Until It Feels The Pain

[Patrick Gathara/Al Jazeera]

If there is anything that has been true in the history of the world, it is that states, and especially Western states, rarely if ever act out of a sense of moral compulsion, when such acts could impose hardships back home. Look at the rhetoric around support for Ukraine following the Russian invasion as an example.

While the conflict has been presented in starkly moralistic terms, as the West helping brave Ukraine stand up to Russian bullies, it has been clear that moralism can be quickly discarded in the face of discomfort for their citizens. The prospect of cold European homes and high prices motivated the European Union to leave a myriad of loopholes in its sanctions to allow for the flow of Russian gas and oil to continue. When Russian gas was cut off, European governments did not hesitate to reach out to various fossil fuel-rich autocrats they otherwise regularly criticise for their dismal human rights record.

As Africans learned long ago during the Cold War, global powers are more than happy to wage supposed wars of principle on other peoples’ lands, sacrificing other peoples’ welfare but not their own.

The same dynamic is evident in the narratives and proposals that were tabled at the latest United Nations Climate Change Conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. Lots of the talk was about helping the unfortunately-situated “Global South” cope with the ravages of extreme weather events such as droughts and floods, and helping them transition into greener sources of energy.

Like during the Cold War, the West is actively theatre-shopping, recruiting countries to serve as arenas for its climate fight. Switzerland, for example, plans to cut its greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030, not by actually reducing them, which might require inconveniencing its citizens, but by paying countries like Ghana to reduce its emissions and give it credit.

The idea would be for the Swiss government to pay for efficient lighting and cleaner stoves to be installed in Ghanaian households and claim the resulting reduction in emissions as its own. Switzerland is not the only Western nation to use such carbon-offsetting schemes, which displace climate action from rich polluting nations and frame poorer nations that have contributed little to the crisis as the ones that need to change the most.  READ MORE...

China/America In A Second Cold War

During Donald Trump’s presidency, the term “Cold War 2.0” was popularized in the context of U.S.-China rivalry, which has been spurned by China’s economic rise. By becoming the fastest growing economy around the globe, China is challenging the U.S.-led economic system and laying the foundation to become a military superpower. 

As the second-largest military spender after the United States with a speculated military expenditure of nearly $250 billion, China is using its military might to assert its territorial claims in the South China Sea (SCS). China is constructing artificial islands across the SCS while also establishing its first-ever foreign military base in Djibouti at the strategic chokepoint of Bab el-Mandeb. 

These actions are influencing U.S. perceptions that China’s rise is a threat and, hence, a new global competition between the United States and China for hegemonic status has begun.

The Cold War 2.0 shares similarities with the original Cold War (1945-1991) in many aspects. First, during the Cold War, the United States and Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) were the prime contenders for superpower status, however, the threat of an active military conflict between the two was largely defused due to the nuclear deterrence. 

Hence, this allowed both the United States and USSR to collaborate on major global challenges, like resolving the 1956 Suez Canal Crisis. Although nuclear deterrence is still viable today, the context of the U.S.-China rivalry is far more beholden to economic interdependence—trade relations amounted to $660 billion in 2018—whereas U.S. trade with the USSR remained low throughout the Cold War. 

Nevertheless, the ongoing U.S.-China “trade war” has somewhat reduced their mutual dependency, providing space for more divergent foreign policy behavior. China has also sought to exclude the United States from its ambitious Belt and Road Initiative which is aimed at enhancing its economic presence through the multi-channel yet interconnected global framework.  READ MORE...

The AUKUS Deal

In early July, when the U.S. was fast-tracking the troop pullout from Afghanistan , President Joe Biden said, “America didn’t go to Afghanistan to nation-build”. He said the U.S. met its strategic objectives in Afghanistan — bringing Osama bin Laden to justice and disrupting al-Qaeda’s networks. On August 31, the last day of U.S. troops in Afghanistan , Mr. Biden gave another statement, defending the pullout that led to a quick Taliban victory. 

He argued that continuing American troops indefinitely in Afghanistan did not serve the U.S.’s national interest. According to Mr. Biden, the era of military operations to remake other countries is over.
Pragmatic realism

An establishment Democrat with decades of experience in foreign policy, Mr. Biden had been a supporter of the U.S.’s regime-change wars. As a Senator, he voted for the 2003 Iraq invasion. He was number 2 in the Obama administration that invaded Libya in 2011. But now, Mr. Biden is distancing his administration from the liberal internationalism of his predecessors and, in a way, following Donald Trump’s strategic reluctance. 

Mr. Trump was the first American President in decades who did not start a new war. It was Mr. Trump who imposed trade tariffs on China ratcheting up tensions and reached a withdrawal agreement with the Taliban. While Mr. Trump reined in America’s interventionist tendencies and turned the foreign policy focus towards China, his approach was largely transactional and with contradictions. Except on climate change, Mr. Biden hasn’t revoked any of Mr. Trump’s key foreign policy decisions. Rather, he appears to be offering a strategic framework based on pragmatic realism to what Mr. Trump began — the geopolitical contest with China.

In 2001, President George W. Bush launched the ‘global war on terror’. Mr. Obama continued it and Mr. Trump used it to target the Iranian power in West Asia. But Mr. Biden doesn’t believe that it’s the U.S.’s responsibility to defeat terrorism globally. What is America’s vital national interest in Afghanistan? he asked on August 30. “In my view, we only have one: to make sure Afghanistan can never be used again to launch an attack on our homeland.” 

In effect, Mr. Biden is re-interpreting the war on terror as a war focused on preventing more attacks on the American homeland. This approach would allow the U.S. to retreat from other conflict theatres, especially in the Muslim world, and refocus its resources on tackling China’s rise.

The AUKUS alliance
The withdrawal from Afghanistan raised credibility questions on America’s power. There were criticisms that the U.S. abandoned its ally in Afghanistan — the Kabul government. But in Mr. Biden’s new realist world, supporting the Afghan government or fighting the Taliban endlessly doesn’t serve any national security purpose to America. But tackling China’s rise is vital to America’s interests because an increasingly powerful China could challenge the U.S.’s global pre-eminence. 

China has already established a domineering status in the Indo-Pacific. After completing the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Biden administration did not waste any time to announce its most ambitious new alliance — the AUKUS .

Under the AUKUS deal , announced on September 15, Australia would get nuclear-powered submarines from the U.S. and the U.K. Australia will also host American bombers on its territory and get access to advanced missile technology. Mr. Biden, by convening the first Quad summit of leaders from India, Australia and Japan, in March had signalled where his focus would be on. But Quad, which has been around for some time, hasn’t acquired any security dimension yet. 

AUKUS, on the other side, is Washington’s most emphatic effort to rebalance to the Indo-Pacific, a move that would harden the belief in Beijing that the U.S. was seeking to contain China. While Mr. Biden ruled out a new Cold War in his UNGA address on September 21, six days after the AUKUS announcement and three days before the first Quad in-person leaders’ summit, he left no ambiguity on what the focus of his foreign policy would be. It’s not war on terror; it’s not Russia, America’s traditional foe. It’s going to be China, and the new great power contest would unfold in the Indo-Pacific.  READ MORE...