Joe Biden (left) and Xi Jinping (right). Image source: Reuters Photos
United States President Joe Biden will be meeting his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping at the APEC Summit in California in what will be the latter’s first trip to the US since 2017 when he met with Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump.
Hyper-nationalist regimes cannot keep up pretences for too long in domestic politics – there comes a time in their foreign and security policies when they must act to show domestic and international audiences that they are capable of action even if they do not have a fully worked out plan. Since Galwan, the Indian government has largely made mistakes in its China policy by acts of omission – for example, not responding punitively to the Chinese transgressions in eastern Ladakh in 2020, or giving up within a few months heights it had captured in the region in response.
Gates’ question about his country ‘Can a Divided America Deter China and Russia?’ – is a reference to the extreme political polarisation in US politics that has made it difficult to have conversations across the political aisle. There is a similar lack of consultation and engagement between political actors in India that does not bode well for Indian foreign and security policymaking, and, especially, for the objective of deterring and countering China.
Gates points out that the US’ ‘fractured political leadership… has failed to convince enough Americans that developments in China and Russia matter’ For Indians, too, internal friction and conflict seem the priority between political parties, between Members of Parliament, between religious communities, between states and regions.
If Gates says, ‘Political leaders have failed to explain how the threats posed by [China and Russia) are interconnected’, Indian leaders despite their use of Pakistan for electoral reasons continue to do an insufficient job of drawing the connection between China and Pakistan, and its consequences for India’s strategic space.
China’s economic engagement over the past decade through the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) appears somehow to have taken attention away from the China-Pakistan nexus rather than having Indians more worried about the increasing breadth and depth of Chinese engagement in India’s neighbour. Narratives of CPEC’s limitations or failure – however, true they may be should not distract from the fact that Pakistan is being pulled into an ever tighter embrace with China that will only end up constricting India’s options in South Asia, and complicate its moves in West Asia and the Indian Ocean
Gates’ accusation that US political leaders ‘have failed to articulate a long-term strategy to ensure that the United States, and democratic values more broadly, will prevail’ mirrors the situation in India. Recent news of an Indian National Security Strategy document in the works does not take away from this reality. Such ambitions have been declared before and come to nought. One reason for this might be the absence of an overarching doctrine or set of values to underline such a strategy document. Such a doctrine or set of values is already contained in the Constitution or ideally must derive from it. But if constitutional values and parliamentary procedures and norms are increasingly sacrificed at the altar of political one-upmanship or in the interests of political hegemony, then a national security strategy so derived will also fail to do its primary job of protecting the interests of all Indians.
India has a stronger system of government than the US does today and with a greater capacity to muster and direct available resources necessary for national security objectives. Consider, for example, the regular news of infrastructure projects being completed or on the verge of completion – the Bogibeel bridge across the Brahmaputra in Assam, the Atal Tunnel in Himachal Pradesh, or any number of border roads and advanced landing grounds for military aircraft along the Line of Actual Control (LAC). Yet, dissuading adversaries is more than about infrastructure capabilities. It is also about policymaking nous.
Gates calls for ‘address[ing] the breakdown in the decades-long bipartisan agreement with respect to the United States’ role in the world! What is India’s role in the world? Is this role to be determined by one political party without consultation with others in India’s parliamentary system? Can this lead to a well-thought-out approach to international relations? Consider the thoroughly confusing picture that Indian foreign policy must present to the world on the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict where the ruling party has sided with one party to the conflict while the Ministry of External Affairs has reiterated India’s traditional support for the Two-State Solution even as its voting record on United Nations resolutions display a degree of inconsistency.
China policy, at least since Galwan is a lot easier – New Delhi has so far had a clear line restoration of status quo ante on the LAC before allowing progress in other domains of the relationship. However, a government-aligned think-tank was recently the first to host a major Chinese academic delegation in New Delhi. Some weeks earlier, another government-aligned think-tank had taken a large delegation of Indian scholars and retired government officials on a weeks-long tour of China. Notably, this delegation did not include many scholars who actually specialised on China. While both sides have engaged with each other in the online mode since Galwan and Indian scholars have travelled individually to China since the end of Covid-19 restrictions, these were the first organised Indian and Chinese delegations travelling across.
Indian governments, whatever their political colour, have seldom been encouraging of Track-2 initiatives, especially those involving the Chinese. So, what despite the current government’s current hard line explains the timing of this sudden opening to China? What is the policy line being conveyed to the Chinese or the message for the Indian public?
As general elections near, are we in for a repeat of the poorly thought-out Wuhan informal summit that preceded the 2019 general elections? Chinese transgressions leading to Galwan would start just six months after the second informal summit in Mamallapuram, in Tamil Nadu.
India’s China policymaking appears driven by inexplicable, contradictory, and self-defeating impulses – a clear sign as any of the lack of adequate consultation and creative thinking within the system. This must change.
