For years, American officials have claimed the US wants China “to succeed and prosper”. A declassified document reveals that on the contrary, US policy was  to “implement a defence strategy capable of … denying China sustained air and sea dominance”.

On January 12, in a revelation reminiscent of the Pentagon Papers, the outgoing Trump administration declassified and released its 2018 national-security document detailing the US strategy for the Indo-Pacific region.

The Pentagon Papers and this latest document were released to influence government policy. The unauthorised release of the former was intended to reverse American policy in Vietnam, while the unusually early release of the Indo-Pacific strategy document appeared to be designed to constrain the policy options of the Biden administration.

Both documents revealed that the US government had systematically lied to Congress and the American people regarding its Asia policy. Ironically, both big lies –  50 years apart – were cover for the same US objective: to contain China.

The document was prepared to meet a congressional requirement to submit a declassified China strategy to lawmakers.

While the US strategy for the Indo-Pacific region is unlikely to survive the Biden administration’s probably more conciliatory, multilateral approach, make no mistake. The ultimate objective will remain the same: maintenance of US primacy in Asia by constraining and containing China.

“Containment” in this context means obstructing China’s rise. The strategy is based on the theory that the US needs a weak China to continue its hegemony in Asia. It is to be accomplished by “establishing military, economic and diplomatic ties with countries adjacent to China’s borders, frustrating China’s own attempt at alliance building and economic partnerships, and the utilization of tariffs, sanctions and lawfare”.

These are all elements of the present US policy – and have been for some time. But for years, American foreign-policy officials and echoing pundits claimed the US was not trying to contain China and that it wanted China “to succeed and prosper”.

This and similar sentiments were the consistent rhetoric of Barack Obama’s administration, including from Obama himself. Anyone suggesting otherwise – including China itself – was berated by US officials and empathetic pundits.

A chief promoter of this strategy, Trump’s secretary of state Mike Pompeo, declared that the Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy was a vision for the region “of free, fair and reciprocal trade, open investment environments, good governance, and freedom of the seas”. It excluded no country and was “open to all who wish to prosper in a free and open future”.

However, the newly released document reveals that on the contrary, the US intent was to “devise and implement a defence strategy capable of … denying China sustained air and sea dominance inside the ‘first island chain’ in a conflict; defending the first island chain nations including Taiwan; and dominating all domains outside the first island chain.”

In other words, the US intends to contain China to maintain its hegemony in the region, including, in particular, in the East China and South China Seas. This explains the more aggressive behaviour there by the US in the Trump era.

The duplicity also involved false statements to friends and partners. At the August 2019 ASEAN-US summit, Pompeo solemnly declared, “Look, we don’t ever ask any Indo-Pacific nations to choose between countries. Our engagement in this region has not been and will not be a zero-sum exercise.” That has now also been revealed to be false.

The document says the strategy has as a goal making the US India’s “preferred partner on security issues”. The US would try to achieve this goal by pushing and pulling India away from its non-aligned status – in China’s eyes if not those of the world.

The document also sees Southeast Asia as an accomplice in Washington’s China-containment policy. It urges the US to “promote and reinforce Southeast Asia and ASEAN’s central role in the region’s security architecture, and encourage it to speak with one voice on key issues”.

That may sound benign, but it is not when it is a key component of the United States’ China-containment strategy. From this document, it is clear that US policy toward Southeast Asia is contingent on the US relationship with China.

Even worse than the lies, the policy was apparently formulated based on cultural bias. In May 2019, the State Department’s director of policy and planning at the time, Kiron Skinner, said US competition with China would be especially bitter because “it’s the first time that we will have a great power competitor that is not Caucasian”.

She also said the US struggle with China was uniquely “a fight with a really different civilization and a different ideology”.

These inaccurate slips of the tongue (the US opponent in World War II, Japan, was certainly a different civilization and ideology) revealed that some in the Trump administration believed the US and China are engaged in a “clash of civilizations”.

