The delusion of Pax Americana

By: Azhar Azam

There is a sharp division between Americans, who are deeply skeptic of the U.S. overseas intervention, and the country's political parties, which believe it is the right and in the interest of the U.S. to impose its will and wield power to stoke tensions between other countries for the restoration of Pax Americana (Latin for "American Peace") or the post-1945-international order of American global dominance.

Leaders in the U.S. remained in a state of denial as ambitious regional powers such as Brazil, Turkey and Indonesia challenged the unruly U.S.-led international order and China marched toward achieving the status of a great power at an "astonishing" pace.

The U.S. is as stubborn as it has been with some lawmakers believing the country can still stop China's rise by coercing allies to rupture ties with the world's second largest economy or shifting focus from Europe to Asia.

All the notions of the right, left and center – the U.S. should shy away from Russia to take on China and vice versa or handle both without starting new or losing existing wars – are utterly misplaced. The idea will turn out to be a farce as it fails to realize the U.S.-led world order has begun to crumble not because of outside threats but due to the U.S.'s imperialist policies abroad that ignored omnipresent internal challenges: political polarization, populism and social and economic problems.

Invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq are a handful of instances of how the U.S. blew up politically, militarily and economically weak countries in the name of freedom to herd them into the American system. The so-called U.S. international campaign for human rights is just an extension of its imperialist foreign policy, which uses human rights to further its neoliberal agenda.

More recently, the U.S. has devoted its concentration on creating new hotbeds of tensions the world over. Acting as a spearhead of America's imperialism, the U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a Congressional delegation visited China's Taiwan region. The trips, part of the global Pax Americana, signaled to reverse the 50-year old political settlement between the leaders of China and the U.S.

The provocations, designed on the Cold War pattern, risk to spark a conflict by supporting the "Taiwan independence." But such efforts cannot stop reunification of Taiwan into the Chinese mainland as China is a much stronger political, economic and military force whose stance on Taiwan is backed by more than 170 countries. The U.S., on the other hand, is on the decline and increasingly isolated for its double-standard, illegal and unilateral wars and interventionist policies on humanitarian grounds.

Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. has been using its military power to assert its world hegemony. It destabilized vast swathes of the Middle East and North Africa as well as South and Central Asia by frequent invasions, eventually abruptly ending its military campaigns and leaving the regions with tails in legs.

Deluded by the Cold War nostalgia, the U.S. President Joe Biden spun the Ukraine conflict into a battle of democracy versus autocracy and incited China through serial interferences in the Taiwan region. His promotion of democracy and "freedom" is another shot to revive the era of Pax Americana. Yet global publics don't condone this offensive posture concocting an imaginary threat to democracy from "autocracy," warning economic inequality is the biggest challenge for the survival of the Western form of governance.

The hawkish U.S. mindset is encountering a strong resistance from several emerging countries across the continents where majorities don't want to cut ties with Russia on the Ukraine conflict. Given a large global support for China's view on the Taiwan region and Washington's implicit recognition of China's sovereignty over Taiwan, the U.S. Cold War mentality including forging military alliances like the Quad and the AUKUS and democratic bloc will not triumph.

Over the years, the U.S.-led international order has produced a "huge, unmanageable financial bubble" and deep inequalities and encroached on nations' territorial integrity. China doesn't need to "reshape" the system; America's own policies are leading the way for a more balanced, multipolar and symmetrical global order based on respect of national sovereignty and shared interests.

The trend is gathering momentum as regional economic powers, unwanted by the U.S.-led blocs, are considering joining inclusive regional and global organizations such as BRICS or Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

Pax Americana is becoming even more elusive for it didn't adhere to international law and undermined peace and stability and multilateralism. As a result, the world is witnessing end of the unipolar and emergence of a multipolar order. The U.S. pursuit of hegemonizing the world and efforts to inflict its self-styled rule is solely responsible for the country's decline and potential sudden collapse.

