How Japan Can Navigate Growing US-China Tensions

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US-China tensions have emerged to dominate the geopolitical space. How is this rivalry affecting states, particularly in the Asian context? Japan, a long-standing ally to the US, and at the same time a key economic partner to China, finds itself, as do other states in the region, in a difficult position. Still the US-China rivalry alone fails to fully define the foreign policy challenges Japan faces currently. With the Olympics just recently completed in Japan, and COVID-19 numbers on the rise, vaccination numbers still relatively low, continuing cool relations with South Korea, nuclear tensions with North Korea, and finally a looming national election, it is important to recognize that there are a variety of serious issues that Japan’s current political leadership faces.

The US provides Japan with defence and security, but China boosts the Japanese economy, with 22% of Japanese exports going to China in 2019 alone and increasing another 5.1 percent in 2020. Japan is wary of losing its status as a major power but understands that choosing between the two superpowers is surely a lose-lose proposition.

Territorial Disputes

Territorial disputes are a long-standing issue for Japan. Between 2010-2012 tensions began escalating with China over the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea. However, while the Senkaku Islands remain an area of contention, the question of Taiwan is a cause for even greater concern. Japan’s southernmost island, Yonaguni, is just some 111km east of Taiwan, and in recent months, China’s presence around Taiwan has grown. Threats have increased. In April 2021, when Prime Minister Suga visited President Biden in Washington, their joint statement on the renewal of the US-Japan partnership mentioned “Taiwan” for the first time since 1969: “We underscore the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and encourage the peaceful resolution of cross-Strait issues.”

Beijing responded harshly to the statement and accused the US of interfering in “internal affairs”. For a country like Japan, a response of this nature raises concern: China’s been known to utilize economic means to retaliate against countries that condemn their actions. Therefore, while it may be important for Japan to collaborate and work with the US on matters relating to Taiwan, Japan is treading quite carefully with China.

Former Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama argued that the US-Japan Joint Statement’s mentioning of “Taiwan” was counterproductive to seeking cooperative relations with China. However, various US military officials in the Indo-Pacific have argued conflict between China and Taiwan is highly probable in the next six years. Given Japan’s proximity to Taiwan and the US’s presence in the region, Japan must consider the wider geopolitical implications.

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Reaching Agenda 2030 by 2030 – The High Level Political Forum (HLPF) 2021

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As the annual global stocktaking on the 2030 Agenda of Sustainable Development this year’s High Level Political Forum (HLPF) was held from July 6th to July 15th under the auspices of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). Mandated in 2012, the HLPF is the main UN forum targeting sustainable development progress. The HLPF devises international political declarations and countries present their voluntary national reviews (VNRs) on progress in reaching the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals). The HLPF also features a three-day ministerial segment. Apart from the 42 VNRs that states presented in 2021, the main outcome document of this year’s HLPF was a Ministerial Declaration. This Declaration had been negotiated for four months before the HLPF meeting and the Declaration was adopted by acclamation on July 15th. This most recent Declaration describes Agenda 2030 as a blueprint and plan of action to respond to and recover from the global Covid-19 pandemic.

The pandemic has had a substantial negative impact on many SDGs. In the first year of the pandemic alone:

Focussing on nine SDGs:

  • 1 – No Poverty
  • 2 – Zero Hunger
  • 3 – Good Health and Well-Being
  • 8 – Decent Work and Economic Growth
  • 10 – Reduced Inequalities
  • 12 – Responsible Consumption and Production
  • 13 – Climate Action
  • 16 – Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions, and
  • 17 – Partnerships for the Goals,

the Ministerial Declaration highlights the negative effects on these goals and negative effects on other SDGs. Nevertheless, the international community reaffirmed its commitment to the Agenda 2030 and its individual goals calling for enhanced measures and intensifying the responses to the global challenges currently pertaining to Agenda 2030. However, The Declaration stops short, however, of concrete agreements on policy measures, or financial commitments to getting back within reach of achieving the SDGs by 2030.

