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US Tensions Over a Leading Role

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So, I was ruminating a bit on the question of US diplomacy coming off of the previous Substack Post and particularly the Jessica Matthews’s targeting of Biden foreign policy in the upcoming Foreign Affairs article “What Was the Biden Doctrine? Leadership Without Hegemony”. As a reminder, this is what she wrote and I quoted in last week’s Substack:

 

But he [Joe Biden] has carried out a crucial task: shifting the basis of American foreign policy from an unhealthy reliance on military intervention to the active pursuit of diplomacy backed by strength.

 

He has won back the trust of friends and allies, built and begun to institutionalize a deep American presence in Asia, restored the United States’ role in essential multilateral organizations and agreements, and ended the longest of the country’s “forever wars”—a step none of his three predecessors had the courage to take.

 

All of this happened in the face of grievous new threats from China and Russia, two great powers newly allied around the goal of ending American primacy. Biden’s response to the most pressing emergency of his term—Russia’s brutal full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022—has been both skillful and innovative, demonstrating a grasp of the traditional elements of statecraft along with a willingness to take a few unconventional steps. … But he has carried out a crucial task: shifting the basis of American foreign policy from an unhealthy reliance on military intervention to the active pursuit of diplomacy backed by strength.

Now I concluded that analysis with a Matthews’s quote with my concluding remark: “Now it seems to me there are questions over the effective use of diplomacy of this Administration but that is for another day.” Well this is another day and I want to focus a little on the current effectiveness of US diplomatic policy.

There appears to be a growing split over whether the US has had, or should I say, will choose to move forward with sharper diplomatic policies and initiatives rather than, if I can put it bluntly, ‘Reach for the Gun’. In fact, in the end, there are questions of whether the US will involve itself at all in serious but distant conflicts especially in the face of seriously weakened multilateral institutions. The foreign policy question is actually two questions then: will a Harris Administration respond to foreign policy crises with sharp diplomacy or resort to force and even more dramatically not only how the US may engage but whether it will engage at all.

Shortly after Harris and Waltz assumed the mantle of leadership of the Democratic Party that a strong positive view was identified. For instance Mark Hannah and Rachel Rizzo wrote the following in FP:

When applied to foreign policy, it could inform a pragmatic, forward-looking realism that’s all too rare in Washington. This sentiment aligns with a growing expert consensus.

 

A recent Carnegie Endowment for International Peace study concluded that the United States’ current approach to the world is “poorly adapted to the challenges of today and tomorrow.” It also noted a widespread demand among analysts for “a major strategic reorientation.” This reorientation could be from an everything-everywhere-all-at-once approach to a more judicious and strategic use of American might.

Let’s start with what appears to be the positive efforts of the current Biden policy efforts and conjure it  as a likely course of action for a new Harris Administration.  The immediate diplomatic approach is the recent Biden actions focused on its key geopolitical concern – that is its perceived strategic competitor and threat – its biggest rival – China. Notwithstanding the tough back and forth the two have undertaken recent discussions that appear to be designed to stabilize this most difficult bilateral relationship. The evidence for this is the recently concluded visit of National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan to China. This most recent meeting with Wang Yi who is the chief Chinese foreign affairs official for President Xi was not the first. For Sullivan and Wang this was one of a series of interactions as described by Demetri Sevastopulo in the FT:

It was the first of several secret rendezvous around the world, including Malta and Thailand, now called the “strategic channel”. Sullivan will arrive in Beijing on Tuesday [August 27th] for another round of talks with Wang in what will be his first visit to China as US national security adviser.

 

While the backchannel has not resolved the fundamental issues between the rival superpowers, says Rorry Daniels, a China expert at the Asia Society Policy Institute, it has aided each’s understanding of the other. “It’s been very successful in short-term stabilisation, communicating red lines and previewing actions that might be seen as damaging to the other side,” she says.

The two leading powers do not see ‘eye-to-eye’ on the role of diplomatic interactions.  China in particular does not accept the framework of stabilization in the context of competition – the US view. Still, there does appear to be a certain diplomatic stabilization as described by Sevastopulo leading up to this most recent series of meetings in Beijing:

Sullivan strived to get Wang to understand the new reality — that the nations were in a competition but one that should not preclude co-operation. “That was a really hard jump for the Chinese,” says the second US official. “They wanted to define the relationship neatly [as] we’re either partners or we’re competitors.”

 

The Chinese official said China did not accept the argument. “Wang Yi explained very clearly that you cannot have co-operation, dialogue and communication . . . and at the same time undercut China’s interests.

