America’s Asia excludes Pakistan

Biden was hoping to work with a cluster of Asian nations that had signed the far-reaching Trans-Pacific Partnership

For US President Joe Biden, Asia begins in New Delhi and ends in Tokyo. This definition of the continent was also the case with the administrations that preceded his. Afghanistan, the country with which the US had been engaged for two decades, is a case apart. The geographic space beyond Kabul is the Middle East. If these definitions are correct, Pakistan does not figure in Washington’s thinking. The Americans think of Islamabad only when their strategic interests are involved. This approach dates back to the Ayub Khan and Ziaul Haq eras when Pakistan’s participation was needed to stop the advance of the Soviet Union into Afghanistan and South Asia. When Gen Pervez Musharraf was in charge in Pakistan, President George W Bush left the Pakistani president with little choice but to participate in Washington’s ‘war on terror’. These are no longer concerns for Washington and the administrations that operate from that city are happy to ignore Pakistan. India is the current favourite for three reasons. As discussed later, India was included in the 13-country alliance Biden announced on May 23 as he was concluding his visit to Asia. Pakistan was not invited to join.

There are several reasons why India has drawn close to the US. The first is the growing influence of the Indian diaspora in American politics as well as economics. Several large American companies are now headed by people of Indian origin, and some occupy important policy-making positions in the Biden administration. The second reason is the belief that India could counter China’s growing influence not only in Asia but in places beyond the continent. The arrangement known as ‘Quad’ — the name given by a former Japanese PM — includes, in addition to his county, the US, India and Australia. The third reason is the interest corporate America has in the large growing Indian market. The Economist, the British news magazine, wrote a cover story on India in May 2022 titled ‘India’s moment: Will Modi blow it?’ “For India to grow 7% or 8% for years to come would be momentous,” wrote the magazine. “It would lift huge numbers of people out of poverty. It would generate a vast new market and manufacturing base for global business, and it would change the global balance of power by creating a big challenge to China in Asia. Fate, inheritance and pragmatic decisions have created a new opportunity in the next decade. It is India’s and Mr Modi’s to squander.”

The magazine’s positive and enthusiastic endorsement of India’s rosy future came with a caveat based on “bigger than usual spate of nasty clashes that broke out across a swathe of central India during this spring’s festival season. However, BJP officials made scant efforts to calm things. Instead, they loudly invoked the right of Hindus to practice their faith.” There is no doubt that India under Modi is heading towards a clash of religions and civilisations. That development does not seem to have bothered Washington. Even though Biden did not include India in his Asian visit, he met with Prime Minister Modi in Tokyo when he reassembled the Quad countries to discuss how the US was approaching the large continent. A Quad summit had been held in Washington soon after President Joe Biden took office.

President Biden began his two-country, five-day visit to Asia by stopping first in Seoul on May 20. His first place of call was not the President’s house or his office but the sprawling campus of a superconductor factory built by Samsung at a place an hour’s drive from Seoul. The American president was joined by Yoon Suk-yeol, the newly elected president of South Korea, who had been sworn in ten days before Biden arrived. This was a clear signal that advanced technology would be the battleground between the US and China in the remaining decades of the 21^st century. Biden was hoping to work together with a cluster of Asian nations that had come together to sign up on the far-reaching Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) that President Barack Obama had taken months to negotiate with what were termed the ‘Pacific Rim’ nations. As he had done with several other Obama initiatives, President Donald Trump pulled out of the TPP within days of taking office. Biden went back to Asia with a new initiative named the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF). There is some significance in the fact that the title of the new initiative includes ‘Indo’. Biden was making India the cornerstone of his Asia policy.

Speaking at the Samsung site, Biden said the visit to the factory was “an auspicious start to my visit, because it is emblematic of the future cooperation and innovation that our nations can and must build together”. He noted that Samsung would invest $17 billion to build a similar plant in Taylor, in the American state of Texas. The plant would employ 3,000 people. President Biden has seized on global supply chain problems to urge Congress to pass legislation that would provide $52 billion in grants and subsidies for semiconductor makers and $45 billion in grants and loans to support supply chain resilience and American manufacturing. The legislation was one of the few notable bipartisan bills expected to clear Congress. “So much of the future of the world is going to be written here in the Indo-Pacific for the next several decades,” Biden said in his speech at the Samsung plant. “The decisions we make today will have far-reaching impacts on the world.”

The details of the new approach were revealed on May 23 in Tokyo. It sought to bring together many of the same countries that had joined the US in the TPP but it was without the market access or tariff reductions that were central to the Obama approach.

The framework is not a traditional free trade agreement. It is instead an architecture for negotiation to address four major areas of interest to the US and the Americans believe also to the Asian nations. The areas are: supply chains that bind the global industrial structure; the digital economy; clean energy transformation; and investments in infrastructure. In a conversation with the press on Air Force One as he was travelling with the president, President Biden’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said it would be a “big deal” and be a “significant milestone for American relations with Asia. I think this is going to be the new model of economic arrangements that will set the terms and rules for trade and technology and supply chains for the 21^st century.” The Financial Times reported that the administration had diluted the language of the organising statement to encourage more countries to join. Some countries were concerned that Washington will impose labour and environmental standards on them without the trade-offs of better trading terms because of the liberal opposition within Biden’s party. Rahm Emmanuel, the American ambassador in Japan, explained that the US “has an interest in saying that we are still playing in the Pacific and China has an interest in saying that the U.S. is on its way out.” But President Biden made it clear that the US was not going out of Asia. It was instead deepening its involvement in the continent.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, May 30^th, 2022.

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