Considering that the efforts to achieve Agenda 2030 were already in threatened – even before the pandemic – this failure to commit to action is disappointing. Even at the HLPF in 2019, the diagnosis there was that the global response to implementing the SDGs had not been ambitious enough and that accelerated action was needed. In 2020, marred by the early months of the pandemic, the HLPF was not even able to produce a Ministerial Declaration. At the time there was a lack of consensus among the states. Whoever was waiting for a “now-or-never” moment leading to a more ambitious Ministerial Declaration this current year would be disappointed. Despite explicit consensus that the knowledge, science, technologies and resources are readily available to make progress in the future, and despite the assessment of many of the current challenges pertaining to the SDGs, the political will and the willingness to compromise are lacking. One is struck that an opportunity to reconstruct the world and bringing Agenda 2030 closer, the goals was ‘thrown away’. As the UN General Assembly President Volkan Bozkir put it: “rarely has a society been given the opportunity for such a radical change”, but the ministers failed to capitalize on this opportunity and appeared to be paralyzed by politics and narrow national interests.

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Biden, Suga, Xi and Yes, Others – the New Mix Reshaping Global Order Relations

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The current state of the international system. That is what I hope RisingBRICSAM can tackle in the next set of posts. While I remain the named blogger here at RisingBRICSAM,  I shall not be undertaking this task alone. Nope. I have been fortunate enough these past weeks to be working with a great set of recent, or near MGA graduates from the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, University of Toronto.

And all of us in various ways have had  opportunities to examine in some detail aspects in the evolving global order. In addition, many of these same researchers have joined in the China-West Dialogue (CWD) research and online meetings. But more on that in a moment.

 

There is as you will see a host of significant influences shaping the global order and its politics. Probably the most immediate has been Covid-19. The waves of the virus have had a significant influence on all the major and minor actors in the global system.

The global public health crisis has also underscored the growing array of new actors in the global order. Of course the many states – leading powers, major powers, emerging and developing powers, and also the international organizations both formal and the often forgotten but in fact critical informal institutions.

The array of these state actors have been significantly supplemented during the pandemic by sub-state actors – whether regions, networks or local actors and even more dramatically non-state actors such as foundations, public and private corporations.  The pandemic has underscored the growing role of technology and digital organizations. One of the envisaged posts will focus on the global developments of Agenda 2030 – the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – and the threat that the Covid-19 pandemic has posed to achieving these critical global development goals by the end of the decade.

The virus has been dramatic globally. But then as well has been the replacement of the Trump Administration and its ‘America First’  foreign policy in the United States with the Biden Administration’s autocracy versus democracy and build back better world (B3W). Both administrations grappled with, or amplified, the reemergence of geopolitics with the intensifying rivalry between the United States and Xi Jinping’s China. Even in these early months, the Biden Administration has represented a highly different domestic and diplomatic effort from the often chaotic years of Trump policies though it appears the Biden Administration has moved slowly on revising aspects of American foreign policy including with China. Some of the early and continuing analysis and research at the Global Summitry Project (GSP)  on US and US-China foreign policy has been undertaken by the China-West Dialogue Project (CWD) co-chaired by Colin Bradford, non-resident senior fellow from Brookings and myself. For almost two years we have met largely virtually with thought leaders – former officials, policymakers, academic experts – from around the globe to build a narrative that can accommodate competition, avoid confrontation and vitally permits collaboration – an approach that counters the ideological divisions that have emerged with rising US-China tensions.

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So Many Summits!

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This weekend we open on a sustained set of Summits beginning with the G7 hosted by the UK in Carbis Bay.  Along with various states easing restrictions and beginning to open after months of Covid lockdown, we now have the in-person opening of this summit season. The G7 will be followed by a NATO gathering, then an EU-US summit and then a sort of ‘back to the future’ classic ‘cold war’ summit, this between US President Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Our colleague, Stewart Patrick at CFR identified 10 summits just before the start of this calendar year. His list included:

  • The NATO Summit
  • US-EU Summit
  • Summit for Democracy
  • UN Convention on biological diversity COP15, Kunming China
  • G7 Summit
  • WTO Ministerial Conference
  • NPT Review Conference
  • The Opening of the General Assembly of the UN
  • G20 Summit
  • UNFCCC COP26 Glasgow

Now there are even some others as well that are not on the list and have occurred already. Before this G7 we saw the newly elected US President hold a Quadrilateral Security Dialogue or Quad Summit, on March 12th, the first with leaders from India, Australia, Japan and the United States. And in April the President organized  a Leaders Summit on Climate. Over 40 leaders attended virtually including notably President Xi Jinping of China. As the State Department noted, the Climate Summit was intended “to rally the world in tackling the climate crisis and meeting the demands of science.” It was also seen as a precursor to the COP26 Glasgow meeting scheduled to be held from November 1st to 12th and right after the G20 Summit.

