership through “predatory” lending so it must activate all channels to corrode the new engine of Chinese growth, the BRI.

As the US believes that under the initiative, China is seeking to become the global center of trade, commerce and technology through a network of vassal states and sovereign economies are would be replaced with the CCP-controlled satellite states – the situation has led into full-blown cultural, educational, diplomatic, information, trade and technological war.

Washington’s brimming nuisance about Beijing’s growing influence and its moves – to slap tariffs on Chinese goods, sanction Huawei and other tech giants, designate Chinese media outlets as foreign missions, expel Chinese students, scale back diplomatic ties and develop strategic groupings like the Quad – outright describe that the US isn’t going to allow China to weaken its global dominance and power projection.

Taking reciprocal measures, China has too demonstrated its alacrity to clap back at the US to protect its interests and hundreds of billions of investments. A tug of war, where neither of the sides is willing to retreat, would force the global nations, especially the developing ones, to give up their neutrality and make a clear choice between the two colossi.

Lately, the US push at the initiative took a beating after experts said that the BRI projects were “overwhelmingly nonstrategic investments” in Malaysia, African rising debt levels weren’t China-made and China was renegotiating several contracts with the Southeast Asian nations over the uncertainties hanging around their economies.

In addition, Chinese key strategic allies such as Sri Lanka and Pakistan have repeatedly turned down the accusations that the BRI loans were weighing down on their economies. While Islamabad has linked its future with China, Colombo also continues to acknowledge Beijing’s assistance in the development of the country’s infrastructure.

As China makes headway to become the only major economy recording a positive growth in 2020 amid swarms of governments inscribing their countries with the BRI, the Covid-19 affronting the worldwide economies and researches ditching the US idea – Washington’s “Chinese debt-trap” diplomacy is appearing to have outshined by China’s “win-win cooperation,” soliciting the new White House dweller to come out with thoroughly totally reformed strategy. 

*This is one of my opinion pieces (unedited) that first appeared in "New Straits Times":

https://www.nst.com.my/opinion/columnists/2020/11/640359/one-side-prevailing-us-china-rivalry

Crippled transatlantic relations: Will US remodel its EU policy?

By: Azhar Azam

​Since coronavirus has flipped over global trade and economic system as well as eroded health and mobility rights of human race across the world irrespective of opulence, nationality and ethnicity – many international leaders have equated the financial crisis stoked by the insidious disease with the Second World War, prefiguring its serious economic fallouts as “unprecedented” or the “great global struggle.”

Antithetical to the first wave of the fatal respiratory illness when the fraught European Union (EU) states took unilateral decision and shut the borders, banned medical equipment exports and stockpiled protective gears for their citizens – the bloc is trying to demonstrate a pan European solidarity and forge a united front against the renascent bug.

Last Month, envoys of the EU's 27 member nations adopted measures to control Covid-19 in the peninsula. They agreed to safeguard the health and wellbeing of people by classifying the region in color zones – green, orange and red – on the basis of new notified cases and infection and testing rate, accepting their right to travel within the region that it said is crucial for safely rebuilding the economy.

While the EU is exerting sterling efforts to cap the spread of the virus, it shouldn’t be resting on its laurels by just ensuring cross-border travel to keep the economy moving. The alliance needs to show no laxity on growth and must pull out all the stops, which could help to achieve its pre-crisis level amid signs of slower than expected recovery.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently forecasted that Spain, Italy, France and the Union’s economic driving force Germany could see a slump of 12.8%, 10.6%, 8.3% and 6.0% percent respectively in 2020. These estimates for the leading European economies are far worse as compared to its global projection of 4.4% contraction in the year.

For 2021, the international financial watchdog expects the global economy to bounce back with 5.2% growth. This prophecy for worldwide economic expansion, though, matches the Fund’s latest projection for the EU in the next year; however, is still weaker than its erstwhile estimate of 6.0% in June.

A potential slowdown in growth solicits the EU to inject greater emphasis on expanding consumption, the backbone of its economy. The governments should encourage European consumers, holding billions of euros in cash or bank deposits, to freely practice their spending spree that historically accounted for more than half of the region’s output.

Stressing on the role of people in remaking the economy, chief European economist at Capital Economics Andrew Kenningham told DW, "If that (household consumption) collapses because people just decide to save their money, then that will affect the number of jobs, amount of output in the economy."

Brussels has so far funneled more than €13 billion toward healthcare and through policy stimuli to vanquish the Covid-19 and support the economy and maintain employment. But without a more collaborative and sprightly endeavor to inveigle consumers jack up their spending, it would be a herculean task to improve the economic outlook in the short run.

In an interview with US broadcaster CNBC in October, German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz urged European leaders to team up if they were to increase the economic growth and return to the pre-crisis levels by 2022 or a bit earlier.

Describing it as a “Hamiltonian moment – a deal struck by the first US Treasury Secretary in 1790 to convert the debts of individual states into joint obligations of the federal union – he also saw the recent increase in economic growth an opportunity for closer fiscal union.

Nevertheless, in order to fully harness the lucky break, the EU should redouble its efforts to boost international trade, promote multilateralism, protect international rules-based system and pursue a balanced foreign policy. The bloc is trying to press ahead on all these crucial issues but as the US could conceive these empathic measures a threat to its global leadership, Brussels is likely to face indignation from Washington.

Due to the sizzling nature of the US, the scholar Michel Smith, years before, had defined America as a “warrior state” that has been championing a “sovereignist” diplomacy and foreign policy to dominate the world through use of force. He characterized the EU a “trading state,” which believed in multilateral negotiations and institutional engagement.

Under Trump, the US bullying of the international nations and leaders including the EU’s is in its heyday. Over the last four years, the US president has labeled EU ““basically a vehicle for Germany”, termed NATO obsolete, declared “The Germans are bad, very bad”, identified American primal ally “the biggest foe” and scrapped several transatlantic accords.

Owing to Trump’s flagrant criticism of EU and fragmentation of multilateral treaties, Brussels-Washington bilateral relations have reached a tipping point. American experts are now pinning hopes on Joe Biden to repair the damage with his senior policy adviser Tony Blinken calling for an end to the “artificial trade war” that has been contaminating the economic relations, costing jobs and increasing costs for consumers.

It is not just the responsibility of the EU to save the longtime relationship with the US. Washington should also play its part to strengthen ties with Brussels through deepening trade cooperation, reviving economic growth, upholding multilateralism – crux of Europe’s approach to foreign policy – and supporting international institutions.

A chronological downward spiral of the US favorability across the Europe – a scenario that matched the grim ratings of March 2003 among French and Germans – necessitates the White House to quickly remodel its EU policy, aimed at leeching off partisan trade advantages and hamstringing the economy of an ally, which has invariably stood by Washington for peace and justice in the world. 

*This is one of my opinion pieces (unedited) that first appeared in "The Express Tribune" https://tribune.com.pk/story/2270922/brussels-economy-and-transatlantic-relations and "Global Village Space" https://www.globalvillagespace.com/crippled-transatlantic-relations-will-us-remodel-its-eu-policy/