US bluster is China’s gain

S P SETH

The US’ long term allies are bewildered about the direction and future of their relationship with the world’s (still) most powerful country. Take, for instance, Australia, which has stood loyally by the United States for a century, forging even stronger ties during WW11 and sealing it subsequently with the Australia, New Zealand, US (ANZUS) alliance. It fought alongside the US in Korean and Vietnam wars, and is part of the US-led coalition in wars in the Middle East. You name it and Australia is there by the US side.

And it is the site of some very important US intelligence gathering electronic stations, which serve as the eyes and ears of its military machine against its enemies—the Soviet Union being the most important during the long Cold War years and so it goes. And it is also hosting US troops in rotation in its north and there is some talk of permanent US bases.

It is important here to point out that Australia’s loyalty has been largely self-serving for reasons of its own perceived insecurity. Having been, more or less, abandoned by Britain during WW11, mostly preoccupied with the European theatre of the war, it was the US that found in Australia a very useful and important part of its war with Japan in the Pacific theatre.

And when the US decided to grant Japan autonomy, essentially under US supervision and control, Australia wasn’t too happy about it against the backdrop of Japan’s war record; and to assure both Australia and New Zealand of America’s protective role, it signed the ANZUS treaty. Originally designed against possible Japanese national revival, it subsequently became a larger and all-purpose alliance.

With China now emerging as a security threat with its activities in the South China Sea, Australia’s role as US ally is all the more relevant. And what sort role it will be is the subject of discussion here in Australia, especially in the new Trump era.

Australia has a security complex about its Asian neighborhood, being the only predominantly European/white country in the region. Its white Australia policy was an expression of it, with fear of being swamped by Asian immigrants, particularly from China. And now that China is so powerful and potentially threatening, Australia’s security alliance with the United States is regarded as even more important.

At the same time, China has also emerged as Australia’s biggest trading partner, with Australian commodity exports an important mainstay of its economy. Therefore, it is trying to tread a delicate balance between its security tied to the US alliance and its trade interests tied to China’ growing economic power. And when Trump talks off-script on foreign and security affairs, it creates a bit of shudder here in the political establishment.

A case in point recently, unrelated to China, was the way Trump hung up on a telephone conversation with the Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, cutting it reportedly to 25 minutes from the scheduled one hour.

It happened because Turnbull urged Trump to honour the agreement, signed with the Obama administration, requiring the US to take the bulk of boat refugees—so-called because they arrived in leaky boats-- that Australia had sub-contracted to its small neighbours for detention in camps.  And they happen to come from some of the Muslim countries banned under Trump’s executive order.

To Australia’ disgrace, these are refugees (about 2000 of them) Australia bribed its tiny neighbor Nauru, and Papua New Guinea, to put them in one of the most inhumane camps as a deterrence to other boat refugees contemplating heading to Australia. But that is another story.

Coming back to Trump’s snub to Prime Minister Turnbull, a loyal US ally, which created quite a stir in the Australian media with a sense of helplessness and foreboding. The US has been the security shield for Australia for as long as one can remember and for much of the region, even for those countries that are not formally part of the US alliance system.

Sensing that times are suiting China, even more so with Trump as President with emphasis on ‘America first’, Beijing seems to believe that, despite Australia’s long term security alliance with the US, in the medium and long term Canberra might not have any option but to develop closer relations with China. Interestingly, during a recent visit here the Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, appeared quite relaxed about Australia’s security relations with the US.

As the Sydney Morning Herald’s international editor, Peter Hartcher, remarked that Wang abandoned his standard lecture critiquing the ANZUS alliance as “a relic of the Cold War.” And he said at a joint press conference with the Australian foreign affairs minister, Julie Bishop, that Australia “can continue to be an ally of the US, at the same time be a comprehensive strategic partner for China.”

The personal chemistry between the two foreign ministers was quite encouraging with Wang reportedly kissing Bishop on both cheeks after dinner, regarded as an unprecedented gesture. With Trump rejecting the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade pact and seeking renegotiation of its trade agreements, including with Australia, China is emerging as the champion of globalization. And Australia, as a trading nation, now finds itself on the Chinese side on this issue.

