Seven Reasons Why US Relations With China Will Get Worse in 2018

2018 could be a portentous year for China. Its principal relationship – that with the United States – is on a cusp. Things could get better, but more likely they will get worse. The Trump administration’s retreat from the world has just enlarged China’s strategic opportunity. Such circumstances are not the most propitious for international relations.  

1. Internally, the trend of the Communist Party of China (CPC) reasserting its control over the state and society is likely to intensify. As Xi Jinping told the 19th Party Congress: “Government, military, society and schools, north, south, east, west, the Party is the leader of everything.” Private businesses, educational and other institutions are being told that the Party head of that institution must also be inducted into the governing board of that entity.

2. Xi is very much in-charge of the Party and the state and has consolidated his hold as the most powerful leader China has seen since Deng Xiaoping. Indeed, the very first meeting of the Politburo after the Congress decided that the CPC needed to “safeguard Xi’s position at the core of the CPC Central Committee and the whole Party.”

He is also holding the military close to himself, among the most important meetings he held following the Party  Congress were with the military. On the occasion of new year, Xi again donned a military uniform and conducted what Xinhua said was a fist ever “mobilisation meeting” where Xi issued instructions to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to strengthen “ real combat training an improve its war willing capability.” Though the parade involved one crack division of the PLA ground force, it was witnessed over close circuit  TV by PLA formations in 4,000 different locations.

Another new development has been the decision to resume the old practice of having PLA personnel in the Party Standing Committees which deal with every aspect of administration in China.

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3. It will be interesting to watch how these trends impact on the economic development of China. The signal came in the Party Congress when it changed the principal contradiction, geared to boosting the material life of the people, to one which  focused on removing imbalances and improving their  quality of life. The Chinese leadership need to deal with four major issues – dealing with the massive debt overhang which could undermine economic stability, eliminating the vestiges of poverty which could destabilise society, reducing pollution which affects the life of all those who live in China, and coping with the American demands on trade and North Korea.

4. The last named has the potential of degenerating into a military conflict and has serious implications for China and the North-east Asian region. The US may not be directly affected, but any military action will result in a downward spiral of the global economy and, if anything, tip the regional balance in favour of China. Deneuclarisation of North Korea is not likely to happen. Sanctions alone will not work, just as they have not in the case of India or Pakistan.

5. The new US National Security Strategy (NSS) has clearly shifted tracks of the US policy. The NSS says that the US had worked on the assumption that integration of China into the international system it had created after World War II was its norm, now the Trump team believed that America has been led up the garden path and China wants to integrate on its own terms, accepting the benefits and avoiding the obligations. For a long time Trump had been claiming that the US is being taken for a ride by China and we may now be at the cusp of a major change in US–China relations as the Americans being to implement punitive trade measures against Beijing.

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6. The post-Tiananmen CPC was led largely by engineers and technocrats who had become politicians like Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao, Li Peng, Zhu Rongji and Wen Jiabao. However, now professional politicians are at the helm – Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang. The former did study engineering, but has never worked as an engineer, the latter followed the route of many Indian politicians, he studied law.

The point is that in the main they all have a technotronic orientation and so it is not surprising that they are taking uncommon interest in promoting Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and Robotics very seriously. Their aim is to have all the AI revolution under the command of the CPC. China has huge data sets and few privacy controls, further, this data is being used for maintaining social control in a society that is already under authoritarian rule.

7. Ever since Xi has taken over, China has been more assertively pushing its foreign goals. China is already a major economic power across the globe. It now wants its military also to catch up with the kind of economic clout it has. China is inexperienced and somewhat gauche in the exercise of global power. But it is being helped along by the US retreat from its global responsibilities.

Under Xi, China has launched a massive programme of infrastructure and connectivity development involving hundreds of billions of dollars. This could be a make or break project which could see China waste a lot of money, or transform its economy. In 2018 China’s influence will continue to expand across South, South-east and Central Asia. Now, as the US retreats, China is the principal beneficiary. 

The Wire January 9, 2018

US-Pakistan relation: How nasty can the US get with Pakistan?

On Thursday, the United States announced that it was suspending nearly all security assistance to Pakistan which includes $ 225 million military aid and the balance in reimbursements Pakistan gets for fighting militancy, called Coalition Support Funds (CSF) .

