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Calming US-China Tensions

 

My colleague, Michael Swaine, now a Senior Research Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, has produced two very insightful pieces on US-China relations. The longer piece can be found as a Quincy Brief and well worth reading. But if that is not possible, then a shorter examination is set out by Michael at  WPR. The ‘heart’ of both pieces is that stability arising from the Biden-Xi Summit at the margin of the APEC meeting in  San Francisco late in 2023 is far less than meets the eye. As Michael narrates in the WPR piece:

All this means that, far from developing the incentives and the means to avert a crisis or conflict, efforts on both sides to reassure each other on their vital interests are ringing increasingly hollow, with the result that both continue to view each other as engaging in evasive or, worse yet, hypocritical and duplicitous behavior.

And with respect to Taiwan, set out in the Quincy Brief, Michael paints a rather bleak picture:

The reality, however, is that the features and trends pushing both countries toward a confrontation over Taiwan persist, fueling a dangerous, interactive dynamic that could quickly overcome any diplomatic thaw between the world’s foremost powers.

Why have the two leading powers come to such a serious pass in the face of what appeared to be a solid effort to stabilize the relationship at the margins of APEC? Here Michael is clear:

Achieving this requires each nation to match its formal statements clearly and reliably with its actual behavior—in other words, to avoid hypocrisy—with regard to what each side regards as its vital interests, and to do so consistently over time. This in turn requires both sides reaching a mutual understanding of what their vital interests are, the meaningful assurances regarding them that each desires, and what would constitute violations of those assurances and, hence, threats to the concerned party’s vital interests. …

Unfortunately, despite some initial efforts, neither Washington nor Beijing has thus far met these requirements. Perhaps the most prominent example of this failure involves what began as the “Four Noes and One No Intention,” but which Beijing now calls the “Five Noes.” These reportedly affirm that the United States: does not seek a new Cold War with China; does not aim to change China’s political system; is not revitalizing its alliances to counter China; does not support Taiwan’s independence; and does not seek a conflict with China. [WPR]

From Michael’s perspective the United States has failed to reassure China that indeed it is committed to the “Five Noes”. Then, added to this is the failure to provide the reassurances necessary over Taiwan. As Michael describes the Taiwan situation:

  • The increasingly high (and arguably growing) stakes the Taiwan issue presents for both Beijing and Washington;
  • Deepening levels of domestic threat inflation on each side;
  • The growing tendency on both sides to worst case the motives and intentions of others (fed by a persistent lack of trust) while failing to recognize the interactive nature of the rivalry;
  • A resulting steady erosion of confidence in the original, stabilizing bilateral understanding regarding Taiwan reached between Beijing and Washington during the 1970s normalization process, and a related stress on deterrence over assurance;
  • The absence of effective bilateral crisis prevention and management Mechanisms”. [Brief]

While the two articles focus on somewhat different aspects of the US-China relationship, the big conclusion I draw from these two very insightful pieces by Michael is that both leading powers are providing insufficient assurances to the other of the desire of each to maintain the status quo and peaceful relations.

The rising gyre of action and response between the two is underlined by Michael:

In China, U.S. assertions that the One China Policy has not changed, or that its relations with Taiwan remain unofficial, thus fall on deaf ears. And the apparent hypocrisy of U.S. behavior is then used to justify more provocative Chinese actions, which lead many Americans to conclude that Beijing is jettisoning its commitment to peaceful unification.

This worsening situation is made even more dangerous by the absence of substantive crisis prevention and management mechanisms and procedures between the two nations. It is true that Washington and Beijing have recently agreed to resume a nascent military–to–military crisis communication working group that remained suspended since 2019 and appear to be working to revive a few other more established agreements designed to avoid incidents in the air and at sea. [Brief]

For Michael the heavy reliance on military deterrence, as opposed to material bilateral reassurance is at the heart of the shaky relations between the two. What is needed is clear, according to him:

There are, however, concrete steps that the U.S. government, Congress, and civil society can take to reduce the mounting tension around the Taiwan issue and remove it as a major factor driving the growing rivalry between Washington and Beijing. Most importantly, both sides must reverse the tendency to regard the island as a surrogate for the overall U.S.–China strategic competition.

This requires, as a first step, efforts to reduce the overall intensity of the bilateral rivalry, by eliminating the heretofore divisive, often politically–induced, zero–sum rhetoric that has dominated much of the dialogue in Washington and Beijing, and ending, to the extent possible, the mismatch between the words spoken and actions taken on both sides.” “… Such overblown rhetoric and hypocrisy deepen distrust and signal that there is no potential common ground on critical issues such as Taiwan’s future. They reinforce worst–case assumptions about motives and therefore increase the likelihood that manageable crises will become severe conflicts.[Brief]

Michael then sets out a rather lengthy list of reassuring statements that the US might express to undermine any trajectory toward confrontation and conflict. As he says:

These statements would represent a clear shift from the current drift toward confrontation and abandonment of the “One China” normalization understandings with China over Taiwan. They would not constitute a new U.S. policy so much as an attempt to restore policy understandings that have maintained peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait for decades.”[Brief]

In an ideal world such efforts backed by equally reassuring statements and actions from China could well represent an optimal path for US-China relations in the immediate circumstances. Unfortunately, in a Presidential election year and with the heavy cloud of a possible Trump re-election and his growing wild rhetoric of an 8-month campaign, it seems to me Michael’s solutions in these circumstances may well unfortunately be overreach. What therefore can be done in this difficult period.