 

They discussed possible deals for a summit, including a compromise that would involve the US lifting sanctions on a Chinese government forensic science institute in return for China cracking down on the export of chemicals used to make fentanyl. They also talked about resurrecting the military-to-military communication channels China had shut after Pelosi visited Taiwan. And they discussed creating an artificial intelligence dialogue.

 

Rush Doshi, a former NSC official who attended the meetings with Wang, says it was important to explain to China what the US was doing — and not doing. “Diplomacy is how you clear up misperception and avoid escalation and manage competition. It’s actually not at odds with competition but part of any sustainable competitive strategy.

And in this most recent set of meetings in Beijing, Sullivan was able to meet not just President Xi, important in and of itself,  but critically a meeting with General Zhang Youxia:

Mr. Sullivan’s meeting with Gen. Zhang Youxia, vice chairman of China’s Central Military Commission, was the first in years between a senior American official and a vice chair of the commission, which oversees China’s armed forces and is chaired by Mr. Xi.

The Biden Administration regarded the Beijing meetings, therefore, as important diplomatic effort in stabilizing great power relations:

Sullivan tells the FT that he was under no illusions that the channel would convince China to change its policies, but he stressed that it had played an instrumental role in helping to shift the dynamic in US-China relations.

All you can do is take their policy, our policy, and then try to manage it so that we can take the actions we need to take and maintain stability in the relationship,” Sullivan says. “We have been able to accomplish both of those things.”

If managing great power relations was the US diplomatic goal, that seems to be successfully achieved for the moment. But that positive framing is not replicated in wider global order relations and the US efforts or lack thereof. Thus, the assessment of wider US diplomatic efforts is not nearly as upbeat. This is the message of Alexander Clarkson,  a lecturer in European studies at King’s College London in his analysis of US foreign policy in his WPR article titled: “For Much of the World, the Post-American Order Is Already Here”:

This gradual waning of American influence outside of core areas of strategic focus rarely features in ferocious debates in Washington between those who believe that the U.S. should remain deeply involved in global affairs and the so-called Restrainers on the left and MAGA Republicans on the right who are skeptical of security commitments outside U.S. borders.

 

The limits of the United States’ ability to influence developments on the ground in destabilizing conflicts, or the responses of states engaged in them, have been particularly visible with civil wars in Myanmar and Sudan that barely feature in domestic American news cycles. In both cases, U.S. policymakers distracted by developments elsewhere failed to anticipate emerging escalation dynamics and then failed to develop the strategic leverage needed to rein in brutal armies and militias whose backing from other states rapidly widened devastating wars.

 

Washington’s flailing in the face of conflicts within Myanmar and Sudan that have now become wider geopolitical crises is a product of long-term shifts in the global balance of power. While Washington will continue to play a decisive role in managing conflicts that involve great power competition, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the tensions between Israel and Iran and China’s strategic assertiveness under Xi Jinping, in many other parts of the world the U.S. impact will be limited to diplomatic press releases expressing grave concern.

Clarkson sees US actions and inactions as a reshaping of the global balance of power. But I suspect it is an unwillingness to exercise direct diplomatic action to what is seen to be a distant conflict. It is also an evident result of the undermining, including by the United States, of effective diplomatic action by the UN. The weakening of the formal institutions – the WTO in trade policy and the UN in security and peace efforts – is now ‘coming home to roost’ at the US doorstep. US inaction is matched by the inability of these and other formal institutions to take on, stabilize and hopefully resolve difficult and potentially threatening conflicts.

The Harris Administration, if it wins, needs to address the manner of engagement but in too many instances the likely failure of foreign policy engagement at all. Much is currently wanting in US foreign policy. It is unclear if a Harris Administration is likely to tackle, and if so, how, these difficult foreign policy questions.

Image Credit: YouTube

This Post was originally posted at Alan’s Newsletter. Your comments are welcome as well as free subscriptions to Alan’s Newsletter

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China, seemingly, stays the course

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It is hard to resist not commenting on Donald Trump’s views, so I will if just briefly. In this instance the comment is over Kamala Harris’s racial makeup. It is ‘weird’ as the Democrats have started saying. In fact that barely describes his comments on her. Mind you, I doubt that it is the last time we will hear such ‘jaw dropping insights’ from Trump when it comes to his likely opponent Kamala Harris.