China is seeking to emerge as the leading proponent of globalization. President Xi Jingping strongly supported globalization at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, during a recent call with German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, said that, “China and Germany should send stable signals to the global markets and jointly safeguard the existing international system through trade and investment liberalization.”

This is against the backdrop of Trump’s threat to Germany that the US might impose a border tax on cars that BMW would export into the US from its planned new factory in Mexico. Trump wants Germany to buy US cars.

Germany is a long-standing NATO ally. Trump has said that NATO is now obsolete, though the message is being moderated linking it with increased defence spending by other NATO countries. And he is also not fond of European Union, having said that Brexit could be a “great thing”.

In the Pacific, Trump has already signed an order withdrawing the US from Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact, thus creating a sense of exasperation among America’s friends and allies in the Asia-Pacific region.

If Trump continues his Twitter diplomacy of random policy pronouncements, China might emerge as the standard bearer of global stability, with such lower standards now permeating international polity.

Trump’s scary vision

S P SETH

If you are Donald Trump, the world appears upside down. It wasn’t always like that. From Trump’s perspective, it is all the fault of the past US presidents for allowing other countries to take advantage of the United States, bringing it to its present state where things are out of control and need to be fixed. And Trump is the strong man who will fix it. As Trump put it recently, “The world is in trouble, but we’re gonna straighten it out, OK? That’s what I do—I fix things. We’re gonna straighten it out. Believe me.” And where would he start, with so much needing to be fixed? There is China, of course, there are Muslims, there is Islamic state and there are US’s so-called friends and allies who have got used to its protective security umbrella at virtually no cost.

In the Middle East, Iran is proving a thorn given a new lease of life under Obama’s nuclear deal. Imagine its audacity for testing a missile that is a violation of the terms of the nuclear deal, Trump would argue. In any case, the nuclear deal with Iran was a bad idea, because they are not going to abide by it. And its proof, the argument would go, is the recent test of an Iranian missile as part of its continuing work on a delivery system for its nuclear weapons, which somehow the Iranians, despite the freeze under the nuclear deal, will continue to perfect. Indeed, Trump had promised that as President, he would undo this deal. And the first step, so opportune after the missile test, is to put Iran on notice. As Michael Flynn, Trump’s national security adviser (now forced to resign under a Russian cloud) reportedly said, “As of today, we are officially putting Iran on notice”, describing the missile launch as a violation of the relevant UN Security Council resolution.

Iran denies it is in breach of the resolution and, until the Trump administration took over, it had reportedly test-fired ballistic missiles since the 2015 nuclear deal without any serious reaction. The US is now putting some selective sanctions on Iran to show its serious intent. It is part of Trump’s commitment, of sorts, to Israel to, more or less, bring back the US’ tough regime of sanctions and possibly some military retaliation. It is not only the ballistic missiles/nuclear question that needs sorting out, it is also Iran’s disruptive and destructive activities in Iraq, Yemen, in Bahrain, in Syria with Hezbollah acting as its proxy and so on—the argument would go.

It is imperative for the US to demonstrate its military strength to reestablish its primacy—to make America strong and great again. In this Iran could be made an example. Some such scenario is outlined in a recent book, The Big Stick: The Limits of Soft Power and the Necessity of Military Force, by Eliot A. Cohen, reviewed in the New York Review of Books. He is all for restoring America’s big power credibility, like Reagan did in some ways, by invading the tiny state of Grenada in 1983. And the recovery of American credibility today, “will probably occur only when the United States actually does something to someone—wiping out a flotilla of Iranian gunboats”, for example. And he wants this done soon before Iran has nuclear weapons, which he takes for granted despite the fact that under the nuclear deal Iran’s nuclear program is shut down for at least fifteen years.

In his view, “The heart of Iran’s emerging military power lies in its nuclear program”--- no ifs and buts about it despite the 2015 nuclear deal which has frozen Iran’s nuclear program over many years. And: “Once Iran does have nuclear weapons… a nuclear armed Iran will, eventually, pose a direct threat” to the US. In other words, Cohen is not advocating this course necessarily for Israel’s security but to remove a potential security threat to the United States.