In Skinner’s view, China was a “fundamental threat” and there was no hope for cooperation – only a “struggle for domination and thus survival”. Such thinking only plays into the worst scenarios of China’s hardliners and thus could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

So now the US has revealed its true intentions toward China and that some observers of US-China relations were right all along. To many, this was just another episode of American duplicity, hypocrisy and inconsistency. Its future avowed foreign-policy positions will be considered in this light.

This is an edited version of an article first published in the Asia Times; 28 January 2021.

Read more:

https://johnmenadue.com/forked-tongues-us-duplicity-on-china-revealed/ 

China can help solve the debt and environmental crises

Debt-for-nature swaps target reducing deforestation and protecting threatened species

Debt swaps are quickly becoming part of the international dialogue surrounding innovative approaches to achieving climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation targets amid the COVID-19 economic crisis (7, 8). Early debt-for-nature efforts, where organizations and/or government creditors negotiated with government debtors to cancel or reduce debts in return for binding commitments to achieve conservation targets (9), focused on low-hanging fruit, where debt was cheap on the secondary markets and enforcement was limited. Contemporary debt-for-nature swaps establish funds to ensure investment over longer periods of time, greater involvement of numerous stakeholders, and sufficient enforcement. New frontiers of debt restructuring continue to emerge that envision debt swaps for “nature performance bonds” or “green recovery bonds” that link economic activity to environmental performance. Incentive-based climate mitigation and adaptation strategies—like the emerging debt-for-climate swaps—will also be necessary for reducing countries' contributions and vulnerability to climate change. Given that the mantra for the response to the COVID-19 economic crisis has been to do “whatever it takes,” serious consideration of debt-for-nature or climate swaps is warranted as part of the COVID-19 global economic toolkit.

With China's emergence as the world's largest source of bilateral credit, it has come under scrutiny in some quarters for creating “debt traps” in developing countries, supposedly seeking to saddle borrowers with massive debt to increase political leverage. Yet this perception is in contrast to empirical evidence of China's history in lending and debt relief (10). Across Africa—where China has a long history with sovereign lending—China has frequently engaged with various forms of bilateral debt relief (11), including additional promises during the 2020 Extraordinary China-Africa Summit on Solidarity Against COVID-19. China also joined the DSSI in 2020, marking its first participation in any multilateral debt relief effort, and it is currently the largest single contributor to the DSSI. To date, China has not engaged in debt-for-nature or debt-for-climate swaps, but as a pioneer of green bonds, the country is now considering including these swaps in their policy toolkit (8).

To maximize return on investment, countries participating in debt swaps could jointly target debt relief, conservation, and climate mitigation and/or adaptation (7, 12). Of 87 low- to middle-income countries that received more than $25 million in development finance commitments from China's two policy banks since 2008 (4), we identify 25 countries under the greatest possible Chinese debt stress; we define these as countries whose Chinese development finance commitments constitute more than 4.80% (median) of their most recent gross domestic product (GDP) (4) and whose total outstanding external debts constitute more than 38.47% (median) of their GDP. We also considered payments due for 62 DSSI countries and identify the 27 countries at greatest risk of defaulting on China payments due in 2020, defined as countries whose China payments constitute more than 51.30% (median) of all bilateral payments due in 2020 and more than 13.17% (median) of all external (bilateral and multilateral) payments due in 2020 (2). In total, Chinese debts were considered for 102 countries, and 41 low- and middle-income countries met one or both indicators of substantial Chinese debt concern (fig. S1), representing up to $179 billion in maximum Chinese debt and $9.7 billion in payments originally due by the end of 2020 [see supplementary materials (SM) for country-level data].

Traditionally, debt-for-nature swaps target reducing deforestation and protecting threatened species (9), and debt-for-climate swaps can target climate change mitigation and/or adaptation strategies (7). To gauge the prominence of these respective threats for debt-stressed countries, we score the 41 countries on two climate threat metrics (average annual carbon emissions and climate vulnerability) and two biodiversity threat metrics (threatened species density and annual tree cover loss) (fig. S2). Scores for each metric are distinguished as relatively “high threat” (1 point) or “low threat” (0 points) based on the median of all 102 low- and middle-income countries considered in this analysis (see SM for data sources and calculations).