This is, of course, not a surprise. Beginning with President Trump, nearly all top officials have publicly warned Pakistan in recent months that it had not done enough to round up terrorist and dismantle militant camps.

This is not the first time that the United States of America and Pakistan have come to the brink in their relationship with each other. In May 1992, the then US Ambassador to Islamabad Nicholas Platt  delivered a letter from Secretary of State James Baker to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif saying that if Pakistan did not stop supporting terrorism in Indian controlled Kashmir, the US may declare Pakistan as a state sponsor of terrorism.

The scope of sanctions would have been far more drastic that what Pakistan had faced for its nuclear weapons programme and would have led to the shutting of funding from the World Bank, IMF and other international financial institutions. 

As Hussain Haqqani recounts, Sharif and the government decided that they could “manage” the US. Washington needed Islamabad, more than the other way round. So, the Pakistanis tweaked their support for the Kashmir militancy and put up $2 million to lobby the American media and Congress. Later that year, the Americans elected Bill Clinton as President of the US and that was the end of that. Indeed, in1993, Pakistan stepped up support for the militancy in Kashmir and helped establish the Taliban.

This little history is recounted here to serve as a backdrop to analyzing the current developments which began with a US decision to withhold $ 255 million aid to Pakistan for buying US military equipment and President Trump’s Tweet excoriating Islamabad which despite $ 33 billion aid “had given us nothing but lies and deceit.” Note, of course,  that the Tweet referred to Afghanistan and not Kashmir.

It is not so easy for the US to simply walk away from Pakistan. There are three big reasons for it. First, the US has decided to double down in its efforts to defeat the Taliban. Trump has ordered a doubling of US personnel in Afghanistan and given the Pentagon a free hand in dealing with the Taliban. But if the troops increase from 8,000 to around 14,000, the US dependence on Pakistan’s logistic lines of communications will only increase. US relations with Russia are such that the so-called Northern Distribution Network is non-functional. Likewise, the Trump administration’s antipathy to Iran ensures that the US cannot take advantage of the Indian developed port and lines of communications from Chah Bahar. So that leaves just Pakistan.

Second, Pakistan is a nuclear weapons state. Its nuclear arsenal, reportedly bigger than that of India, makes it vital for Washington to remain engaged with Islamabad. Any breakdown would result in creating yet another North Korea. The world and America’s nightmare is the possibility of terrorists laying their hands on nuclear weapons. Remaining engaged with Pakistan makes it much easier for the US to monitor the activities of these dangerous terrorist groups and their interface with the Pakistani society and state.

Third, a US hard line would only strengthen the Islamist parties grouped under the Difa-e-Pakistan Council, among its leading lights is  the Jamaat-e-Dawa, the front for the LeT .  

Pakistan’s commitments in Afghanistan and India are different. In the former, it seeks to expand its power by supporting the Taliban. While it seeks  to offset India’s size by supporting militant groups like the LeT and JeM. If push comes to shove, it will be willing to reduce its Afghan commitments, especially since that would buy peace with the mighty US, but is unlikely to concede to India in any way.

One of the obvious ways in which Pakistan will seek to offset US pressure is to use China. Not surprisingly, China  came to the defence of Islamabad with a strong statement hailing the “outstanding contribution” of Pakistan to counter-terrorism. Islamabad’s response was to signal its willingness to expand Beijing’s remit in Pakistan by allowing the use of China’s currency for bilateral trade and investment. However, China also shares the American worries about the growth of militancy in the region.  

The Pakistanis have a deep understanding of the US and the ways of handling it. Aid cuts and the like are things that have happened before and dealt with. The bottom line is just how nasty can the US get with Pakistan? Actually, plenty. The Pakistani elite is western-oriented with relatives, properties and bank accounts in the western countries and vulnerable to targeted sanctions which could take on the military.  Further sanctions on Pakistani banks could cripple foreign trade.

Any way, not many in India expect that there will be a break in Pakistan-US relations. They may desire that, but it is not likely to happen. US Defense Secretary James Mattis’ Friday press briefing suggests that the Pentagon is still hoping to strike a deal with Islamabad.

