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Welcome Back, America?
by Philippa Kaur 13 November 2020, 16:32
America may well be divided about Donald Trump, but the rest of the world isn’t. The soon-to-be-former president has gotten high marks in the Philippines and Israel, a passing grade in a couple of African countries and India, and dismal reviews pretty much everywhere else. US allies in Europe and Asia are particularly relieved that Joe Biden will be taking the helm in January. The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, summed up world sentiment with a pithy tweet: “Welcome back, America.”
The international community is happy that the American people have taken down the world’s biggest bully. The heads of international bodies — from the World Health Organization to Human Rights Watch — are delighted that soon Trump won’t be undermining their missions. Perhaps the 2020 presidential election will inspire people elsewhere to dethrone their lesser bullies like Viktor Orban in Hungary, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Narendra Modi in India, even Vladimir Putin in Russia. Short of that, however, the removal of Trump from the international scene will restore a measure of decorum and predictability to global affairs.
Joe Biden and America’s Second Reconstruction
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With a slew of executive orders, Joe Biden is expected to press the reset button shortly after his January inauguration. The Washington Post reports: “He will rejoin the Paris climate accords, according to those close to his campaign and commitments he has made in recent months, and he will reverse President Trump’s withdrawal from the World Health Organization. He will repeal the ban on almost all travel from some Muslim-majority countries, and he will reinstate the program allowing ‘dreamers,’ who were brought to the United States illegally as children, to remain in the country, according to people familiar with his plans.”
Just as Donald Trump was determined to delete the Obama administration’s legacy, Joe Biden will try to rewind the tape to the moment just before Trump took office. That’s all to the good. But the world that existed just before Trump began starting messing with it wasn’t so good: full of war, poverty and rising carbon emissions. Will Biden to do more than just the minimum to push the United States into engaging more positively with the international community?
Dealing with Russia, China and North Korea
The paradox of Trump’s foreign policy is that he often treated US adversaries better than US allies. Trump was constantly berating and belittling the leaders of European and Asian countries that had come to expect at least a modicum of diplomacy from Washington. The abrasive president berated NATO allies for not spending enough on their own defense, and he was constantly trying to pressure Japan and South Korea to pony up more money to cover the costs of US troops on their soil.
Trump loved to insult what should have been his friends: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was “dishonest and weak,” British Prime Minister Theresa May was a “fool,” and German Chancellor Angela Merkel was “stupid.” But Trump was positively glowing about North Korean leader Kim Jong-un (“We fell in love”), Chinese President Xi Jinping (“He’s now president for life, president for life. And he’s great”), and Russian President Vladimir Putin (“he might be bad, he might be good. But he’s a strong leader”). On the campaign trail in the fall, Trump reiterated: “One thing I have learnt, President Xi of China is 100 per cent, Putin of Russia, 100 per cent … Kim Jong-un of North Korea, 100 per cent. These people are sharp and they are smart.”
Biden can be expected to reestablish the more routine praise of democrats and condemnation of autocrats. But will the reset go beyond rhetoric? During the campaign, for instance, Biden hit Trump hard on his China policy. The president, according to the Democratic candidate, wasn’t tough enough on China. Biden pledged to force Beijing to “play by the international rules” when it comes to trade and security. In addition, “under my watch America is going to stand up for the dissidents and defenders of human rights in China,” he has said.
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The US-China relationship had begun its slide before Trump took office. The consensus, therefore, is that Biden’s election won’t reverse the trend. As Steven Lee Myers writes in The New York Times, “While many will welcome the expected change in tone from the strident, at times racist statements by Mr. Trump and other officials, few expect President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. to quickly reverse the confrontational policies his predecessor has put in place.”
Remember, however, that China-bashing has become a time-honored element of US presidential campaigns. Biden was not different. He saw an opening to criticize Trump and an opportunity to look tough on foreign policy, a perennial requirement for Democratic candidates. Once in office, however, presidents have generally adopted a more business-like approach to Beijing.
My guess is that Biden will largely abandon the tariffs that Trump applied on Chinese goods because those were self-inflicted wounds that hurt American farmers and manufacturers. But he’ll continue to use sanctions against Chinese companies — on the grounds of intellectual property theft or security concerns — and against individuals associated with human rights abuses. Practically, that would mean shifting tensions to more targeted issues and allowing the bulk of US-China economic cooperation to proceed.
More focused cooperation might be possible on environmental issues as well. In 2011, China and the United States established the Clean Energy Research Center to combine efforts to develop technology that can wean both countries of their dependency on fossil fuels. The funding runs out this year. Trump would not have renewed the project. Biden can do so and should even expand it. Of course, just talking would be a good start. The United States and China need to dial back tensions over Taiwan, the South China Sea and the global economy. Biden will likely move quickly to lower the temperature so that he can focus on cleaning up some other foreign policy messes.
The same applies to Russia. Despite some rather conventional hawkish language about Russia, Biden is clearly interested in reducing the role of nuclear weapons in US military policy. He is not only skeptical about the huge cost of modernizing the US arsenal but has shown some support for a no-first-use pledge, which would put him to the left of Obama. These positions should facilitate arms control negotiations with Russia, beginning with an extension of New START, even if the two sides remain far apart on issues like Ukraine, human rights and energy politics.
The prospects for a resumption of negotiations with North Korea are perhaps not as rosy. Biden will probably order a strategic review of relations with Pyongyang, which will conclude after several months with various recommendations for cautious engagement. Those proposals, not terribly different from the ones that the Obama administration embraced in 2008, will not entice North Korea to give up its nuclear program. There might be negotiations, but they won’t be any more successful than the Trump administration’s efforts.
The end result: the same “strategic patience” approach of the Obama years. But perhaps a more flexible Biden administration will allow South Korea to move forward with its own slow-motion engagement with the North.
The Greater Middle East
Trump tilted US policy toward the Israeli hard line. He was a great deal more accommodating of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, particularly around Yemen and human rights. And he substantially escalated tensions with Iran.
Biden’s first and perhaps least controversial step will involve the nuclear deal the Obama administration negotiated with Tehran. Biden has indicated that he favors rejoining the pact, and Iran would welcome such a move. To begin with, he’ll likely negotiate the removal of Trump-era sanctions in exchange for Iran reversing some of the nuclear moves it has made over the last three years.
“One option for a Biden administration to jumpstart the process would be to revoke National Security Policy Memorandum 11, which formally ended U.S. participation in the JCPOA on May 8, 2018, on day one of his administration,” the National Iranian American Council recommends. “Sanctions-lifting could be accomplished by the same mix of statutory waivers, Executive order revocations, and U.S. sanctions list removals as performed by President Obama when implementing the initial U.S. commitments under the nuclear accord.” It can’t come too soon. Iran will hold its presidential election by June 2021, and the reformists need to demonstrate that their strategy of engagement with the United States is still effective. The reform camp did poorly in last spring’s parliament elections.