It would be nice if a Leaders Summit was planned relatively soon but unfortunately the Brazil G20 Summit is scheduled to  take place after the US election. Thus a bilateral meeting at the margins of a summit is not going to be possible. Bad timing I’m afraid. In the face of a poor calendar the best that might be hoped for are confidence building gatherings of senior officials. Here too the G20 can be useful. There are a large number of ministerial sessions that provide the setting for side meetings by US-China senior officials. These bilateral side gatherings provide opportunities where expressions of reassurance could be had and public statements made that underline the US-China effort to maintain stability and express specific collaborative policy initiatives. It might provide just the kind of opportunities that Michael believes might help stabilize US-China relations.

Image Credit: France24

This Post first appeared at my Substack, Alan’s Newsletter https://globalsummitryproject.substack.com/p/calming-us-china-tensions?r=bj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true

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US-China Relations- How difficult is the relationship?

This week I, and just about everybody else holding some interest in sport, or at least in innovative commercials were distracted by the events leading up to, and including, the 58th Super Bowl. Notwithstanding the quickening approach of this Super Bowl Sunday, however, I was drawn to an examination by a number of experts for the Brookings Institution of the US-China relationship.

So in this somewhat shortened Post, thanks to the Event,  I thought I might pay a bit of attention to their useful views.

Graham Allison, one of the experts called on to respond to the question, pointed to the issue posed to the experts:

The invitation from Brookings’ debate organizers asked: “Is the U.S.-China relationship the most consequential bilateral relationship for the United States in the world?

He went on to lay out just why the bilateral relationship is so consequential:

My answer is: yes. If not China, who?

China is:

– one of only two nations that poses an existential threat to the United States.

– the only nation that poses a systemic threat to the U.S. position as the global leader, architect, and guardian of the post-World War II international order.

– the largest emitter of greenhouse gases—accounting for more emissions in 2022 than the United States and Europe combined.

– the second backbone of the world economy: the manufacturing workshop of the world, the No. 1 trading partner of most countries in the world (including the European Union and Japan), and the supplier of most critical items (including everything green and clean) in global supply chains.

– both a classic Thucydidean rival and America’s inseparable, conjoined Siamese twin.

The folks who commented included, as I noted above, Graham Allison, Douglas Dillon Professor – Harvard, and additionally, John Cartin, Adjunct Professor, Walsh School of Foreign Service – Georgetown, Elizabeth Economy, Senior Fellow – Hoover Institutions and Susan Thornton, Senior Fellow – Paul Tsai China Center, Yale Law School, and nonresident fellow, the Brookings Thornton China Center.

It is, for sure, a significant question. After all, the state of the US-China relationship, largely without question, drives the geopolitics of current international relations. And the answers did not fail to satisfy. The assessments by these experts are all very revealing and if you have a moment the answers are worth a read. I say this notwithstanding that not all even saw the relationship as most consequential. In fact Elizabeth Economy promoted a somewhat contrary notion. As she argued:

There are many ways to describe the U.S.-China bilateral relationship. For example, the relationship is the world’s most complex, most challenging, or most competitive. However, the relationship is not “the most consequential in the world for America. Far more consequential is the United States’ relationship with its network of allies and partners in Asia, Europe, and North America. Unlike China, the United States’ allies and close partners share the same values, norms, and strategic objectives. … However, over the almost half-century since the normalization of the U.S.-China relationship, the bilateral relationship has never realized the potential Washington imagined. The two countries’ values, norms, and interests have increasingly diverged, and the ties that have bound them together have increasingly frayed.

In his response, Allison is unwilling to let the Economy argument pass and sets it out his views starkly:

In arguing against the significance of the U.S.-China relationship, both Economy and Cartin duck the reality of China’s existential threat. The brute fact is that China is one of only two nations in the world with nuclear arsenals that constitute genuine “existential” threats—meaning threatening existence.

While not unanimous, then, still I think most would underscore that the US-China bilateral relation is highly consequential. Having said that though, I was most taken with Susan Thornton’s response. Now admittedly I know Susan most of all the experts as she is a key figure in our own China-West Dialogue (CWD). But she argued and targeted exactly what I would have also zoned in on. Susan accepted that the relationship was indeed the most consequential but then targeted what I would have as well: the key to the relationship and its likely impact on the global order is the state of domestic affairs in the US. As Susan argued:

And just to be clear, relations with or actions taken by any other single country will have little consequence for Americans in the world compared to our own decisions and actions. Our fate lies in our own hands. … In short, America cannot escape “China impact.” China is big, capable, changing rapidly, and operating in all priority zones. Still, obsessing over what China does or might do is a mistake that will carry large opportunity costs for America that it cannot afford. China may be the most consequential “other country,” but we need to take responsibility for our own future, a future that will involve “China impact,” but that we can shape.

