US scheme at G7 meeting only divides allies
Like many other people concerned about the continuation of “civilization” as we know it, I followed the Group of Seven Summit at Carbis Bay in Cornwall, the United Kingdom, with particular interest only to be disappointed in the end. Much of the three-day meeting seemed to focus on the Joe Biden administration’s continuing fixation on “democracies” versus “autocracies” in general, and on China in particular.
While, with Donald Trump no longer leading the United States, the G7 summit was a much less chaotic affair than in the previous four years, it was still nothing more than a better-organized continuation of the confrontational Trump line when it came to China.
The confabulation showed US President Joe Biden continues to be laser-focused on pressuring so-called democratic countries, whether in agreement or not, to submit to his will, and pushing, pulling or dragging them into a coalition, which to varying degrees is inconsistent with their national interests, in pursuit of his anti-China agenda.
As an American I had hoped for much more, but wasn’t surprised as the Sino-US relationship continues to rapidly descend down the slippery slope.
It wasn’t too long ago that many of us looked forward, at the very least, to the new US policy toward China that Antony Blinken talked about last summer, half a year before he became the US secretary of state: a competitive race to the top and not to the bottom. Even this February, we could take hope despite Biden talking about “extreme competition” with China, because it takes two to tango and to compete.
In his first foreign policy speech as secretary of state, Blinken said the US’ approach toward China will be “competitive when it should be, collaborative when it can be and adversarial when it must be”. This indicated he recognized that there are areas of cooperation and benefit where the interests of China and the US overlap.
But cold reality set in a fortnight later at the Sino-American high-level meetings in Anchorage, Alaska, where the atmosphere inside was more frigid than the snow and ice outside, although there was a glimmer of optimism in the recognition of potential cooperation on climate change by the world’s two leading economies.
But hope was shattered when Biden’s “Asia czar” on the National Security Council, Kurt Campbell, architect of the US’ pivot to Asia policy in 2011, announced three weeks ago that after almost five decades of Sino-American relations, “the period described as engagement has come to an end”. This pronouncement left little room for cooperation and replaced Blinken’s formulation with a much more aggressive and ominous one: compete, confront and contain China.
It’s no surprise then that during the Cornwall summit and in the concluding nearly 14,000-word Carbis Bay G7 communique, the 3-C formula was omnipresent. But it wasn’t necessarily smooth sailing as it likely would have been for a post-World War II, preTrump US president to impose his will on erstwhile allies since the national interests of G7 members continue to diverge today.
It once again proved the maxim of British diplomat Lord Palmerston (1784-1865) that “we have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.”
Thus, while there was general agreement among the G7 members to work toward Biden’s goal of competing with China, there was no agreement on just how adversarial a public position the US’ allies should take against China. Canada, France and the UK largely endorsed Biden’s position on China as an existential threat, but Germany, Italy and the European Union were more hesitant to do so.
And it will not be easy to implement even the generalized areas of the agreement to counter China, which are more like wish-lists than concrete plans with funded commitments.
A prime example is the newly minted Biden-led effort of the G7 to counter China’s Belt and Road Initiative called the “Build Back Better World”. According to the White House, it is designed to “help narrow the $40+ trillion infrastructure need in the developing world, which has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic”.
But how will it be funded? Again according to the White House, the Biden administration will work with Congress to supplement existing development financing and to “collectively catalyze hundreds of billions of dollars of infrastructure investment”. Really? Work with the same divided Congress that doesn’t even support Biden’s domestic infrastructure bill?
The Republican “America firsters” can hardly spend even a fraction of the trillions of dollars necessary to fund the US share of “Build Back Better World”.
This is also a case of déjà vu. In 2018, Trump and previous US secretary of state Mike Pompeo proposed a largely private sector-funded effort to rival the Belt and Road Initiative. However, people didn’t hear much about it, because even with all the arm-twisting they used, they could raise only a meager $113 million. Now they’re trying to flog the same dead horse.
The Belt and Road Initiative has been around since President Xi Jinping proposed it in 2013. As of mid-2020, the initiative had facilitated more than 2,600 projects in 100 emerging economies at a cost of $3.7 trillion. Comparing the US track record and China’s experience, it’s theoretically possible that “Build Back Better World” is viable, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
It’s impossible to tell at this juncture which of the many G7 initiatives agreed in principle will move from words on a page to actual implementation. But it’s fair to conclude that Biden’s idea of raising a compliant coalition of the willing to successfully compete, confront and contain a more confident and accomplished China has no more than an Alaskan snowball’s chance in hell.
And it will not be easy to implement even the generalized areas of the agreement to counter China, which are more like wish-lists than concrete plans with funded commitments.