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Another important first move would be for Biden to end US support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen. The cancellation of all military assistance, from intelligence-sharing to spare parts for planes, would seriously compromise the war effort, and it’s a move that even some Senate Republicans support. “He should publicly and privately tell the Saudis that he will do this on day one,” Erik Sperling, of Just Foreign Policy, told In These Times. “This will pressure them into negotiations and may end the war before he even enters the White House.”
The Saudis, not thrilled with Biden’s victory, have been slow in sending their congratulations. In addition to his stance against the Yemen war, the next president will take a harder line on Saudi human rights violations, including the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi embassy in Istanbul. On the other hand, Biden might find a bit more common ground with Saudi Arabia in piecing together a new approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Donald Trump put a heavy thumb on the scale to favor Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Biden will seek to correct the balance. Writes Yossi Melman in the Middle East Eye:
“It is very likely that once Biden enters the Oval Office, his foreign and national security team will renew contacts with the Palestinian Authority, reinstate the Palestinian embassy in Washington and re-open the US Treasury’s pipes to allow the smooth flow of financial aid to the Palestinians, which were blocked and closed by the outgoing administration.
From sources close to the Biden campaign, Middle East Eye also learned that the CIA will once again cooperate with its Palestinian counterparts and engage in mutual security collaboration to tackle terror threats. But at the same time, PA President Mahmoud Abbas will be asked to tone down anti-Israeli rhetoric and to resume talks with Israel.“
Biden favors a two-state solution, but it’s not clear whether this option still exists after Trump and Netanyahu teamed up to undermine the Palestinian negotiating position.
Climate Crisis and Security
Unlike the progressive wing of the Democratic Party — or major political parties in Europe and other countries — Joe Biden has not fully embraced the Green New Deal. Instead, he has put forward his “clean energy revolution,” which envisions a carbon-neutral United States by 2050 and would invest around $1.7 trillion into job creation in clean energy and infrastructure.
Biden’s positions on the climate crisis are in marked contrast to Trump’s denialism. According to the president-elect’s website, he “will not only recommit the United States to the Paris Agreement on climate change – he will go much further than that. He will lead an effort to get every major country to ramp up the ambition of their domestic climate targets. He will make sure those commitments are transparent and enforceable, and stop countries from cheating by using America’s economic leverage and power of example. He will fully integrate climate change into our foreign policy and national security strategies, as well as our approach to trade.”
This plan, if implemented, “would reduce US emissions in the next 30 years by about 75 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide or its equivalents,” reports The Guardian. “Calculations by the Climate Action Tracker show that this reduction would be enough to avoid a temperature rise of about 0.1C by 2100.”
Achieving the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement is certainly a major improvement over Trump. But those goals themselves are insufficient. The pledges of Paris would still result in an increase of more than 3 degrees Celsius, well above the 2-degree target. Moreover, those pledges were voluntary, and many countries are not even meeting those modest goals.
Of course, Biden will face considerable resistance from the Republican Party for even his modified Green New Deal. That’s why he has to focus on the jobs and infrastructure components to force the Republicans to appear “anti-job” if they stand in the way of the “clean energy revolution.” To pay for his green transition, Biden plans to rescind the tax cuts for the wealthy and leverage private-sector funds. He hasn’t discussed reallocating funds from a sharply reduced military budget. Indeed, Biden hasn’t talked about reducing military spending at all, right he favors reducing American military presence in Afghanistan and Iraq.
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Joe Biden is rather unexceptional when it comes to his views on American exceptionalism. The Foreign Affairs article that outlined his foreign policy approach was titled “Why American Must Lead Again,” after all.
Granted, Biden was focusing more on the soft-power side of American leadership, leading on climate change, human rights and democracy, nuclear non-proliferation. His tone in the Foreign Affairs article is a welcome antidote to Trump’s bombast: “American leadership is not infallible; we have made missteps and mistakes. Too often, we have relied solely on the might of our military instead of drawing on our full array of strengths.” He emphasizes diplomacy, international cooperation, openness.
But Biden will be the president of the United States of America, not the Democratic Socialists of America. He believes that the United States has a right to intervene militarily overseas if necessary. He views the United States as an honest broker to mediate in parts of the world — the Middle East, East Asia — where the United States is hardly neutral. He will, like Obama, sell weapons, and lots of them, to almost any country with the cash to buy them (and even some that don’t). And if that weren’t enough, he’ll have a still-strong “America First” constituency in Congress scrutinizing his every move, eager to label him a “traitor.”
The international community, although welcoming the new president, will understandably remain wary of the United States. Dr. Jekyll will be back in charge in the White House, but who’s to say that Mr. Hyde won’t return in four years or even make some guest appearances before the next election? It simply doesn’t make a lot of sense to entrust leadership to a country with a severe personality disorder.
*[This article was originally published by Foreign Policy in Focus.]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
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Why Is the US Losing Against China in an Espionage War?
by Philippa Kaur 27 October 2020, 00:24
Chinese espionage cases in the US have assumed alarming proportions. On July 7, Christopher Wray, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, declared: “We’ve now reached the point where the FBI is opening a new China-related counterintelligence case about every 10 hours. Of the nearly 5,000 active FBI counterintelligence cases currently underway across the country, almost half are all related to China.”
Does Beijing Prefer Biden or Trump?
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Since the mid-1990s, evidence of Chinese espionage in the US had been mounting. However, it is only recently that the US began taking this issue seriously. Washington’s inability to recognize the threat from Beijing early on is due to its failure to understand Chinese espionage culture. This, in turn, is because the US lacks a strategic counterintelligence culture and focuses excessively on operations.
Historical Roots of Chinese Espionage Culture
Americans see the worsening of Sino-US relations from the prism of “betrayal” and “surprise.” This is because the US considers the 1972 US-China rapprochement as a watershed moment. Many in Washington believe the US was singularly responsible for the dramatic economic rise of China. Consequently, they had assumed that the Middle Kingdom would be grateful for American help and adopt Western norms over time. To their surprise, this did not happen. Beijing never really displayed gratitude and it has become increasingly defiant as it has become more powerful. The rising threat of espionage, both security and commercial, is just one of the many manifestations of this defiance.
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A simple question arises: Why did the US fail to foresee the threat of espionage by China? The answer lies in the chronic inability of American intelligence and intelligentsia to pay adequate attention to the intelligence cultures of other countries. As early as the 1980s, this lacuna had been pointed out by some academics who understood the perils of neglecting foreign cultures. Their advice went unheeded, though.
To understand Chinese intelligence culture, the operative date is not 1972 but the first recorded interaction between the Chinese and Western civilizations. In the 16th century, Italian-born Father Matteo Ricci led a team of Jesuit missionaries to the village of Shanghai. In a way, these missionaries were the first Western intelligence operatives in China. They came with the mission of converting the Chinese to Christianity. The Jesuits assumed that the lure of superior Western science and technology would convince the Chinese to embrace Christianity. This didn’t happen. By the end of the 19th century, the Jesuits concluded that their mission had been a “total failure.”
