Rising to a Summit – Australia’s Kevin Rudd and US-China Leaders

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Kevin Rudd, the former Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Australia has been on the “speechifying path” recently – I guess that’s what comes with others running the show.  He has been in North America and in the granddaddy of  foreign policy journals – Foreign Affairs – he has provided an interesting addition to the examination of US-China relations – “Beyond the Pivot: A New Road Map for US-Chinese Relations“.  But my suggestion is that rather than a road map his piece is more detour as he describes contemporary global summitry and how summitry today can be used to achieve both progress and stability in this most important of great power relations.

Now I must say I am a fan of Rudd – far more knowledgeable about, and interested in, international relations and international policy than most contemporary leaders. He has written a serious piece on US-China relations.  Shining a light on the new leaders and what this new leadership should examine probably would have been enough for me but in addition he has become a strong proponent for advancing the US-China relationship by a regular series of summits between the leaders – Xi Jinping and Barack Obama.  While I am never one to ‘pooh pooh’ summit advocacy, I think our former Australian leader has missed the contemporary structure of summitry and the effective means to influence contemporary regional and international stability.

So let’s drop back for a moment and examine global summitry.  Now at the global summitry project here at the Munk School of Global Affairs the working definition of global summitry is:

The   variety   of   actors – international   organizations, transgovernmental networks, states and select non-state entities – involved in the organization and execution of global politics and policy.   Global summitry is concerned with the architecture, the institutions and most critically the political and policy behavior and outcomes in global governance.

This is not your old style summitry.  It is not primarily about the “great man” theory of summit leadership – you know key leaders gazing intently across from each other determined to avoid conflict, or advance a new strategic direction – be they Chamberlain and Hitler or Kennedy and Khrushchev or a little closer to Rudd’s theme – Mao and Nixon .

I have pressed the case in this Rising BRICSAM blog and will again in the new ejournal Global Summitry we are about to launch at the Munk School of Global Affairs that to look at these leaders summits alone,  referring here particularly to the apex of such summitry today – the informal and now annual G20 Leaders Summit –  misses the better part of the structure of international governance.  Today a significant structure underpins and motivates summitry.  I call this view the ‘Iceberg Theory of Global Governance‘.   In the case of the G20 there are: the periodic meetings of the finance and central bank governors; the sherpa meetings – the personal representative of the leaders – where the agendas are put together, the meetings of the Working Groups – and there are more than a few, the meetings and reports from the traditional IFIs including, the IMF, World Bank, others, the transgovernmental regulatory organizations like the FSB, BCBS – you get the picture – a large largely unstructured structured institutional network that feeds the periodic meetings and moves the agenda forward to completion in many circumstances.

I think Rudd is rather too enamored with the old frame of global summitry.  Rudd urges that the United States choose the following course:

A third possibility would be to change gears in the relationship altogether by introducing a new framework for cooperation with China that recognizes the reality of the two countries’ strategic competition, defines key areas of shared interests to work and act on, and thereby begins to narrow the yawning trust gap between the two countries.  Executed properly, such a strategy would do no harm, run few risks, and deliver real results.  … A crucial element of such a policy would have to be the commitment to regular summitry.

As he points out there are many informal initiatives between the two great powers, “[b]ut none of these can have a major impact on the relationship, since in dealing with China, there is no substitute for direct leader-to-leader engagement.”  As a consequence Rudd urges:

The United States therefore has a profound interest in engaging  Xi personally, with a summit in each capital each year, together with other working group meetings of reasonable duration, held in conjunction with meetings of the G20, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, and the East Asia Summit.

But the governments also need authoritative point people working on behalf of the national leaders, managing the agenda between summits and handling issues as the need arises.  In other words, the United States needs someone to play the role that Henry Kissinger did in the early 1970s, and so does China.

Now Rudd suggests that for an agenda the leaders need to then take one or more issues that are currently bogged down and “work together to bring them to successful conclusions” and he suggets tackling the stalled Doha Round issues, climate-change negotiations, nuclear nonproliferation or specific outstanding items on the G20 agenda.  Rudd concludes:

Progress on any of these fronts would demonstrate that with sufficient political will all around, the existing global order can be made to work to everyone’s advantage, including China’s.

Now Rudd doesn’t end there but has suggestions for the regional dimension including obviously the island disputes and a protocol to address incidents at sea; and on the bilateral matters Rudd urges that military-to-military contact be upgraded and the talks should be insulated from the ups and downs of the US-China relationship.

Now there is value in urging bilateral summits.  But let’s not turn these current global summit efforts into a G2 – there is much suspicion already around the high table of an implicit bilateral power consortium. An explicit effort of this sort could only undermine collective summitry efforts.  So let’s avoid China and the US dealing as a central agenda with the global agenda of the G20 or the EAS Summit.  And let’s build this new summit network off of let’s say the bilateral S&ED (Strategic and Economic Dialogue).  Here groups tackle bilaterally through a vast network of national officials and ministries the bilateral issues that raise tensions and conflict in US-China relations.

I have heard that President Obama, following the G20 Toronto Summit, complained that he was meeting all the same leaders from one summit to another.  I hope his officials pointed out that that was exactly the point.  So for both Obama and Xi, the G20 or APEC or EAS remains part of global governance structure that is needed for collective discussions and decision-making – leave the bilateral to the bilaterals.

And as for the military-to-military discussions I suspect it still a vain hope to expect these meetings to be insulated from the competitiveness and rivalry that remains an element of the great power relationship. However, I would think the building of a more structured and regularized network dedicated to the S&ED – its tasking and summit meetings – could in the long run insulate the military discussions from the displays of political displeasure.

There is clearly a case for global summitry for the US-China relationship it is just not the model Rudd suggests.

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A Compelling Counterweight? – The Role of the BRICS in Global Summitry

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So the 5th BRICS Summit has come and gone in Durban South Africa.  The first BRICS Summit in Africa; the first hosted by the newest BRICS member South Africa; and the first to be attended by the new Chinese leader, Xi Jinping.  I am sure there are a number of other firsts but that will do for the moment.

For the world’s media there were these persistent questions –  what is this organization?  What does it represent?  Do we need to take any notice of it or is this a leader-made media opportunity?