Absolutely. Couldn’t agree more. In the face of the real possibility of a return of Donald Trump as American President, most anything, and likely everything else pales in comparison to that reality and the real chaos likely to be generated by his return both for domestic and US foreign policy.

Image Credit: MIssouri State University

This Post originally appeared at my Substack, Alan’s Newsletter. https://open.substack.com/pub/globalsummitryproject/p/us-china-relations-how-consequential?r=bj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Feel free to subscribe there and coments are welcome

 

The First Informal Falters

Yup, a little late in the weekend it is. But then for some Monday is a holiday. Mea culpa, but I was deep into completing a draft chapter for a yet to appear volume – which, in fact is scheduled to be released by 2025. The publication year, by the way, is important. My chapter will be part of a planned edited volume by Edward Elgar Publishing. There will be many chapters, so I am told, that will review and analyze the G7. It will do so on the 50th anniversary of the initiation of the G7 Leaders Summit. Yup, Rambouillet, the acknowledged first G7 Leaders Summit – it was actually, the G6 – France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK, US at that moment in time – met in 1975.  All the chapters, I suspect, will cover aspects of this ‘First Informal’, the G7, and, I suspect, the other Informals as well – that is the G20 and the BRICS.

Wow, the 50th anniversary of this First Informal! Certainly, I was interested in examining the role of the First Informal not to mention the Others.

Unfortunately, as you explore the Informals – indeed the promise of the Informals, you come face to face with the state of effectiveness of this leader-led summit. Has this multilateral instrument been effective?  It is hard not to assess that the Informals have not met the hopes of those initiating and managing this and all of these informal institutions.

The emergence of the Informals reflected in part the fading power of the Formals – the institutions of the UN, the IMF, the World Bank and some others – and the intent to advance collective global governance policymaking . A more cynical view would suggest that these major western powers – the US, UK, and Europeans, not to mention Japan, sought to resolve growing global economic problems in the 1970s impacting them and more broadly the global economy without interference of others in the global economy – newly emerging market economies and more broadly the Global South. As I wrote in the early paragraphs of the draft chapter:

“Beyond just a question of representation, however, there is the continuing question, quite crucial, of the effectiveness of all these Informals.” As I concluded: “… their structures and processes have not led to the desired policy leadership as was hoped by early leaders.

There are various explanations, I believe, in undermining the success of First Informal – and helping to explain the current weakness of it and all the Informals. These ‘forces’ are, I believe, hobbling global governance progress in the current global order. One element, of course, is the lack of  broad representation – this is after all just the G7. But there is more. Recently the United States has focused the G7 on like-mindedness and beyond that, at least in a US view – expressed in part by the statement of Antony Blinken, the Secretary of State, that the G7 is:

… the steering committee of the world’s advanced democracies, demonstrating unprecedented unity of purpose and unity of action on the issues that are defining the 21st century.

This US “steering committee” focus on the G7 has arisen at the same time, or in part because of, the return of geopolitics, particularly the growing rivalry and competition between the US and China in international relations. While the US-China rivalry does create tensions in the G7, still these tensions are nothing like that in the G20 with the mix of developed and developing members and most obviously including the US and China and in fact the US and Russia.

The US-Russia tension speaks to the growing global disorder erupting with various regional conflicts. There is nothing more dramatic than in the past two years and more of the Russia-Ukraine war in the heart of Europe. Then there is a more recent but no less dramatic war between Hamas and Israel in the Mideast that is spreading regionally.

As described by the President and the CEO of the International Crisis Group (ICG), Ero Comfort and the ICG Executive Vice President, Richard Atwood (2024) in a recent FP post:

Worldwide, diplomatic efforts to end fighting are failing. More leaders are pursuing their ends militarily. More believe they can get away with it. … So, what is going wrong? The problem is not primarily about the practice of mediation or the diplomats involved. Rather, it lies in global politics. In a moment of flux, constraints on the use of force—even for conquest and ethnic cleansing—are crumbling.

And then there is uncertainty of US commitment to the multilateral order as we watch the possible return of a second Trump presidency. Even without that the current Biden Administration has too often exhibited a tepid commitment to a multilateral order.

All these forces have weakened the actions of the Informals and the broader multilateral initiatives. Multilateral weakness is a threat to the current global order and raises the prospects of growing harmful global disorder.

This Post first appeared at Alan’s Newsletter, a Substack Post – https://substack.com/@globalsummitryproject

Image Credit – Japan’s Office of the Prime Minister

The Troubling Aggressiveness of the House Select Committee on China

This is an effort to unpack the US-China relationship and its impact on the current global order following the Xi-Biden Summit at the margins of the APEC Summit last month in San Francisco. It is difficult to assess the consequences of the very real US-China competition and the potential for not just competition but confrontation and conflict. As Fareed Zakaria describes it in an opinion piece in the Washington Post:

China is the largest of the challenges and the one that, in the long run, will shape the international order — determining whether the open international system collapses into a second Cold War with arms races in nuclear weapons, space and artificial intelligence.

But that nuanced assessment is not found everywhere. We’ve made passing reference in the past in this Substack posts to the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition  Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party (Select Committee).  With the most recent Select Committee Report the grim clarity of the Select Committee’s view is on full display.