Greater Kashmir January 8, 2018

The Mule and His Very Big Nuclear Button

Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series describes a future universe which is carefully programmed so that no single individual can alter the pre-set socio-historical path worked out by the mathematical genius Hari Seldon and his Foundation. Things go awry when an extraordinary individual called ‘The Mule’, with the ability to control the minds of the masses, defeats the Foundation and with it, the universe’s monopoly of nuclear weapons with which he conquers the galaxy and alters the course of history.

Asimov could well have been describing Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States.

The carefully structured American governmental system with its separation of powers doctrine is designed for conservative and steady governance. This system, and the country’s great geographic and natural endowments, have taken the US to unprecedented heights in the 20th century.  With its secure geographic location, energy self-sufficiency, a system that attracts the best and the brightest to its shores, a peerless university system and military,  the US should retain its pre-eminence well into the latter half of the 21st century.

But now an outlier has turned these calculations upside down. Trump is the proverbial black swan which was not anticipated – a low probability, high-impact presence which is disrupting American politics, its alliance systems and its governance structures. There are questions not just about President Trump’s  policies, but, alarmingly,  his mental fitness. A year ago,  Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote a book, The World in Disarray. Last week, in an afterword to a paperback edition, he noted that things have gone worse and the disarray is even greater. By viewing the burdens of global leadership as outweighing its benefits, “the US has changed from the principal preserver of order to a principal disrupter.”

Donald J. Trump could well end up as a  modern-day Attila or Chengiz, who changed the world through their acts of wanton destruction.

In recent decades as China and India have risen, the relative power of the US has been  steadily declining. But Trump is actively aiding that process, though he believes that he will make America great again.

Given the sheer magnitude of its power, the US has weathered  massive setbacks  like the “three trillion dollar war” of choice in Iraq and the 2008 financial meltdown. But the Trump effect is wilful and more pervasive.  Beginning with his two benign neighbours, he has undermined the strong system of friends and allies that the US had around the world. By pulling out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, he knocked the legs off any viable strategy of standing up to China in what he now terms the “Indo-Pacific.”

He disdains multilateral trade rules and has surrendered American leadership in the issue of the day, climate change. He wants to cut the American foreign assistance budget for 2018 by nearly $12 billion, putting paid to any plan to counter China’s belt and road initiative. And the  $11.1 billion cut in the R&D budget flies in the face of the $20 billion per annum that Beijing is putting into just one area, artificial intelligence. The crowning blunder is restriction of immigration which has given America its science and technology sinews. Last year, all six American Nobel Prize winners were immigrants and since 2016, fully 40% came to the US from other countries.

In very obvious ways, such a situation offers other contenders for the Great Power mantle an enlarged strategic space. Even its best friends would say that India is not quite ready to exploit it. Indeed, as of now it views the American disruption as a useful way of keeping its regional rivals – Pakistan and China – in check.

But for China it is a clear opportunity. As  Evan Osnos put it last week,  “China has never seen such a moment, when its pursuit of a larger role in the world coincides with America’s pursuit of a smaller one.” In 2000, he says, the US accounted for 31% of the global economy and China 4%. Today, the US share is 24% and China’s 15.

China’s footwork has been flawless so far and it is steadily accruing economic power and military strength. It is striking out in new ways through the Belt Road Initiative to expand its remit and brazenly seeking to re-write the rules of the world order to favour its suit.

From US order to less order

Since we are not in Hari Seldon’s predetermined world, the quality of leadership matters. One measure of it is the reading habits of the China and the US. Xi, according to netizens who look at the shelves of his office when he delivers his New Year speech, are loaded with Marxist-Leninist texts, western classical literature, the Russian greats, as well as books of contemporary concerns ranging from the military, to economics and finance and AI. By contrast, Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury cites White House aides as saying that Trump reads nothing, not even one page memos or briefing policy papers.

The US is not going to be replaced by China as the global hegemon soon, if ever. China lacks the combination of things which has made the US great, in particular the trust America garnered through its liberal internationalism. So, as Haass warns, “the alternative to a US-led international order is less international order,” something that has consequences for all of us residents of the globe.