The reason behind this failure is fairly straightforward. Hostility toward foreigners was deeply entrenched in the Chinese psyche. Any foreigner was categorized as “inferior” and “barbaric.” The missionaries were only welcome as long as they imparted knowledge in the scientific and technological realms. Beyond that, when they tried to propagate religion and philosophy, they were punished and sometimes executed. In essence, the Chinese saw the missionaries akin to a fat cow that was to be milked and then slaughtered. This episode offers important insights for understanding modern Chinese espionage culture.
Today, China is again milking the West for advanced scientific and technical knowledge. This time, it has sent Chinese spies to infiltrate citadels of Western knowledge, especially in the US.
Reassessing Chinese Espionage Operations
Studies on Chinese intelligence have mostly focused on operational level analysis. Analysts have largely failed to place individual espionage operations within the cultural context. Few Americans understand that the principles guiding Chinese espionage operations are fundamentally at odds with western ones.
This difference could be spotted as early as the mid-20th century when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was building up its intelligence infrastructure with the help of the Soviet Union. Subsequently, the CCP intelligence apparatus cooperated closely with Soviet intelligence. Yet, despite tutelage and operational cooperation, the influence of Soviet intelligence practices on the Chinese remained minimal.
Just as 16th century China had welcomed Western science and discarded Western philosophy, the CCP followed the same practice. Operationally, the CCP intelligence services were keen to learn the tricks of the trade from the Soviets. However, they stuck with their ancient philosophies on the subject. In particular, the Chinese stayed true to Sun Tzu, the famous military strategist of the 6thcentury BCE. There was “no imitation or even emulation” of Soviet intelligence practices, but only “customization and improvisation.”
One such customization can be seen in how the Chinese have employed the Sun Tzuvian concept of “expendable spies,” which conflicts with the Western philosophy of “ethical spying.” Empirical studies on the British, American and Soviet experience in running human intelligence operations reveal a remarkable degree of concern for field agents. In particular, Western intelligence agencies have historically shown great regard for the lives and security of their informers. The Americans and the British treated Russian informers like Adolf Tolkachev and Oleg Gordievsky rather well. The Soviets also took good care of strategic informants like the Cambridge Five. Western handling officers often insist on “informant security.”
The “expendable spies” doctrine, on the other hand, does not extend to the field agents the privileges that come with “ethical spying.” The arrest of Candace Claiborne, the State Department official, illustrates this point. Claiborne’s true identity was revealed when she unsuspectingly accepted a compliment from an undercover FBI operative that she was one of the “highest regarded” assets of the Ministry of State Security (MSS), the intelligence, security and secret police agency of China. This incident reveals that Chinese intelligence seems to have offered zero security training to an agent who enjoyed top-secret clearance. The CCP treats agents as “disposable” because it still follows Sun Tzu’s theory of “expendable spies.”
The expendable and ethical schools of intelligence lead to a qualitative versus quantitative dichotomy when it comes to informer networks. Western agencies look for a few reliable informers who can be secured. The Chinese employ a vacuum cleaner approach and prefer using a large number of intelligence collectors instead of a few trained professionals. This qualitative-quantitative distinction is certainly well known, but few Americans appreciate its historical origins that date back to the formative years of the CCP intelligence apparatus.
Beijing has used the quantitative approach relentlessly when it comes to commercial espionage. In 2015, John Lewis of the Obama administration insisted to his Chinese counterpart that they discuss this thorny issue. After a few failed attempts at dodging it, the Chinese official made a rather candid observation. According to the official, the Chinese intelligence culture did not distinguish between espionage for national security and for economics. Such a dichotomy was solely a Western one. For the Chinese, it did not exist. Despite this clear confession, it took another five years for the American establishment to completely wake up to the reality of the Chinese threat.
Fixing the American Culture of Counterintelligence
The US can contain the Chinese threat by effective counterintelligence. However, the current state of play does not inspire much confidence. American misreading of Chinese espionage culture has given birth to an inadequate counterintelligence response. The US focuses too much on individual cases and not enough on developing a strategic counterintelligence doctrine.
In such a strategy, the US would employ offensive operations to disrupt enemy intelligence goals. Instead, the FBI currently deploys a defensive strategy that involves the prosecution and conviction of foreign agents. This has two obvious flaws.
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First, prosecution takes up scarce time, energy and money. It has an opportunity cost. It fails to exploit a compromised spy who could be used as a double agent. Prosecution also alerts enemy intelligence agencies who can then cover up their tracks.
Second, convictions are hard to obtain in intelligence matters. Evidence is often insufficient, critical details of operations cannot be revealed and the gray matters of espionage do not translate as easily to the cut and dried approach of the court of law. This makes convictions difficult to secure. In fact, the shrinking arrest-to-conviction ratio feeds into the Chinese intelligence offensive, which feeds on accusations of racism and witch-hunting by the Americans. Every person accused by the FBI who walks away free adds to China’s psychological operations (PSYOP).
In theory, PSYOP is shaped and targeted at a particular set of audiences to achieve a well-defined set of objectives. By accusing Americans of racism, the CCP aims to appeal to the sentiments of the American people in order to turn them against the FBI. In this regard, Beijing seems successful as American academic and scientific institutions have repeatedly resisted the FBI’s requests to monitor Chinese students. These institutions fear accusations of racism and perhaps a drying up of Chinese money. China has cleverly created rifts between American security agencies and its intellectual institutions to further its own purposes.
To extricate American counterintelligence from this imbroglio, the US will have to embrace a strategic counterintelligence doctrine. It will have to use PSYOP effectively too. In particular, it could focus on China’s violations of human rights such as the brutal “traitor weeding” program followed by its intelligence agencies. Already, educated Americans are turning against Chinese actions in Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Tibet.
Therefore, the need of the hour is for Americans to embrace the famed Sun Tzuvian dictum: “[K]now thyself and know thy enemy; a thousand battles, a thousand victories.”
*[Atul Singh provided guidance for this article.]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
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Does Beijing Prefer Biden or Trump?
by Philippa Kaur 20 October 2020, 16:39
Few major events occur in the world now occur without China having a stake, directly or indirectly, in their outcome. That is because Beijing has become a force to be reckoned with, and its influence has grown to rival or even surpass that of the US in many parts of the world. Just as elections throughout the world have historically implied some sort of impact on Washington, now the world is becoming accustomed to the same being true for Beijing.
The US presidential election is certainly no exception. At least part of the reason that matters to Washington is because, for the first time since America became a global superpower, it now has a proper peer. The former Soviet Union may have been a military peer, but it was not a peer on any other level. That is not true with China, which now rivals the US in some arenas or is on its way to doing so. In some aspects of science, technology, the global economy, diplomacy and political influence, Beijing is already more consequential to much of the rest of the world than America is.
