Diplomatic Brief
India says US destabilising Bangladesh, Camp David is anti-China and mini-NATO, Vietnam won't be fooled, Australian foreign policy, a middle path for a middle power.
UPDATE: India has conveyed to the US that the way various steps are being taken by the US to destabilise the Hasina government is not positive for the overall security of India as a neighbouring country and South Asia as a whole.
Despite the US President Joe Biden claimed that the US-Japan-South Korea summit at the US presidential retreat Camp David "is not about China" afterward, the leaders of the three countries explicitly picked on China under the pretext of "joint efforts to maintain peace and stability" in Taiwan Straits and South China Sea, which once again laid bare anti-China hypocrisy.
The US has never given up in instigating color revolution to promote regime change in socialist countries, including Vietnam, while the CPC and the CPV share common interests and ideals to support each other in governing their own countries, so this prevents the US from using Vietnam as a puppet against China. Hanoi will handle its ties with China and the US properly.
The traditional way Australia’s leaders have dealt with the pervasive sense of vulnerability that geographic isolation engendered was to ingratiate themselves with “great and powerful friends”. Not much has changed in this regard either, although our current notional protector – the United States – is neither as reliable nor as powerful as policymakers in the US or this country seem to believe.
India says US destabilising Bangladesh
India has conveyed to the US that the way various steps are being taken by the US to destabilize the Hasina government is not positive for the overall security of India as a neighboring country and South Asia as a whole, reports Anandabazar Patrika.
According to New Delhi, India, like Washington, wants a fair and free election in Dhaka. In the next three weeks, US President Joe Biden and Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will share the same stage in New Delhi as they will attend the G20 Leaders Summit.
Before that, this message from India is considered to be significant enough, according to Anandabazar. South Block (the seat of India's external affairs ministry) thinks that if Jamaat-e-Islami is given 'political concession' Dhaka will be taken over by fundamentalism in the near future, reads the report that also mentioned that the liberal environment that exists will no longer exist.
New Delhi feels that if Hasina's government in Bangladesh is weak, it will not be good for either India or America. According to diplomatic sources, New Delhi communicated this to the Biden administration at multiple levels of meetings.
According to the diplomatic camp, the security system of the entire region has turned upside down after the decision to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan.
India's Northeast Frontier region is in a dangerous situation, said the report.
The Taliban is now at the peak of power in Afghanistan.
It is believed that the US made a closed-door deal with Afghanistan without considering its women, children and minorities, and is now facing the consequences.
The Ministry of External Affairs feels that America's policy towards Kabul as well as India's other neighbours is increasing New Delhi's discomfort with questions of national interest, said the report.
Bangladesh has the longest land border with India. As a result, any adverse situation in that country affects India as well. Quoting the sources, the report mentioned that New Delhi has told the Biden administration that if the Jamaat is patronized to grow, India's cross-border terrorism can increase and China's influence in Bangladesh will increase a lot, which is not desired by Washington.
It is believed that America always tries to show Jamaat as an Islamic political organization. America compared Jamaat with the Muslim Brotherhood. But in reality, the report said, New Delhi is in no doubt that the Jamaat is in the hands of radical fundamentalist organizations and Pakistan.
The Biden administration has announced a separate visa policy for Bangladesh only. According to sources, New Delhi does not think it is justified at all. As a result of this new visa policy, those who try to disrupt the upcoming elections in Bangladesh will not be allowed to enter America.
The diplomatic camp feels that the American administration directly interfered with the internal politics of Bangladesh by applying its own country's laws and adopting a separate visa policy for that country, reads the report.
Recently, a five-member delegation of Bangladesh Awami League visited New Delhi and held meetings with the top leadership of BJP and the ministers of the central government. There, they also gave a message that the BNP-Jamaat alliance is dangerous in terms of maintaining regional stability.
Leader of the delegation Agriculture Minister Abdur Razzaque held a positive meeting with Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar. Right after that meeting, he said: "We told India that regional stability is important for both countries. The government led by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is committed to not allowing the soil of Bangladesh to be used for anti-India activities.”
