Recent developments in the border standoff saga reaffirm the observations made in Edward Luttwak’s 2012 book, The Rise of China vs The Logic of Strategy
China continues to move — quickly and defiantly — in its pursuit of a self-defeating aim: alienate a new generation of peoples in its neighbourhood, simultaneously and purposively.
Three developments related to the India—China border standoff took place last week. One, Xinhua News Agency, China’s official mouthpiece engaged in blatantly racist propoganda against Indians. Not only was this crude caricature aimed at going viral, Chinese media controllers even took down articles on the internet that criticised the cheap humour.
Two, Japanese Ambassador to India spoke—albeit guardedly—on China’s unilateral attempts to change status quo at Doklam by force. Not many countries have spoken up on the border standoff and hence, this statement is significant.
Three, Economic Times reported that India might be tightening the rules for Chinese businesses entering the power transmission and other critical sectors in India.
All three events reaffirm the Logic of Strategy articulated by Edward Luttwak in 2012. His essential contention was that China’s economic and military rise is bound to coalesce some of its neighbours against China. And this will happen regardless of the cultural impediments, ideological fixations and political hesitations of these countries.
In his words:
Other things being equal, when a state of China’s magnitude pursues rapid military growth, unless the resulting shift in the power balance passes the culminating point of resistance inducing the acceptance of some form of subjection, it causes a general realignment of forces against it, as former allies retreat into a watchful neutrality, former neutrals become adversaries, and adversaries old and new coalesce in formal or informal alliances against the excessively risen power.
In the case of India, Japan, and Vietnam, the power balance has not yet shifted to the point that ‘induces the acceptance of some form of subjection’ to China and hence, a general realignment of their forces against China is starting to take shape. In fact, as Luttwark observes, all these three countries —increasingly antagonised by China since 2008—conjointly match or exceed China in population, gross domestic product, and overall technological capacity.
This Logic of Strategy is only accelerated by China’s own efforts in consciously turning its neighbours against it through arrogant, provocative, threatening, and now racist words and deeds. Luttwak quite correctly predicted the impact of propaganda such as the latest one from Xinhua will have:
Individually, each component of the Chinese state that operates internationally is purposeful enough in pursuing its own institutional objectives, but the overall effect is frequently contradictory and damaging to China’s overall interests, by evoking hostile reactions, as in the cases … of Japan, Vietnam, Mongolia, Indonesia, and the Philippines.
That awkward handshake: where Xi Jinping is apparently disgusted that he has to shake hands with Shinzo Abe
The costs to China of such arrogance are significant — overriding even the economic benefits accruing from a closer relationship with China. Again, Luttwak has a prescient insight:
China’s diplomatic setbacks in the region that should be its primary sphere of influence are especially remarkable because of the ever rising importance of its trade, including imports as well as exports, investment, and, lately, tourism, on an ever larger scale globally to be sure, but more especially in Asia. It has been argued above that this failure is not due to chance errors or individual failures, but instead derives from a deeply rooted strategic culture that is both intellectually seductive and truly dysfunctional. Its harmful consequences have marked the historical experiences of the Han nation, supremely accomplished in generating wealth and culture from earth and water by hard work and wonderful skill, but exceptionally autistic in relating to the non-Han, and therefore unsuccessful in contending with them whether by diplomacy or by force. Nor is this culture at all appropriate for the fluid conduct of inter-state relations among formal equals, as opposed to the management of a China-centered tributary system.
Finally, the possibility of tightening rules for import of Chinese products also points to another structural weakness that regional powers will be pushed to execute as China continues its non-peaceful rise.
China’s sustained military growth and more recent propensity for threatening conduct have already begun to prejudice the highly favorable trading atmosphere that allowed its very rapid export-led economic growth. Because of sundry food and toy scandals, but also because of declining goodwill for China in general, private demand for some categories of Chinese goods has declined in many more markets.
All in all, China’s provocative rise is increasingly turning away bandwagoners and making them work together to balance China. Are the supposedly brilliant Chinese strategists thinking of this?
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