Recent studies have considered countries' “creditworthiness” (7) and implementation or management costs (12) as barriers in debt swap opportunities. Here, we take a more direct and globally comparative approach to estimate opportunities for success, based on climate commitments and natural capital. Under the Paris Climate Agreement, several countries have proposed ambitious nationally determined contributions (NDCs) for renewable energy (13), and high debt stress may jeopardize these commitments. We consider countries whose renewable energy investment costs (associated with their existing NDC commitments) are more than 5.50% (median) of their GDP to have greater opportunity for success in meeting the terms of debt-for-climate swaps, because they may have stronger political will for climate action. Given the rapid decline of intact landscapes in developing countries and the frequency with which protected areas have been key features of traditional debt-for-nature swaps, we consider countries with more than 78.39% (median) of remaining intact lands currently unprotected to have greater opportunity for implementing traditional debt-for-nature swaps. We add an additional point to countries' climate and/or biodiversity threat scores if they have greater debt swap opportunity, for a total score ranging from 0 to 3 for debt-for-climate and debt-for-nature potential (see the figure and SM).

Several countries under greatest China debt stress show great promise for debt-for-nature and debt-for-climate swaps. Angola, Cambodia, Myanmar, and the Solomon Islands score highest across simultaneous climate and biodiversity threats and opportunities (see the figure). Angola—where China has extended a total of $29.6 billion (31% of GDP) in finance commitments—could greatly benefit from debt-for-climate swaps incorporating both climate mitigation and adaptation initiatives, freeing up capital for their $15.7 billion commitment to renewable energy investments. In addition, nearly 91% of Angola's remaining intact areas are unprotected, providing an opportunity for debt-for-nature swaps to protect these landscapes and reduce relatively high rates of tree cover loss. Cambodia ($5 billion in China finance commitments) faces similar potential benefits, but the majority of its intact landscapes (84%) are already under protection, limiting the opportunity to find suitable locations to efficiently and ethically implement traditional debt-for-nature swaps.

For countries like Senegal, Sudan, and Zimbabwe, where carbon emissions and climate vulnerability are high and renewable energy commitments span 15 to 39% of their GDP, debt-for-climate swaps could be prioritized to simultaneously reduce carbon emissions and facilitate investment in building climate-resilient communities. By contrast, debt-for-nature swaps show greater promise for smaller countries like Fiji and Togo. These nations with a smaller carbon footprint have some of the highest concentrations of threatened species and minimal existing protection of their remaining intact landscapes. Together, these two countries owed China $58 million by the end of 2020—a relatively small figure compared with most other debt-stressed countries; such small debt-for-nature investments could serve as lower-risk pilot programs and lead to positive biodiversity outcomes.

Debt swaps provide both practical and reputational incentives for China. Many of China's debtors will not be able to repay the full amount of their debt, which could leave China with stranded assets across the globe. Restructuring would simultaneously help countries recover from the pandemic and increase the likelihood that the remainder of the debt will be repaid. Furthermore, the implementation of debt swaps could allow China to still receive something in return in terms of reputation (e.g., favorable political scores, evidence of investing in the public good). As China is set to host the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 2021, opportunities abound to advance debt swap mechanisms and lead by example in the post-2020 era of conservation. China has also pledged to be carbon neutral by 2060; as the “Rule Book” for Article 6 of the Paris Climate Agreement becomes clearer, China and other creditors may even be able to obtain “credits” for such swaps moving forward.

Because biodiversity and climate change are intrinsically linked, debt swaps should be designed to maximize dual benefits to biodiversity and climate mitigation, such as preserving carbon sinks by reducing deforestation. This would provide an additional tool for China to deliver on its own policy priorities, such as the Beijing Call for Biodiversity and Climate Change (3) and a “green” Belt and Road (8).

China and its borrowers can work bilaterally and multilaterally to make these swaps part of their toolkit. As China considers creating a new biodiversity fund ahead of the CBD COP in 2021, some of those funds could be earmarked for debt-for-nature or debt-for-climate swaps, enhancing the environmental performance of new or replaced financing from China. On a bilateral level, numerous countries are engaged in debt relief negotiations. China could signal that it is willing to expand those discussions to include possible debt swaps, and borrowers could propose swaps as well. More ambitiously, China could expand multilateral debt relief options. There is an increasing recognition that the DSSI does not include all the countries that will need debt relief, including several climate-vulnerable countries. China should join these calls to expand the DSSI to include climate-vulnerable countries and to use debt swaps as a tool for reducing these countries' debt burdens.