In the age marked with intense global challenges of the 21st century and mutual interdependence, the 20th century strategy to contain China and reestablish a unipolar world order is inoperable and fatally flawed.

Today, not many countries will be tricked by Pax Americana, veiled in Washington's illusory campaign for democracy. Biden needs to understand changing global attitudes, emphasize internal weaknesses and review his aggressive policies to avert the looming American decline.

*This is my opinion piece that first appeared at "China Global Television Network (CGTN)":

America's grunts are faintest roars of a dying power

By: Azhar Azam

The U.S. has been trying to engineer a catastrophe across the Taiwan Strait in the past few weeks. The U.S. congressional delegation's recent visit, led by Senator Edward Markey, to China's Taiwan region is another extremely dangerous action for it is inconsistent with the one-China principle, and provokes Beijing by challenging Chinese sovereignty.

The strategically unwise move will be in the soup given China's vastly improved military capabilities and the sheer Chinese determination to make no compromise on Taiwan, an issue linked to the country's territorial integrity unlike the conventional economic or trade relations.

America's international ambitions are driven by avarice of global economic and strategic dominance, using power projection as a tool to achieve covert objectives outside the U.S. borders, territories and possessions.

Power projection isn't a Chinese characteristic. But when someone like the U.S. keeps threatening China's territorial integrity, the onus of responsibility to protect national sovereignty shifts to the Chinese military. The recent live drills manifested the same commitment and ended after testing troops' combat capabilities.

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose visit to China's Taiwan region in a military jet was a blatant provocation and threat to China's national jurisdiction, exclaimed "We cannot allow the Chinese government to isolate Taiwan." The statement is fundamentally incorrect; it's the Chinese military that is professionally bound to thwart any efforts to carve out Taiwan from the China.

As long as the U.S. continues to challenge China's sovereignty or supports "Taiwan independence," China's security forces will come into play to safeguard the national domain. It's immaterial whether this defensive posture is seen as "significant escalation" or raises concerns for U.S. President Joe Biden in the post-Pelosi visit situation.

America's dangerous and reckless action necessitated an immediate and strong counteraction. Responding to U.S. disregard of Chinese representations and protesting Pelosi's trip, China suspended or terminated a series of bilateral cooperation channels involving military-to-military talks, climate change, transnational crime, legal assistance in criminal matters and anti-narcotics.

Washington quickly called the holdup of exchanges on combating narcotics including illicit fentanyl trafficking "unacceptable." This was largely because the U.S. felt the move would weaken its response to the fentanyl-led opioid crisis, which – according to the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention – took 107,622 American lives in 2021. Yet the Biden administration cannot blame Beijing, for it ignored China's stern warnings and led with its chin.

Climate change is another issue in which the U.S. has been seeking cooperation from China. Despite the U.S. trade war to contain the world's second largest economy and Biden's criticism, Beijing helped produce the joint Glasgow Declaration. Again, China's willingness to work with the U.S. was taken for granted by the U.S. president who looked to use this rare collaboration to boost his climate agenda in domestic politics.

Pelosi's Taiwan visit could ruin Biden's midterm election campaign just a few months ahead of the all-important United Nations' COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt as he travels across the country to tout his climate and other legislative measures.

The suspension of this dialogue may complicate the U.S. clean energy transition, for the country is highly dependent on Chinese technology exports of renewable energy. This, however, in no way means Beijing has walked away from its climate change promises.

The U.S. has made a gross intervention in China's Taiwan affairs and has breached the decades-long commitment by attempting to contort its one-China principle. As a result, these deterrent countermeasures to defend Chinese national sovereignty have drawn support from a number of world states, which see it as an interference in China's internal affairs by external forces.

Alarmed by the provocative visits, several countries have reaffirmed their backing for China's sovereignty and territorial integrity with some U.S. allies striking a restrained tone on Pelosi's Taiwan trip. Quite a few states have already broken off their diplomatic ties with Taiwan, declaring it an "undoubted part" of China.