All right, let’s turn to today’s focus – the state of US-China relations following China’s Third Plenum – really focusing on the Third Plenum. This gathering is the Third Plenum of the 20th Party Congress, which brought together the Party’s top leadership, including all the members of the Central Committee and the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party.  Third Plenums in particular have especially been closely followed. Why? Well, it really began with the Third Plenum of the 11th Party Congress in December 1978. That Third Plenum ushered in a series of policy changes championed at the time by Deng Xiaoping. This Plenum was in retrospect the start of the ‘Reform and Opening Era’ which was followed by the Third Plenum of the 14th Party Congress when the leadership identified the goal of creating a ‘socialist market economy’. And, at the 18th Party Congress in November 2013, the CCP emphasized in that Third Plenum,  “the decisive role of the market in allocating resources,”. So, it is not unreasonable for experts, officials, etc. to look at each 5-year Third Plenum to identify signals for domestic economic reform which many then anticipate impacts on the global economy with China’s increasingly central role on the international economy.

It’s not a surprise, then, that there was a degree of anticipation for this Third Plenum which had been postponed for months, especially given the flagging Chinese economy. Our colleagues at CSIS including Jude Blanchette and Scott Kennedy described the tortured passage of policy creation:

According to a CCP website, the document went through 38 drafts. Right after the conclave ended, the CCP issued a communique (English, Chinese) summarizing the results of the meeting. On Sunday, July 21, the text of the full, far more detailed Decision (English, Chinese) was issued, which provides a stronger foundation for evaluating the meeting’s significance.

So where are we and what consequences are likely to follow the policy pronouncements?

There was a lot of anticipation. As pointed out by Bert Hofman in his Substack Post: 

This year’s third plenum was highly anticipated due to several factors.  The multitude of structural challenges that China’s economy is facing—debt, demographics, demand, deflation, and decoupling—require the robust economic reforms that third plenums tend to deliver. Second, China’s propaganda machine had built up the plenum’s importance, comparing it with breakthrough plenums of the pasts.

But for most analysts the outcomes have been rather disappointing. As pointed out, again by Bert Hofman, the hoped for policy tilt and more toward markets and/or greater domestic consumption is not evident in the Declaration:

This year’s plenum has dropped the decisive role of the market.  Instead, it  proposes that the party should “better leverage the role of the market.” This is hardly an encouragement of the private sector, whose confidence is still recovering from regulatory crackdowns and COVID lockdowns.  At the same time, in a press conference after the conclusion of the plenum Han Wenxiu, deputy director of the Central Financial and Economic Affairs Commission’s general office, and a main drafter of the plenum decision document, said that it was “necessary to create a favourable environment and provide more opportunities for the development of the private sector” in China.

Nevertheless, the omission of the market’s decisive role is in line with the more statist view on development that has been gaining grounds under Xi Jinping, and that the private sector will be increasingly guided by the party and restricted by regulation.

 

But the nature of reforms has changed—whereas in previous plenums reforms were predominantly aimed at facilitating marketization and liberalization of China’s economy, they are now meant to strengthen the policies and institutions that underpin Xi Jinping’s view of the world.

The party-state dominance seems to be fully in charge. And China can be expected to stay the current course for domestic economic growth and prosperity. As Scott Kennedy argues:

The Communique and Decision give the distinct impression that despite the economy’s various structural problems and cyclical downturn, the CCP is not going to change course, but instead will intensify its efforts to steer the economy on to a sustainable long-term path. The central focus for generating “high-quality development” will be on expanding focus on advanced technologies, what are now ideologically described as “new productive forces” (新质生产力).

 

That said, the Plenum’s analysis and policy proposals on the economy are likely to draw a more skeptical reaction from a variety of corners, domestic and international, because of its deeply statist focus: 1) A strong emphasis on the central role of China’s party-state in directing the economy; 2) The prioritization on investment and production as the drivers of growth and far less attention to consumption and households; 3) Continued support for the “public sector” and state-owned enterprises (SOEs) even while pledging to create a level playing field for private firms; 4) A discussion of the global economy that proposed incremental expanded market access to China while stressing the need for China to leverage its large market for its own benefit; and 5) The expansive discussion of national security and the need to align economic policy with national security, which as Jude Blanchette notes, is centered around the security of the CCP.

Scott’s colleague at CSIS, Claire Reade, underlines that trade partners are unlikely to be fooled by this Plenum Declaration and trade tensions as a result are unlikely to abate and that’s without taking into account the likely economic earthquake of a second Trump Administration:

The latest Third Plenum Decision declares that “overall, we have accomplished the reform tasks” set out in 2013. Since this is patently not the case, it is particularly discouraging. The decision ironically then highlights the gap between its triumphant conclusion and reality by going on to pledge that by 2029, the market will determine the allocation of resources, and private domestic and foreign enterprises will obtain equal treatment with state-owned enterprises.

On balance, trading partners need to continue to be savvy and proactive in taking steps to protect their economies against this massive, state-heavy economy, and companies need to look carefully at their own risk management.