For the experts the questions weren’t really all that much different.  It is not at all clear how to assess the impact and influence of this Leaders Summit?  And where are we to place this annual leaders gathering in the larger architecture of global summitry?

First, and barely mentioned by either the experts or the global media is the fact that all these BRICS countries are also members of the G20 Leaders Summit.  Indeed Russia is not just a member of this leaders gathering but is also a member of the G8 – extant since the late ’90s – and hosting the G20 this coming September in St. Petersburg.  Oh and it will shortly host the G8.

By now even the most casual observer knows the annual summit’s origin – at least with respect to the name.  Jim O’Neill of Goldman Sachs fame created the BRIC grouping – Brazil, Russia, India and China – as an investment monicker for these large emerging market countries  – only to see it appropriated by leaders from those very same countries first by ministers from these countries in 2008 and then in an annual leaders meeting beginning in 2009 at Yekaterinburg in Russia.  The original four were joined by South Africa in 2011 at the Summit in Sanya in China.

So what are we to make of this grouping?  Is it a developing country alliance – a magnet for developing country concerns; a caucus of large emerging market economies within the G20; or some kind of counterweight  – whether in the G20 or not – to the traditional and dominant states in the fashioning and future organization of the global economy.

Let’s start with their accomplishments.  At the end of the day analyzing their decisions is an important aspect of global summitry, and worthy of some attention.  Like the G7/8 and the G20, the BRICS leaders issue a declaration at the end of each gathering.  Now these communiques have been worked on by Sherpas, personal representatives of the leaders, and officials long before the conclusion of the meeting.  The current communique issued, the eThekwini Declaration – you can find it at the official BRICS website – or use the BRICS website at the University of Toronto – brought to you by my colleague, Professor John Kirton and the students at University of Toronto as well Marina Larionova of the Higher School of Economics in Moscow and her colleagues.

Well the communique is lengthy and I am afraid not terribly edifying.  I was asked by various media outlets what I thought the leaders had to accomplish to consider the Durban Summit a success.  I suggested two concluded policies were necessary:  the creation of the new BRICS Development Bank (see paragraph 9); and then the Contingent Reserve Arrangement (paragraph 10).  But neither was concluded notwithstanding that the Statement declared that both would be established.  All the critical detail for both projects still need to be worked out at this point and who knows when, and whether, the BRICS officials will be able to do so.

One other matter seemed to raise interest over the collective influence of the BRICS – this a possible the statement on Syria. Just before the Durban Summit began Bashar al-Assad appealed to the BRICS leaders to help end the two-year conflict in Syria.  The appeal raised all sorts of possibilities for involvement of these countries – especially given that Russia but also China – had resisted muscular international efforts, including at the UN, to end the Syrian civil war.  So here would be a collective effort in security cooperation among the 5 states.  It might bring influence.  Paragraph 26 speaks to the BRICS-Leaders’ concerns at the Syrian situation.  But other than a statement to permit “unimpeded access to humanitarian organizations” – possibly provision of assistance without notification to the current government, which would be a change in policy – the statement evidenced little in the way of a new initiative.

So a reading of the Declaration reveals little in the way of effective decision making.  In reading the experts and the more enthusiastic officials – read that at least as Jacob Zuma –  the pendulum swings in the direction of some kind of counterweight – to the traditional states especially the United States.   And this view pushes in the direction of suggesting that the global economy and the traditional institutions – World Bank and IMF have failed to adjust and accommodate the rise of these large emerging market economies and that the BRICS somehow can force the pace.  Now we all can agree that the reforms promised have failed to keep pace with the promises made at the time of the global financial crisis; but how the BRICS will bring about a more rapid change – I’m afraid I don’t see it though my colleague Oliver Stuenkel at Post Western World thinks it – or at least the BRICS bank possibly will:

The answer is that while emerging powers seek a larger role within the existing framework, they do not feel established powers are willing to provide them with the adequate power and responsibility – reforms at the World Bank and the IMF have been too slow, and not far-reaching enough. The World Bank remains, despite its name, essentially a Western-dominated institution in the eyes of emerging powers.  It is difficult to read the creation of the BRICS Development as anything other than that.

Oliver then swings in a very Brazilian direction – that is “state-led economic growth sustained by strong development banks.”  This is the possible BRICS consensus.  And while there is some attention in the Declaration, see paragraph 18, to what is called State Owned Companies (SOCs) and encouragement to explore cooperation among these companies, there is little substance you can point to to suggest that the development model is the foundation for the BRICS.

So while a counterweight remains possible motivation for the BRICS how is it shaped in the context of the BRICS?  Many experts have referred to the BRICS and the character of consensus, or lack thereof.  On the latter experts from the traditional countries have alluded repeatedly to the lack of consensus.  My friend and colleague from the WTO, John Hancock writing recently  in Canada’s Globe and Mail targeted this feature of the BRICS:  “But ironically as the BRICS grow more powerful, they also grow more fractious.”  Now John acknowledges that the lack of consensus is not restricted to the BRICS, but like-mindedness has always been overrated whether at the BRICS or the G8 or the G20.  What’s important, as I argued above, is what gets decided and as we can see from this current Summit there is a long way to go.  John suggests, however, that there may be substance to the notion of a counterweight:

The only thing the BRICS clearly share is a smouldering resentment of Western dominance, and a palpable desire for their own place in the sun. Russia is still smarting from its loss of superpower status.  China has not forgotten the humiliations of the 19th and early 20th centuries.  India still carries heavy colonial baggage, and the South Africa carries even heavier baggage from its grim apartheid past.  If your enemy’s enemy is your friend, then the BRICS at least have that in common.

Is it enough?  Well rhetorically, maybe but on a developmental level, its seems far fetched. And as John concludes, “But shared covetousness doe not a common agenda make.”

