US, China both lacking balance
As Albert Einstein put it: “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.” At present, both superpowers would do well to heed Einstein’s very personal advice. Currently, both the US and China find their regional policies in the crucial Indo-Pacific entirely out of kilter, as Beijing’s overly bellicose strategic policy is matched in folly by Washington’s tone-deaf misunderstanding of the importance of geoeconomics.
In my last book, “To Dare More Boldly: The Audacious Story of Political Risk,” I look at the riveting tale of former Chinese Paramount Leader Deng Xiaoping. Deng almost single-handedly changed the course of Chinese and world history by (after December 1978) rationally opening up the Chinese system, thereby laying the groundwork for Beijing’s astounding economic rise. Deng advanced his program in a characteristically cautious, understated way. Suffice it to say, this doctrine of geopolitical quietism has been ruinously overturned by President Xi Jinping, who has instead (in true Communist fashion) tried to hurry history along. Championing China’s resilient rebound from the coronavirus pandemic it unleashed upon the world, Xi has become ever more triumphalist in his public statements, even as he has seemed to take on the whole of the IndoPacific region at once.
Throwing caution to the wind, Xi has made it clear that China intends to call the tune for the whole of the Indo-Pacific, not at some future date, but right now.
Expressly because of Xi’s folly, US ties to India are presently better than they have ever been, as is the case for US-Vietnamese relations. Long-term allies Japan and
Australia are clamoring to enhance their already highly integrated strategic partnerships with America. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations states also want to drift closer to the US. As a result of all this, America finds itself in a very favorable geostrategic position in the Indo-Pacific.
But never underestimate America’s vexing ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. At present, in both US political parties’ protectionist withdrawal from the world, America, for the first time in its history, finds itself with not one but two protectionist parties.
These are the political reasons that the US is, in turn, committing a gigantic geoeconomic blunder, definitively closing off economically from the Indo-Pacific, the most important future economic region in the world.
From a regional perspective, the lopsided nature of what both superpowers provide is clear:
Most of the region wants to shelter under the US security blanket, even as they also want to further their booming trade ties with China. At present, given their respective follies, neither the US nor China has an attractive, holistic pitch that will definitively win the Indo-Pacific nations over to their side. Whichever great power manages to balance its geopolitical and geoeconomic strategies — for China to be seen as an unthreatening regional neighbor and for the US to be seen as a viable trading alternative — will win the brewing superpower contest that defines our new age. It is as simple as that.