It is not surprising that various Chinese experts are suggesting that a more incremental approach was always a more likely approach of the President and the Party. Here is Huang Yiping, who is the Dean of the National School of Development at Beida, or Peking University, assessing on the Pekinology Substack Post the policy approach coming out of the Third Plenum:

The first point you probably all saw is that the Asian market dropped after the Third Plenum, especially after the full document was out. So some people felt a little bit pessimistic. My own sense, my take, is that the market was probably too optimistic about what they should expect.

So some people felt a little bit pessimistic. My own sense, my take, is that the market was probably too optimistic about what they should expect.

 

In fact, if you were paying attention to what the President himself was saying and the message government officials were trying to convey to the public. It was pretty clear this would not be a grand-scale liberalization program. This will be about reform, about modernization. But the key approach, the President outlined himself very clearly. He called it running towards the problems and trying to correct them. So it’s more like a down-to-earth and very practical approach—when you try to see the problems, you try to overcome them.

 

So when you say, well, the market is disappointed. That’s probably true, but either because the expectation was just overly too high or No. 2, I think the reason why investors are not very upbeat at the moment is because the macroeconomy is not doing particularly well.

Huang Yiping is aware, however, of the consumption problem:

Weak consumption causes two problems. No. 1 is you obviously would easily end up with a domestic overcapacity problem, right? You produce a lot, you invest a lot, and then the final consumption demand is very weak. That means there will be a certain portion of the capacity you cannot find domestic buyers for, and you call it overcapacity. That’s why during the last 45, 46 years of Chinese reform, we almost always had the overcapacity problem.

I think the macroeconomic problem is there is a macro imbalance. Consumption and demand and supply are not very balanced. So that’s one big issue.

So where does that leave us? I anticipate there will be continuing if not growing trade tensions with the US and with Europe as well as China continues its ferocious pace of manufacturing exports and fails to encourage greater domestic consumption. At least to constrain these tensions and protective trade actions in the absence of the WTO, it might be useful to try and negotiate VERs – ‘voluntary export restraints’ with China. It is not optimal – far from it – but it could avoid a trade ‘bloodbath’.

An important opportunity has been missed for the moment and may in fact be even more dramatically lost if Donald Trump wins the next election in  November. Let’s hope the US electorate is smarter than that.

Image Credit: CNN

The Intensity of the US Presidency – and the Race

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So many eventful happenings again this past week. As a consequence this Post will be a quick ‘dip and serve’ of several consequential matters. First from my international law colleague, Ooa Hathaway from Yale Law School and the Department of Political Science at Yale. She is one of the best. She and her colleague, Scott Shapiro wrote a terrific book in 2017, The Internationalists: How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World. And it was interesting to see this past week that her piece on the Presidential Immunity case, Trump v the United States, appeared in Foreign Affairs, the journal not particularly notable for publishing international law issues. Nevertheless, the piece is quite interesting by pointing out that this examination of Presidential Immunity domestically has long been examined internationally – and the consequences have not been good. As Oona writes: 

What most analysts have failed to note, however, is that this lack of legal accountability for decisions by the U.S. president, including decisions to direct the military to use lethal force, is nothing new. It has long been the reality for most of the world outside the United States.

As Oona points out there has been a long effort to reign in such ‘extra-legal’ Presidential behavior:

What most analysts have failed to note, however, is that this lack of legal accountability for decisions by the U.S. president, including decisions to direct the military to use lethal force, is nothing new. It has long been the reality for most of the world outside the United States.

 

For years, attempts have been made to hold the United States accountable for its unsanctioned violence. Lawyers in the United States and overseas have filed case after case challenging U.S. military and CIA operations abroad, but few have made it past procedural and jurisdictional hurdles. As a result, the U.S. president has long been a “king above the law” when it comes to actions outside the United States.

As Oona, perhaps, vainly concludes: 

The problem of presidential immunity—and the capacity of the president to act outside the law—was not created by the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. United States. It was simply exposed and expanded by it. Outside the United States, American presidents have long been able to violate the law with impunity, inflicting death and property destruction on civilians in the process. Now that this is also true in the United States, perhaps there will be the will to do something about it.

The acknowledgement of some immunity for ‘official acts’ – still to be determined of course, is just one aspect of presidential intensity that I recognized in the past week. The obvious other matter is the gathering US presidential race. It has been a whirlwind of change for the Democrats of course, but it seems for the Republicans and the Trump campaign as well. 

First was the incredibly speedy replacement of President Biden with his Vice-President, Kamala Harris. The ultra speedy consolidation of her position as the presumptive nominee for the Democrats was startling and indeed head spinning.  As Shane Goldmacher described in his recent NYT piece, titled, “How Kamala Harris Took Command of the De​​mocratic Party in 48 Hours”:

Time was of the essence. A sprawling call list of the most important Democrats to reach had been prepared in advance, according to two people with knowledge of the situation. The vice president, in sneakers and a sweatshirt, began methodically dialing Democratic power brokers.