There is no obvious answer at this juncture as to what the BRICS represents but I’m willing to bet that in the medium and longer term. we are far more likely to see the BRICS acting as a caucus within the G20 than anything else. And we have seen it acting that way already.  For instance in building policy consensus for committing funds to the IMF, that could be used among other things for the eurozone crisis, the willingness to commit among all the BRICS was concluded after just such a caucus gathering persuading Brazil to commit though it had expressed doubts publicly.  Indeed it would be a sad outcome if the BRICS ended up as a counterweight when much hope has been expressed over the expansion of the G8 to the G20 exactly because it brings together at the global summitry level leaders from the large emerging market countries and the traditional states.

As a parting comment there was much idle discussion at the conclusion of the Summit over the name with some suggesting the BRICS should be renamed the BRICSI as there was much discussion about extending membership to include Indonesia.   But I and others took care of that long ago – so a sign off for now from Rising BRICSAM

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The ‘China Dream’ or ‘A New Type of Great Power Relationship’

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Experts are trying to puzzle through exactly what Chairman Xi Jinping has in store for US-China relations now that the power transfer has been completed in China and Xi has been named President. There appear to contending views from the US side on the future of the US-China relationship.  There is one school – attractive for the “China Threat” and grand strategy types – that focus on Xi’s reference to “The China Dream”.  For some others, myself included, less ‘exercised’ by the China Dream possibilities and intrigued – but aware of the empty content so far in Xi’s proposal – a reference to “a new type of major or great power relationship”.  It is worth exploring both to try and tease out Xi’s think, if we can.

The China Dream 中国 之梦 －zhong guo zhi meng

Many of the China Threat types have raised concern over Xi Jinping’s reference to the ‘China Dream’.  Though it is officially described as the ‘rejuvenation of the nation’, the focus for most is President Xi’s series of talks to the military on the ‘China Dream’.

This title, as has been described by a number of sources, also reflects a book that was written some 3 years ago by Colonel Liu Mingfu of the PLA and a professor at National Defense University.  As described by Jeremy Page, a Beijing reporter for the WSJ in a recent article entitled “For Xi, a ‘China Dream’ of Military Power”,  the book by Liu Mingfu predicted a “marathon contest for global domination”.  Though suppressed soon after the publication – it was viewed apparently, as likely to cause damage to US-China relations – a new edition was approved just shortly after President Xi gave the China Dream speech.  And in the run up to the final leadership transition Xi Jinping has made it a point to speak to various groups of the military.  Chairman Xi, for instance,  told a group of sailors late last year aboard a guided-missile destroyer that had patrolled in the hotly disputed South China Sea that “To achieve the great revival of the China nation, we must ensure there is a unison between a prosperous country and strong military.”

All this has led many in US diplomatic, strategic beltway and analyst circles to believe, according to Jeremy Page that:

… Mr. Xi is casting himself as a strong military leaders at home and embracing a more hawkish worldview long outlined by the generals who think the US is in decline and China will become the dominant military power in Asia by midcentury”.

So those attracted to this view and Xi’s efforts to woo the military see:

… Mr. Xi is setting the stage for a prolonged period of tension between China and neighbors, as well as for a potentially dangerous tussle for influence with a US that is intent on reasserting its role as the dominant Pacific power.

In setting out apparently on this more military and aggressive policy, Xi appears to be setting aside the doctrine expressed by Deng Xiaoping: 韬光养晦 (taoguang yanghui) – concealing one’s capabilities; biding one’s time; to have an achievement.  Many have identified the more assertive behavior of the former leadership since about 2010 – in the South China Sea and more recently in the East China Sea, as a product of greater national aspiration and great power determination.  According to Xinhua news, President Xi expressed the following to the Politburo

… but we will absolutely not abandon our legitimate rights and interests and absolutely  cannot sacrifice core national interests.

The closeness to the military and the reflections on a more aggressive approach has led President Xi to issue orders to focus on “real combat” and “fighting and winning wars.” It certainly appears an evident contrast to the previous leadership of Hu Jintao who seemed to keep a very low military profile. But President Xi may well have adopted various territorial and nationalist perspectives that were seen to be confined before to largely military hawks to secure strong military loyalty.  Why, is still unclear.  It may be to secure the loyalty of the military as Xi prepares, perhaps. for serious economic reform.  We really don’t know, though there is much speculation.  Time will tell.

But then on reflection while the policy shift may be now, military capabilities are quite another.   What China can bring to this “party” are not anywhere near what the US currently possesses and deploys in the Asia-Pacific.  And the China Dream at least as expressed by Liu Mingfu is decades away.  And the desire to build the military resources of the Chinese military – aircraft carriers and stealth fighter jets – are costly weapons systems that may yet prove to be yesterdays war tools.  As today’s platforms become increasingly vulnerable, serious military spending on today’s costly weapons systems may prove to be a serious and not very effective weapons path.  And I always look at the official weapons expenditures and double the amount. Why?  Well at least in the recent past China – state and party – have spent about as much on internal security as they have spent on the military.   This is not a Party operating from strength, but perhaps, fatal weakness.

In the final analysis the China Dream is founded on US decline.  Today the military gap between China and the US remains demonstrably large (for 2013 China is proposing – at least officially – a budget of $119 billion while the US budget calls for $553 billion) .  The key player in this relationship is surely the United States – as much as it is China.  While there are voices that seek the US to lower its profile in the international system or that the US can shift to some notion of offshore balancing to get others to do what is necessary, reduce defense costs and maintain US influence, the reality appears to be that the US is moving in the opposite direction in the Asia-Pacific.  And while the Defense Department will be required to participate in the ‘right-sizing’ of the US budget, including weapons procurement, US decline does not appear to be evident – or on the horizon.  There is however, one policy change that could alter the strategic equation and nudge US-China relations toward a “New Type of Great Power Relationship”.