360˚ Context: The 2020 US Election Explained
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Given its single-minded focus on creating an alternative world order crafted in Beijing’s image, as well as the tremendous resources it is devoting to that task, there is little reason to believe that China’s trajectory will change in the coming decade and beyond. One could argue, in fact, that the outcome of the election matters almost as much to Beijing as it does to America, for it will define the type and scope of headwind Beijing faces for at least the next four years.
A second Trump term of course implies more of the same: trade war, challenging Beijing at every opportunity, the war of words, and not giving an inch on anything. But it also implies four more years of discord and disarray between America and its many allies. Both America and China have paid a serious price for having Donald Trump in the White House, but Beijing has certainly benefitted while Washington has suffered from the fractious nature of America’s relationship with its allies.
Under a Biden presidency, that is likely to be greatly reduced, which should concern Beijing a lot, for it has enabled the Communist Party of China (CPP) to act with virtual impunity on the global stage while America and its allies passively look on. That is what has enabled Beijing to expropriate and militarize the Spratly and Paracel Islands, bulldoze its way into more than 70 countries without opposition via the Belt and Road Initiative, and significantly increase its influence in the world’s multilateral organizations, among other things. That damage has already been done and, in truth, there is relatively little Joe Biden or any subsequent US administration may be able to do about it.
What Biden can do in response is repair those alliances and lead an effort to coordinate and unify the West’s future responses to Beijing’s actions. It is by acting in unison that the West will not only get Beijing’s attention, but begin to reverse the tide. Beijing has few real allies, and some of its “allies” have dual allegiances between Beijing and Washington. When push comes to shove in a time of crisis, Saudi Arabia, for example, is not likely to pivot in Beijing’s direction, despite China’s growing economic ties with the kingdom. The same is true with a variety of other allies that China believes are in its camp but which Washington has cultivated over the decades. Beijing is a new arrival to the party.
So, what is at stake for Beijing is an unfortunate choice: endure four more years of Trump’s tirades or (at least) four years of a US administration that values America’s alliances and intends to reinvigorate them. Biden is not likely to try to reverse the course Trump has embarked upon with Beijing. That ship has sailed. US Congress is on board with Trump’s contention that Xi Jinping and the CCP are bad actors and that the Chinese government is America’s greatest adversary. Biden’s foreign policy is unlikely to be substantively differently oriented.
In that regard, while this is undoubtedly the most important election of most Americans’ lifetimes, it is also crucially important for Beijing. The gloves are off on both sides and they are not going to be put back on. The question is, does Beijing prefer Trump or Biden? While the answer is probably neither, knowing that bilateral relations are not going to revert to where they were under Barack Obama, Beijing may actually prefer Trump over Biden in the hope that the damage done to America’s alliances may become permanent. In the meantime, the CCP will continue to use Trump to whip up nationalism at home, which of course suits its ultimate objective of strengthening Xi’s and the CCP’s grip on power.
*[Daniel Wagner is the author of “The Chinese Vortex: The Belt and Road Initiative and its Impact on the World.”]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
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Will Laos Become a Model for China’s Economic Colonialism?
by Philippa Kaur 16 October 2020, 12:03
The small Southeast Asian nation of Laos stands out as a success story in COVID-19 control. With only 23 confirmed cases, it has gradually lifted lockdown measures. Success on the medical front, however, will not be enough to carry the country through the economic whiplash that pandemic containment had on the informal economy. Laos’ reliance on remittances from abroad is not unique in the region, and while it has thus far averted a coronavirus-induced health crisis, its economy is expected to contract, according to World Bank estimates.
Incomes from tourism, remittances and the informal gig economy are expected to be hit hardest by the pandemic. Director general of the Laotian Department of Labor Skill Development at the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare, Anousone Khamsingsavath, has voiced concerns about exacerbated poverty under COVID-19. Migrant workers have been returning from abroad due to evaporated opportunities, and the sudden influx of job seekers, coupled with a precarious economy, makes countries like Laos particularly susceptible to economic — and thus political — influence from outside.
With the BRI, China Still Has a Long Road Ahead
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Against the backdrop of the pandemic, countries whose economies are large enough to weather the storm have a unique opportunity to extend their influence vis-à-vis their smaller neighbors. A case in point: China and Laos. Earlier this year, Beijing began to build diplomatic goodwill in Vientiane by sending supplies, health advisers and medical staff, as well as offering loans and development opportunities to help Laos recover from the crisis. Existing power imbalances between the two states will likely be exacerbated, and China is well positioned to further consolidate support for its ally.
Golden City
China was the first country to be hit by the pandemic, and its economy, the second largest in the world, is now showing signs of recovery. Beijing has already unveiled a 3.6-trillion yuan ($506-billion) stimulus package, suggesting that China intends to continue work on its existing projects, with the Belt and Road Initiative being the crown jewel among them. As part of this initiative unveiled in 2013, China has been working to extend its land and maritime transportation networks through infrastructure built with the agreement of partner countries.
One of the initiative’s branches that has thus far received little attention is the China-Laos railway, which stretches from Mohan, in China’s Yunnan province, to the Laotian border town of Boten, before reaching the capital, Vientiane. Once adjoining railways are complete, the segment is projected to be part of a pan-Asian network that joins Yunnan’s capital Kunming with Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. The project has been underway since 2016. Laos is the only landlocked country in Southeast Asia, and due to the lack of ports that can offer counterbalancing sources of income and connectivity, it is particularly dependent on Chinese investment in towns like Boten. The town was designated a special economic zone (SEZ), its casinos drawing in massive numbers of tourists from mainland China, where gambling is illegal.
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Touted by both governments as a partnership of mutual prosperity, local Laotians complained of the disrespect and one-sided decision-making from the new arrivals. This was the case when casinos in Boten were shut down in 2010 by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs over accusations of crime and prostitution. The town, whose economy centered around gambling, went into decline even as construction of the railroad continued. Two years later, however, Laotian officials decided to give the original sponsor of Boten’s failed project a second chance. The sponsor partnered with another industrial group and signed a new agreement to shift the town’s focus from gambling to commerce, rechristening “Golden Boten City” as “Beautiful Boten Specific Economic Zone.”
It is unclear whether this new venture is a result of or is intended as an extension of the railway being constructed. What is clear is that China does not intend for the BRI to be an isolated transportation framework in Boten’s case. Railway construction naturally brings an influx of Chinese laborers who prefer Chinese goods and Chinese services, but an injection of Chinese cash into the local economy could also add to the local government’s incentive to cooperate with construction. The businesses and the railway can then form an economic feedback loop that justifies each other’s existence.