Pelosi did nothing for the peace and stability in the region, something the regional countries looked for; her visit instead was a drumbeat of divergence and instability. As the U.S. military conducts about 100 military exercises in waters around China every year, Chinese defensive, economic and political responses cannot be termed as overreaction.

Washington's persistent interventionism and bouts of insanity to exploit tensions to its advantage is driving countries to take initiatives on their own. The UN-brokered deal in Turkey between Russia and Ukraine to resume exports of grain through the Black Sea is one such example, urging Washington to get back to diplomacy and talk to Russia.

On Taiwan, Biden is messing things up by demanding China not unilaterally change the status quo of the island and also allowing U.S. lawmakers to arrive, stoke tensions and vamoose from Taiwan on an American government plane with his administration "supporting" Taiwan's "self-defense." This is where the U.S. is fiddling with Chinese sovereignty. As Taiwan has never been a country and is a part of China, its status quo is the same as Beijing's.

Taiwan, in fact, is a unilateral issue that doesn't require any bilateral, multilateral mechanisms or the U.S. advice to peacefully resolve cross-Strait differences. When it comes to safeguarding national integrity, these channels – as well as the U.S. new provocations including keeping the USS Ronald Reagan stationed in the Philippines Sea, east of Taiwan and the U.S. Congressional delegation's visit – hardly matter. Taiwan belongs to China and America's grunts are just the faintest roars of a dying power.

*This is my opinion piece that first appeared at "China Global Television Network (CGTN)":

Why is the US so apprehensive of China's technological growth?

By: Azhar Azam

The U.S. accuses others of stealing its intellectual property or IP. The upstart country's a trailblazer in intellectual piracy. Two centuries back, textile technology reached its pinnacle in Britain as America remained an agrarian backwater. The fledgling U.S. cried foul over technology barriers of British imperialism and the U.S. offered rewards for bringing secrets home of extraordinary value.

In order to maintain its economic and technological preeminence, the British parliament enacted laws to prevent the export of textile machinery and the emigration of skilled workers. But America's Founding Fathers snatched Britain's mechanical and scientific innovations to close the technological gap between the U.S. and its motherland.

America's steal-the-technology strategy condoned industrial espionage and established a nation of capitalists with a full array of Machiavellian thefts. History shows that smuggling – and proscribed imports of West Indies molasses, Dutch gunpowder and African slaves to modern-day Mexican workers and Columbian cocaine – have given the U.S. an industrial and economic muscle, helping its evolution from a remote British colony to the world's leading "anti-smuggling crusader."

For these compelling historical reasons, Washington, the "world's hotbed" of intellectual property thefts, is seeing Beijing through the same lens. Yet the fact of the matter is that by 2010, China had matured into a preferred destination for multinational companies and transitioning toward becoming the high-tech industrial factory of the world.

The speed and magnitude of China's advances in foundational technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and 5G infrastructure stunned America and its intelligence chief started searching Mandarin-speaking technological experts. Despite U.S. attempts to cramp Beijing's tech savviness, China's digital innovation megatrends are growing apace. These include the great retail integration, virtualization of services, mobility revolution, social-life digitalization, industrial internet of things and digital urbanization – and efforts to assimilate digital technologies with real economy to drive growth and upgrade governance capabilities.

The unique blend of combining the techno-human expertise is further empowering Beijing to make best use of technologies like 5G, high-speed rail, facial recognition, navigational satellite and AI, cloud computing and big data to stimulate economic growth and improve the lives of 1.4 billion people through faster internet, less travel time, quick virus tracing and keeping driverless cars on right track.

All these public-centric achievements have been possible by encouraging and rerouting investments in technology research for community welfare. According to a study commissioned by the UK Intellectual Property Office, China was the second largest destination of private investment in AI in 2020. Almost a quarter of peer-reviewed AI publications in 2019 came from China; Chinese organizations, holding particular strength in deep learning, made up 17 of the top 20 academic players in AI patenting and AI-related scientific publications, said the UN World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in a report.