新型大国 关系 – (Xin xing daguo guanxi) – new type of great power relationship

So alert to the potential turn in relations, yet not entranced by the China Dream perspectives, what then of a new type of great power relationship.  As I mentioned earlier there is nothing at the moment that fills this particular diplomatic and strategic vessel.  But in reflecting back on the conversations that a number of colleagues and I had in January in Beijing at the Harvard-Beida conference I came away with one overwhelming conclusion – China experts – possibly not officials  but maybe – believe that the Obama pivot is a policy targeting China and indeed a strategy all about China and US determination to contain China and remain the hegemon in the region and beyond.  Moreover the China experts suggest that the US pivot will give comfort to Vietnam, the Philippines and most especially Japan to advance more aggressive stances with China in the continuing “Island Disputes.”   Especially with the latter, US diplomacy can be effective in alerting allies quietly, especially Japan that the US has little appetite for crisis and no appetite for conflict, intended or not.  The same needs to be conveyed quietly to China.  Publicly the US needs to avoid some of the more pointed language that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton publicly prone to express, though she claimed to be advancing a neutral stance.  This even-handedness is obviously most difficult with the Japanese, where security guarantees tilt US statements.  Overall the US needs to frame the Pivot in a wider frame of diplomatic and economic engagement – and away from a military focus.

So a tuning of US policy toward greater diplomatic and economic policy in the Asia-Pacific is the bedrock for a new type of great power relationship.  In addition while greater competitiveness is evident in the US-China relationship, there are possibilities of collaboration.  In a recent assessment of the US-China relationship at the China US Focus David Shambaugh, from George Washington University,  and long time observer of China and the US-China relationship acknowledges  the deep interdependence of the two in what he sees as a ” … predominantly competitive relationship with a major power with which it is simultaneously deeply interdependent.”  He characterizes the need for a new relationship as:

For all these reasons, President Xi Jinping and the new Chinese leadership is wise to put forward the desire for a “new type of major power relationship.”  It is definitely needed – because the “old type” of competitive and suspicious relations is now predominant in the bilateral relationship.  … While establishing such a “new type of major power relations” is a desirable aspiration, this observer believes that “managing competition” is the more feasible reality. To establish a relationship of “competitive coexistence”  is more realistic.

It would appear that David has bowed – at least a little – to a more contemporary framing of the US-China relationship – it is primarily competitive.  It leans in the direction of the characterizations expressed by the IR China scholar Yuan Xuetong, the Director of the Institute if International Studies at Tsinghua University, accepting the current enmity and rejecting superficial friendship, extending the meaning of the traditional Chinese perspective –  (非敌 非友)  (fei di fei you) – “neither friend nor foe”.

亦敌 亦友－ (yi di, yi you) –  both friend and foe

The traditional expression it seems to me to leans too far in the direction of a competitive relationship.  The slight turn of the traditional phrase, above, which I have commented on in earlier blog posts appears to me to better situate the two – highly interdependent powers in a periodically competitive relationship.  So unlike earlier competitive power transitions, this relationship is defined as much by high economic interdependence and various potential global or near global collaborative leadership settings, e.g. APEC, EAS and the G20. This doesn’t suggest that the road map to a new type of great power relationship is self evident or inevitable but  it does set off this competitive relationship from the host of earlier power transitions – whether US-Soviet or Germany and Great Britain before World War I.

It leaves me to suggest that there are a number policy steps that the US – and for sure China can take – that  can help build a new type of great power relationship:

  1. As noted above the US needs to widen its “Pivot” and underscore that it is as much diplomatic and economic as it is political and security.  And I would think that the advice from Harvard’s Stephen Walt at the Harvard-Beida Conference, and then on  his return to the blogosphere, warrants policy exploration. He urged policy efforts of both positive and negative cooperation.  On the positive side the evident possibility is the DPRK and there has been some sanction cooperation between the two.  There needs to be more and that requires – I suspect President Xi – to press the PLA to bring greater reality to the DPRK military;
  2. President Xi also needs to take note of Harvard’s Joe Nye’s realistic strategic framing – only China can contain China – and that its “assertive behavior” has accomplished exactly that in the region;
  3. President Xi can take a giant leap – and I suspect this is more in the realm of wishful thinking – and put to the test the US position that the TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership) is not designed as an anti-China economic initiative, by signalling its interest in joining the talks  now that Japan appears to have signaled the same; and
  4. Then in the realm of perception and policy followup both the Chinese and US leadership and the cognoscenti circling the leadership need to avoid framing the relationship in “Cold War” terms.  It is all too comfortable for policy makers and the military to see the relationship in growing competitive even growing rivalrous terms.  Perceiving it may in fact hasten it.  Now that is really a bad idea!

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Cold Reality – Economic Growth Among the BRICS

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I was caught by the recent FT article chronicling a report from Goldman Sachs that concluded “that the global economy will expand at a faster rate this decade than in any of the previous three.”  What powers this enhanced growth, according to Goldman Sachs and its celebrity economist, Jim O’Neill, are the original BRICs – excluding therefore South Africa.

With the economic growth of the BRICS in mind I decided to look a bit more closely at the economic growth.  My inquiry produced the table below on economic growth.

Economic Growth for the BRICS

Country Current Estimate 2013 Recent – 2012 Previous -2011
China 7.5% (Premier Wen) 7.8% 8.0 -9.2%
India 6.1% to 6.7% (Finance) 5% 6.5%
Brazil 3.26% (Finance) .98% 2.7%
Russia 3.3% (World Bank) 3.4% (Federal Statistics) 4.3%
South Africa 2.6% (Reserve Bank) 2.5% 3.5%

A couple things are apparent.  First of course O’Neill would strongly object to an examination of what I call the “Political BRICS”.  The Political BRICS is the global summit leadership that has met annually now from 2009 – though ministers met before that.  For O’Neill, and publicly stated, he argued that South Africa should not be included in his conception of the BRICS.  All of his original members rank  within the top ten of GDP growth.  South Africa in contrast is ranked only 26th (all this according to the CIA’s World Facts Handbook).

It is also apparent from this cursory examination that China still stands out from the rest for rapid growth – well beyond any of the other BRICS.

And finally it would appear that current estimates of economic growth are decidedly moderated from recent years.  Moreover, if you follow the estimations of economic growth mixed signals appear to be the ‘order of the day’.  India is struggling with inflation; Brazil has generally healthy growth, but not any way the “China growth rates” at least in recent years.  And of course South African growth has been sputtering along and there are estimates that South Africa will lose its place as the largest African economy to Nigeria.

Now I suppose it is all relative.  The article I alluded to was written in part to raise concerns over European growth and in particular Eurozone growth. In that light the projected growth from the BRICS looks solid in comparison to the Eurozone.  But still it does seem to me that the economic growth – with the exception of China – seems rather modest.  And there is a constant mixed bag of reporting that raises the capacity of China to continue to grow at an above 7 percent rate.