Business Model
This business model would not be so worrying if the local Laotian government retained significant regulatory power over the venture. However, the Chinese-funded Boten Economic Zone Development and Construction Group has been given the responsibility of charging taxes and building both utility and telecommunications infrastructure. This calls into question the sovereignty of the host nation’s government, and one of the group’s buyers stationed in Boten went so far as to say the company basically controlled the entire growing city.
SEZs like Boten may become the next model of economic colonialism in Southeast Asia, where Chinese investors lease large tracts of land for a substantial period, import Chinese workers to build infrastructure around railway stations, and create economies that cater specifically to Chinese patrons and Chinese interests. This form of colonialism doesn’t have to be directly affiliated with the Communist Party, as China has more than enough corporations with deep pockets that can withstand the risk of investment and provide the much-needed capital to rural areas whose native government do not have the means for development.
As COVID-19 ripples through Southeast Asia, countries in the region can be expected increasingly to look abroad for any kind of financial buffer that will help them survive the economic shockwaves. Even countries like Laos that have avoided a health crisis cannot avoid suffering indirectly from the economic contractions of their less proactive neighbors. Regional governments will be tempted to grant more concessions in the hopes of bringing more jobs to locals out of work, and capital from China will be alluring, even as it inevitably comes with economic dependence and the local influence of powerful Chinese corporations.
Developments in little-known outposts with potential, such as Boten, rarely make the headlines. But make no mistake: China was already making its way steadily through Southeast Asia, and the ongoing pandemic is only likely to increase its pace.
*[Fair Observer is a media partner of the Young Professionals in Foreign Policy.]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
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China-India Clash Wakes Up Tibet’s Ghost of Independence
by Philippa Kaur 7 October 2020, 10:52
Wildfires have been burning in California, Brazil and Siberia. Brexit is causing unending headaches in both Europe and the UK. The American election campaign has kicked off in high gear. Deaths from COVID-19 have crossed one million. US President Donald Trump’s taxes were the talk of the town, before he landed in hospital with COVID-19 himself. In such a milieu, it is easy to overlook a tempest in Asia. On October 5, China threatened to make India’s latest strategic tunnel unserviceable even as Indian engineers race against time and tough conditions to bolster their country’s border infrastructure.
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For the last few months, India and China have been clashing over icy heights on the roof of the world. Their undefined border and contesting claims are causing increasing unease in the world’s largest and most populous continent. They are also leading to new moves on the geopolitical chessboard that might have historic consequences.
Tibetan Troops, Article 370 and Ladakh
Tenzin Nyima, a company leader in India’s shadowy Special Frontier Force (SFF) and a stateless Tibetan refugee, died on the contested Line of Actual Control that separates territories controlled by India and China. Hundreds of thousands of Tibetan refugees have lived in India since the Dalai Lama’s flight to the country in 1959. A select few serve in the SFF, an extremely tough outfit that excels in high-altitude operations.
The Tibetan Kashag was the de facto independent government of Tibet before the invasion by China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in 1950, which was condemned by the United Nations General Assembly. The SFF fights under the snow lion flag of the Tibetan Kashag. The Central Tibetan Administration, known as the Tibetan Government in Exile, also uses the same flag. Understandably, the PLA, the Communist Party of China (CCP) and Chinese nationalists are not too fond of this symbol.
Nyima’s funeral in Ladakh occurred with much honor. Importantly, Ram Madhav, then the general secretary of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was present at the funeral. His admirers refer to him as the “Kissinger of India.” More pertinently, Madhav is one of the most influential political figures in India and a key ideologue on strategic matters. He was a key architect of the BJP’s Kashmir policy and was instrumental in removing Article 370 last year, which ended Jammu and Kashmir’s autonomy. By honoring Nyima, Madhav is making a symbolic but profound point: He is signaling support for the Tibetan cause.
As most Indians and India hands know, the BJP had been vowing to remove Article 370 for decades. Once Prime Minister Narendra Modi won historic reelection last year, the BJP made a bold bet and removed this article from the constitution. It carved out Ladakh from the state of Jammu and Kashmir as a separate union territory. The people of this land practice Tibetan Buddhism, share ethnic kinship with Tibetans and follow the Dalai Lama. By removing Article 370 and giving Ladakhis their own territory, India has upset not only Pakistan but also China.
Salami Tactics
Historically, India’s stand on Tibet has been ineffectual. Despite domestic opposition, Jawaharlal Nehru acquiesced to the Chinese conquest of Tibet. Even after the disastrous defeat of 1962, India’s first prime minister did not come down on the side of the Tibetans. The Dalai Lama has lived in India for decades, but Delhi has never openly supported Tibetan independence or autonomy. In contrast, China has allied with Pakistan and opposed India’s interests in Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh.
Since Modi came to power in 2014, he has met Chinese President Xi Jinping 18 times. He has been conciliatory and accommodating to Xi. Even before Modi, India opened its markets to Chinese products. This economic engagement was for a strategic reason: India wanted peace with its larger neighbor and aimed to wean it away from Pakistan. Instead, China has consistently followed salami tactics, and, this year, it cut off a larger slice of Indian territory.
Chinese actions led to Modi losing face earlier this year. The Indian National Congress (INC) party tried to paint him as the new Nehru. For the Nehru dynasty that still leads the INC, a debacle for Modi would wash off Nehru’s sins and damage the BJP. In the brutal battle for national dominance, an embarrassment for Modi would boost the INC. Hence, it is no surprise that Modi and Madhav are pushing back so strongly against China.
In recent years, India has been preparing for a two-front war. In 2018, India’s Air Force conducted its largest exercise to counter a joint China-Pakistan invasion. The junior minister in charge of border roads is General V.K. Singh, the former army chief. More than most, he understands the key need for border infrastructure and has been pushing hard for it. This has caused the Chinese grief because Indian infrastructure upgradation of its Central Asian tracts chips away at the PLA’s strategic advantage.
Public Sympathy
In recent weeks, Modi has gained public sympathy. The Indian public blames Xi for backstabbing him and the Indian intelligentsia for being too naive, if not deluded, about China. This public support has allowed Modi to take a stronger stance against Beijing. The PLA and Xi have been caught off guard. At high altitudes, Chinese troops have been weighed, measured and found wanting. Indian troops have not rolled over as in 1962. In fact, they have given the PLA a bloody nose. This is deeply embarrassing for a country with superpower pretensions. China is setting itself up as a counterpart to the US. Anything short of a conclusive victory against a country China deems to be its inferior would be nothing short of a national disaster.
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As two of the authors explained in a historical analysis of the India-China conflict, Beijing has become more aggressive since Xi came to power. The PLA has consistently and constantly claimed territory India considers its own. As a result, confrontations have been on the rise. There is a real risk that Xi might be overplaying his hand.