 

I wasn’t going to let this day go by without you hearing from me,” Ms. Harris had said over and over, as day turned to night, according to five people who received her calls or were briefed on them.

 

The blitz demonstrated exactly the kind of vigor and energy that Mr. Biden had lacked in recent weeks. Mr. Biden had reportedly made 20 calls to congressional Democrats in the first 10 or so days after the debate, while his candidacy hung in the balance. Ms. Harris made 100 calls in 10 hours.

 

Within 48 hours, Ms. Harris had functionally cleared the Democratic field of every serious rival, clinched the support of more delegates than needed to secure the party nomination, raised more than $100 million and delivered a crisper message against former President Donald J. Trump than Mr. Biden had mustered in months.

The speed and impact on the Democratic Party of Harris assuming leadership, and the invidious comparison with Biden and his now ended campaign appears quite stark. As described by Goldmacher:

Even some at the White House and the newly transformed Harris campaign in Wilmington, Del., privately confided that the vice president’s energetic early appearances were a refreshing change from those of the 81-year-old president, whose verbal stumbles were constant fodder on the right.

The heaviness and distress of the prior campaign was only underlined by the President’s ‘stepping aside’ Oval Office appearance and statement this last Wednesday. It was quite the downer and it certainly lacked insight and explanation. Susan B. Glasser of TheNewYorker did a good job of describing the very short Biden speech: 

The short, awkward speech—a mere eleven minutes, though it felt longer than that, listening to Biden’s painful communion with the ghosts of Presidents past as he justified his decision to step aside a few months before the election—served as yet another reminder of why Democratic officials had felt such an urgency to act. … Lyndon B. Johnson was the only other modern President to choose not to run again for a second term, and, in the address he gave to the nation making his surprise announcement, in March of 1968, the trauma of Vietnam that prompted his decision did not seem at all comparable to Biden’s quieter tragedy of an octogenarian in decline and denial.

 

Years from now, I suspect it will not be Biden’s speech that I’ll remember so much as the few heady days of pure political joy among Democrats that preceded it: the race against Trump, practically given up for lost, suddenly looked winnable again.

That sudden energy and excitement that appeared to surge through the Democratic Party seemed very evident if not palatable. Now, let’s be clear, it is far too early to tell if the Harris ascension has in fact altered the trajectory of the race. And it will take some time to get some electoral evidence impact. Any numbers at the current moment can only be received with restraint if not outright skepticism. Still, here is just an early dip into the electoral waters at this very early stage by folks at the NYT under the heading: “Harris Narrows Gap Against Trump, Times/Siena Poll Finds” : 

Overall, Mr. Trump leads Ms. Harris 48 percent to 47 percent among likely voters in a head-to-head match. That is a marked improvement for Democrats when compared to the Times/Siena poll in early July that showed Mr. Biden behind by six percentage points, in the aftermath of the poor debate performance that eventually drove him from the race.” … Because the survey was of voters nationwide, the impact of Ms. Harris’s candidacy in particular battleground states was not immediately clear.

And my colleague Dan Drezner from Drezner’s World,  a noted Substack provider not to mention a Distinguished Professor of International Politics at the Fletcher School  of Tufts University set out ‘Ten Things I Think I Think About the 2024 Presidential Race After Joe Biden’s Exit’. Here just one point:

Until then, [the Convention] I have ten thoughts — some of which are pretty banal but nonetheless worthy of mention:

 

2. Despite all the shocks, the race remains mostly unchanged. In the past ten days there has been an assassination attempt, multiple court rulings favorable to Trump, his choice of J.D. Vance to be his vice president candidate, and the pageantry of the Republican National Convention. Despite all that, Trump has not received much of a bump. To be sure, he’s in the lead, which is something. Still, despite a month’s worth of good news, it’s still a pretty tight race. That is mostly because Trump is a historically unpopular politician. Never forget that although Trump has a high floor of support, he also has an incredibly low ceiling.

 It is clearly, at this moment, a real contest again. Phew! And, enjoy the Olympics!