Am I wrong?

 

Democracy and Economic Development in India

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Well once again I must apologize for a prolonged silence. These past two weeks I have been travelling through parts of India most particularly Delhi and Agra and then through Rajasthan – Jaipur, Udaipur, Jodhpur and Jesilmar – etc.  This trip was deliberately far from the more rarified halls of global governance discourse.  It is always good to step away from the conference schedules and think tank encounters. Such action is an effort to get some tangible feel for the country.  But I always find it is well worth it – no more so than India.  India from the palaces and forts and bazaars is, as I found, an endlessly fascinating place.  The colors, smells and busy human activities are enticing and suggest possibilities for the future for this ancient/new land.

One of the continuing discussions I had with one of our Indian hosts was the state of progress for economic development in India.  This discussion emerged in a generally jocular discussion over the state of India’s roads.  But there was also a serious discussion as well.  It was an experience travelling on the roads through Rajasthan and Utter Pradesh.  They were, however, from a North American perspective – but for one road/expressway – quite dreadful.  The expressway was terrible for another reason that I shall relate in a moment.

These roads were filled with an enormous variety of vehicles from camel-pulled or buffalo-pulled carts, to the famous tuk tuks, to large trucks and small, bicycles and the ever-present motorbikes, all crowded on to generally badly paved and far too small carriageways.  But enough of the description.  The roads in fact are emblematic of a much larger societal issue – the tension between democracy in India – which as best as I could tell is alive and well – and the demands of development, market growth and prosperity more generally.  The ongoing discourse went something like this: the roads are inadequate for the demands of commerce, the market and people.  Their inefficiency burdens the movement of people and goods throughout the nation.  On the other side a strong Indian push back.  You, meaning me, see the roads from a “western perspective”.  These roads are satisfactory for Indian needs; Indians don’t crave what the system in North America provides.

Now it is not to say there are aren’t some expressways – I travelled on one – the Yamuna Expressway from Agra to Noida – about 10 km outside Delhi.  It is an amazing – amazing especially in the context of highways in India – but it was largely empty.  Most notably absent were the trucks – the big colorful loaded trucks.   There were some evident features that explained this rather haunting emptiness.  First there were almost no exits from Agra to Noida.  Truckers I was told prefer to connect from one community to another – offloading and taking on goods. That is impossible on this super expressway and in addition the stops really don’t accommodate trucker lifestyle, which includes stops conversation and sleep.  The end result is a magnificent highway for the tourists and individual vehicle occupants – that’s it.  Thus the critical goods and services transport is assigned to secondary hugely overcrowded roads.  Indeed in our travel from Delhi to Jaipur we ended up in a several hour delay surrounded by trucks in a very narrow stretch of this so-called main road.

So why are the roads the way they are?  And do the state of the roads threaten economic development?  Let’s look at the first issue – the terrible state of the highway network.  Here the tension with democratic wishes is evident.  Voters in the rural areas – a powerful influence in India – don’t set a high priority in enlarging and improving the road system.  This is especially the case where enlargement and improvement requires the confiscation and compensation of rural folk principally farmers.  Most farmers – with little enough land as it is – want nothing to do with shaving off portions of precious land.  Opposition abounds.  Politicians in India are not blind to the opposition and the voter impact.  So roads aren’t built, or they are built without reference to need.  Now obviously there are alternatives especially rail.  But don’t get me started on that.  My experience tells me that the rail system suffers from serious infrastructure underfunding, but I’ll need to explore further on that.

Now I don’t have the numbers on cost and time delivery but I have to assume that what I saw really suggests an inefficient costly system.  It is why many experts have come to believe that in the contest for economic growth and prosperity China and no India will achieve the better results in raising the poor from poverty.  Steven Rattner, a long time Wall Street financier and some time public policy participant has recently drawn that conclusion in a January piece in the New York Times entitled “India is Losing the Race”:

Many Westerners fervently hoped that a democratic country would triumph economically over an autocratic regime.  Now the contest is emphatically over. China has lunged into the 21st century, while India is still lurching toward it.  That’s evident not just in columns of dry statistics but in the rhythm and sensibility of each country. While China often seems to eradicate its past as it single-mindedly constructs its future, India nibbles more judiciously at its complex history. … Democratic it may be, but India’s ability to govern is compromised by suffocating bureaucracy, regular arm-wrestling with states over prerogatives like taxation and deeply embedded property rights that make implementing China-scale development projects impossible.

Maybe we “westerners” do not have the right frame of reference, as suggested by my Indian colleague, but I am willing to commit to a standard of economic growth, opportunity and increasing prosperity for India’s poor.  And right now India’s politics are failing India’s economic development needs.

What do you think?

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Debating Continuing American Global Leadership

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As a descant to the US-China relations melody, there is a rising debate at least among the cognoscenti over US global leadership.  A recent addition to that debate is a piece from International Security brought to you by Stephen Brooks and William Wohlforth of Dartmouth and John Ikenberry of Princeton.  The piece, “Don’t Come Home America: The Case Against Retrenchment” appears in the most recent winter edition of the Journal.  The examination in the Journal is one of assessing America’s grand strategies – will it be retrenchment or the continuation of US global engagement.  The authors somewhat curiously refer to an article that examines US policy in Asia by Harvard’s Joseph Nye when he was away from Harvard and at the time the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs (it is curious if only because it is approaching twenty years ago that the piece was written and refers to a largely forgotten Clintonian – Bill not Hillary – report – “United States Security Strategy for the East Asia Pacific Region”).  Events and the evolution of countries – especially China – has in my opinion significantly altered the context of the article, though its conclusions may still be valid.

In any case the authors examine US grand strategy first declaring US overlapping core strategy objectives are:

  • managing the external environment to reduce near- and long-term threats to US national security;
  • promoting a liberal economic order to expand the global economy and maximize domestic prosperity; and
  • creating, sustaining, and revising the global institutional order to secure necessary interstate cooperation in terms favorable to US interests.