What Xi fails to appreciate is that 2020 is not 1962. Over the last few months, China has lost the element of surprise. Indian troops are mobilized all along the border and have more experience of high altitudes. Furthermore, Tibetans and other mountain troops fighting for India are local lads with old scores to settle with the PLA. They come from communities who practice Tibetan Buddhism. Hence, they resent Beijing for cultural genocide in Tibet and do not want to live under its yoke. These troops are fighting for their freedom and are in a do-or-die mood. The next clash could easily spill over into an all-out war.
Xi forgets that India has less to lose in case of war. A decisive defeat would merely confirm its underdog status and win international sympathy. Even if India loses but its troops acquit themselves well, China would be humbled. However, if China loses, Xi himself and his CCP might find themselves in trouble. On a simple cost-benefit calculus, a Xi-led China has no rational reason to go to war against a Modi-led India.
There is another key reason for China to wind down tensions. After decades of licking their wounds, Tibetans have now openly entered the fray under their fabled snow lion flag and with the blessing of India’s political leadership. It is no longer two militaries clashing for icy crags but two ideas colliding head-on. A military clash might be about to turn into a political, religious and cultural conflict. The Tibetan snow lion of independence threatens Beijing’s holy cow of Greater China.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
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Will China’s Digital Currency Revolutionize Global Payments?
by Philippa Kaur 5 October 2020, 15:54
China is well on its way to becoming a cashless society. More than 600 million Chinese already use Alibaba’s Alipay and Tencent’s WeChat Pay to pay for much of what they purchase. Between them, the two companies control approximately 90% of China’s mobile payments market, which totaled some $17 trillion in 2019. A wide variety of sectors throughout China have since adopted Blockchain to pay bills, settle disputes in court and track shipments. The Chinese government understands that, via Blockchain, the issuance of its own cryptocurrency is an excellent way to track and record the movement of payments, goods and people.
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The unsexily named Digital Currency/Electronic Payments (DCEP) is intended to be used by anyone around the world to purchase anything. It has the potential to revolutionize the global payments system. Assuming it succeeds, many other countries will want to emulate it. Some other governments have already launched similar initiatives, but not on the scope or scale of the DCEP, which promises to be the first global digital currency.
Digital Wallets
What appears to have spurred the Chinese government to actively pursue the DCEP in 2019 was the birth of an organization that also has the potential to revolutionize the global payments system, the Libra Association. Libra is a grouping of more than two dozen organizations creating the world’s first Blockchain-derived global payment system, specifically founded on best practices in regulation and governance. Its stated objective is to transparently bring access to financial services to billions of people who either have limited or no access to the existing global banking system.
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Given that it is an American-led initiative that will use the US dollar to determine its benchmark value, Beijing viewed Libra as an attempt to establish US dominance over the global cryptocurrency marketplace. It previously viewed other cryptocurrencies as a threat to its own hegemony over capital controls in China.
Although its motivations to counter the US are clear enough, much remains unknown about the DCEP. One has to wonder just how much focus it will have on transparency, governance or best practices. It will not be available on cryptocurrency exchanges, nor will it be available for speculative purposes. Embracing Blockchain and creating a DCEP ecosystem will give the Chinese Central Bank unprecedented power over capital movements — certainly in China, but also around the world.
Like Alipay and WeChat, the DCEP will require a digital wallet, but it will not require a bank account. Commercial banks will issue the digital wallets, but no internet connection will be required to conduct transactions via the DCEP. All that will be required is that a phone has battery power. While a certain degree of anonymity will be present with the DCEP, the Chinese Central Bank will still be able to track who spent or received funds, when, where and from whom. The Chinese government calls the concept “controllable anonymity” and will rely on Big Data to identify behavioral characteristics of the individuals and businesses using DCEP. Doing so will help the government identify money laundering, tax evasion and terrorist financing. It will, of course, also permit a higher degree and quality of state surveillance of Chinese citizens and citizens of any other country that may use it.
Since the Chinese government will be the first to launch a global digital currency, it will gain a considerable lead over the world’s nations and provide it with the ability to perfect its surveillance capabilities in China and around the world for any country that chooses to adopt the DCEP. It will also help to internationalize the yuan and simultaneously create less dependence on the US dollar. So, the Chinese government intends to stay a step ahead of the competition, enhance its ability to monitor its citizens, broaden its soft power and increase China’s appeal to other countries while countering the supremacy of the US dollar in the process.
Alternative System
By issuing the DCEP, the Chinese government hopes that demand for yuan reserves will follow, facilitating a digital version of the yuan as a global alternative to dollar reserves, especially in Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) member nations seeking to modernize their financial sectors. It could also help internationalize China’s e-payment systems, which are not used outside of China. In the absence of an American cryptocurrency, which seems to be a long way off, doing so could in theory make the DCEP the cryptocurrency of choice among BRI (and other) countries.
Such an alternative system may be particularly appealing for countries under US sanctions, which may wish to avoid using the US dollar entirely, or for countries or businesses engaged in trading, investment or lending with Chinese companies. But the yuan remains not fully convertible, with just 1% of international payments using it. That could have a significant impact on the government’s implementation strategy. In addition, the Chinese government is attempting to centralize what is a decentralized technology by requiring that all “nodes” using the Blockchain register with the government and provide information about their users.
While the Chinese people are accustomed to having their government pry into, and try to control, their private lives, most of the world’s population wants nothing of the sort. It remains to be seen just how broadly the DCEP will be adopted, or whether it will turn out to be a net positive for the nations that choose to use it, but having the first-mover advantage will surely serve Beijing well. Despite its apparent flaws, if it also helps to bring some of the world’s poorest nations with the least access to basic and global financial services on par with the world’s developed nations in that regard, Beijing will have done much of the world’s population a great service in the process.
*[Daniel Wagner is the author of “The Chinese Vortex: The Belt and Road Initiative and its Impact on the World.”]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
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Taking American Carnage to the Next Level
by Philippa Kaur 18 September 2020, 12:07
It is a recent tradition among occupants of the White House, as they head out of office, to play a few practical jokes on their successors. The Clinton administration jesters, for instance, removed all the Ws from White House keyboards before handing over the keys to George W. Bush’s transition team. The Obama administration left behind books authored by Barack Obama for Trump’s incoming press team.
Donald Trump has no sense of humor. His “gift” to the next administration is dead serious. With his recent foreign policy moves, the president is trying to change the facts on the ground so that whoever follows in his footsteps will have a more difficult time restoring the previous status quo. Forget about pranks. This is a big middle-finger salute to the foreign policy establishment and the world at large.
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Of course, Trump is not preparing to leave office, regardless of the results of the November election. But in his policies in the Middle East and East Asia, the president is attempting to change the very rules of the game just in case he’s not around next year to personally make more mischief. The man is not going to win a Nobel Prize for his efforts — despite the recent nominations coming from a pair of right-wing Scandinavians — but he’ll do whatever he can to achieve the next best thing: putting the Trump brand on geopolitics.
It cost about $5,000 to replace all those W-less typewriters. The bill for all the damage Trump is doing to international affairs in his attempt to make his Israel, Iran and China policies irreversible will be much, much higher.