Image Credit: CNBC 

Violence and Political Disorder in the United States

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It’s rather foolish to believe that even a ‘bullet wound’ would alter Donald Trump. His speech accepting the nomination for the Republican Party on Thursday night – over 90 minutes – proved that.  What you see is what you get. But let me reflect for a moment on the consequences for Trump, and the political system, of this attempt on his life.  Its impact it seems on American politics, and more particularly on the Trump third presidential run – well, at least for the moment, appears rather negligible. As Susan B. Glasser of The NewYorker wrote:

Trump’s supposed pivot to the center was silly spin, and yet all week long I marvelled at the collective susceptibility to this narrative, so seductive, so absurd. … Soon enough on Thursday night, the audience was back to its comfort zone, booing as Trump criticized “crazy Nancy Pelosi” and warned that the hated Democrats were “destroying our country,” cheering him on as he demanded the firing of union leaders and rambled about the “China virus” and the “plunder” of our nation by rapacious foreigners. The second coming of George Herbert Walker Bush this was not.

He may have had a brush with death but he has not been reborn. He is the same Trump, only four years older, angrier, and far, far more incoherent than anyone who has any business being President of the United States. If Biden can’t beat him, then surely someone else can—and must.

Okay, so it was, I suspect, a rather a vain hope. But it is worth reflecting here on the incident and what it says about American political violence. It certainly appears that many view the shooting – public and commentators alike – as being strongly linked to political violence in the United States. Numerous commentators reprised repeated views and analysis that first reflected on heightened political polarization in the US body politic and then suggesting the tie to instances of political violence. Foreign Affairs reflected on this causal chain with an interview with Robert Lieberman, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins,  who with his colleague from Cornell, Suzanne Mettler in 2020 had written an FA piece titled, “The Fragile Republic: American Democracy Has Never Faced So Many Threats All at Once”. In that piece the two argued:

Polarization is not a static state but a process that feeds on itself and creates a cascade of worsening outcomes. Over time, those who exploit it may find it difficult to control, as members of the party base become less and less trustful of elites and believe that none is sufficiently devoted to their core values.

The culmination of polarization can endanger democracy itself. If members of one political group come to view their opponents as an existential threat to their core values, they may seek to defeat them at all costs, even if it undermines normal democratic procedures. They may cease to view the opposition as legitimate and seek permanent ways to prevent it from gaining power, such as by stacking the deck in their own favor. They may become convinced that it is justifiable to circumvent the rule of law and defy checks and balances or to scale back voting rights, civil liberties, or civil rights for the sake of preserving or protecting the country as they see fit.

And then as Lieberman reflects in his very recent interview on the current political landscape that we face in the aftermath of the shooting:

There are four features that help cause democratic crises. The first is political polarization, the second is conflict over who belongs in the political community, the third is high and growing economic inequality, and the fourth is excessive executive power. At least one of these forces has been present at every moment of democratic turmoil in U.S. history.

What makes the last four years different is that all of them are present. They helped fuel Trump’s rise and were part of why the country was vulnerable to an incident like the storming of the Capitol on January 6. And unfortunately, every such event only further weakens the country’s democracy. It makes the Trump shooting even more dangerous and provocative than it otherwise would be.

So I really worry that if Trump and his people start talking about this in an inflammatory way, you could see not just sporadic attacks—which is what this shooting seems to have been—but more collective and organized forms of violence.

What is interesting is that  a number of current commentators draw the link between the current instability and then tie it back to the origins of the political community. Here is Nick Bryant, the former reporter for the BBC in New York reflecting in FP:

Now, though, I would amend my advice. I would urge young reporters to reach back even further into history. The roots of modern-day polarization, and even the origins of former President Donald Trump, can be located in the country’s troubled birth. Division has always been the default setting.

So many contemporary problems can be traced back to those founding days. U.S. democracy has become so diseased because for most of the country’s history, it has not been that healthy. “We the People,” the rousing words that opened the preamble to the Constitution, was not conceived of as an inclusive statement or catchall for mass democracy. Rather, this ill-defined term referred to what in modern terminology might be called the body politic.

So there are multiple explanations for this instance of political violence, some anchored to the founding of the nation, but most tethered to deep political polarization and dire concerns of immediate political consequences. But there is a particular difficulty, in my mind, in understanding the current circumstances and its political consequences. And to me this understanding the motivation for the shooting by Thomas Crooks. Though much scrutiny has occurred, and I am sure there is likely more to come, there does not appear to be a political motivation involved. In the most recent inquiry by a number of NYT reporters concluding 60 interviews with classmates, teachers, neighbors and officials in Bethel Park, Pa., and reviewed law enforcement bulletins and extensive school records for the article, there is no evidence to date of a political motive:

Experts who study the histories of gunmen said the emerging picture of Mr. Crooks looked more like a 21st-century school shooter than a John Wilkes Booth.

“When somebody attacks a president, our gut instinct is to say, ‘That must be politically motivated,’” said James Densley, a founder of the Violence Project, which has compiled a comprehensive database of mass shootings. “What we might be seeing here is: This was somebody intent on perpetrating mass violence, and they happened to pick a political rally.”