This Committee, it seems to me, is the cutting edge of the reaction against decades-long ‘engagement’ strategy in US-China foreign policy. The ‘death of engagement’ came with the Trump years but has continued with some in the Biden Administration. From a position that argued that economic interdependence between the United States and China would encourage  peace and stability between the two and in the more extreme view that such engagement would even be a force for political  liberalization in China, that view is ‘dead and buried’. While the latter view of political liberalization was clearly ‘over the top’, the notion of economic interdependence promoting economic growth and prosperity and encouraging continuing focus on societal wellbeing was not then and is not now. But not for the Select Committee.

The Select Committee was created on January 10, 2023 at the beginning of the 118th Congress to, according to the recent Select Committee Report, to: “investigate and submit policy recommendations on the status of the Chinese Communist Party’s economic, technological, and security progress and its competition with the United States.” At that time, it was then Speaker Kevin McCarthy – yes the same guy who was fired from Speaker and has now left Congress –  who appointed Mike Gallagher its Chair.  Gallagher was first elected to the US House of Represenattives in 2016 and is a Marine veteran who was deployed twice to Iraq as a commander of intelligence teams, and was on now-retired Army Gen. David Petraeus’s Central Command Assessment Team.

Gallagher has been vocal about what he sees as the Biden Administration’s failure to understand the threat posed by China. In an early set of remarks as Chair Gallagher made clear what he believed to be the necessary course correction in US policy toward China. In an interview in the spring Gallagher laid out his vision:

I think there should be three pillars to our grand strategy vis-a-vis China. One is traditional military competition, hard power, and there we need multiyear appropriations for critical munition systems that need to be prepositioned in the Indo-Pacific. … The second line of effort involves ideological competition. Human rights go in this bucket. One of the things we can do in this area is make sure that the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act is fully implemented and that companies aren’t exploiting any loopholes. … The third line of effort is the most complex. It’s what I call economic statecraft, or what others refer to as “selective economic decoupling.

From early on, indeed from his opening remarks at the Select Committee’s first hearing in February, Gallagher has been explicit that he views the competition and rivalry with China as an “existential struggle”:

We may call this a “strategic competition,” but this is not a polite tennis match. This is an existential struggle over what life will look like in the 21st century — and the most fundamental freedoms are at stake.

The Select Committee is made up of the following members:

Chair: Mike Gallagher WI-08

Republican Members

Robert J. Wittman VA-01

Blaine Luetkemeyer MO-03

Andy Barr KY-06

Dan Newhouse WA-04

John R. Moolenaar MI-02

Darin LaHood IL-16

Neal P. Dunn FL-02

Jim Banks IN-03

Dusty Johnson SD-

Michelle Steel CA-45

Ashley Hinson IA-02

Carlos A. Gimenez FL-28

Ranking Member: Raja Krishnamoorthi IL-08

Democratic Members

Kathy Castor FL-14

André Carson IN-07

Seth Moulton MA-06

Ro Khanna CA-17

Andy Kim NJ-03

Mikie Sherrill NJ-11

Haley M. Stevens MI-11

Jake Auchincloss MA-04

Ritchie Torres NY-15

Shontel M. Brown OH-11

It is notable that all members of the Committee, Republican and Democrat, with the  exception of Representative Auchincloss, a Democrat, signed this most recent recent Report by the Select Committee. It underscores the growing negative  shift in Congress over the relationship with China. As pointed out recently in the NYTimes:

… that ties to China could be weaponized in the event of a conflict. It could be catastrophic for the U.S. economy or the military, for example, if the Chinese government cut off its shipments to the United States of pharmaceuticals, minerals or components for weapons systems.

Beijing’s subsidization of Chinese firms and incidents of intellectual property theft have also become an increasing source of friction. In some cases, China has allowed foreign firms to operate in the country only if they form partnerships that transfer valuable technology to local companies.

The report said that the United States had never before faced a geopolitical adversary with which it was so economically interconnected, and that the full extent of the risk of relying on a strategic competitor remained unknown. The country lacks a contingency plan in the case of further conflict, it said.

And, it reflects what is today described as ‘bipartisanship’ in US-China relations.

The current Report, titled ‘Reset, Prevent, Build: A strategy to win America’s economic competition with the Chinese Communist Party’ was intended to address, what the Report describes as an “equally critical concern: America’s economic and technological competition with the People’s Republic of China (PRC)” – one of three pillars identified by the Select Committee. The central narrative of US-China relations, according to the Select Committee was, and is:

For a generation, the United States made a bipartisan bet that robust engagement with the PRC would lead the PRC to open its economy and financial markets, which would in turn lead to reforms in the political system, greater freedom for the Chinese people, and peace and stability in the region. That bet has failed. The PRC, led by the CCP, has abandoned the path of economic and political reform, doubled down on repressive activities at home, and engaged in destabilizing activities in the region. In the decades since its accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), the PRC has consistently broken its promises, which ranged from commitments to allow wholly foreign-owned internal combustion engine vehicle manufacturing licenses in the PRC to pledges to reduce market-distorting agricultural subsidies. It committed to these reforms dozens of times and reneged each time.