For good measure though the authors recognize that “security commitments are a necessary condition of US leadership, and that leadership is necessary to pursue the strategy’s three core objectives. Without the security commitments, US leverage for leadership on both security and nonsecurity issues declines.”  There of course is the heart of the matter that US leadership/hegemony/primacy – call it what you will – remains crucial to achieving the objectives – that is US national objectives, a stable world economic and political order.  Here a reference to the 1995 Nye article is indeed helpful:

The United States is committed to lead in the Asia-Pacific region.  Our national interests demand deep engagement.  For most countries in the region, the United States is the critical variable in the East Asia security equation.  The United States is not the world’s policeman, but our forward-deployed forces in Asia ensure broad regional stability, help deter aggression against our allies, and contribute to the tremendous political and economic advances made by the nations of the region.

Now it is evident from the title of their article that three strongly favor “continuation of the globally engaged grand strategy.”  The authors in fact declare early on that such an approach is “a wholly reasonable approach to pursuing narrow US interests in security, prosperity, and the preservation of domestic liberty.”   The article then takes a long examination of the various arguments for retrenchment (I will take a look selectively at their description and evaluation of retrenchment in a follow on piece) and concludes that the cost/benefit  favors continuing US engagement – read that as global leadership. Indeed the authors suggest that critics of deep engagement overstate the costs and understate the security benefits. As the authors conclude:

Advocates of  a clean break with the United States’ sixty-year tradition of deep engagement overstate its costs, underestimate its narrow security benefits, and generally ignore its crucial wider security and nonsecurity benefits.  Many moreover, conflate the core grand strategy of deep engagement with issues such as as forceful democracy promotion and armed humanitarian intervention – important matters, but optional choices rather than defining features of the grand strategy. … In the end, the fundamental choice to retain a grand strategy of deep engagement after the Cold War is just what the preponderance of international relations scholarship would expect a rational, self interested, leading power in the United  States’ position to do.

So that ‘point finale’ of their article may indeed be right, but there are nagging concerns that accompany this favorable nod at continuing deep engagement. As pointed out earlier, the changing context in Asia – the rise of China – and the more recent assertive China posture in the region challenge US leadership.  While the bilateral security  relationships are a vital part of US deep engagement in the region, it is not an answer to how to build a competitive but still non-rivalrous relationship with this rising power.  Certainly in Beijing last month most argued for building a collaborative relationship but with a few exceptions (Stephen Walt and Nicholas Burns were exceptions as pointed out in an earlier blog post here “Looking at the ‘World’ with Two Lens“)  there are few clues as to how  do this.

More broadly there is little in deep engagement that extends beyond the primacy/hegemonic approach.  While there is a expressed desire to build the institutional structures especially of the global economy, but also the regional settings, deep engagement remains locked in primacy.  There is little that describes a more global governance, multilateral  approach. There are various nods to greater multilateralism – but ‘realistically’ for the advocates it remains an exercise about US leadership – or not.  So more collective leadership is barely a topic of discussion in deep engagement.  It is this aspect of deep engagement that is ‘broken’ – or never attended to –  and needs far more intellectual and policy examination.

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Structural Complexity in the Global System

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[Editors Note – Arthur was another expert that joined the Harvard-Beida Conference earlier in the month.]

The disjuncture between economic and military structure is not a new phenomenon.  The Cold War, certainly from the early 1960s on, consisted of military bipolarity and economic multipolarity (at a minimum, the end of the Bretton Woods order in the early 1970s signaled the end of US economic hegemony).

The post Cold War has seen military unipolarity and economic multipolarity.  In each case, economic multipolarity has meant that there have been powers capable of exerting substantial economic power but not militarily capable of global power projection.  In a sense, the current case of China is similar.  China is a global economic power, with an economic impact that extends to every continent, but militarily only a regional one.

The critical difference today is the alignment pattern.  In the past, the other centers of global economic influence were security allies of the US and dependent on the US for their military security.  Now, China is not part of a US security sphere, and the concern is that it will have in its economic orbit states that have security links to the US.  This raises a concern that did not exist in earlier periods, that of an economic power (China) that would use its economic leverage to achieve geo-strategic objectives antithetical to the US and its allies.  The result could then be economic appeasement on the part of US allies.

One place to look for this consequence is the current financial troubles of the government of Vietnam.  Will acceding to China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea be the price of a Chinese bailout of Vietnam?

Looking at the ‘World’ With Two Lens

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Final reflections on the Harvard-Beida conference on US-China relations (see previous blog posts for further information).  If I was a meteorologist, I would suggest that the weather forecast for US-China relations has gone from, partly sunny to partly cloudy.

A number of international relations experts examining the Asian architecture recently have described a growing polarity in the structure of pan Asian relations.  So, for instance Evan Feigenbaum now at the Paulson Institute (a former US official) and Robert Manning (also a former official) but now at the Atlantic Council described in “A Tale of Two Asias” in October in foreignpolicy.com that Asia today consisted first of a “Security Asia” described by the two as “a dysfunctional region of mistrustful powers, prone to nationalism and irredentism, escalating their territorial disputes over tiny rocks and shoals, and arming for conflict.”  And there was a second Asia, what the two authors called “Economic Asia”, a dynamic, integrated Asia with 53 percent of its trade now being conducted within the region itself, …”

The first pole, according to Feigenbaum and Manning  is dominated by the United States while the second has become increasingly dependent on China. For the two experts the dilemma posed by this structure is that Economic Asia is increasingly seen to be at risk by the rise of nationalism and the growing security competition in the region. As Feigenbaum and Manning have written recently in the East Asia Forum in a piece entitled, “The Problem with the Two Asias,” a response to a critical piece written by American University’s Amitav Acharya’s “Why Two Asias May be Better Than None” also posted at the East Asia Forum:

Our principal point is that Asia’s incredible economic dynamism and growing integration are at risk because of debilitating security competition and sharpening political disputes within the region, not just between the United States and China, but among Asia’s major economies as well. … Put simply, competing nationalisms and the scars of national memory remain potent forces in Asia.  And they risk undermining the economic gains that have done so much too promote integration, boost growth and foster opportunity.