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Camp David is anti-China and mini-NATO
By Deng Xiaoci and Yang Sheng
Despite the US President Joe Biden claimed that the US-Japan-South Korea summit at the US presidential retreat Camp David "is not about China" afterward, the leaders of the three countries explicitly picked on China under the pretext of "joint efforts to maintain peace and stability" in Taiwan Straits and South China Sea, which once again laid bare anti-China hypocrisy, Chinese observers criticized.
Biden held the summit with South Korean President Yoon Suk-Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on US local time Friday and announced new commitments that they believe herald the new era of cooperation and to turn this first-ever trilateral summit into an annual tradition, media reported.
Apart from the Camp David summit with leaders of South Korea and Japan, Biden will also chalk up a fresh victory in his campaign to boost US influence in the Indo-Pacific by sealing a deal with Vietnam next month aimed at drawing Hanoi closer to Washington at a time of rising tensions with Beijing, Politico reported on Friday.
The US is trying everything it can to incite bloc confrontation in Asia and using its allies and regional countries to serve its goal to contain and compete with China, but this goal is selfish and actually undermines the peace of the region, so it will receive opposition not only from China but also other regional countries like North Korea and Russia, analysts said, noting the US' deal with regional countries like Vietnam will merely arouse temporary interests and won't fundamentally impact the regional countries' traditional ties with China.
Camp David summit
Camp David in Maryland, a presidential retreat located some 112 kilometers from the White House, saw the release of "Spirit of Camp David", "Camp David Principles" and "Commitment to Consult" among the US, Japan and South Korea on Friday following the summit.
The three leaders announced deepening military and economic cooperation and made their strongest joint condemnation yet of "dangerous and aggressive behavior" by China in the South China Sea, Reuters reported on Friday.
Without mentioning China, Biden said the leaders reaffirmed a commitment to maintain peace and stability in the Taiwan Straits and address economic coercion, the Voice of America (VOA) reported.
They also made a commitment to "consult during crisis", including regular military exercises and ballistic missile drills, as well as new collaborations on economic security — strengthening semiconductor supply chains, cybersecurity and artificial intelligence, and new regional initiatives to build partner capacity throughout the so-called Indo-Pacific, including in the maritime security domain, VOA reported.
The group also agreed to pilot a supply chain early-warning system to guard against disruptions of certain products, including critical minerals used in electric vehicle batteries, the report noted.
In a briefing to reporters Friday, US national security adviser Jake Sullivan commented on criticism of the trilateral summit as Washington's gambit to create a "mini-NATO" in Asia by saying that "this partnership is not against anyone. It is for something… It is for a vision of the Indo-Pacific that is free, open, secure and prosperous."
However, Chinese analysts lashed out at anti-China hypocrisy and pointed out that although the group has yet to form a collective defense commitment similar to NATO's "an attack on one is an attack on all," the hype of "a threat to any member is a threat to the US, Japan, and South Korea as a whole" has already echoed that mechanism.
The pledge is intended to acknowledge that the three countries share "fundamentally interlinked security environments" and that a threat to one of the nations is "a threat to all," according to a senior Biden official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
"Any provocations or attacks against any one of our three countries will trigger a decision making process of this trilateral framework and our solidarity will become even stronger and harder," South Korean leader Yoon reportedly warned.
It is concerning that the mini-NATO planned around serving the US' strategic competition with China and weaken China's development prospects is being formulated, Chinese observers warned.
To create confrontation
Military expert and TV commentator Song Zhongping warned Saturday that whether the mini-NATO becomes reality would depend on if such trilateral framework is institutionalized and made into law in each country, which is believed to be highly likely.
Although Biden still terms the trilateral ties as "partnership" in the joint statement, his understanding and conception is entirely different from previous administrations and has a strong "alliance color", Li Haidong, a professor at the China Foreign Affairs University, told the Global Times on Saturday.
The leaders of three countries are expanding the currently existed partnership toward the goal of forming the trilateral alliances, with Camp David summit as their latest efforts, Li pointed out. "It is crystal clear that the fundamentals for such partnership or alliances is all about serving US competition with China and weakening China's development prospects."
The US and its two regional allies are in fact exploiting regional affairs to create confrontation and spread anxiety to legitimize their grouping in strategic competition with China, Li noted.