Beijing continues to integrate itself in the global tech ecosystem to protect its people. Earlier this year, China joined the WIPO's Hague System and the Marrakesh Treaty to bring and move industrial designs in and out of the country and provide greater access to the 17 million blind and visually impaired community to copyrighted works. The WIPO Director General hailed the joining of the "birthplace of one of the world's great literary and cultural traditions" to two treaties as an important development for the global IP fabric.

In its newly-veiled Global Awards program, which recognizes exceptional enterprises and individuals using IP to make a positive impact at home and abroad, a group of seven jurists from around the world at the WIPO in July scrutinized 272 submissions of 62 countries. Chinese small- and medium-sized enterprises, Raycan and Shylon, clinched two of the five awards.

China's astonishing speed in technology is causing techno-nationalism in the U.S., prompting Washington to seek tech separation from Beijing. As the Chinese tech sector has benefitted Washington in many ways including providing skilled labor and revenues to U.S. research and development, any additional curbs would harm the interests of U.S. companies, academic institutions and residents.

Over the last three and a half years, the U.S. administrations, members of Congress and leading think tanks have released roughly 209 bills, policies and reports to restrict science and technology cooperation, obstructing Chinese STEM talent. Huawei is one of the biggest targets of Washington's tech clampdown. Still, the Huawei Cloud, the technology research firm Gartner revealed, managed to rise to the top-five in global infrastructure as a service market of about $91 billion besides expanding its business segments such as inverters and automobiles.

Within the last decade, China's universities have beefed up their credentials internationally, producing top students and computer science professors for the best American universities. The allegations of espionage or IP theft on Chinese scientists and engineers, most of which ended in acquittals, are now forcing them to leave the U.S. and discouraging others to come. As a result of these impediments and racial profiling of Asians and Africans, the U.S. could soon yield its technological edge that was partly made possible with overseas talent.

Amid the U.S. geo-technological competition against China, cross-country collaborations haven't been held back. According to Stanford University's Artificial Intelligence Report 2022, AI publications between the two nations since 2010 increased five times. The California-based research institution also noted Beijing last year filed more than half of the world's AI patent applications with the country also ranking first in the publication number of AI papers in journals while the U.S. was third.

Disappointed by the failure of the prior foreign policy encompassing wars and conflicts in other regions, the U.S. is now pursuing global technology dominance to tame potential rivals. Apprehensive about Beijing's tech-led economic growth and good governance, Washington has embraced a more restrictionist policy toward China. Like the previous one, this U.S. approach is also driven by craving for global supremacy. it will eventually backfire as China is committed to using technology to modernize its economy and improve human lives.

*This is my opinion piece that first appeared at "China Global Television Network (CGTN)":

China-Indonesia ties and regional peace

Alarmed by the rising US protectionism and unilateralism, woeful economic forecasts of the global financial institutions for regional countries and threats of the Russia-Ukraine war to the world economy, Indonesia’s President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo in his first stop to the three-nation trip in East Asia arrived in China and held with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang.

The leaders of the two economic heavyweights attached “great strategic significance” to their bilateral relationship and agreed to fast-track all bilateral mechanisms as well as develop a broad plan to strengthen strategic coordination in regional and international affairs. In the face of the US mounting pressure on Indonesia to expel Russia from November’s G20 summit in Bali, Jakarta gained strong support from Beijing.

Other than deepening the trade relations and expanding cooperation in agriculture, health, poverty alleviation and food security, Jakarta and Beijing reached a consensus to synergize the Belt and Road Initiative and the Global Maritime Fulcrum. More importantly, China and Indonesia vowed to assume greater responsibility to protect regional peace, stability and prosperity. The Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi, accompanying Jokowi, quoted Xi appreciating Jokowi’s peace efforts to end the Moscow-Kyiv standoff.

