Is China the greatest geopolitical challenge of 21st century?

On 3^rd March, the US issued an ‘Interim National Security Strategic Guidance’ — the first formal foreign policy doctrinal statement by the Biden administration. Reading it, one cannot miss its three outstanding and prominent features: one, US policy against China is not likely to showcase any major change, and President Joe Biden may rather continue with the tough stance that his predecessor had taken against the country; two, pivot to Asia will continue as the erosion in deterrence vis-a-vis China in Asia-Pacific is recognised in this document as the greatest emerging threat; three, the US will continue and reinforce its strategic and defence partnership with India.

The new Biden administration has termed China ‘the biggest geopolitical test of the 21^st century’. I would differ with this assessment and recommend that instead of calling China the biggest geopolitical challenge, the US should see Asia-Pacific region, as a whole, as its biggest geopolitical test in the 21^st century. This is because of the difficulties and problems the Asia-Pacific region poses to the world order which the US not only wants to recreate but continue to lead.

Why should Asia-Pacific — and not China — be termed the biggest geopolitical challenge facing the US in the 21^st century? In fact, Asia-Pacific is unique in the sense that there is a greater degree of geopolitics presence in this region than in any other region of the world. There is more spending on nuclear weapons in the region and greater threat of nuclear proliferation than elsewhere. More specifically, the spending on arms that fight conventional inter-state wars is much more by many states than spending on purchase of arms to maintain internal security as in case of Latin America or other regions. More contested borders are found here than in any other region so the threat of conflict, even a nuclear conflict, remains very high.

So, for the US to say that China is the biggest geopolitical threat of 21^st century is not only to limit the scope of the emerging geopolitical threat but also narrow it down and focus just on a country (although an economic giant and a rising power) rather than the entire region. Clearly, if the identification of emerging threat is incorrectly conceived than the entire response to mitigate that threat and employ the right instrument of power to challenge it will also be ill-conceived.

The world in 21^st century, like the one in 20^th century, cannot be divided into a bipolar world. Bipolarity has ended and the politics of Asia-Pacific and Eurasian region itself demonstrates how multilateralism and not bipolarity will guide and drive the world in 21^st century. The whole idea of the Americans trying to divide the world into ‘anti-China coalitions’ and ‘pro-China coalitions’ is again the reinforcement of a previously failed policy slogan ‘Are you with us or against us’. This, President Joe Biden must avoid as some countries like Pakistan have deep-rooted friendship with China and the security implications of dividing the world into anti- and pro-china coalitions would have huge political, diplomatic and security implications for the entire region.

I also object to the creation of ‘techno-alliances’ as a means to combat China’s technological rise. The very US idea that ‘democracies and not autocracies should be at the forefront of technologies’ is a wishful idea because of two reasons. One, in an anarchic world of today which is the creation of two decades of US policy of unilateralism, the democracies around the world may have done well by not going to war with each other but many of them are significantly at war with themselves and their people, especially in the Asia-Pacific region where the US is fast pivoting. America’s own defence and strategic partner India has recently lost its status as a ‘free democracy and free society’ and was downgraded to ‘partly free’ in the annual report of political rights and liberties by Freedom House which is America’s own government-funded NGO that studies political freedom around the world. Protectionism, authoritarianism and populism is taking hold in many democracies and the very idea of dividing the world into two blocs — one that practises liberalism and the other that practises illiberalism — is not easy. If China and Russia are viewed as illiberal states then what about India? Is it not as illiberal under Modi as the other two states? The job of the new US President is not to further divide the world but unite it, and some of the US actions seem entirely at cross-purposes with such thinking specially when it warns China by saying that “We must convince Beijing that the costs to achieve its objectives by military force are simply too high”, but to endorse that conviction employs military and not diplomacy as instrument of power.

Commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Phil Davidson has, in a budget request, asked the US government to seek from the Congress a sum of $4.7 billion for 2022. This is part of a larger $22.8 billion request made by the US government to the US Congress over the next five years. The more military muscle the US builds up in Asia-Pacific and the more aggressive stance it takes against China the more China will reciprocate. More military build-up in the region will only increase challenges and will have more negative effect on the geopolitics in the region. Already internally many countries in the region are coping with the interwoven problems of weak and corrupt governments, drugs, increased rates of crimes, enlarging inequalities, poor judicial systems and host of other problems that are causing massive social disruptions.

With all these problems, countries in the region are least likely to liberalise internally. And if they cannot liberalise internally, they are least expected to liberalise externally and thus a world that America wants to divide in this region will only become more prone to clashes and conflict.

US Secretary of State Tony Blinken states that “Donald Trump was right to take an aggressive stand against China”. He also says that “whether competing or confronting China the common denominator is the need to engage China from a position of strength.” Surely, America has the right to push back and outcompete China but it must do that without executing excessive offensive military posture. This will not be good for Asia-Pacific.

Lastly, America should stop counting China as the greatest geopolitical threat of the 21^st century. Geopolitics of this region is complex and China is a great power that minimises and not maximises that complexity.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 14^th, 2021.

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