At our own conference at Beida, our colleague John Ikenberry from Princeton sketched a similar two pole pan-Asian architecture.  Acknowledging a division in the structural construction between security and economics in Asia,  Ikenberry proposed that the longstanding partial US hegemonic order, as he called it, is giving way to:

In effect, as noted earlier, there increasingly are two quasi-hierarchies in East Asia.  There is an economic hierarchy led by China and a security hierarchy led by the United States. This circumstance creates constraints and dilemmas for the United States.

Now most suggest that the reassertion of classic balance of power dynamics in Asia would be detrimental to all and lead to growing friction and rivalry between the US and China and put pressure on the powers in Asia to choose one or the other.  Ikenberry puts well the unease that appears to pervade Washington circles today:

At the same time, the United States does see China today in the way it has seen potential regional hegemonic rivals in the past.  It is worried that China could amass sufficient wealth and military power to fundamentally alter East Asia. The ultimate danger is the growth of a Chinese rival that would endeavor to drive the United States out of the region and project illiberal ideas and policies outward into the world.

I think the “two poles” construction today still distorts the current Asian architecture.   Feigenbaum and Manning point to the fact that 53 percent of Asia’s trade is now conducted in an intra-regional basis identifying this datum, and others, as indicating that “Asian economies have become increasingly reliant on pan-Asian regional trade.”  But a quick comparison with other regions shows the strength of intra-Asia’s broad intra-regional trade but suggests that it is hardly excessive.  EU intra-regional trade as a percent of global export merchandise trade is 26 percent as opposed to Asia where the intra-regional trade is 16 percent.  Furthermore, any examination of global value chains would suggest that in fact long valuable chains stretch to Europe and North America.  And EU-Asia trade as a percentage of world trade comes in at 3.6 percent.  This rather too static look at intra-Asia trade  and the growing China trade presence in Asia, I believe does lead falsely to a conclusion that there is a security pole, headed by the US, matched by an economic pole dominated by China.

That being said there certainly does appear to be rising nationalist sentiment in Asia among the key players.  And there is no question that interdependence is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for stability in the global environment – though I would suggest that “complex interdependence” – globalization, generates a quality different than say the interdependence in the period before World War I.

So what conclusions can one derive from our conversations at Beida and in the surrounding informed blogosphere debate? Here is a part of what I take away from the conversations and readings:

  1. China is ‘driving the bus’ in the region in many issues – especially on the island/islets dispute – and it is driving it in the wrong direction.  China repeatedly appeals to acting only in response – a reactive stance – in the South and the East China Seas island disputes.  But for many, “one man’s reactive is too frequently aggressive behavior to the other”.  The apparent manipulation of the Cambodia host at the most recent ASEAN gathering and the continuing unwillingness to contemplate seriously a binding Code of Conduct or to put the sovereignty disputes away for cooperation on resource development, are all unhelpful and raise the temperature over these disputes.  As Joe Nye so aptly described, “only China can contain China” so as China has become more assertive China, in fact, has begun to contain China in the region (see a more developed view by Nye following the conference posted at the NYT).  So China responding
    with more measured cooperation here would be a fabulous starting point for the new China leadership if it was determined to lower the temperature;
  2. China experts need to consider abandoning a view that every action by the US has only China in mind and that all US actions are designed to contain China.  The US, in fact, has been a primary supporter of Chinese leadership building its economic strength and achieving greater prosperity for all Chinese;
  3. Much attention was paid to the overreaching of the “Pivot” both in US actions but most especially in its rhetoric.  A number of US experts were critical of what they saw as the unnecessarily aggressive statements of US officials.  One expert urged that US and China focus on solutions that preserve face for both suggesting a start with much broader exchange and cultural programs.  Another arguing the reduction in assurances by the US to China urged that the US undertake efforts to build trust.  He has urged in the past that the US could give way on the close-in surveillance of the Mainland, made unnecessary by other surveillance means.
  4. The US, according to many at the Conference needs to work very hard to  avoid “balance of power” actions.  Instead, a look at Stephen Walt’s proposals seem designed in particular avoid balance of power actions.  Walt urges (see his blog post at foreignpolicy.com) positive and negative security cooperation including the involvement of the US and China.  On the positive side he points to possible cooperation on Iran, Korea or anti-terrorism.  It does strike me that Korea is a most apt choice, especially given the DPRK’s recent threats against the US.  On the negative forms of cooperation surely greater efforts to conclude a multilateral Code of Conduct led by the US and China and useful for both sets of island disputes could be extremely valuable.

There is likely more.  Let let me conclude here nevertheless.  The cloudy forecast is a result of the insidious impact of rising nationalism in China, Japan, Korea and elsewhere.  It is time for the new China leadership and the renewed US leadership to build trust and lower the nationalist temperature throughout the Asia-Pacific region.

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The Diversity of Opinions in US-China Relations

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Two days of opinion, argument and interpretation.  That’s what I’ve just enjoyed in the smog capital of China and possibly the world – though thankful the winds have picked up and we could at least enjoy the sun by the end of the conference.

This Beijing meeting was the latest in a series of encounters between former officials from the US and China and experts from the same.  These encounters have been organized by the Kennedy School, Ash and Belfer Centers at Harvard and SIS and the Institute for China-US People-to-People Exchange at Peking University.  By one participant’s calculation this was the 8th meeting of the two groups.

So what are the possible takeaways from this meeting – subtitled, “How Can Rising China and Adjusting US Manage Their Relations and Deal with Global Challenges?”  In comparison to the November 2011 meeting in Cambridge MA, the last meeting in the series, this meeting in Beijing reflected by the speakers’ remarks and follow up, a certain sense of enhanced competitiveness – a possibly larger distance – between Chinese and US speakers and their countries over immediate issues.  Most acknowledged competition between the two powers, some suspicion over intentions and a disappointment over the lack of trust between the two.  Speakers sought to identify, in their own ways, both the source of current problems and/or obstacles in the relationship and the means to reassure China and the US thereby build greater trust and restore stability.  What is required, as suggested by one expert, is an “active cooperation.”