Beyond issues of  Trump’s wrong-headed policies  is a more alarming thought. Is Trump all right up there? Last month,  a Yale psychiatry professor Bandy X. Lee  told a group of US legislators that Trump is “going to unravel.” His bouts of slurring, instances of using two hands to drink water off a glass and his intemperate tweets, the latest about the size of his nuclear button, are alarming.

The Atlantic magazine has run a major story asking “Is something neurologically wrong with Donald Trump?”. It rightly concludes that we should not judge such medical issues  from afar. Instead,  it has proposed a non-partisan body to come up with  a presidential fitness report, leaving the final judgment to the people and their elected representatives.

As for ‘The Mule’, his impact, in Asimov’s telling, turns out to be ephemeral and he is finally defeated by the Foundation. But then, that is the kind of satisfying conclusion fiction often revels in. Reality could  prove to be much more painful.

The Wire January 7, 2018

Intelligent design: Reading the reading list of Xi Jinping to figure out his goals and conceits

For some years now, learning what Chinese President Xi Jinping is reading has become a sort of a game in China. Netizens pore over photographs of book shelves that form the backdrop when Xi delivers his New Year speech from office.  

All this pre-supposes that Xi actually has read all these books, or intends to read them. It is well known that Xi is an avid reader because his speeches have often used quotes from Dickens, Victor Hugo and Paul Coelho. But even if Xi’s office has been dressed up for the occasion, the very choice of the books has a meaning.

None of us read all the books in our libraries, even so the choice of the books is a pointer to our intellectual pursuits and, possibly, conceits. In Xi’s case, to go by what the netizens discovered, the choices are eclectic and somewhat overwhelming. There are, of course, the usual texts on Marxism-Leninism, Mao and Deng. But this year sharp-eyed analysts noted that the classics – Das Kapital and The Communist Manifesto – have been brought to easier reach near him.

Does this reflect Xi’s policy directions outlined to the 19th Party Congress in October? Xi announced that a “new era of socialism with Chinese characteristics” was unfolding, rooted strongly on China’s Marxist, Leninist and Maoist heritage. Indeed, he signalled that China was moving away from the path of liberalisation back to the monolithic and authoritarian state.

His collection of western literature which has included the works of Diderot, Rousseau, Dumas, Gogol, Turgenev, Pushkin and other classical greats, grew larger this year. It now includes Homer’s The Odyssey and Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. A pop psychologist could well say that despite the seeming consolidation of his authority, it is actually taking a great deal out of him in terms of effort.

There are also some new texts on the military in his book cases, on the history of PLA, ancient Chinese texts on strategy, and a Chinese military encyclopaedia. Once again, this seems to reflect the reality of Xi’s intense effort to reform PLA and keep it close to himself. Far reaching changes in 2016 have made him directly responsible for PLA. He often dons military fatigues, most recently on Wednesday, when he attended the first of its kind “mobilisation meeting” to speak directly to a crack PLA division, with the speech being relayed to formations at 4,000 other locations.  

The economics texts in his library also speak for themselves. Among those visible are WW Rostow’s classic on the stages of economic growth, William N Goetzmann’s Money Changes Everything and Michele Wucker’s The Grey Rhino, and various books on ecological economics. Goetzmann’s historical survey argues that finance is really the key to economic transformation. A far cry from Lenin’s critique of finance capital, but summing up the contradictions of China of today and the role its finance is playing around the world. Wucker’s book is about the black swans we know about, and yet fall prey to. Xi is aware that if there is one thing that can bring his brittle system crashing down it is a major crisis of any kind – weather related, military or financial. And it is significant that he is seeking to understand the nature of the beast.

Equally striking are two other books on understanding artificial intelligence – Pedro Domingo’s The Master Algorithm and Brett King’s Augmented: Life in the Smart Lane. Xi and the Communist Party of China are betting big on AI, both as a means of social control of the vast Chinese system, as well as a driver to the kind of innovation economy that they want to create. The Chinese government is investing $100 billion in the next five years to develop AI technology hoping to have its giants like Baidu, Tencent and Alibaba in the global driver’s seat in the area of self-driving vehicles, smart cities and health technology.