 But Iran is no Grenada. Therefore, the US would need to use massive force to disable Iran, with all sorts of unpredictable results that might get out of control. One that comes to mind immediately is how Russia will react to it, considering that Trump wants the US to become chums with Putin’s Russia. In Syria, for instance, Iran and Hezbollah are an important part of Russian-led operations to save Bashar al-Assad regime from IS and other terror groups. And for Trump IS is a major threat, which Russia is spearheading to combat and defeat. And if Iran/Hezbollah are disabled/destroyed and Iraq is regarded as Iran’s proxy in the region, it would prove a welcome boon to IS and its ideology.

But the US needs to show its power now and then to prove its credibility, as propounded in, what has come to be called, Ledeen Doctrine, named after Michael Ledeen, who is the co-author with Michael T. Flynn of a recent book: The Field of Fight: How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and Its Allies. The so-called Ledeen Doctrine propounds that, “Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business.” But Iran is not a small crappy little country and throwing it against the wall might not be all that easy, leading to a chain of events not knowing where it will all end.

But in this new world of cowboys and Indians, the new frontiers to subdue are not just Iran but much of the world. I examined in my last article how things are hotting up in South China Sea, and even poor Mexico is a target. And the European Union is not sacrosanct as Trump would like more cases of Brexit-like defection in its ranks. He is unhappy with Germany as they don’t buy enough American cars and keep expanding their exports to the United States. At the same time, he is unhappy with Merkel’s Germany for letting in Syrian refugees, thus setting a terrible example and creating more potential for terrorist attacks. In any case, he doesn’t feel comfortable with multilateral institutions, be it EU or United Nations as they are less likely to submit to US dictates. And NATO, in his view during the election campaign, is already obsolete, and they don’t even pay their dues by spending more on defense.

All in all, it is a very dangerous world out there with Donald Trump as America’s President. This is best summed in the words of America’s celebrated novelist, Philip Roth. In an email exchange with a reporter of the New Yorker, Roth wrote, “…what is most terrifying is that he makes any and everything possible, including, of course the nuclear catastrophe.” 

Note: This article first appeared in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au

Trump’s China dilemma

S P SETH

Judging by the initial days of Donald Trump’s presidency, it looks like the new administration might end up turning the international system upside down. First, of course, is the China factor, where President Trump and his nominee for secretary state, Rex Tillerson, have clearly warned Beijing that its provocative and unilateral sovereignty claims and building of military facilities on new and old islands in the South China Sea will be resisted and pushed back. Tillerson told Senate Foreign Relations Committee that China’s island building in the waters contested by six countries was illegal. Therefore, he said, “We’re going to have to send China a clear signal that, first, the island building stops. And second, your access to those islands is not going to be allowed.”

Tillerson added that, China’s South China Sea activity was “extremely worrisome”, posing a threat to the “entire global economy” from Beijing’s control of the waterways to dictate international trade and maritime passage. And it has come to this because: “The failure of a response has allowed them just to keep pushing the envelope on this.” And: “The way we’ve got to deal with this is we’ve got to show back-up in the region with our traditional allies in Southeast Asia.”

In other words, the US would need to galvanize the region under US leadership to confront China. So far, this hasn’t happened for two reasons despite Obama’s announcement in 2011 of US’s ‘pivot’ to Asia. First: while the US has opposed China’s activities in the South China Sea and occasionally sent a ship or two to assert their right of freedom of navigation through Beijing-claimed waters, it has been sporadic without any clear policy backup; which has given China the impression that the US lacks resolve to follow up. Which in turn has led the regional countries to waver, not sure of US’ willingness and stamina to say engaged in the region. Therefore, China’s neighbors, even those with contested sovereignty claims like, for instance the Philippines, are seeking to make their own peace with China.