Read more:

POLICY FORUMFINANCE AND ENVIRONMENT

B. Alexander Simmons, Rebecca Ray, Hongbo Yang, Kevin P. Gallagher

Science  29 Jan 2021:

Vol. 371, Issue 6528, pp. 468-470

ASPI’s executive director Peter Jennings is banging the war drums over Taiwan again. He would have Australia automatically marching into a war in defence of the island. Why would Australia go to war over Taiwan?

Sovereignty has been elevated in Australia’s national interests to near sacred status. But to argue for joining a US defence of Taiwan’s sovereignty would be specious. In 1971, the UN General Assembly recognised the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as “the only legitimate representatives of China to the United Nations”. The Australian Government “does not recognise [Taiwan] as a sovereign state and does not regard the authorities in Taiwan as having the status of a national government”.

In US policy the significance of Taiwan has shifted with political and geostrategic developments. In the early years of the Cold War, John Foster Dulles believed that if Formosa (Taiwan) fell to the Chinese Communist forces, US resolve would appear weak, and the Soviets could establish an important military presence in East Asia.

The 1972 joint Sino-US communique stated: “There is but one China and Taiwan is a part of China.” In 1979, China and America commenced formal diplomatic relations and President Carter ended formal relations with Taiwan, abrogated the mutual defence treaty, and withdrew all military forces from Taiwan. After pro-Taiwan US legislators passed the Taiwan Relations Act that re-established the previous situation with Taiwan, and in particular the defence arrangements and arms sales, the Reagan Administration subsequently negotiated another communique in 1982. This made clear the US had no intention of threatening China’s sovereignty or seeking the separation of Taiwan.

In the post-Cold War era, the US position on Taiwan’s sovereignty has continued to displease at times the Chinese and the Taiwanese. In Senate testimony in September 2020, Assistant Secretary of State David Stilwell reiterated longstanding US policy on Taiwan. He stated that the United States “will not take a position on sovereignty” which was “to be worked out between” the PRC and Taiwan.

Geographically, China would gain no significant military advantage from possessing Taiwan. Just 130 kilometres separates Taiwan from the mainland. Potential Chinese targets, in South Korea, Japan and Southeast Asia, are closer to military installations on the mainland, and the opportunities to interdict shipping in the South China Sea would not be enhanced. Any adversary assets in the Taiwan Straits or on the island are already extremely vulnerable to overwhelming attack from China.

Instability in East Asia would not increase nor the strategic situation be transformed if China took possession of Taiwan. The defence of Australia would be unaffected by a PRC takeover of Taiwan. The relative military situation in East Asia would remain unchanged, and there would be no increase in the direct military threat to Australian territory.

Jennings does raise the key strategic issue. China “might just commit a military blunder of globally disastrous proportions” if the US was determined to resist an invasion of Taiwan. The potential is great for such an encounter to spill over into a major war between two great powers. The longer-term consequences for Australia from such a war would be multidimensional and disastrous.

Yet, for Jennings: “[W]hatever Biden does about Taiwan, he will expect Japan and Australia to be there. There is no exit strategy from our own region.” More emphatically, Paul Dibb has claimed: “[T]aiwan certainly comes within the ANZUS Treaty’s definition of an armed attack in ‘the Pacific Area’. If Australia didn’t rush to the defence of Taiwan, it “would be seen in Washington as the ultimate betrayal of our alliance commitment in our own region of primary strategic concern.” Dibb further claims that “[I]f Taiwan isn’t worth defending, why would anyone come to Australia’s defence?” Like Jennings, Dibb seems to be saying Australia has little discretion over going to war over Taiwan in the event that the US does.

Leaving aside whether these positions are misrepresentations of Australia’s ANZUS treaty obligations, these strategic experts never discuss how the military encounter might unfold in East Asia. While the exact details cannot be known, some aspects of the conflict between the US and China can be surmised.