Times of India January 6, 2018

After Trump’s Tweet, India Hopes US Will Bring Pakistan to Heel

The attack on Sunday, 31 December 2017, that killed five CRPF personnel in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pulwama district marks the failure of the Narendra Modi government’s hard-line policy of finishing off armed militancy in the state. This has involved a tough approach towards Pakistan, as well as a major offensive to kill or capture militants within the Valley.

Last month, the Lok Sabha was told that there had been a 230 percent increase in the number of ceasefire violations along the Line of Control (LoC). This is despite a three-year policy of reining in Pakistan through heavy retaliatory firing along the LoC and the so-called surgical strikes of September 2016.

Indian policy now seems to be resting on the hope that the United States’ tough stand on Pakistan, most recently revealed by President Trump’s New Year tweet, will bring Islamabad to heel.

A Dangerous Trend: Kashmiris Getting Involved in Fidayeen Attacks

The more alarming news, perhaps, is the suicide attack on the CRPF camp. It signals a new and dangerous trend – triggered in part by the government’s policy missteps – of Kashmiris getting involved in Fidayeen attacks. Till now, this was the preserve of hardened Pakistani nationals, but in this particular attack, it was reported that two, or perhaps all three, of the militants who were killed were locals.

Ever since the killing of Burhan Wani in 2016, the security forces have been on the offensive against militancy in the Valley. This has led to the killing of 214 militants in 2017, nearly double the number of those killed in 2013 or 2014. But it has also led to a sharp rise in the fatalities of the security forces, reaching 88 in 2016 and 83 in 2017, as compared to a low of 17 in 2012.

The fact that the militants killed in Pulwama were from Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) indicates that the so-called surgical strikes have failed to deter Pakistani adventurism.

The militants may have been Kashmiri, but there should be no doubt that the task of motivating them would have been carried out by a seasoned handler, almost certainly a Pakistani.

Impact of Surgical Strikes Overstated

Actually, the impact of the so-called surgical strikes has been overstated from the outset.

Indeed, this was evident when a far more serious attack occurred within two months of the strikes on the army’s 166 Field Regiment near Nagrota in November 2016, leading to the death of seven Indian soldiers, including two officers.

Unlike the attack on Uri, which triggered the ‘surgical strikes’ and which lies very close to the LoC, Nagrota is a Corps headquarters and lies at least 60 km from the border.

The logic of the ‘surgical strikes’ would have suggested that every significant Pakistani provocation would be met by a disproportionately tough response. Yet, there was no Indian reaction.

Indian Policy Not Working

In fact, there have been as many as four Fidayeen attacks in 2017 itself.

On 27 April, three jawans were killed in an attack on the Panzgam garrison along the LoC in Kupwara district. On 5 June, an attack on a CRPF camp in Bandipora was foiled and all four Pakistani Fidayeen were killed. On 27 August, eight police personnel were killed in an encounter following a Fidyaeen attack in Pulwama. And on 3 October, a BSF junior officer was killed and three others were injured following an attack on the BSF’s camp at Srinagar airport. All of these attacks have been authored by the JeM, the outfit run by Masood Azhar, which was responsible for the Uri and Pathankot attacks.

The Indian policy has not been working since the Pathankot attack of January 2016. The effort to make a political outreach through interlocutor Dineshwar Sharma is too recent and inchoate to yield results.

Also Read: Pakistan Lodges Protest With US Embassy After Trump Says ‘No More’

Unwise to Expect that Trump’s Tweet Represents a Major Policy Shift

So, it would seem that New Delhi is depending on the United States to pull its chestnuts out of the fire. Perhaps that is what accounts for the joyous response to Trump’s tweet by the Bharatiya Janata Party’s official spokesman, GVL Narasimha Rao, who said that it was the result of Modi’s diplomacy.

It would be unwise to expect that Trump’s tweet represents a major policy shift. That Pakistan has been playing the US on the issue of support to the Taliban is no secret. If anything, Trump’s remarks are a manifestation of American frustration in getting Pakistan to behave.

Trump has publicly attacked Pakistan on the issue of its support to the Taliban.

In August 2017, he announced his policy of ramping up troop levels in Afghanistan beyond the 8,400 number left by the Obama administration. Besides giving them autonomy to fight as they pleased, he called on Pakistan to “immediately” stop supporting “the very terrorists we are fighting.”