From the near outside – which is where I am situated, it is perplexing that so few commentators reflect on the obvious – the dramatic presence in the United States of too many guns in the country. Not ignoring this, however – and what appears to me to be the obvious as well, is the reflection by Opinion Writer for NYT, David Wallace-Wells. And he writes:

But many others were not so obviously motivated by ideology or a sense of political crusade, including the country’s deadliest attack, in Las Vegas. In Connecticut, Adam Lanza left no manifesto before marching into Sandy Hook Elementary School, and though Virginia Tech’s Seung-Hui Cho left an epic paper trail, it primarily documented deep social resentment and incel-style sexual frustration like that which pushed Elliot Rodger toward violence in the 2014 Isla Vista killings. Other rampages — including in Uvalde, Lewiston and Aurora — have been rendered in national memory not just as horrifying acts of spectacular violence but enigmatic ones, too, with inscrutable motivations.

In the aftermath of the shooting at Trump’s rally, it seems everyone had a story to tell or an argument to make about it. But conspicuously absent was the subject that often takes center stage in the wake of a shooting: guns.

Everyone knows this country is an unusually violent place, but few appreciate just how unusually so. Our gun homicide rate is 22 times as high as it is in the European Union; this means that, on a per-capita basis, for every European who is killed by a gun every year, 22 Americans are. One conservative estimate put the number of guns in America at almost 378 million, increasingly concentrated in a smaller number of households. Perhaps 44 million are AR-15-style rifles.

And while American murder rates are in long-term decline, mass shootings, though only a tiny fraction of the total, are becoming only more common. About a decade ago, it was sometimes pointed out that, contrary to the public narrative, mass shootings hadn’t meaningfully increased in America; instead, they had simply become more salient in an age of, first, cable news and, then, social media. But if you define “mass shooting” as an attack with four or more victims, killed or injured, the number more than doubled between 2014 and 2023.

Experts, analysts and opinion writers need to face these very striking figures. And, if necessary, ignore the politics.

Image Credit: The New York Times

Not Simply the Pace of Summitry: In then end, it is all about the 4Cs

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I posted recently here at Alan’s Newsletter on the upcoming BRICS Summit – Puzzling over a BRICS Enlargement. And BRICS, as I described in the Post, is a ‘big deal’ in the pantheon of Leaders’ Summits. I also noted the possible ‘reignition’ of the Trilateral Summit – China, Japan and the Republic of Korea (Korea). But this is not the current extent of summit activity. There is, in fact, another Trilateral Summit that is about to gather – what I am referring to as a ‘Second Trilateral Summit’. This is the gathering at Camp David of the leaders of Japan, Korea and the United States. And since that gathering is tomorrow, Friday, I thought I’d get this Post out in anticipation of the Camp David Trilateral Summit of the three leaders.

‘Global summitry’ – the extent, importance and consequence of these leaders’ gatherings and the global governance progress achieved at these gatherings is, not surprisingly, at the heart of the Global Summitry Project (GSP). It is here in the e-journal Global Summitry, in our work with colleagues in the China-West Dialogue (CWD), and the strengthening of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and our work with students and researchers through the GSP including the articles, podcasts and videos.

Well let’s turn back, for just a moment to the upcoming  Summit. What, you say, a second trilateral summit? Well, yes, actually. The JapanTimes sets out possible goals for such a Trilateral Leaders’ gathering – the Second Trilateral Summit :

In a major step toward making trilateral cooperation a more permanent fixture, U.S.President Joe Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean leader Yoon Suk-yeol will agree to hold three-way summits at least once a year, while also conducting more frequent joint military drills around the Korean Peninsula and bolstering intelligence-sharing, including real-time warning data on North Korean missile launches.

The three leaders are also expected to signal deeper cooperation in areas such as cybersecurity, supply chain resilience and fighting economic coercion.

The one-day meeting — the three leaders’ first stand alone summit not held on the sidelines of a separate event — will take place against the backdrop of North Korea’s ever-improving nuclear and missile programs as well as China’s growing military assertiveness. Both issues will be high on the agenda.

But first and foremost, the summit is expected to focus on laying the foundation for a more durable trilateral relationship that can withstand political change, namely the growing partnership between two of the most powerful democracies in Asia.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

March 12, 2023

 

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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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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‘G2’ and the Expectations Game

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While designed to build consensus among a broad group of countries, a significant aspect of the G20 has been a consolidated discussion between the leaders of China and the United States. US President, Barack Obama and China’s President, Hu Jintao have used these informal talks for relationship building.  These informal discussions have until now complemented the G20 leaders’ process. But if these US-China leaders’ talks take hold, it may also prove to be a principal rival to the G20 dialogue.