At the same time, the CCP has pursued a multidecade campaign of economic aggression, fulfilling General Secretary Xi Jinping’s directive to be the “gravediggers of capitalism.” It has employed extensive mercantilist and coercive policies to hollow out the American economy and displace American workers and has wielded extensive subsidies at unprecedented levels and market access restrictions to strengthen indigenous industries and decrease the PRC’s reliance on foreign partners. At the same time, it has sought access to U.S. technology, expertise, and capital. It has often done so illegally, stealing as much as $600 billion per year of intellectual property (IP) and technology—in what the former director of the National Security Agency called “the greatest transfer of wealth” in history.

This Select Committee Report presents findings from the Committee hearings and it outlines recommendations for a strategy for the economic and technological dimensions of the competition with China. Once again there are three pillars to the described strategy with the intent to “…reset the terms of economic and technological competition and shape a strategic environment that favors the national and economic security of the United States and its allies while upholding our values.” The pillars include:

  • First, the United States must reset the terms of our economic relationship with the PRC and recognize the serious risks of economically relying on a strategic competitor;
  • Second, the United States must immediately stem the flow of U.S. technology and capital that is fueling the PRC’s military modernization and human rights abuses.
  • Third, the United States must invest in technological leadership and build collective economic resilience in concert with its allies.”

Identifying just these three pillars fails to do justice to the rather ‘breathtaking’ list of recommendations – some 150 recommendations – that covers a multitude of issues from AI to rare earth production and manufacturing. As described in the Washington Post:

The report, released Tuesday by the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, contains a broad legislative blueprint that — if followed — could ratchet up duties on Chinese goods, significantly curtail certain U.S. investments in China and further restrict or ban U.S. market access for companies including TikTok, as well as drone makers, chip manufacturers and telecommunications groups.”

Though the Select Committee Report describes something less than full throttled decoupling it is hard not to see the rising barriers to US-China trade and investment and the rising protectionism and the costs for the United States and its allies and partners from such a severe strategy as outlined in the Report.

Reading the Select Committee Report one could be forgiven if one presumed that the US-China competition was just a ‘hair’s breadth’ from a dramatic confrontation.

It leaves one unnerved and more than slightly depressed.

This was posted earlier at my Substack Post, Alan’s Newsletter – https://substack.com/@globalsummitryproject

Image Credit: Asia Freedom Institute

Maintaining ‘Entanglement’: APEC Summit Discussions including the Xi-Biden Bilateral Summit

Doing some quick catch up on the APEC Summit that was held between November 11th and 17th in San Francisco. The main event, as it turned out, was the much discussed bilateral summit between China’s Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden. While the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF) meetings to receive some attention – more for what didn’t happen than what was secured – the APEC gathering activity was dominated by US-China Bilateral Summit and there was some attention paid to the other bilateral Summit of note that between President Xi and the Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.

The Post here is constructed from several Substack Posts in Alan’s Newsletter: “Maintaining ‘Entanglement‘: APEC Summit discussions and more” and “It’s working; just not like what was anticipated: The sudden rise of Bilaterals”; and “So Success, or What? Final thoughts on the Summits in San Francisco”. Feel free to subscribe to my Substack: Alan’s Newsletter

Maintaining ‘Entanglement’: APEC Summit discussions and more

It appears that we are likely to see a meeting this month of President Xi and President Biden at the margins of the APEC Summit. I think that is a good thing. What can we, or should we, expect from such a summit of leaders of the two leading powers? While contemplating this question, I was caught by two articles written by Brookings colleague, Ryan Hass. Ryan has recently been named director of the John L. Thornton China Center and holds the Chen-Fu and Cecilia Yen Koo Chair in Taiwan Studies at Brooking is also a senior fellow in the Center for East Asia Policy Studies. Ryan has contributed two first rate articles on US-China relations – what they are, and what they need to be.*

First, there is the big question of where US-China relations are, and then where they need to be? There is little question that Ryan is correct in believing that the US and the global order would be far worse off if China were to exit the current international system fragmenting what is still a critical -and I believe necessary – ‘single international community’. As Ryan urged in one of the two contributions, this a recent Foreign Affairs piece:

Washington should aim to preserve a functioning international system that supports U.S. security and prosperity—and that includes China rather than isolates it. Meanwhile, the United States should maintain a strong military to deter China from using force against the United States or its security partners and seek to sustain an overall edge over China in technological innovation, particularly in fields with national security implications. … Washington’s goal should be to keep China entangled in a global system that regulates interstate behavior and pushes Beijing to conclude that the best path to the realization of its national ambitions would be to operate within existing rules and norms.

‘Entanglement’ as a strategic aim strikes me as ‘right on target’.

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Troubles with Global Summitry

We are definitely in the midst of Global Summitry gatherings. With the BRICS Summit just recently ended, we are deep into the G20 weekend gathering in New Delhi. So much commentary has accompanied these summitry gatherings. But I caution casual observers and readers: there are way too many assessments and conclusions drawn by all those folks that unfortunately barely pay attention to Global Summitry through much of the year. You can see this in the various ‘hair on fire’ commentaries in the assessments and consequences of the actions of key players in both the BRICS and now especially with the G20. Too many declarations of the G20 demise; firm conclusions that China and Russia would block any consensus statement that sought to condemn Russia’s aggression against Ukraine; the fragmentation of global summitry with the rise of the BRICS plus and the demise of the G20 with leaders from Russia and China choosing to absent themselves from summit.