The other noticeable feature in the discussions over the last several days was not only the apparent growing diversity of opinion between the groups of experts but a greater diversity of opinion within the groups.  While clashing US expert views over events, intentions and policy were hardly a revelation; the variety of voices and interpretations from our Chinese colleagues was rather more surprising – an unexpected note in the discussions.

So where were the differences most evident?  Well, unlike November 2011 two sets of events were front and center in our examination of the evolving US-China relationship and posed the most marked contrasting interpretations.  The first was the series of island dispute clashes over sovereignty in both the South China and East China Seas.  The second was the description, analysis, purpose and consequences over the US Administration’s “pivot” or “rebalancing” in the Asia-Pacific.  Both event discussions laid bare the contending views of the country actions.

First, the island disputes.  For these former officials and experts, it was evident that they understood the deep differences in the two island chain disputes.  But much attention was placed on the rising friction between and among disputants.

The island disputes moved China, as one expert acknowledged, from reassurance to resolve.  As a result it appears that China’s more assertive behavior has led to many of the disputant states to encourage increased US involvement.  As one expert suggested only China could contain China and as China has become more assertive it has accomplished just that.

There was also much animated discussion over the Administration’s “pivot”.   Some of the most pointed analysis came from US experts.  Much criticism was laid out of the Administration and its intention – the seemingly aggressive use of language by high US officials in the region, the failure to acknowledge the continuity in military policy and the reduction in US assurances to China.  Experts chided the US for interference in the open disputes in particular between the Philippines and China and Vietnam and China in the South China Sea and between Japan and China in the East China Sea.  For Chinese discussants there was a growing suspicion that US actions were designed to contain and constrain China and that US intermeddling, as they saw it, had raised hopes of US support for its Asian allies and had the effect of encouraging greater belligerence among these countries, including the Philippines, Vietnam and most especially Japan.  As one expert suggested while it may not have been US intent, the pivot has put in place policies that increased US presence in region.  Chinese experts were insistent that Chinese actions were only reactive.  Though China was always particularly resolute over sovereignty questions – having endured the many years of humiliation over the foreign interventions in China – its current behavior was neither aggressive nor offensive.

The China experts also raised somewhat puzzling perspectives on US policy in the Asia Pacific region.  Many China experts were critical of the Pivot for it’s almost exclusive attention to military and strategic actions in the Asia Pacific.  They repeatedly questioned the intentions of US policy makers – pointing over and over to designs to constrain China and deny China’s rise.  But then when US experts raised the diplomatic and economic initiatives – the US agreement to join the East Asia Summit, adhere to ASEAN’s TAC – the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, the effort to build consensus for new economic agreement in the Pacific – Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) – these too raised suspicions among some China experts of a unilateral China targeting.  The TPP in particular raised suspicions of an effort to contain China through the proposed trade and regulatory arrangements with an evident effort to isolate China and to target its State-owned Enterprises. Even when it was pointed out that the TPP was in fact a creature originally of the preceding Bush Administration and not immediately connected to the Obama pivot it did not appear to allay concerns.  The incongruity remained on the table:  was the US pivot all about the strategic, or was there in fact a broad revitalization of US actions including strategic but addressing diplomatic and economic initiatives and not solely designed with China in mind.

So a sense of greater friction between the US and China pervaded the discussions.  A number of experts urged that US-China relations not slide toward traditional balance of power relations.  Such a slide could raise the real prospect of competition and growing rivalry in the Asia Pacific. Instead a number of experts suggested that the US and China work on serious issues together, even if these issues were outside the region, to help (re)build trust between these two vital powers. Looking for those issues of engagement is a central focus of a number of the experts following the meeting.

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Looking at the Big Question

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Well I am looking forward with anticipation to a conference here in Beijing that begins this evening.  Now I didn’t exactly count on clean air in Beijing – but I didn’t expect the most unbelievable  dirty air I’ve ever seen.  It is hard to believe that China’s leaders – who live in this sprawling capital – wouldn’t pull out all the stops to work on pollution reduction here and in all the very polluted cities across the nation after this weekend of dirty dangerous air in the nation’s capital.

Anyway back to the conference.  This is a Harvard University (The Kennedy School and the Belfer and Ash Centers) and the Institute of China-US  People to People Exchange, Peking University. This is the latest in a series of encounters between experts from the US and from China – with one thrown in from Canada – me – concerned with the US-China relationship.  The subtitle of the conference tells it all: “How Can Rising China and Adjusting US Manage Their Relations and Deal with Global Challenges?”

In preparation some of my Harvard and Princeton colleagues prepared a series of memorandum on the relationship.  A particularly interesting piece was prepared by Charles Maier “Ambiguous Lessons from History”.   Charlie’s principal point is that while there is something he, and others call a “Thucydean Model” –  where a rising power raises fears in the hegemonic power.  The growth of the new power, in this model, makes war inevitable.  Charlie acknowledges the hegemonic war thesis but suggests that it is in fact the entangling alliances that leads to the prospect of war between these powers.  As Charlie argues:

They were locked into a logic of bipolar rivalry such that implicitly any change in the balance of power or the “corollary of forces” must have appeared a threat to both sides.

It is this structural feature – alliance loss or gain, rather than misperceptions that led to conflict – or as he says “they arose from the geometry of the overall situation.”

What this in turn suggests is a need for analysts to examine the properties of the international/regional context to determine the shift to a form of balance of power and away from the previous hegemony. This is an examination undertaken by, among others, our colleague John Ikenberry from Princeton who urges us in “Source of Order and Great Power Restraint in East Asia”  to look at: “What are the sources of great power restraint in a region that is increasingly less defined by America’s hegemonic presence?”    Now John raises the possibility of a turn to a balance of power, though he suggests that this is not what has yet occurred. It is instead a “partial balance of power order.”

But a look at the regional and global dynamics of East and Southeast Asia seem to me to suggest something very different.  Probably the best short examination is that proposed very recently in the EastAsiaForum by Don Emmerson an Asian specialist from Stanford University who heads the Southeast Asia Forum in the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University. Applying a lens that includes ASEAN and economic relationships puts a rather different spin on the evolution of relationships in the region.  In my remarks I will focus on the many FTAs including in particular the EU initiatives in Asia.  But more on that soon.

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