Things came to a head after the US discovered that a militant had been captured in the rescue of a Canadian couple in October 2017. But when the US demanded that Pakistan give them access to interrogate him, Islamabad flatly refused. No doubt Pakistan was worried as to what could be revealed by the militant in such an interrogation.

This is what possibly led to Trump’s tweet and the US withholding $255 million in aid to Pakistan.

The Quint  January 3, 2018

Modi government can't afford to repeat foreign policy mistakes in 2018

When it comes to the Modi government’s foreign policy record, you can see it as a glass half full or a glass half empty. Full or empty, it was half. It did not meet its full potential and there were more misses than hits, especially in the neighbourhood, in 2017. But there was one significant achievement which has made up for this and has important portents for the future. This was facing down Beijing over Doklam which was done with verve and sophistication.

So what could 2018 bring? Perhaps its most important motif will be balance. Having stepped out in significant directions in 2015 and 2016 towards the US and Israel, Modi will seek to restore some equilibrium. He will seek to repair ties with China and reach out to Palestine, to signal to the Arab world that Indian policy is not changing.

Israeli Prime Minister Binjamin Netanhayu is to visit India in mid-January for the Raisina Dialogue, but that is more about ideological signaling rather than achieving any major foreign policy goal. India is not a player in the Middle East, its primary interest is the stability of this vital region and it would be well advised to maintain its traditional posture of balancing between Israel, Saudi Arabia and Iran.

With the Saudi-Israel entente growing, there could be an argument for a slight tilt in the Iranian direction, else we may see a repeat of a situation where external pressures pushed our ally Russia into the arms of China. Note that Modi’s initiatives in the Gulf sheikhdoms are now paying. Following Modi’s visit in early 2017, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority has invested nearly $3 billion (Rs 19,000 crore)in a range of areas relating to infrastructure and renewable energy. And this, say Indian diplomats in the region, is only the beginning.

In 2018, significant developments could also take place in southeast Asia, beginning with the Indo-ASEAN commemorative summit on January, followed by New Delhi hosting all the ASEAN leaders collectively as chief guests at the Republic Day function.

Modi’s expected speech at the Shangrila Dialogue in Singapore in early June will be important because it is being delivered at Asia’s premier security meet. This could be a harbinger of deepening Indian commitments in the region to balance China’s activism in South Asia.

The China factor

Having faced down Beijing in Doklam, India is in a good position to engage Beijing. Not much will come from this because issues between the two are not open to quick resolution. In recent years, they have displayed a dangerous tendency not to respond to the numerous CBMs that have kept peace between the two countries in recent decades.

We now need newer mechanisms simply to ensure things do not get out of hand. If things go well, we could well see an acceleration of the steadily increasing Chinese investments in India topped off by a visit by Chinese supremo, Xi Jinping. The Chinese understand well that India is a huge opportunity for them. We could well see a negotiated settlement of the Sino-Indian impasse over the Belt and Road Initiative. It is in the context of China that India also needs to pay attention to Russia in 2018. There has been significant activity on the official front in 2017, but a visit by President Putin for the annual consultative summit could restore some vitality to the relationship.

No change for Pak

Our most important tie will remain the one with the US. It will also be the most problematic. It has so far been Washington’s best managed foreign relationship, but it could rub up against Indian interests relating to Iran and Russia. However, there is every indication that the US is willing to give New Delhi considerable leeway here because its need for India’s weight in the “Indo Pacific” region is significant.

And what about Pakistan? There is unlikely to be much of a shift here, considering Pakistan has no real government at present and, perhaps, more important, it remains a useful electoral tool for Modi. He is also likely to visit Davos for the World Economic Forum summit. At first sight, it looks like an attempt to catch up with Jinping who was the chief guest last year. Symbolic attendance at Davos won’t change things. The economy is not going anywhere for a while and Modi must take the blame for that.

New Delhi does appear to be in a sweet spot of sorts because of American friction with Pakistan and China. This could grow, for differing reasons, in 2018. This can provide sufficient space to further India’s interests. This is where the rub comes in. It is now widely accepted that Indian economy slowed down on account of self-inflicted wounds in 2017. Hopefully, Modi and his team will not do a repeat in the arena of foreign policy.

Mail Today January 1, 2018