Now don’t get me wrong, the geopolitical pressures, particularly rising US-China competition and opposition and condemnation of Russia for its unprovoked aggression on Ukraine are impactful. The geopolitics has seemingly hindered the G20 in advancing global governance policies. Yet the global governance agenda and goals remain. Look at the G20 agenda as described by Damien Cave in the NYT:

The agenda in New Delhi includes climate change, economic development and debt burdens in low-income countries, as well as inflation spurred by Russia’s war in Ukraine. If members can reach consensus on any or all of these subjects, they will produce an official joint declaration at the end.

In the ‘hair on  fire’ camp here is a piece by Alec Russell in the FT

The countdown to the talks was dominated by news that Xi was not going to attend. This was widely seen as a major blow to the G20, and an acceleration of the shift to a world in which a China-led bloc is facing off against a US-led one, with many countries hovering in the middle.

But the collective global governance effort has not been stymied. Indian efforts to reach consensus have proven successful. The G20, thanks to India, has released the Declaration a day early. Our good fortune. As described by the Indian Sherpa the Declaration was:

… a complete statement with 100% unanimity” that highlights India’s “great ability to bring all developing countries, all the emerging markets, China, Russia, everybody together at the same table and bring consensus.

He went on:

Urging adherence to the United Nations Charter, the New Delhi statement says: “All states must refrain from the threat or use of force to seek territorial acquisition against the territorial integrity and sovereignty or political independence of any state. The use or threat of use of nuclear weapons is inadmissible.

So there we are, a consensus statement has been issued. As often is the case, the document was not short, some 29 pages of declaration plus pages of annex.  Nevertheless it ended on a ‘high note’:

81. We reiterate our commitment to the G20 as the premier forum for global economic cooperation and its continued operation in the spirit of multilateralism, on the basis of consensus, with all members participating on an equal footing in all its events including Summits. We look forward to meeting again in Brazil in 2024 and in South Africa in 2025, as well as in the United States in 2026 at the beginning of the next cycle. We welcome Saudi Arabia’s ambition to advance its turn for hosting the G20 Presidency in the next cycle. We also look forward to the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2024 as a symbol of peace, dialogue amongst nations and inclusivity, with participation of all.

But a reading of the Declaration raises again the question: what success has in fact been achieved? As Caves points out:

But how much progress has the G20 made toward its ambitions? And what can be expected from this year’s meeting in India on Saturday and Sunday? … Then what? Often, not much, when it comes to real-world results. Most of the grouping’s joint statements since it formed in 1999 have been dominated by resolutions as solid as gas fumes, with no clear consequences when nations underperform.

‘Solid as gas fumes’. Well, in many respects the Declaration is no more than a statement of collective progress – what have we collectively identified as worthy of committing to and implementing. And, I did note, in an earlier Substack Post, Not Simply the Pace of Summitry that Leaders and their official are working toward commitment but:

So, let me at least raise in this Post, what I believe is the ‘continuum of action and commitment’ available to leaders in these various Leaders’ Summits. This continuum identifies the extent to which global governance policies have been secured. We move from the aspirational, often set out in the leaders’ declarations or communiques all the way to implementation by a country. What is evident from the continuum is that these folks are governmental leaders. And, as a result no matter what the communique announces, individual leaders’ may, or may not, actually implement a collective wish set out in a declaration.  This is well beyond just the aspirational.

The continuum, as I see it, is:  Consultation/ Cooperation/ Coordination/ Collaboration – the 4Cs of global governance progress, as I see it. Distinguishing between these concepts can be quite difficult. And of course, beyond this is, collectively achieving the actions, proposals and policies that are set out in the communiques, or announced at the Leaders’ gatherings.

And that is paydirt. Collectively achieving the actions set out in all these Summit Declarations – implementing policy in other words – is global governance success. Such implementation lies generally at the national political level, although there are instances where international organizations do in fact implement.

Bottom line: it requires a lot more than a statement in a Leaders’ Declaration to achieve global governance progress. But a number of us are watching including my colleagues at the CWD process.

This Post was originally uploaded to my Substack – Alan’s Newsletter. Feel free to subscribe.

Image Credit: Al Jazeera

 

 

The New and Rather Difficult Course of Global Order Relations

‘The Decline of US Hegemony and its Consequences for the Global Order’ – A Roundtable at the International Studies Association

ISA 2023: Exhibit, Advertise, and SponsorSo, the International Studies Association (ISA) just concluded in Montreal  after a visibly energetic in-person gathering following several years of virtual meetings only.

I was fortunate enough to chair the roundtable. All sorts of good folk attended including panelists: Arthur Stein, UCLA, Lou Pauly, University of Toronto, Yves Tiberghien, University of British Columbia, and Kyle Lascurettes, Lewis and Clark College. Unfortunately, our colleagues, Janice Stein could not join but I was fortunate enough to receive her speaking note and I have tried to reflect some of her thinking with the notes from other colleagues.