A new game of expectation-raising has begun to swirl over what has been dubbed the “G2” in anticipation of renewed strategic dialogue and the home-and-home state visits announced for 2009, with President Hu visiting Washington in late-summer and President Obama visiting Beijing in late-fall. While the US-China bilaterals will not lack for issues, indeed there are already a series of bilaterals between China-US officials, it remains to be seen how in-depth the two leaders will want to harmonize global economic strategies. Will these encounters survive expectations? Will the G2 serve as distraction to the G20 process?

China’s global status can hardly be ignored. While the economic fires rage on in New York, London and Tokyo, Beijing has demonstrated a cool confidence and continued growth. In the lead-up to the London Summit, People’s Bank of China Governor, Zhou Xiaochuan made very public declarations on the perils of over-reliance on a single currency for global reserves, advocating instead for a standardized, SDR-type currency valuation less prone to volatility. In London, Paola Subacchi of Chatham House commented that, “China graduated from regional to global power. It showed political and financial muscles and the appetite to be involved in the global dialogue – with also an interest in developing a closer relationship with Washington.”

A leading voice in support of an informal G2 “leadership conclave” has been C. Fred Bergsten of the Peterson Institute. As early as 2006, he advocated bilateral diplomacy to support China’s and America’s “joint responsibility” to ensure global financial stability. Recent events have revived proposals for such a format.  These advocates have stressed the need for the two countries to resolve currency disputes and jointly enforce IFI reforms.

In his analysis, CIGI Senior Fellow Gregory Chin suggests that failure or frustration in a divergent G20 process may feed a “Great Power withdrawal into the bilateral track to deal with matters of highest strategic importance. This could mean confining the multilateral track to implementing the decisions made by the Big 2.” This should not immediately be considered a negative outcome. While the G20 scores high on legitimacy, its efficiency and compliance have waned. Resolution of the multitude of issues on the US-China bilateral agenda alone (from trade to currency valuation to intellectual property) could ease gridlock in many international negotiations. However, expectations for a lean and authoritative G2 assume that the two leader countries can abstain from squabbles over human rights, the proverbial ‘third rail’ of US-China relations.

While certainly there are larger strategic factors at play, the success of a G2 would heavily depend on ability of the leaders themselves to get along and work constructively. Can the ever technocratic Hu find common ground with the always affable Obama? The new American President shows an understanding of the importance of the bilateral relationship. Following their first meeting, President Obama noted that, “I continue to believe that the relationship between China and the United States is not only important for the citizens of both our countries but will help to set the stage for how the world deals with a whole host of challenges in the years to come.”

Indications from inside China, however, seem to downplay any expectations of a G2. In the days before the London Summit, leading scholar Huang Ping of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) asserted that “the so-called G2 is both unrealistic and problematic to fit in with the traditional Chinese value of a harmonious world.” By pushing other regional and global developing economies out of key international decision-making, China could risk alienating its like-minded allies in the global South. Continued success of the G20 fits in much better with this approach, and Dr. Huang suggests that China should promote this larger steering group.

Whether formalized or not, a G2 appears to be inevitable, if in nothing but name only. As the two leaders meet, the US-China forum will be cast in this light with enormous scrutiny. ‘G2’ will become the favored term of pundits, perhaps to its detriment.

A major stumbling block for the G2 may end up being the two nations’ cultural differences in their fiscal behaviors. Arguably, the US propensity to spend and the Chinese need to save drove the world into crisis and offered recovery, respectively. However, this balance has proven unsustainable and the macro-economic structure must be fixed. Recovery relies on the two governments providing their citizens with the correct incentives towards long-term restorative fiscal behavior. Yet, to appear successful, a G2 will need instantaneous results.

In his column, “What the G2 Must Discuss Now that the G20 is Over” (7 April 2009), the Financial Times’ Martin Wolf suggests that while China’s desire to engage the US may be self-motivated – to stabilize its US currency reserve, deflect exchange rate reform, and rebalance spending-saving – it is a “necessary condition for serious discussion of global reforms.” If arranged properly, a collaborative G2 would have the potential to remove policy obstacles and pave the way for general agreement across the board. However, if used as another opportunity to name and shame each other, it could heighten tensions in an already delicate relationship.

The most likely outcome is a mediocre G2, one that cannot live-up to the overblown expectations. Here, enters again the G20, this time with a strong dose of modesty and a previously excluded group of leaders more committed than ever to be a part of the process. If however the G20 can forgo this chain of events by harnessing leadership from within and boosting national compliance and effectiveness, plurilateral consensus may trump dyadic centralism.