How can the US hope to lead the West when it can’t even see the wood for the trees?

Washington’s inability to develop a better narrative than ‘democracy vs authoritarianism’ speaks poorly of its attempt to represent the West
Meanwhile, US-led strategic thinkers are taking non-aligned Asian countries for allies, underestimating Moscow’s strength and failing to see that US policies have pushed Russia and China closer

Bunn Nagara

Published: 1:00am, 9 Jul 2023

Why you can trust SCMP

Seriously flawed yet widespread narratives are clouding US-led Western strategic thinking. In skewing facts, neglecting past experience and being unhinged from current realities, these stock narratives serve only to justify muscular posturing and rising military budgets.

Taiwan is taken for granted as a US ally against Beijing when Taipei’s indifference to mainland concerns rings true only for President Tsai Ing-wen’s Democratic Progressive Party. The opposition Kuomintang (KMT) is different, ready to acknowledge Taiwan’s vital economic linkage with the Chinese mainland.

The KMT portrays the election in January next year as a stark choice between peace (if it is elected) and war (if the DPP wins). Given that most Taiwanese are war-averse, the KMT’s prospects look brighter than the incumbent’s.

The Philippines and Vietnam are also presumed to be Western allies because of their differences with China in the South China Sea. Yet Manila and Hanoi are non-aligned, seek improved trade and broader relations with Beijing and are wary of being drawn into spiralling US-China tensions.

Meanwhile, assumptions of a blossoming US-Philippine military alliance revolve around Manila’s renewal and expansion of the Enhanced Defence Cooperation Agreement (EDCA). But the military sites the US troops are allowed to use – unlike before 1991 – are very much under Philippine jurisdiction.

US-Vietnam relations are also flourishing a generation after Washington withdrew from its proxy wars in Indochina. Hanoi has since proven adept at soliciting no-strings foreign aid while proudly defending its national sovereignty and prerogatives. Nobody pretends a geopolitical alliance is brewing.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets Nguyen Phu Trong, general secretary of Vietnam’s Communist Party, at the party headquarters in Hanoi on April 15. Photo: AFP

There is no longer a market for dated dichotomies. Washington’s inability to develop a 21st century narrative beyond “democracy vs authoritarianism” speaks poorly of its attempt to represent the West.

Cold War bipolarity is passé: Vietnam and the Philippines are too nationalistic to play the compliant junior partner to any superpower. The same applies to larger Asian countries such as India.

The promise of an “Asian century” epitomised by China’s rise has lifted India’s aspirations, substantiated by its rapid economic growth. With its proud nationalism, India is not taking orders from any foreign power.

New Delhi happily partners with Washington in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, and with Moscow and Beijing in the BRICS bloc (with Brazil and South Africa) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). Former Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s original call for dynamic non-alignment translates today into multiple engagements instead of passive disengagement.

03:04

Biden, Modi hail new era of US-India ties and tout deals

Much the same is true of Japan – it was for former leader Shinzo Abe as it is for Prime Minister Fumio Kishida – despite reports to the contrary. Tokyo and its formidable industrial sector retain a serious national interest in investing in China’s rise, with all its transnational prospects.

Even as Japan endorses the US-proposed Indo-Pacific Economic Framework and lauds the G7’s “Build Back Better World” initiative, it knows that decoupling from China is not an option. Neither is there an alternative to working with China.

When French President Emmanuel Macron and European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen visited China in April, Macron assured Beijing that hostile US policies were not universal while the European Commission president offered a nuanced and limited interpretation of decoupling in referring instead to “derisking”.

The true battleground in the US-China cold war will be in Europe

US President Joe Biden later took up the term, without necessarily understanding it as a European rebuff of US decoupling. By then, several other countries were also “derisking” their economies through de-dollarisation. Nobody wants to pick sides in the US-China strategic competition, or feels comfortable with rising superpower tensions.

Still, Western elements bent on a feud with China continue to misread the signs and ignore obvious hints. Likewise with Western antipathy towards Russia in the proxy war in Ukraine. The Russian economy is less vulnerable to sanctions than expected, so moves to ban Russian imports backfired, with worsening inflation and exorbitant energy costs.

02:17

Wagner Group merchandise are hot items in Russia after revolt

The Wagner mercenary group’s march on Moscow has given the West more misleading perceptions. The blip of a rebellion is seen as proof of Russia’s weakness and President Vladimir Putin’s vulnerability, even when reality suggests otherwise.

Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin is a Russian patriot indebted to Putin for his success. Prigozhin’s problems were mainly with Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and the army chief, General Valery Gerasimov. He remains a bitter foe of Kyiv so neither Ukraine nor the West can count Wagner as a prospective ally. Its march to Moscow was never more than a symbolic, if dramatic, protest.

That Prigozhin took the exile option within hours, even at the risk of ultimately losing Wagner, underscored Moscow’s strength. Yet these realities scarcely register in the West. Neither has the way that US policies, under successive Republican and Democratic administrations, only pushed Beijing and Moscow into closer collaboration.

When Washington cannot even fathom the implications of its foreign policy, how can it respond adequately to multilateral entities like BRICS and the SCO?

Geopolitical strength derives from strategic vision with intellectual honesty. Biden’s America offers none of that, never mind anything to occasion Western policy unity and coherence.

Bunn Nagara is director and senior fellow at Belt and Road Initiative Caucus for Asia-Pacific (BRICAP), and honorary fellow at the Perak Academy