What didn’t surprise me, of course, during the session was the recognition from all that we have a fraught period of transition in the international system. There is the obvious Russian aggression against Ukraine and the challenge by Russia to some of the basic tenets of the current order – most notably territorial integrity and national sovereignty. There is also the obvious growing leading power tensions between the US and China and the growing threat of confrontation and conflict especially over Taiwan that currently stock the relationship. There was the obvious attention to US determination to sustain dominance even in the face of a dramatic power transition with the emergence of China and more broadly the Global South – India and other Indo-Pacific nations including Indonesia, etc. and other Southeast Asian states and then, of course, the return of Lula to Brazil.

But raw geopolitics did not dominate the discourse of the Roundtable. Equally significant in our discussions was the acknowledgement of the continuance of the intergovernmental institutions and collective actions of states to advance global order and achieve collective action within the framework of the current and evolving Order. While some decried the faltering of the global institutions, nevertheless, there was general acceptance that regional and other informal order-based institutions continued advance policies in various ways. AS one of my colleagues Kyle Lascurettes noted: “There is a truly global rules-based order that stands a good chance of outliving American hegemonic decline. But the so called “liberal” or “Western” rules-based order is and will be in trouble.” Indeed, the liberal order or the Liberal International Order (LIO) disappeared, I’d argue with the Global Financial Crisis” in 2008 but the Global Order does indeed remain. And, as Yves Tiberghien focusing on the dramatic power transition suggested: “today is a time of disruption and transition – a special phase. Major shocks, change, crises, innovation will take place over the next 1-2 decades … Also shift in awareness. Western dominated order was an anomaly of last 200 years, with a rise phase for 300 years before that. Return of multiple voices all over the world. Return to a diverse, polymorphic, poly polarity.” As Jagannath Panda recently wrote in an EAF blog on March 20, 2023:  “Obituaries of the US-led liberal international order may be exaggerated, but the shift towards multipolarity is in motion.”

And what then do we have as the Global Order, and how will it advance. Arthur Stein recalled the fragile nature of the Order, which he described for me in his opening chapter of my 2008 edited volume – Can the World be Governed? The global order, he wrote then, and repeated at our Roundtable was:  ‘a weakly confederal world’. As he said at the time (2008, 52) : ”In fact, one could argue not only that multilateralism is an existential reality but that weak confederalism is the nature of modern reality.”

So the LIO has faded,  and what remains is the global RBIO (rules-based international order). Weaker and less collaborative – indeed as Arthur pointed out, the low hanging fruit of cooperation has passed and it is and will be increasingly difficult to reach collaborative solutions . But as Yves points out that there is continuing support for aspects of the Order including with China where Yves notes the significant China support for COP15 the Conference on  Biodiversity where the multilateral conference came together to agree on a new set of goals to guide global action through 2030 and to halt and reverse nature loss and the recently concluded agreement on the text for the critical High Seas Treaty. The challenge for the leading powers is to maintain a forward collaborative thrust, and as Lou Pauly warned, it is critical for the US to accept: “The challenge is to overcome perennial tendencies toward either insularity or spasmodic over-extension, toward temporizing on necessary decisions, toward shifting the costs of adjustment to the relatively poor internally, and toward exporting the rest of those costs to other countries.” It will not be easy; and Arthur reminded us that American domestic politics has been a problem since 1919 and continues today with the failure to approve through the US Senate, international agreements and the often strained effort to use executive power.

As Janice Stein alludes to in her notes: “Plurilateral and minilateral institutions – from AUKUS to IPEF to Trade and Technology Councils will be the principal sites of innovation. I have called this process “taking it offsite.” New institutions are being stood up, led by the willing, who set rules and invite others to join if they wish. One could argue that we are entering a period of start-up innovation in the creation of new, smaller, more flexible, and more focused institutions.

Although Janice may be a touch pessimistic over multilateral collaborative action, the Global Order has its worked cut out for it to avoid great power conflict and achieve critical global governance policies in climate, global finance, global health and much more.

 

Image Credit: ISA

Focusing on the China-West Dialogue Project (CWD); Advancing Global Governance; and Improving US-China Relations

Now, turning back to the Global Summitry Project (GSP) and the Vision20 – collective efforts of Yves Tiberghien, Professor of Political Science and Konwakai Chair in Japanese Research at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Colin Bradford, nonresident Senior Fellow from Brookings  and myself, the Director of the Global Summitry Project. We have initiated various research initiatives.

A critical major effort over some three years has been the China-West Dialogue Process (CWD). The CWD has been Co-Chaired with Colin Bradford, the lead Co-Chair of the CWD and myself. This initiative has held some twenty plus virtual gatherings and many participants are set to gather in person for the first time in years at the Global Solutions Summit in Berlin May 15-16th <https://www.global-solutions-initiative.org/programs/china-west-dialogue/?utm_source=MASTER_Verteiler&utm_campaign=33fe63ffef-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_11_11_10_44_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_4f4e08bb85-33fe63ffef-447373003> to focus on US-China relations and assess how the G20 can advance critical, and dramatically needed global governance issues – global debt management, climate change policy, global food security and health security.