The Asia-Pacific region is a highland of peace and development, and a land of cooperation that must not become an arena for geopolitical games, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said on Friday, commenting on the Camp David summit, and urged all parties to uphold true multilateralism amid a complex international security situation.
Although the summit has been hyped by the US media as show of stronger solidarity of the group, political differences between the countries are hard to overlook, and future domestic political changes could reverse the current solidarity, Chinese analysts noted.
Yoon, for example, facing a declining approval rating at home due to his overwhelming pro-US policies and his olive branch offering to Japan, had been repeatedly denounced by domestic critics as "national disgrace," Li said.
Current policies of the leaders of Japan and South Korea reflect a lack of independence, making their diplomatic approach unbalanced, which will impact these leaders domestically, and especially in South Korea, once the opposition party takes office again, the current ties between Seoul and Tokyo will face big turbulence, experts said.
Analysts said North Korea and Russia will also pay attention to the trilateral move of the US, Japan and South Korea, and the aggressive step of the US-led "mini NATO" could force other regional countries to take more assertive actions to respond, and the US-hyped bloc confrontation could also make Seoul and Tokyo fall into huge geopolitical crisis, if the two US allies blindly follow Washington's order to harm their neighbors in the region.
Read more here.
Vietnam won't be fooled
According to Politico on Friday, Biden "will sign a strategic partnership agreement" with Vietnam during "a state visit to the Southeast Asian country in mid-September," according to "three people with knowledge of the deal's planning" who asked for anonymity.
The agreement will allow for new bilateral collaboration that will boost Vietnam's efforts to develop a high technology sector in areas including semiconductor production and artificial intelligence, media reported.
Li said the development of US-Vietnam ties is deeply related to the rising tension between China and the US, but this kind of cooperation between Washington and Hanoi is driven by temporary and short-term interests, while the Southeast Asian country with the leadership of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) is wise enough to prevent being used by Washington to confront its comrade and neighbor China.
"China and Vietnam will continue to leverage the cooperative mechanisms, coordinate efforts to advance collaboration in various fields, and propel the bilateral relationship towards the goal of building a community with a shared future between the two countries," Wang Yi, director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, said on Wednesday during his meeting with Vietnam's Deputy Prime Minister Tran Luu Quang who was in China to attend the seventh China-South Asia Expo.
China and Vietnam should work on making well preparations for the upcoming high-level exchanges, further deepen strategic mutual trust, collaboratively safeguard political stability and institutional security, and jointly uphold the Communist Party's ideals and beliefs as well as the socialist orientation, said Wang Yi, also a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee.
Tran said China's significance and distinctiveness to Vietnam are unparalleled; it stands as the sole nation with Vietnam's diplomatic priorities, and the development of relations with China remains a foremost priority in Vietnam's foreign policy, Tran added.
"The US has never given up in instigating color revolution to promote regime change in socialist countries, including Vietnam, while the CPC and the CPV share common interests and ideals to support each other in governing their own countries, so this prevents the US from using Vietnam as a puppet against China. Hanoi will handle its ties with China and the US properly," Li noted.
Read more here.
Australian foreign policy, a middle path for a middle power
By Mark Beeson (amended)
The traditional way Australia’s leaders have dealt with the pervasive sense of vulnerability that geographic isolation engendered was to ingratiate themselves with “great and powerful friends”. Not much has changed in this regard either, although our current notional protector – the United States – is neither as reliable nor as powerful as policymakers in the US or this country seem to believe.
Even more alarmingly for Canberra’s cognoscenti, part of the reason for America’s relative decline is the reemergence of China as the most powerful economic and strategic actor in our immediate neighbourhood. Dealing with an Asian “great power” adds another layer of complexity for policymakers who instinctively cleave to traditional allies, as the recently agreed AUKUS security pact demonstrates. Aspects of this awkward reality are directly or indirectly analysed in the two books under review here.
Although Van Jackson’s outstanding, historically informed analysis of US statecraft in the Asia-Pacific deals with Australia only in passing, Pacific Power Paradox is an essential guide to the regional geopolitics upon which our national peace and prosperity overwhelmingly depend.
Engaging China, edited by Jamie Reilly and Jingdong Yuan, looks at what this rapidly evolving and increasingly unpredictable environment means for Australia’s relations with the People’s Republic.