There is widespread confusion in the Asia-Pacific region, as elsewhere in the world about, what looked like at times, the random utterances of Trump and his team. For instance, even though Trump has retched up the rhetoric against China, Australia’s foreign minister, Julie Bishop, appears worried about lack of engagement with regional countries. In a speech at the US-Australia Dialogue on Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific, she said it was “essential” for the US to give “serious consideration and at the highest levels” to closer involvement with the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), which still had the power to positively shape/contain China’s rise. But it doesn’t seem likely because there is not much stomach to confront China in the region, which is not only a strong military power but also a major trading partner and investment source for these countries. Indeed, Trump’s withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which was supposed to be the second plank of the US ‘pivot’ to Asia (military engagement being the first), doesn’t encourage regional countries to line up behind the US.

China’s response to Tillerson’s remarks at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was relatively subdued and measured, while maintaining its sovereign position in the South China Sea. A foreign ministry spokesman, Lu Kang, said at a regular press briefing that China “has the full right” to conduct activities in the waters but, in any case, “the South China Sea situation has cooled down and we hope non-regional countries can respect the consensus that it is in the fundamental interest of the world.” But some of the state-controlled media warned that any US military interference to stop access would require Washington to “wage war.”

Earlier, China had reacted strongly to Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen’s telephone call to president-elect Donald Trump offering congratulations on his victory, which China regarded as a violation of the basic premise of US-China relations based on one-China principle. Interestingly Trump’s basic position was that the US was duded in this deal, as it got nothing in return for giving away Taiwan (sort of). He seemed keen to activate the Taiwan issue to create leverage in resetting the US-China relations.

As president-elect at the time, Trump said, “I don’t know why we have to be bound by a one-China policy unless we make a deal with China having to do with other things, including trade” And on trade and other issues, he added,  “We’re being hurt badly by China with devaluation [currency manipulation]; with taxing us heavy at the borders when we don’t tax them; with building a massive fortress in the middle of the South China Sea, which they shouldn’t be doing; and frankly, with not helping us at all with North Korea.” Even though Trump has now recognized the one-China principle, but the only predictability about the new US president is his unpredictability.

At another level, the loss of manufacturing jobs in the US, said to be due to artificially suppressed labor costs (cheap labor) and currency manipulation, has allowed China to flood the US market with its goods. And he wants to bring those jobs back to the US. This has been an important plank in his election pitch and a significant factor in his victory. The US has the largest trade deficit with China estimated, in 2015, at $367 billion, the highest with any country. As of November 2016, US owed China a bit over $1 trillion. And Trump believes that it has been largely underhand because of China’s undervalued currency, which gives it an unfair advantage. And to rectify this imbalance, Trump is threatening to impose import duties on foreign goods, as he has threatened to do with Mexico. Indeed he has forewarned Germany that the planned BMW plant in Mexico to advantage its exports into the US might also face similar treatment.

But China is supposedly the biggest culprit. The resulting trade war, it is feared, might eventually lead to the kind of depression in the thirties, which also accentuates an already volatile political and security situation developing in the South China Sea. It is true that a sharp decline of Chinese exports into the US has the potential of creating large-scale unemployment and resultant social instability in that country, as well as political problems for the communist regime; because the implicit social contract between the regime and people is based on political allegiance in return for incremental economic improvement. But on the other hand, China too can hit back by diverting its imports, as in the case of US aircraft, to European manufacturers, which will hit selective sectors of the economy. Besides, it has the potential of rising inflation in the US. And at the same time it is not easy to revive/resurrect jobs of the past.

The important point to make is that like armed conflict once unleashed, the trade wars too are difficult to contain and the two tend to converge at some point. But Trump has his own logic to show the world that the United States means business and its business is to show the world that the US will hit back and hit back hard.

Note: This article first appeared in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au

Obama’s failed dream

S P SETH

After eight years in the White House, Barack Obama is now a private citizen. He had brought hope and yes, even excitement, when he became the country’s president in 2009. The US needed that in the midst of the worst financial crisis after the thirties’ depression. At the time it seemed that the country needed a different direction from an altogether different man at the helm in every sense of the word. The US never had an Afro American as the country’s president and in Obama there appeared to be a young, personable, intelligent, hopeful candidate with no evident bitterness that was understandably ingrained among blacks. Indeed, he passionately believed and talked about one country and one people, thus transcending all differences of race, ethnicity, and partisan politics. And he believed too that the Americans were ready for that kind of unity of purpose and commitment, both the Democrats and the Republicans.

