India has commitment issues. It has apparently dropped out of the main components of the BRICS currency project. It dropped out of RCEP in 2019, after almost a decade of negotiations.
It has been wooed by some crass hospitality and vague promises in the Modi tour about technology sharing with the US. In return they have given further rights for the Pentagon to use its territory. Delhi is boxing itself in, for what exactly?
Turkey appears to be doing something similar by reneging on a prisoner deal with Russia. Pakistan has been attempting to turn back the clock since Imran Khan, but cannot find any partner able to replace Chinese expertise and resources for infrastructure. Those happy days of playing wargames in Afghanistan, in sync with the Saudis and the US, do not look as plausible as in the 1990s.
Thailand may experience the same problem of not discovering another China. Its tie-pin, pin-stripe shirted frontman is facing a little local difficulty with the entrenched elites. A sea-change in Thai external relations (i e towards the US) may be on pause if the youthful electoral winner is barred. The Shinawatra clan may step in, for some baby steps in that direction, and not go the whole hog.
The Philippines has inexplicably become Fort Apache for the US, decades after ridding the old colonial power from its territory. Marcos Junior is reliving the 1970s, giddy with delight over its relationship with Washington, for a few crumbs and risk of collateral damage. Manila is only comfortable, then, when it plays vassal.
South Korea is outdoing Japan in distancing itself from China. This seems strange given the financial killing for Seoul in leading technologically in the vast Chinese market. Korean reunification will never happen until 30,000 US soldiers decamp. Then there is Japan, most of all.
What is going on?
Well, the peripheral parts of Asia are becoming like Europe. Both are shooting themselves in the foot, on behalf of a United States doubling down on slowing down the competitor states of China and, less so, Russia.
The political classes of much of Spykman’s Rimland have gone on one too many jollies in US think tank land, internalizing the worldviews of an enduring Western-run world.
Incidentally, Spykman, writing in 1942, saw Russia as the number one threat. Even in the early and most vulnerable months of war against Japan, he foresaw its defeat and the benefits of converting Tokyo into a US vassal.
Then China was under Western tutelage and suzerainty. Russia was the indispensable ally. In 1945, all this changed. So, superpower strategic shifts can be lightning fast. Bear that in mind.
Attaching oneself to a coalition against an invading nuclear power is one thing. Committing self-harm on its own economic and energy infrastructure is something else. There were less painful and more intelligent ways of going about this. That’s Europe, and a warning for Asia this decade.
Peripheral Asia’s political classes are looking at China as a designated enemy. Fearing the rise of an economic titan suddenly appearing on your doorstep is understandable. Joining a NATO crusade against it, is not.
China is not Russia. It is focused on markets, economies, investments, technology, and wealth creation -- to plug the one-hundred-year gap of lost growth because of marauding Western powers. It wins precisely by NOT fighting a hot war. One really does not need to read Sun Tzu to work that one out.
In You will be assimilated, David Goldman of the Asia Times claims that China is fearful of an India-Japanese alliance, given that Tokyo is one of the leading technological cores, with ample financial liquidity.
This would be logical, in terms of economic catch up by India, on the back of Japanese capital and investment. That is, it accelerates Indian development to close the gap on China. Instead, Japan is seeing this through the prism of holding back China, not building up India.
Japan is reliving its rivalry with China, not just the 1930s but also the 1590s, under Toyotomi Hideyoshi. As its relative power has waned, it has become more belligerent (exactly as the West is doing).
It promoted the QUAD in 2007 when China was far smaller than today. It now flirts with opening an office for NATO (temporarily back-peddling by “party-pooper” Macron) in an Atlantic-Pacific strategy of containment. In 2016, Tokyo came up with the fable of FOIP.
In any case, India’s dysfunctionality precludes any eventuality of a new China emerging on the subcontinent. Tokyo understands that it cannot repeat its success in Southeast Asia in South Asia. Washington and New York probably do too. Which means India is useful if it fights a war on the Himalayas against China, as a second front to an eventual conflict on the Taiwan straits.
Elites can be and are mesmerized by the soft power arsenal of the United States. They have lived through the glory days and are easily persuaded that the sun will never set on it. That seemed plausible when the neocons dreamed up the Project for Another American Century, in the 1990s. That aged well, didn’t it?
Peripheral Asia, as well as the peripheral states of the subcontinent, should do some forecasting. The world has changed so fast since 2008, a mere 15 years -- they should figure out what it will look like by 2035.
It is true China is facing a “moment,” with the post-lockdown cautious consumer unwilling to spend. It might be far worse to the east.
Financial analyst William Pesak of the Asia Times warns that the moment of truth is coming up in the short to medium term for Japan. Forget its bumped up stock market. Ask how long before it pays the piper for over two decades of money-printing madness?
Keep an eye on its monetary mess before you place your chips on Tokyo. Here's looking at you, Dhaka.
Farid Erkizia Bakht is a political analyst.