What is required, however, and is currently missing, is that the two leading powers turn their minds to such critical global governance policy efforts – both bilateral and multilateral.  From the beginning the CWD has targeted first Trump policy and now Biden foreign policy. Trump Administration officials made it clear that ‘engagement with China’ born in the Nixon Administration was at an end. Both Administrations called for competition though not for conflict. The outcome so far, especially for bilateral relations has been dismal.

As my Co-Chair Colin Bradford wrote on March 7th: “The strategic competition between the US and China is real and must be accepted and managed. But the confrontational narratives of this binary relationship are dominating and weakening global leadership and governance and present a threat to the global order.”   As the Editorial of the NYTimes, today, March 12th, urges: “Americans’ interests are best served by emphasizing competition with China while minimizing confrontation. Glib invocations of the Cold War are misguided. It doesn’t take more than a glance to appreciate that this relationship is very different. Rather than try to trip the competition, America should focus on figuring out how to run faster, …” <https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/11/opinion/china-us-relationship.html?referringSource=articleShare>. Competition is not the problem for the Biden Administration; but collaborative policy making certainly appears to be. And current policy has made it more difficult. All one needs to do is to examine the interaction of the Biden Administration and the Chinese Government and Party on “balloon gate”. As Paul Herr of the Chicago Council identifies in his post at EAF: <https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2023/03/12/ballooning-mistrust-in-the-us-china-relationship/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter2023-03-12> “Washington and Beijing’s response to the appearance of a Chinese surveillance balloon over the United States in February 2023 illustrates several aspects of the current US–China relationship that will make it very difficult to reverse the downward spiral in bilateral ties. The episode displayed mutual distrust, latent hostility, a failure to communicate and the adverse impact of internal politics on how the two sides deal with each other.”

As the CWD has identified at the GSI CWD Website – <https://www.global-solutions-initiative.org/programs/china-west-dialogue/> “The CWD’s fundamental goal is to help reshape the narratives and behaviours of US-China relations from friction to function by engaging other middle and major powers and emerging powers in a reframed China-West relations in G20 processes and other public forums. The aim of the Project is to identify new political dynamics that yield more productive relations in the international system.” At the CWD has identified, and noted by Colin Bradford on March 7th: “The CWD has concluded that the G20 is the most important platform for profiling and actualizing these alternative political dynamics in the year-long official G20 processes, which could enable convergence on systemic threats and ease geopolitical tensions.”

It is a challenging  goal in the face of current difficult US-China relations – but crucial for settling global order relations that have become ‘so rocky’ and unsettled in the last several years.

March 12, 2023

 

Competing and Collaborating – Dealing with Today’s Geopolitics and Global Governance

It is an eventful several weeks. Most dramatically the 20th Party Congress of the Chinese Communist Party has launched – indeed it is approaching its conclusion. There is little doubt that Xi Jinping will claim a third term ending the effort by earlier leaders to limit leadership to two terms. His statements will likely be our best guide to Chinese foreign policy for the immediate future. But more on that in a future blog post.

And then there’s the Biden Administration’s release of the National Security Strategy (NSS). The NSS explains the security priorities of the administration to both Congress and the American public and is a legislatively mandated document.This strategic document was about to be released in February of this year but was delayed as the Russia-Ukraine war loomed. With its release just a few days ago, we get some big picture framing for Biden Administration security and foreign policy. Indeed, the advance press call held by Jake Sullivan, the United States National Security Advisor to President Joe Biden, on the day of the document’s release provides an interesting summary and insight of current US policy. Jake sets it out:

The fundamental premise of the strategy is that we have entered a decisive decade with respect to two fundamental strategic challenges. The first is the competition between the major powers to shape the future of the international order. And the second is that while this competition is underway, we need to deal with a set of transnational challenges that are affecting people everywhere, including here in the United States — from climate change to food insecurity, to communicable diseases, to terrorism, to the energy transition, to inflation.

 

And this strategy makes clear that these shared challenges are not marginal issues, they are not secondary to geopolitics, but they operate on a plane alongside the competition — the geopolitical competition with major powers.

 

Now, of course, there are tensions between trying to rally cooperation to solve these shared challenges and trying to position ourselves effectively to prevail in strategic competition. But there are also ways in which these are reinforcing. And we believe fundamentally that the core elements of what the United States must do in the years ahead is — are the same for both sets of challenges.

 

Specifically, we need to invest in the underlying sources and tools of American power and influence, especially our strength here at home, both for the purpose of effective competition and for the purpose of being set up to rally the world to solve shared challenges.

 

Second, we need to build the strongest possible coalition of nations to enhance our collective influence, both to shape the global strategic environment and to address these transnational threats that require cooperation to succeed. And finally, we need to set the rules of the road for the 21st century in critical areas — from emerging technologies in cyberspace, to trade, economics, investment, and more — both so that the international order continues to reflect our values and our interests and so that the international order is better designed to be able to take on the challenges ahead.

 

So this decisive decade is critical both for defining the terms of competition, particularly with the PRC, and for getting ahead of massive challenges that if we lose the time in this decade, we will not be able to keep pace with most notably the climate crisis, but other challenges as well.

 

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