Jakarta highly values the strategic significance of its ties with Beijing and has a firm desire to jointly focus on pressing global challenges such as peace and food and energy security. Jakarta also supports China-proposed Global Development Initiative (GDI) and Global Security Initiative and seeks to participate in the two China-led drives. Earlier, Jokowi in his telephone talk with Xi had hailed the GDI as conducive to the realization of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

In the joint press statement, the two leaders pledged to implement the GDI at bilateral and regional levels to further accelerate the advancement toward the UN Sustainable Development Goals and foster international development. Taking note of the GSI, which provides guidance to prevent war and conflicts, Jokowi reiterated his willingness to work with China on the initiative to ensure peace and stability through dialogue and diplomacy.

Within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Indonesia’s ranking as an exporting country to China has climbed from 5th in 2019 to 3rd in 2021. China is Indonesia’s largest trading partner. Bilateral trade between the two sides in 2021 exceeded $124 billion at an impressive 58.6% increase.

Beijing is the largest export market of Jakarta’s coal, mineral resources, metal ore and steel and one of the key buyers of the Indonesian animal and vegetable fats and oils. Last year, Beijing was also the third largest investor in Jakarta with a total investment of about $3.2 billion. Thanks to investments including from China, foreign direct investment in Indonesia flew about 40% to around $11 billion for the April-June.

Xi in March stressed the two sides needed to quickly complete the Jakarta-Bandung High-Speed Railway, effectively implement key projects such as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Corridor and the Two Countries Twin Parks and jointly promote Belt and Road cooperation to support Indonesia’s development. In the recent summit, both leaders committed to make progress on all these projects.

Considering the budding relations on economy, trade and infrastructure development, there was always a need to reinforce the China-Indonesia comprehensive strategic partnership, particularly in a highly complex geostrategic and geoeconomic landscape emanating from the US high-handedness the world over.

As both countries have warned Australia’s acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines could trigger an arms race in the region and they continue to talk on the Code of Conduct to bring stability in the South China Sea, recent developments indicate the economic relationship between China and Indonesia is inching toward broader strategic cooperation. This booming coordination should be evolved into multilateral strategic engagement, not just to promote economic partnership, through capitalization of respective influence in other countries.

Amid an avalanche of US coercive efforts to bully the regional countries to pursue the Biden administration’s divisive Indo-Pacific strategy, leaders across the expansive territory must advocate harmony, engage in active diplomacy and build a bulwark to thwart challenges to peace and security. Such collaboration will build trust among the key regional stakeholders and usher in new economic opportunities for all of them.

For a world still struggling to recover from the pandemic, the US geopolitical competition with China and the Afghanistization of the Ukraine war are wreaking havoc on international peace and economy. Upset by Indonesia’s neutral stance on the Russia-Ukraine war, America is trying to use Jakarta’s strategic position to architect new security challenges to East Asia.

It is a watershed moment in the history of East Asia, facing intensifying risks of economic and peace crises from the US stubborn behavior. America cannot be trusted to bring peace and stability in the region for it will slash its influence in the region. At this critical time, Jokowi’s visit to Beijing steers the region into a right direction and urges the pacifist countries to prioritize economy and peace, strengthen multilateral strategic cooperation and exert sincere efforts to secure a peaceful and prosperous region.

*This is one of my opinion pieces that also appeared in "The Express Tribune."

UK economic crisis widens with rising inflation and inequality

By: Azhar Azam

Just a few months ago, the British economy was gearing up to bounce back strongly. Official figures from the UK Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed that after a contraction of 9.4 percent in 2020 due to the initial impact of the pandemic and public health measures, the country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) saw an increase of 7.5 percent in 2021, the largest annual increase since World War II.


But this "remarkable resilience" lost its shine as the UK economy shrank 0.1 percent and 0.3 percent in March and April of this year. This economic downturn forced the Bank of England to hike interest rates for a fifth consecutive time to stem the trend of persistently high inflation. In May, the consumer price index hit a new 40-year high of 9.1 percent and deepened the cost of living crisis for many Britons who had to skip meals to weather immense inflationary pressures.