It is tough to keep track of all the summits planned, or already concluded. But here are some additional summits planned for this calendar year.

  • APEC
  • East Asian Summit
  • ASEAN Summit

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Measuring American Foreign Policy for ‘Competition without Catastrophe’: The Alaska US-China Summit

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With President Biden’s first official news conference last Thursday March 25th, the news conference brought the curtain down on the first meeting of top foreign policy officials from the United States and China. The public side of the Summit was a rather fiery uncooperative back and forth between the leading government officials from both China and the United States. We are led to understand, however, that the private meetings that went on into the next day were more productive. And with both encounters past, the shape of the competition between China and the United States began to take some public shape.

For some time now we have been made aware that a more confrontational  approach in US-China relations was likely. As David Sanger describes in a recent NYT article, the ‘Washington beltway’ view has crystallized around a far more competitive foreign policy with China. And the Biden foreign policy has reflected, seemingly, this rare political consensus:

For a president barely 10 weeks into office, casting the United States as confronting a global struggle with the Chinese model has some clear political benefits. One of the few issues that unites Democrats and Republicans is the need to compete head-on with Beijing.

William Galston at Brookings reviewing American public opinion toward China underscores how American public opinion has turned against China particularly after the Trump years:

All things considered, the Biden administration will enjoy substantial public support if it places competition with China at the center of its foreign policy, and it will pay little price for the blunter rhetoric its senior officials employed during the recent meetings in Alaska with their Chinese counterparts. On the other hand, most Americans have not focused on the military dimensions of this emerging relationship and are not prepared for a possible conflict over Taiwan.

Advisors to Joe Biden during the election period, and many of these same folk now as officials for President Biden, are describing and clarifying US policy toward China that they had previously written about pre-election. The dominant position as articulated by the senior policy folk such as Jake Sullivan, now National Security Advisor to the President and Kurt Campbell now the ‘Asia Tsar’ is strategic competition, or slightly more poetically, ‘competition without catastrophe’ the title of their consequential 2019 FA article. Continue reading →

Which Countries are Middle Powers – And Why are They Important to the Global Order? Part 2

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The growing geopolitical tensions in the international system, in particular  between the United States and China and also with Russia, have led to a chorus of voices urging on middle powers to greater efforts in maintaining  and even strengthening a rules-based order. Roland Paris in a major Chatham House Brief titled: “Can Middle Powers Save the Liberal World Order?” pointed at various urgent calls from international experts:

Gideon Rachman, a Financial Times columnist, has proposed a ‘middle-powers alliance’ to ‘preserve a world based around rules and rights, rather than power and force’. Two eminent American foreign-policy experts, Ivo Daalder and James Lindsay, have also called on US allies to ‘leverage their collective economic and military might to save the liberal world order’.

The urgency and calls for middle power action rose perceptively, of course, with ‘America First’  from the Trump Presidency and from the failure of the leading powers – the United States and China – to organize global governance efforts to tackle the global pandemic. Indeed the global pandemic has seemingly ‘lit a fire’ under experts and officials issuing a rising chorus of calls for greater middle power action in the face of leading power failure. An  evident instance is a recent article from  Foreign Affairs from our colleague Bruce Jones from Brookings titled:“Can middle powers lead the world out of the pandemic? Because the United States and China have shown that they can’t”.

In Part 1 of this Post series we attempted to identify which states experts were referring to when they issued the call for middle power action. We ended up with a variety of categories. There were the traditional states, Canada, Australia and maybe South Korea and Singapore. There were states that fell within the top 20 economic powers  – way too many states but lots of familiar powers. And then there were all those states , identified by Jeffrey Robertson in his insightful article: “Middle-power definitions: confusion reigns supreme” in the Australian Journal of International Affairs (2017. 71(4): 355-370, with an interest in and “capacity (material resources, diplomatic influence, creativity, etc.)resources, diplomatic influence, creativity, etc.) to work proactively in concert with similar states to contribute to the development and strengthening of institutions for the governance of the global commons.” And in fact there seemed to be a bit of a marriage between middle powers and multilateralism in the newly created “Alliance for Multilateralism” created by the foreign ministers of France and Germany that umbrellaed at its creation some 40 states.