Israel Up, Palestine Down
For several years, the Trump administration promised a grand plan that would resolve the Israel-Palestine stand-off. According to this “deal of the century,” Palestinians would accept some economic development funds, mostly from Gulf states, in exchange for giving up their aspirations for an authentic state.
The hoops Palestinians would have to jump through to get even such a shrunken and impotent state — effectively giving up Jerusalem, relinquishing the right to join international organizations without Israel’s permission — are such obvious deal-breakers that Jared Kushner and company must have known from the start that their grand plan was not politically viable.
But finding a workable solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict was not the purpose of the plan. It was all an elaborate shell game. While the administration dangled its proposal in front of world leaders and international media, it was working with Israel to create “new realities.” Trump withdrew the United States from the UN Human Rights Council for its “chronic bias against Israel.” The administration closed the PLO’s office in Washington, DC, and eliminated US funding for the UN agency that supports Palestinian refugees. And in perhaps the most consequent move, Trump broke a global convention by moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Until recently, only one country, Guatemala, had followed suit.
But then came a flurry of diplomatic activity this fall as both the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain extended diplomatic recognition to Israel. The Trump administration also pushed Serbia and Kosovo, as part of a new economic deal, to include clauses about Israel: Serbia will move its embassy to Jerusalem and Kosovo will establish one there after establishing diplomatic relations with Israel.
Astonishingly, the Trump administration has promoted this diplomatic activity as restraining Israel. In May, Netanyahu announced that he was moving forward with absorbing sections of the West Bank that already featured large Israeli settlements. He subsequently stepped back from that announcement to conclude the new diplomatic deals with the Gulf states. But it was only reculer pour mieux sauter, as the French say — stepping back to better leap forward. Netanyahu had no intention of taking annexation off the table.
“There is no change to my plan to extend sovereignty, our sovereignty in Judea and Samaria, in full coordination with the United States,” Netanyahu said in mid-August. Some further to the right of Netanyahu — alas, they do exist — want to annex the entire West Bank. But that’s de jure. As writer Peter Beinart points out, Israel has been annexing the West Bank settlement by settlement for some time.
Where does this leave Palestinians? Up a creek without a state. The Trump administration has used its much-vaunted “deal of the century” to make any future deal well-nigh impossible. In collaboration with Netanyahu, Trump has strangled the two-state solution in favor of a single Israeli state with a permanent Palestinian underclass. The cost to Palestinians: incalculable.
Permanent War With Iran
Strengthening Israel was a major part of Trump’s maneuverings in the Middle East. A second goal was to boost arms sales to Gulf countries, which will only accelerate the arms race in the region. The third ambition has been to weaken Iran. Toward that end, Israel, Bahrain and the UAE now form — along with Saudi Arabia — a more unified anti-Iran bloc.
But the Trump crowd has never been content to contain Iran. It wants nothing less than regime change. From the get-go, the Trump administration nixed the Iran nuclear deal, tightened sanctions against Tehran and put pressure on all other countries not to engage Iran economically. In January, it assassinated a leading Iranian figure, Major General Qassem Soleimani of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. And this summer it tried, unsuccessfully, to trigger “snap-back” sanctions against Iran that would kill the nuclear deal once and for all.
Even as the Trump administration was celebrating the diplomatic deal between the UAE and Israel, it was going after several UAE firms for brokering deals with Iran. Trump recently castigated the Iranian government for going through with the execution of wrestler Navid Afkari for allegedly killing a security guard during a 2018 demonstration.
And US intelligence agencies have just leaked a rather outlandish suggestion that Iran has been thinking about assassinating the US ambassador to South Africa. According to Politico, “News of the plot comes as Iran continues to seek ways to retaliate for President Donald Trump’s decision to kill a powerful Iranian general earlier this year, the officials said. If carried out, it could dramatically ratchet up already serious tensions between the U.S. and Iran and create enormous pressure on Trump to strike back — possibly in the middle of a tense election season.”
Hmm, sounds mighty suspicious. Sure, Iran might be itching for revenge. But why risk war with a president who might just be voted out of office in a couple of months and replaced with someone who favors returning to some level of cooperation? And why would the unnamed US government officials leak the information right now? Is it a way to discourage Iran from making such a move? Or perhaps it’s to provoke one side or the other to take the fight to the next level — and take off the table any future effort to repair the breach between the two countries?
Cutting Ties With China
At a press conference earlier this month, Trump laid out his vision of US relations with China. Gone were the confident predictions of beautiful new trade deals with Beijing. After all, Trump had canceled trade negotiations last month, largely because the Phase 1 agreement hasn’t produced the kind of results the president had predicted (in terms of Chinese purchases of US goods). Nor did Trump talk about what a good idea it was for China to build “reeducation camps” for Uighurs in Xinjiang (he reserves such frank conversation for tête-à-têtes with Xi Jinping, according to John Bolton).
Rather, Trump talked about severing the economic relationship between the two countries. “Under my administration, we will make America into the manufacturing superpower of the world, and we’ll end our reliance on China once and for all,” he said. “Whether it’s decoupling or putting in massive tariffs like I’ve been doing already, we’re going to end our reliance on China because we can’t rely on China.”
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As with virtually all things, Trump doesn’t know what he’s talking about. China has been largely unaffected by all of Trump’s threats and posturing. As economist Nicholas Lardy explains, “for all the fireworks over tariffs and investment restrictions, China’s integration into global financial markets continues apace. Indeed, that integration appears on most metrics to have accelerated over the past year. And U.S.-based financial institutions are actively participating in this process, making financial decoupling between the United States and China increasingly unlikely.”
In fact, decoupling is just another way of saying “self-inflicted wound.” On the non-financial side of the ledger, the United States has already paid a steep price for its trade war with China, which is only a small part of what decoupling would ultimately cost. Before the pandemic hit, the United States was already losing 300,000 jobs and $40 billion in lost exports annually. That’s like a Category 3 hurricane. A full decoupling would tear through the US economy like a Category 6 storm.
Geopolitical Carnage
American presidents want to leave behind a geopolitical legacy. Bill Clinton was proud of both the Dayton agreement and the Oslo Accords. George W. Bush touted his response to the September 11 attacks. Barack Obama could point to the Iran nuclear deal and the détente with Cuba. Donald Trump, like the aforementioned twisters, has left destruction in his path. He tore up agreements, initiated trade wars, pulled out of international organizations and escalated America’s air wars.
But perhaps his most pernicious legacy is his scorched-earth policy. Like armies in retreat that destroy the fields and the livestock to rob their advancing adversaries of food sources, Trump is doing whatever he can to make it impossible for his successor to resolve some of the world’s most intractable problems.