London is descending into recession. Last month, the UK central bank governor Andrew Bailey warned Britons to prepare for a more severe bout of inflation than other major economies. Like other advanced nations, the era of low and stable inflation has ended in the UK and it won't come back soon after a series of economic shocks from COVID-19, the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the breakdown of global supply chains.

There are several other factors such as labor shortages, reverberations of Brexit on trade and declining productivity that has morphed the British economy into crisis. Within the Group of Seven (G7), the UK workforce is seeing the second largest contraction, trade openness continues to dwindle by the largest amount, and productivity and investment lags behind other advanced economies.

Although the economy grew by 0.5 percent in May, inflation is likely to top 11 percent later this year. That's more than five times the targeted rate of 2 percent, when household disposable income would be curtailed further by the rise of energy prices in autumn. Any political power struggle could make matters worse for the British economy and turn out to be a "poisoned chalice" for the next British prime minister.

In its most recent assessment, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) sketched a bleak picture of the UK's future economic outlook. Not only did the global financial regulator revise its forecast for the British GDP to 3.7 percent from January's 4.7 percent for 2022, it almost halved the growth forecast from 2.3 percent to 1.2 percent for 2023, anticipating the UK to sink to the bottom of the G7 league.

It was a significant change from the IMF, which in February had lauded Britain's economic recovery yet stressed the importance of addressing post-pandemic and post-Brexit structural issues such as making additional investments in transport infrastructure and digital connectivity to tackle regional inequality in the country.

The UK is one of the most regionally unequal countries in the developed world. Much of the economic development and infrastructure spending have been focused on London and the southeast, leaving the rest of the country behind in everything from productivity to transport links. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson vowed to end the "North-South divide" through "leveling up," but the initiative is still on the drawing board as inflation and cost of living crisis have widened the regional disparity.


Ahead of the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors meeting in Bali, the Fund's head Kristalina Georgieva warned the world was facing a "darkening" economic outlook and signaled to further downgrade the global growth for 2022 and 2023 this month from April's 3.6 percent. She appeared to downplay the G7, which has been criticized for dividing the world and making symbolic statements without solving problems, and sought "fresh impetus" for a G20-led global cooperation to ease the cost-of-living crisis across the world.

Before COVID-19, more than 14.5 million people, or one in five, including four million children in the UK, were estimated to be living in poverty. As inequality and poverty squeezes economic growth, and as a higher cost of living threatens to push another 1.3 million Britons into absolute poverty, Downing Street should reorientate its international approach and accelerate post-Brexit efforts to strengthen economic, trade and investments with all international economies to overcome the searing domestic challenges.

China, being one of the leading global economies, has the ability to help the embattled UK handle these complex economic crises. Total bilateral trade in goods and services between the two countries, according to the ONS, increased 11.8 percent to £93 billion (about $111 billion) in 2021. Improved economic and trade ties could diversify this relationship to attract greater Chinese investment to help Britain resolve regional disparities.

Last year, Johnson said China is "a gigantic part of our economic life and will be for a long time, for our lifetimes." After prejudiced about-faces on Huawei and nuclear power under the U.S. influence, the British government earlier this year pushed for closer economic ties with the world's second largest economy by seeking to resume trade and financial talks that have been suspended since 2018. But some hawkish Conservative MPs, vying for leadership, are trying to put these dialogues in limbo, raising concerns in the business world and looking to take advantage of the to-be world's largest economy and biggest importer.

This naive approach is unrealistic in a globalized and economically interdependent world where even the U.S. is holding "candid and substantive" trade talks with its "strategic competitor," China, to ease inflationary pressures on Americans. At a time when fault lines are badly exposed and the country fails to "level up" the poor regions, the UK should waste no time to reestablish a balanced and mature relationship with Beijing and immediately engage China in constructive economic and trade negotiations to benefit the Britons.

*This is my opinion piece that first appeared at "China Global Television Network (CGTN)":