The fighting could not be restricted to the island, the straits and proximate areas. Chinese forces would be operating from a range of locations on the mainland, and US forces would be operating from bases across East Asia and the Pacific. These would all necessarily be targets. In theatre, initially, China would have the preponderance of forces, and a combined amphibious and air assault would succeed quickly, with US and allied forces in the region suffering substantial early losses, as would the Chinese.

In that scenario, the decision confronting the US and its allies would be whether to abandon Taiwan as lost or regroup for a major campaign for its recovery. What would the objective be? To expend enormous human and other resources to recapture an island within a stone’s throw of China’s mainland, and fortify it in perpetuity? Perhaps launch a full-on war to convince China to surrender its claim?

What Jennings and Dibb are proposing is the subordination of Australia’s strategic autonomy to that of the US in order to maintain an alliance that may lead the country into a major war with devastating consequences for Australia. The economic disruption would be enormous. There is a high probability that Australia would suffer direct and significant casualties and destruction of infrastructure, not to mention the obliteration of its military power. The potential global consequences are incomprehensible.

Taiwan remains a ‘wicked’ strategic problem. The Taiwanese have over time established strong claims for their autonomy. The US has a huge investment in Taiwan’s security, while not denying it is part of China. The consensus in Australia still seems to be that the alliance is a strategic requisite. However, defence of Taiwan could see the island devastated, the ANZUS alliance become irrelevant, and Australia’s security lost. What objective justifies this? Taiwan is not Czechoslovakia in 1939. Defence of Taiwan is not defence of sovereignty.

The experts who default to wanting Australians to rush into war need to give a full account of what exactly they are asking of Australians.

Read more:

https://johnmenadue.com/taiwan-a-wicked-strategic-problem-for-australia/#more-63269

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The past few months has seen something of a stalemate in China's escalating trade sanctions against Australia. Things haven't improved at all, but at least they haven't deteriorated further. 

Last year, barely a fortnight went by without China dishing out some form of additional punishment on all sorts of Australian goods from coal to barley, beef, wine, wheat, cotton, rock lobster, timber, sugar and copper concentrate. 

China was remarkably frank about why it was targeting Australia, listing 14 grievances in a dossier handed to a Nine Network reporter in Canberra. 

Australia refused to budge on any front and now it's about to test Beijing's temper once more. The Prime Minister will join his US, Japanese and Indian counterparts early Saturday morning Australian time for the first leader-level (virtual) meeting of what's known as the "Quad". 

If calling for an inquiry into the origins of a global pandemic upset Beijing so much, one wonders how this will go down.

The Quad has had a patchy history since its inception after the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, which devasted much of the region. The US, India, Japan and Australia closely and successfully coordinated relief efforts and there were hopes this grouping could be the start of a new, permanent and powerful regional grouping of like-minded democracies. 

Before long, China made its concerns clear. It saw this as an attempt to contain its ambitions and for various reasons (not least the trade pressure from China), Quad members hit the brakes and the grouping never reached the level of a leadership gathering. 

In recent years, earlier hopes of China's benign economic rise were replaced by fears of Beijing's growing authoritarian control at home, along with trade coercion and regional aggression abroad. The Quad re-emerged, with officials and foreign ministers holding talks on a semi-regular basis.

The engagement of India in the Quad was key. Last year, while Australia was copping it on the trade front, Indian and Chinese troops were literally belting each other with sticks and clubs during a brief but deadly confrontation on the disputed Himalayan border. 

New Delhi's attitude towards China hardened. In November, India invited Australia to join its annual Malabar naval exercises with the US and Japan. This was the first military exercise involving all four members of the Quad. India's Ministry of Defence said it was about showing support for a "free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific".

The US also toughened its position under Donald Trump and now Joe Biden. Biden called Xi Jinping a "thug" during one of the presidential debates and has made this week's Quad meeting one of his first multilateral engagements.

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-03-11/the-quad-leaders-meeting-china-trade-test-relationship/13234080

Between you, me and a dead rat called Joe, Biden is far more of a thug than Xi Jinping...

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