Obama was lyrical about his faith in America and the American people. Speaking at a public rally in Chicago after he won the race for the White House, he declared with pride, “If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.” And in the spirit of Martin Luther, he added, “The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even in one term. But America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there.”

But from the viewpoint of the Republican Party, Obama might have won the election but he was hardly the one to lead the nation. First and foremost, Obama’s message of uniting the nation and transcending differences seemed too self-serving. Second: political partisanship of the country’s two major parties, Democrats and Republicans, was the guiding principle of its politics. Sure, both sides of the political divide sought to present themselves as advancing national interests but they didn’t always see that in the same way. Obama’s sincere effort to project himself as the all knowing wise man seemed brash and abrupt, not only because of his young age, and for many, due to his race. He was not only black but also suspiciously Muslim and probably not even born in America.

According to a 2015 CNN poll, 29 per cent of Americans still believed that Obama was Muslim. One in five Americans believed that Obama was born outside the country. Indeed, the proportion of Republicans who mixed Obama’s race, religion and birth was much higher. It is not for nothing that Donald Trump continued to paddle the ‘birther’ lie almost to the end, even after Obama had revealed his birth certificate. How humiliating and undignified for the president of the country to be harangued about his origin and whatever else!

But Obama maintained his dignity and continued to pursue his message of national good. He certainly waited too long, hoping that on issues like health cover for all Americans, he might be able to forge an agreement with the Republicans and, in the process, much time and energy was expended without substantive results. It would have been better for him to push necessary legislation, like on health care, when Obama’s Democrats had majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Even the truncated Affordable Care Act (Obama Care), which sought to extend cover to nearly 20 million Americans, was highly controversial with the Republicans vowing to repeal it, which Donald Trump as President has taken steps to dismantle.

In trying to be everyone’s consensual president, Obama sought to present a highly varnished and idealized version of America. He incessantly talked about American ‘exceptionalism’, of respect for human rights and so on, which, at times, so starkly contrasted with US’ reality. The imagined post-racial America was a myth when incidents of Afro American deaths by police shooting and by a Nazi white youth at a Church service highlighted the problem so starkly. While Obama expressed usual sorrow and sympathy for the victims, he was very restrained on such occasions. It was very disappointing for many that he was so ineffective in articulating and dealing with the whole range of disadvantage and discrimination that affected the country’s Afro American population and other minorities.

In his powerful book, Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates, wrote that nothing had really changed for the blacks. He said, “ ‘White America’ is a syndicate arrayed to protect its exclusive power to dominate and control our [black] bodies. Sometimes this power is direct (lynching), and some times it is insidious (redlining). But however it appears, the power of domination and exclusion is central to the belief in being white, and without it, ‘white people’ would cease to exist for want of reasons.” And the election of Donald Trump as President is proof of the strong reaction to Obama’s presidency, even as it was ineffectual in building bridges and creating unity in diversity.

Of course, Obama’s election as the country’s first black president was highly symbolic and symbols are important at times, but Obama was too decent, too dignified and too consensual to take it beyond that. In trying to be everything to everyone, he had to even abandon his long time pastor Jeremiah Wright during the 2008 election who had denounced the policies of his country. Wright reportedly had said after the 9/11 terrorism attacks, “We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye… and now we are indignant, because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought back into our front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.” It was hot stuff and when it came out during the election, America’s consensual president-in-the making, Barack Obama, had no choice but to disown his old church and the pastor. Obama tried too hard to believe in his rhetoric and we know now that it didn’t work.

Under Obama’s administration, the country’s has made some economic recovery but it is too patchy with so many people still in doldrums, not sure of where the country is going. The hope that Obama generated has given way, among many people, to despair and desperation. Which has contributed to the Trump phenomena.

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au