Opinion

Richard Heydarian

Why US and China’s push to set up rival power blocs are likely to fail

China’s biggest ally Russia has concerns about Beijing’s influence in its backyard while US allies in the Asia-Pacific favour neutrality and maintaining Chinese ties
Meanwhile, the middle powers from Japan and India to Australia and the EU have every incentive to prevent a ‘digital iron curtain’ and outright war

Richard Heydarian

Published: 1:00am, 10 Apr 2021

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“Gradually, then suddenly,” said one of Ernest Hemingway’s characters when asked how one goes bankrupt. A similar dynamic has taken hold of the decades-old Sino-American detente, which transformed global politics for the past half-century but is now on the ropes.

Instead of converging on shared interests, the United States and China are rapidly nurturing rival power blocs, creating a perilous situation that eerily resembles the heyday of the Cold War.

The Biden administration is doubling down on its transatlantic alliances and strategic partnerships across the Indo-Pacific, while China builds up strategic ties with major anti-Western powers across the Eurasian land mass, most especially Russia, but also with traditional US partners such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

Yet, amid a raging pandemic that is devastating the global economy and driving millions into extreme poverty, the last thing the world needs is a new cold war.

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The Sino-American detente dates back to to the 1970s when, in arguably the greatest strategic coup of the 20th century, president Richard Nixon orchestrated a rapprochement with the “Great Helmsman” Mao Zedong to forge a common front against the Soviet Union.

As veteran US diplomat Henry Kissinger notes, the US recognised China’s immense potential as a partner in a stable and prosperous international order.

Thus, over the next half-century, both Republican and Democratic administrations carefully nurtured deeper economic engagement with the Asian powerhouse and avoided direct confrontation.

This engagement strategy reached its zenith during the Clinton administration, which facilitated Chinese membership into the World Trade Organization to create a more liberal, open and friendly China.

As president Bill Clinton put it, integrating China into the world economy is “in our larger national interest”, since it “represents the most significant opportunity that we have had to create positive change in China”.

If anything, Wall Street scions such as former US treasury secretary Henry Paulson played a direct role in China’s post-Mao economic reforms. The 2007-08 global financial crisis further reinforced Sino-American economic engagement, as China became a major source of desperately needed investments for an embittered US economy.

It was precisely within this context of unprecedented economic interdependence, the so-called Chimerica era, that major cracks within bilateral relations began to appear.

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Former president Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” was as much a rejection of economic globalisation as an expression of American anxiety over the rise of China, which clearly did not turn out to be a liberal democratic ally of the West.

Impulsive and pugnacious, Trump oversaw a dramatic escalation in bilateral ties through his incendiary rhetoric, unilateral imposition of tariffs on Chinese imports, and expansion of US naval deployments to China’s peripheries.

The fiery exchanges at the Alaska meeting last month, however, proved that rising Sino-American tensions are not solely the product of Trump’s bad statesmanship. In many ways, it is now a structural feature of bilateral relations.

Tellingly, right after their much-anticipated meeting, both Chinese and American veteran diplomats proceeded to build rival alliances.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken addressed Nato allies in the transatlantic security alliance, accusing China of “actively working to undercut the rules of the international system and the values we and our allies share”.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi embarked on a diplomacy tour that included a high-profile meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and visits to key West Asian powers, including Turkey and Saudi Arabia, which have been at loggerheads with Washington over strategic and human rights issues.

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For the first time in recent memory, almost all major powers across the Eurasian land mass, from China to Russia and Turkey, are confronting robust Western sanctions, underscoring the vast potential for a Beijing-led counter-alliance against Washington.

There are, however, three factors that could prevent an inexorable march towards a new cold war in Asia. To begin with, in key regions such as Southeast Asia, there is zero appetite to choose one superpower over the other.

Traumatised by Cold War conflict, even US treaty allies such as the Philippines and Thailand prefer to maintain stable and fruitful ties with China.

For Southeast Asian powers such as Indonesia and Singapore, the cornerstone of their foreign policy is to maintain maximum room for strategic manoeuvring by avoiding an overt alignment with any superpower.

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The same can be said about the bulk of Asian and Eastern European nations, many of which have strong military ties with Washington but are also increasingly dependent on Chinese economic largesse, especially with a pandemic recession brewing.

In a sign of deep divisions among US allies, Italy and New Zealand have chosen to participate in the Beijing-led Belt and Road Initiative in clear defiance of their Western peers.

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Meanwhile, China might also struggle to form a counter bloc. Russia, its most promising ally, is deeply worried about growing Chinese influence across post-Soviet nations, where Moscow is desperately forging a Eurasian strategic and economic bloc, as well as the expanding Chinese presence in its resource-rich Siberian regions in the far east.

The massive Russian-German natural gas pipeline project Nord Stream 2 also shows Moscow’s commitment to and dependence on large-scale energy exports to key Nato members in Europe. Not to mention Russian anxieties over China’s emergence as a rival in the global arms market, another major source of income and influence for Moscow.

Meanwhile, there is no indication that either Turkey or Saudi Arabia are in a position to ditch Washington, their predominant source of military technology and training, in favour of Beijing, which is yet to become a decisive power in the deeply unstable Middle East.

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Finally, all the major “middle powers”, from Japan and India to Australia and the European Union, recognise that a zero-sum superpower rivalry is not in their interest.

Notwithstanding shared concerns over Beijing’s rising assertiveness, they have as much incentive to prevent an unrestrained Sino-American military escalation as to stop the emergence of a “digital iron curtain” that would undercut fragile global economic recovery and threaten decades of globalisation.

The good old days of Sino-American detente may be over, first gradually then suddenly, but there is still a chance to prevent another cold war.

Richard Heydarian is a Manila-based academic and author of “Asia’s New Battlefield: US, China and the Struggle for Western Pacific” and the forthcoming “Duterte’s Rise”