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Which Countries are Middle Powers – And Why are They Important to the Global Order? Part 1

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I had a debate very recently with my China-West Dialogue (CWD) colleague, Colin Bradford. In a memo we were working on for CWD, he described the two major trade agreements, CPTPP and RCEP. He then added:

 

These two trade agreements show that middle powers are able to take multilateral actions on their own that make an impact.(*)  

But which countries do we see achieving that? And behind that, why have analysts and policy makers become significantly more interested these middle powers in the Trump era recently past?

Counting the Middle Powers

The debate begins with the ‘Who’. Though Colin and I were generally agreed on the content of the article, we went around in circles over which countries we could, and should, identify as middle powers. Now, I was more than ready to forgive Colin his vague characterization of middle powers and then broad inclusion of the same – after all he is an economist – but soon thereafter I stumbled over a rather recent article by Bruce Jones, also of Brookings. and a well known international relations analyst. The article found in FA and titled, “Can Middle Powers Lead the World Out of the Pandemic? Because the United States and China Have Shown They Can’t” tackled the question of the current middle power membership. Given the subject matter of the article, Bruce was called upon to identify in some manner, the states that captured the current set of middle powers:

The concept of “middle powers” is imprecise and somewhat inchoate, but it generally refers to countries that are among the top 20 or so economies in the world, lack large-scale military power (or choose not to play a leading role in defense), and are energetic in diplomatic or multilateral affairs. These countries were seeking to fill part of the international leadership void even before the crisis, particularly when it came to buttressing the rickety multilateral system.

So, there we were. I had no difficulty acknowledging that the term was “imprecise and inchoate” but as for the rest of the features identified by Bruce, well, not so sure. Increasingly, I came to suspect that this was likely to be one of those classic international relations definitions – unclear and contested.

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China-West Relations: Reading the Dynamics and Getting the Mix Right

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China-US relations are at a critical juncture in fashioning global order relations in the 2020s.  As Joe Biden approaches inauguration day, there is increasing speculation on what approach he will take toward China.  Theories abound.  There are those in foreign policy circles who are seen as “restorationists” (see Thomas Wright at TheAtlantic for these terms) who tend to have a greater focus on the cooperation component of the relationship.  There are “reformists” who have come to the conclusion that competition and rivalry must define the path for US-China relations.  There are those who see China as the culprit in job loss, technology theft, trade imbalances, the pandemic, climate change and other hits on American pre-eminence.  And there are many with cultural, societal and business ties to China who hope for a period of predictability, and hopefully opportunity.

Clear-eyed self-interest and deep understanding of the new political dynamics need to guide Biden foreign policy. For Biden and his team, it is not just a question how to reframe US international relations after Trump, but how to shape them in response to changed circumstances, domestic constraints, and new defining elements in the global landscape. 

For starters, Asia is more pressing than Europe, the Indo-Pacific region more demanding than the trans-Atlantic, China is more important than Russia, social and environmental issues are more compelling than trade and financial policies, and domestic pressures everywhere mean that international policies are now constrained by and tethered to internal conditions affecting ordinary people.  Global inter-connectivity may be vividly evident, but domestic politics are dominant in defining strategic thrusts.

Biden and his team seem to “get” most of these circumstances, constraints and defining elements.  But, it is not clear that the incoming Administration has yet stared down the underlying political dynamics that will define geopolitical relations among leading powers, especially how to approach China in ways that makes sense to the other significant global players, that will be effective with China and with domestic political constraints. For this, the various “schools of thought” contending with each other to define the overall narrative for US relations with China, each by themselves are less helpful than combining them to address the complexity and importance of this most crucial relationship.

The starting point has to be a clear understanding that China does indeed have strategic interests in meeting US dominance in the Pacific. Additionally, China does use the state and public resources to advance its economic dynamism, does use techniques for internal control which violate international norms on human rights, and does have the scale, scope and dynamism to be a challenger to US predominance, a rival in the Pacific and a competitor in the global economy.  There is no doubt that this is the reality of China today.  The hardening of Xi Jinping’s authoritarian rule in the last four years is real and worrisome. 