One hopes these books will be the proverbial “must reads” for our strategic and economic elites, and that their important lessons will be absorbed and even acted upon. To judge by recent events, however, nothing seems less likely. The contentious decisions to acquire nuclear-powered submarines and manufacture US missiles have only entrenched Australia in America’s anti-China alliance.
Regionalism with American characteristics
One of the most noteworthy and optimistic facts about the Asia-Pacific – or the more fashionable Indo-Pacific, for that matter – is that it has generally been peaceful.
This is more of a surprise than it seems, given that generations of US policymakers and strategic commentators have predicted chaos and mayhem in the region, especially in the absence of America’s supposedly benign, selfless and stabilising influence. Many still do, especially because of the “rise of China”.
A couple of points are worth making at the outset, however. China has not been an aggressive power hitherto, and it is far from certain it is going to be in the future. The US, by contrast, has been at war with someone somewhere for more than 90% of its history as an independent nation.
When Asia’s peace has been upended, it has been because of American intervention. The Vietnam War remains the quintessential example of a catastrophic, unnecessary “war of choice”. Jackson describes this direct mode of US intervention in Asian affairs as the actions of an “imperious superpower”.
This is not the only way the US acts in Asia, however, nor is military intervention the sole determinant of peace or war in the region. At times, Jackson argues, America acts as an “aloof hegemon”, whose actions are “incidental to the course of events”.
At other times – and this is plainly the preferred narrative as far as US policymakers and allies are concerned – the US has acted as a “vital bulwark”, deterring intra-regional conflict, and fostering the development of Asian security.
These three contrasting faces of US foreign and strategic policy are at the heart of what Jackson calls the “Pacific power paradox”. It is possible to mount arguments in favour of all of these positions at times, which is what makes the US such a contradictory and protean presence in the region. Consequently, Jackson argues we have little to gain from separating the economic, institutional and localised rationales of US power.
To develop this argument, Jackson examines the impact of US power in Asia, considering the policies of each president since Richard Nixon’s rapprochement with China, which began in 1972. Jackson considers this development “the crucial founding moment for the Asian peace”.
As the so-called “Asian miracle” demonstrated, regional stability also paved the way for widespread, state-led economic development, which eventually included China.
Despite a good deal of talk about “Asian engagement”, Australia’s role in regional affairs has displayed a striking continuity. “In what amounted to strategic outsourcing,” writes Jackson, “US officials made clear that Australia was a valued ally not least because it could serve as a proxy for US interests in Oceania.”
Many of Australia’s neighbours, by contrast, have tried to make the best of growing strategic and economic competition between the US and China. They have done so through what Jackson calls a “dual hierarchy”. Individual Asian states have “hedged by heavily engaging China economically because US security commitments in the region alleviated the need to worry too much about China’s growing power”.
This response could be considered instructive, but Australian policymakers have generally remained wedded to a conception of the region that is predicated on the US as a “vital bulwark”. They still see China as more of a threat than an opportunity. The potentially egregious consequences of this judgement are increasingly clear.
(Not) coming to terms with China
The rather optimistic subtitle of Engaging China is “How Australia can lead the way again”. Sceptics may be forgiven for asking: when was the first time Australia played a leadership role in regional affairs?
Nevertheless, the editors are to be applauded for producing a much-needed “full-throated defence of engagement” and a “collective counter to the worrisome ‘China panic’ that has swept across Australia in recent years”.
To accomplish this task, a knowledgeable group of China-literate scholars has been assembled to analyse three key areas of Australia’s relationship with China: foreign and security relations; economy; and media, education and culture.
As a former ambassador to China, Geoff Raby, observes, what is needed – and what this book provides – is an explanation of
how a failure of Australian diplomacy brought the relationship to its present nadir by not recognising that the changed world order necessitated different diplomatic responses and positioning than simply doubling down on the US alliance.
The potential risks of continuing to go “all the way with the USA” are spelled out in an essay by Brendon O'Connor, Lloyd Cox and Danny Cooper. The authors note that America’s growing domestic problems mean “we may be only one presidential election away from a return to and a deepening of the isolationism and ambivalence towards allies that marked the previous Trump presidency”.