His diplomatic “achievements” in the Middle East are designed to disempower and further disenfranchise Palestinians. His aggressive policy toward China is designed to disrupt an economic relationship that sustains millions of US farmers and manufacturers. His bellicose approach to Iran is designed not only to destroy the current nuclear accord but make future ones impossible as well.
If he wins a second term, Trump will bring his scorched-earth doctrine to every corner of the globe. What he is doing to Iran, China and the Palestinians, he will do to the whole planet. The nearly 200,000 pandemic deaths and the wildfires destroying the West Coast are just the beginning. Donald Trump can’t wait to take his brand of American carnage to the next level.
*[This article was originally published by Foreign Policy in Focus.]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
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Can the India-China Confrontation Play Out in East Africa?
by Philippa Kaur 15 September 2020, 16:06
China and India have never been friendly neighbors. The laws of geopolitics set the two Asian giants against one another. In recent years, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s confrontation with the US and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ambitions for a powerful and global India have inflamed nationalism on both sides of the Himalayan border. Bilateral tensions peaked in June, when a border clash in the Himalayan Galwan Valley resulted in the death of 20 Indian soldiers and an unspecified number of Chinese troops.
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Now, the competition between China and India is moving to Africa, and to East Africa in particular. Since 2000, the continent has witnessed China’s deep and ubiquitous penetration through trade, investments, infrastructures, energy, budget support and security cooperation. In 2008, New Delhi showed a newfound interest in Africa.
Despite China’s head start, India is trying to catch up to counter Beijing’s predominance over the continent. East Africa is the region where the two Asian powerhouses share vital interests and where their competition will likely play out more seriously.
India’s Africa Policy
India–Africa relations are rooted in history. The Indian Ocean constituted a channel of trade and population exchange for centuries. Consequently, East Africa has always enjoyed close ties with India, and around 3 million people of Indian descent live between the Horn and South Africa. After independence from British rule in 1947, India was politically active in Africa as a champion of decolonization and South-South cooperation. The period that followed saw India–Africa relations phase out until New Delhi brought the continent back into the picture from the mid-2000s.
In economic terms, trade augmented eightfold between 2001 and 2017, making India Africa’s third-largest trading partner with a total exchange worth $62.6 billion. While Chinese trade with the continent largely outnumbers it, India has kept up the pace and investments grew alongside trade, jumping to $54 billion in 2016.
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As a fast-growing manufacturing power, India places strategic relevance to raw materials for the stability of its supply chain and energy sector. Indeed, New Delhi’s exchange with Africa, like Beijing’s, is driven by natural resources — with oil and gas accounting for approximately two-thirds of the total — followed by gold and other ores.
Political ties have also strengthened over the years. In 2008, the first India–Africa Forum Summit was launched in New Delhi and took place again in 2011 and 2015, with 41 African heads of state attending; the next conference was scheduled in September 2020. These summits allowed African leaders, on the one hand, to set out their cooperation priorities and India, on the other, to respond accordingly. As a result, India–Africa cooperation pivoted around capacity building, technology transfer and infrastructural investments. Lastly, India has sought support on UN reform, which would be unrealistic without the votes of African countries in the General Assembly.
Security issues have been on the agenda as well. New Delhi is particularly active in the realm of anti-piracy. After the kidnapping of several Indian citizens by Somali pirates, the Indian navy stepped up its efforts after 2008 and escorted over 1,000 vessels across the Gulf of Aden, sometimes in cooperation with the European Union’s Mission Atalanta.
Another domain that saw India at the forefront is UN peacekeeping missions. The Indian subcontinent has always been one of the leading suppliers of peacekeepers to UN missions, with 80% of them deployed in Africa. On top of that, Indian defense academies have provided training to the Nigerian, Ethiopian and Tanzanian military.
Modi and the Challenge to China
Modi has given further impetus to India–Africa relations. In July 2018, he outlined the 10 guiding principles of India’s engagement with Africa during a visit to Rwanda and Uganda. On that occasion, the prime minister leveraged India’s role in South-South cooperation to advance his credentials as leader of the developing world. Besides rhetoric, Modi moved from words to action by signing a defense agreement with President Paul Kagame of Rwanda and by extending two credit lines worth nearly $200 million to the Ugandan government. He also announced the opening of 18 new diplomatic missions in Africa by 2021, bringing the total to 47.
The prime minister has placed a keen eye on East Africa, which is set to become the epicenter of the India–China confrontation. The Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden are essential maritime routes for India’s export-oriented economy. China is heavily investing along these two waterways through the “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI), especially in the port of Djibouti and the Suez Canal.
Djibouti is indeed becoming yet another element of the Chinese maritime network in the Indian Ocean, along with Pakistan, the Maldives, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Myanmar. This network, the so-called “String of Pearls,” geographically surrounds India and is perceived as a strategic nightmare in New Delhi. Therefore, the Chinese expansion in the western Indian Ocean urges India to intervene.
To counter the BRI in the Indian Ocean, New Delhi launched a similar initiative for East Africa: the Asia-Africa Growth Corridor (AAGC). Conceived in 2016 and still at an early stage, this Indo-Japanese project will attract investments on development, quality infrastructure, institutional connectivity, capacity building and people-to-people cooperation to the region. Due to its anti-Chinese nature, the AAGC primarily targets contested countries like Djibouti and Ethiopia.
In 2017, Indian President Ram Nath Kovind clustered both countries for his first official visit. At the time, Ethiopia was already the largest beneficiary of India’s scholarship scheme and lines of credit for Africa with $1.1 billion, besides being the scene of the 2011 India-Africa Forum Summit. Djibouti was a relatively new target for New Delhi. In the year of the visit, China opened its first overseas military base in Djibouti. Consequently, Kovind not only signed some cooperation agreements, but he also reportedly expressed India’s interest in a military base on Djiboutian soil, a project still under discussion.
The geopolitical confrontation between India and China looms on the horizon. Africa — particularly the east — is set to become an arena of such a global, momentous challenge. India has economic, energetic and security reasons to deepen its relations with the continent. Furthermore, China’s ubiquitous presence in Africa and the Indian Ocean is a direct menace to Modi’s global ambitions. Although China is still out of reach, New Delhi’s engagement has been steadily expanding in all fields, and its approach based on soft power looks promising. The concepts of building Africa’s capacities and unleashing its potential, along with the employment of African workers instead of foreign labor like China, have resonated across the continent.
On the one hand, East Africa is under India’s radar more than any other region of the continent for its strategic position. On the other, East African governments have a long track record of balancing off the influence of external actors. East Africa is also the region where India can rely on a robust diaspora community. Hence, India presents itself as a useful ally to balance China’s growing influence in the region.
Finally, yet importantly, the US and the European powers might prefer New Delhi’s penetration into the continent at the detriment of China’s, which is perceived as a growing geopolitical threat to the West. East Africa, in sum, might soon become the new battleground of the economic and security confrontation between the two Asian giants.
*[Fair Observer is a media partner of Gulf State Analytics.]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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