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Washington’s Unfounded Fear of Biden Collaboration with China

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The Washington Beltway remains in a ‘tizzy’ over the direction of Biden foreign policy. Will Biden commit to the bipartisan ‘full-throated’ competition with China. Here, Ryan Hass of Brookings describes that continuing nervousness on the part of the foreign policy establishment over a possible Biden strategy : 

 

There are a variety of causes for these concerns. Some security-focused experts worry that the Biden administration will prioritize cooperation with China on climate issues above other strategic concerns. Others fear that by signaling interest in cooperation, the United States will show lack of resolve for long-term great power competition with China. Proponents of viewing the U.S.-China relationship as an entrenched ideological struggle worry that cooperation could dilute the focus on what they describe as each side’s irreconcilable ambitions. Some have shared concerns that Beijing will withhold cooperation on climate issues unless it receives American concessions in other areas of the relationship, for example, on Hong Kong or Xinjiang. Others worry that the Chinese are wily negotiators who will hoodwink their earnest American counterparts if given the opportunity. Still others argue that engaging the Chinese as peers on climate issues provides undeserved validation of China on the world stage and legitimation of the Chinese Communist Party at home.

Besides Ryan Haas at Brookings, concern about Biden’s China policy has also been raised by his colleague,  Thomas Wright. In TheAtlantic. Tom has suggested in a recent article that Biden’s choice of John Kerry as special presidential envoy on climate change may well create problems for the new Administration on the critical China file.  

Competition with China will likely be the most difficult foreign-policy issue that President-elect Joe Biden will face. What he decides to lead with and the precise mix of areas in which he engages and confronts Beijing are critically important. This is why Biden’s choice of John Kerry as a special presidential envoy on climate change might create a problem for the incoming president on China policy.

In discussions with Biden colleagues, Wright comments that they expressed concern over Kerry diplomacy. Kerry’s single-minded focus on climate change could, according to these colleagues, bring climate policy progress but sacrifice other security-related US-China matters. As Tom described his conversations with these Biden folk:

A former Obama administration official told me, “China’s diplomacy is a constant search for leverage, and Kerry will deliver a load of it in a wheelbarrow right to their front door every day.

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Exploring the Many Recent International Arrangements – Multilateralism, Plurilateralism, Alliances, Bipolarity and More

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Multilateralism, plurilateralism,  bipolarity, multipolarity, alliances and alignments have all become subjects of serious inquiry in policy and political communities. The discussion and questioning of various international governing arrangements has grown ever louder with the final year, as it turns out, of the Trump Presidency. And, now, also, with the successor to Trump, President-elect, Joe Biden.

The outgoing President scorned long standing alliances and alignments and trumpeted (no pun intended) ‘America First’ attacking these traditional relationships. He fawned over authoritarian leaders and spurned allied ones. Rather than multilateral trade action, he targeted Chinese trade practices imposing broad-based tariffs that brought costs to American producers and consumers. All these many actions seemed determined to undermine the rules-based order.

Meanwhile, Biden, in marked contrast to Trump, announced soon after his election, the return of US global order leadership. This seemed to reflect what colleague Thomas Wright (2020) described in The Atlantic as a ‘restorationist approach’ to American foreign policy.  President-elect Biden presenting his national security team on November 24th declared (2020):

And it’s a team that reflects the fact that America is back, ready to lead the world, not retreat from it. Once again, sit at the head of the table.

What arrangements do Biden and his team envisage – what relationships do they target? Will they seek to: revitalize alliances, encourage multilateralism, avoid rising bipolar tensions between the United States and China and tackle the many global governance challenges. Is the Biden foreign policy willing to relax relations and lower tensions with China and broadly take the steps that reestablish American leadership and to refocus on a multilateral rules-based order? 

Over the next few posts I hope to delve and deliver, with friends, the many forms of global order relations – multilateralism, plurilateralism, multipolarity, alliances, alignments and more. The hope is to reflect on the diversity of these arrangements, determine their individual and collective effectiveness and to examine these arrangements in the context of a new US Administration and its goals. And we hope to uncover those structures and arrangements most likely to stabilize the international system and further global governance efforts.

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