If the smartest thinkers in the US still the world’s pre-eminent superpower can worry about its political dysfunction and the gap between rhetoric and action and can call for ‘rebuilding support at home’ for the responsibility of US global leadership, Indians should worry too, about how their country’s external aspirations are articulated and achieved. Without domestic consensus and accountability on foreign policy objectives, New Delhi will not be able to convey commitment or constancy of purpose to either its external partners or its adversaries.
In that time, US-China relations have undergone a sea change for the worse. Trump responded to a series of broken promises by Xi on bilateral and international issues dating back to the Barack Obama presidency by designating China a “strategic competitor” and instituting a series of trade actions against the country.
While the Biden and Trump presidencies differ significantly on almost every domestic and foreign policy issue, most decisions against China taken by the Trump administration have stayed. That said, if a recent write-up on US foreign policy by Biden’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan is anything to go by, his administration continues to be hopeful – without foundation – that engagement with China can still work in resolving bilateral and global issues.
While Sullivan acknowledges the geopolitical competition with China, he continues to misunderstand it. To even say, as he does that “there have been encouraging signs that Beijing may recognize the value of stabilization” in ties displays a lack of understanding of how the Chinese political system operates and its view of the US as an existential threat. Xi’s speeches and Communist Party of China (CPC) documents are permeated by concerns about internal stability and threats that apparently emanate from liberal, democratic political systems outside China’s borders. Friendly noises from Beijing can, therefore, only be tactical, not sincere.
In another instance, Sullivan argues that “the two sides need to be able to work together on the risks that arise from artificial intelligence”. He is at pains to declare that “Doing so is not a sign of going wobbly…” But it is precisely that. Sullivan ignores not just the Chinese Party-State’s domestic record on the use of existing high-tech tools in its arsenal to monitor and control its minority and dissident populations, but also the export of such technology to help other authoritarian governments implement similar policies.
Advertisement. Go Ad LiteSullivan even has words of faint praise for China brokering the diplomatic deal earlier this year between Iran and Saudi Arabia. He notes that his country “could not have tried to broker that deal, given the lack of U.S. diplomatic relations with Iran” but offers no explanation of why the US cannot return to the Obama-era multilateral deal on the Iran nuclear programme that was scuppered by the Trump administration. Instead of a concert of powers trying to manage Iran, Washington appears content to cede space to just one power – China to do the managing. Why that one power could not have been India is a question worth pondering in New Delhi, at least. In the meantime, though, Sullivan appears to be unconcerned about China constraining India’s space in the region.
The US “adjusting for a new period of competition in an age of interdependence and transnational challenges” is a logical mantra, but it is not something that can be implemented by the US and other democracies alone acting in good faith. The Russian invasion of Ukraine and any number of Chinese actions ranging from the South China Sea to the Line of Actual Control with India suggest that authoritarian states do not see value in acting in good faith. Democratic nations are, therefore, setting themselves up for failure by unilaterally promoting engagement and reconciliation.
It is possible that the US believes it does not have the capacity at the moment to counter China full throttle. Sullivan admits as much when he notes, “we need a sustained sense of confidence in our capacity to outcompete any country.” As he notes in his opening paragraph, one of the “the strategic decisions countries make that matter most” is of “how they organize themselves internally”.
Indeed, there are problems in the way that the US has organized itself’. The advantages of “a growing population, abundant resources” that Sullivan declares are overblown if the kind of internal divisions in the US today are anything to go by. The US is “an open society that attracts talent and investment and spurs innovation and reinvention” only in parts – it is also an extremely unequal society with uneven access to knowledge, talent, and innovation within.
This lack of concern with internal inequality has been a major US failure. The Chinese, by contrast, have actively grappled with problems of various domestic inequalities for decades now. Their experience with internal balancing through regional development programmes targeted at their under-developed west and border provinces has informed such external strategies as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Naturally, as an external strategy, the primary goal is to protect and promote Chinese interests; but, while most nations engaged with China understand this as well as the hierarchy involved, they are willing to go along with it because the US has done a worse job of equitable engagement and shared leadership.
The US remains reluctant to participate in an Indo-Pacific trading arrangement like the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership and ‘Bidenomics’ as Sullivan defines it, is underpinned by protectionism the US objective is to “sustain its core advantages in geopolitical competition”. Clearly, the US lacks faith in “its alliances and partnerships with other democracies” or is reluctant to share global leadership with them despite Sullivan calling them the US’ “greatest international advantage”.
Taken together, these are the wrong responses to China-led regional and global initiatives such as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership or the BRI, and to its efforts to coerce and undermine US partners and allies in Asia.
When he meets with Biden, expect Xi to be aware of these contradictions in US’ policy, and to exploit them accordingly.
‘US continues to get China wrong’, Deccan Herald, 15 November 2023.