While the benefits of globalisation and trade interdependence may have been overstated at times, there is no doubt Australia has benefited from its economic relationship with China. Consequently, James Laurenceson and Weihuan Zhou argue that “deploying public policy to reduce trade exposure to China struggles as a coherent strategy”. Indeed, China’s supposedly bad international behaviour has largely been driven by “the actions taken by other key players, particularly the US abuse of economic sanctions on security grounds”.
Wei Li and Hans Hendrischke detail the similarly pernicious impact of geopolitics on Chinese investment in Australia, which has “transitioned from commercially driven investment cooperation to cooperation constrained by security concerns”.
Likewise, Glenda Korporaal points out that diplomacy and trade promotion “have the potential to create goodwill across a broad range of sectors and significantly reduce the chances of military conflict for a fraction of the cost of defence spending”.
Cold War journalism 2.0
Given the obvious economic costs, the consequences for the education sector, not to mention the adverse impact of the anti-China discourse on Australia’s growing Chinese community – all of which are detailed by other contributors – the counterproductive policies of both major political parties in this country take some explaining.
Part of that explanation is what Wanning Sun calls “Cold War journalism 2.0”. She argues that because China is seen as a hostile nation, “the ritual of reporting, which usually requires an attempt at balance and the provision of evidence, is no longer necessary”.
There has, indeed, been no shortage of irresponsible, evidence-free “red alerts” suggesting that a “direct attack on our mainland” could happen within three years.
And yet there is an even more alarming explanation for the complete absence of real debate amongst Australia’s policymaking elites. Stephen Fitzgerald, another former ambassador and one of the shrewdest observers of relations with China, points out that the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has been
totally sidelined in Canberra, losing out to the weight of advice and opinion from the intelligence and security agencies. These agencies, known to harbour nationalistic and xenophobic views, have been driving the policy[…]
[…]the deeper reason for the extremity and obduracy of the Australian anti-China stand, therefore, lies not so much in the behaviour of the PRC but here, in Australia, in the mindset and the attitudes and prejudices of those directing foreign policy and of the politicians they advised.
Leaders who are prepared to spend (at least) A$368 billion on nuclear submarines to demonstrate their commitment to an international order that looks increasingly fragile and anachronistic are unlikely to be swayed by academic arguments from “outsiders”.
Australia’s distinctive “strategic culture” has been decades in the making. Its foundational assumptions are unchallengeable, self-evident truths – for those who believe them, at least. The fact that a growing number of people are not persuaded by the conventional strategic wisdom is unlikely to change the thinking within Canberra’s strategic bubble, no matter how much evidence accumulates about its perverse social and economic impacts.
Even plausible strategic counter-arguments are likely to remain unheeded, despite the widely noted opportunity costs that flow from proposed defence outlays and the prospect that they are unlikely to influence China’s behaviour.
By contrast, some of the proposals in Engaging China just might.
Changing course and re-engaging?
Ironically enough, it may take the return of Donald Trump to finally encourage some rethinking – even some genuinely independent thinking – that more accurately reflects Australia’s strategic and geographic circumstances. As Jackson, a former Pentagon insider, ruefully observes:
A world where American politics can yield far-right authoritarian demagogues is a world in which it makes no sense to simply count on America to keep things pacific, uphold pacifying international commitments indefinitely, or even remain pacific itself.
Quite so. And yet, in theory if not practice, the logic of “strategic outsourcing” cuts both ways. Australian policymakers still assume that the US is a reliable partner who will come to our aid in the unlikely event it is actually needed. Significantly, even some Canberra insiders now recognise the dangers of being strategically isolated as a consequence of our reflexive fealty to the US.
Compromising our independence and resolutely hitching our collective future to the frailties and pathologies of the US system is unwise at the best of times. When it occurs at the expense of our relationship with our principal trade partner, and in the midst of an intensifying great power competition we can do little to influence, it looks foolish and unthinking.
Surely, there is scope for a truly independent middle power to navigate a middle path. This might be facilitated, as Jamie Reilly and Jingdong Yuan argue, by “promoting an emerging new order based on multilateralism and regional institutions, with binding norms and rules on all players, including both the United States and the PRC”.
After all, that is what the much invoked but seldom seen rules-based international order is supposed to be about, isn’t it?
Read more here.