Brahma Chellaney  |  Open magazine

The United States and India are close friends today, but American policy has long undermined Indian security, first by arming Pakistan as a counterweight to India from the 1950s onward and then aiding China’s rise following President Richard Nixon’s opening to China. That helped create an expansionist power on India’s northern borders. As president, Donald Trump acknowledged that his predecessors “created a monster” by facilitating China’s rise.

Under President Xi Jinping, China seems determined to achieve hegemony in Asia, which explains its stealth border aggression against India in April 2020 that has resulted in continuing military standoffs along the Himalayan border. India-China relations have fallen to their lowest point in decades, with no end in sight to the border confrontation between the two countries.

Yet, amid the military standoffs, Xi’s regime persists with provocative actions against India, including seeking to open new fronts. The fact that Beijing continues to provoke India without incurring any tangible costs points to a faltering China policy under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Despite the imperative to create incentives and disincentives to influence China’s conduct, New Delhi has shied away from substantive action, other than reinforcing military deployments and stepping up infrastructure development along the Himalayan frontier in response to the buildup of Chinese forces. The Indian government has refused to employ economic and diplomatic cards against Beijing, let alone name and shame China for its continuing border aggression.

Unfortunately for New Delhi, American policy under President Joe Biden is likely to further embolden Xi’s regime, with China’s neighbours likely to bear the brunt of the heightened Chinese revisionism.

Biden’s preoccupation with Russia, including bleeding it on the Ukrainian battlefields, limits his administration’s strategic space to deal with the threat from a globally expansionist China. The US may still be the world’s foremost military power but it is in no position to meaningfully take on Russia and China simultaneously.

The only potential winner from the war in Ukraine is likely to be America’s main rival, China. A recent report from a Washington-based organization said that China was already the “biggest winner” from the Western sanctions on Moscow. China has become Russia’s banker and most-important trade partner. China is also building an energy safety net through greater overland oil and gas flows from Russia at heavily discounted prices, thereby setting up secure supply lines that cannot be interrupted even if it invaded or blockaded Taiwan.

Indeed, the longer and deeper the US is involved in the war in Ukraine, the greater will be the dual likelihood of Xi launching aggression against Taiwan and Washington’s strategic nightmare — a Sino-Russian strategic axis — turning into reality. By compelling Russia (now the world’s most-sanctioned country) to pivot to China, US sanctions policy is chipping away at India’s strategic interests by making it more difficult to build Asian power equilibrium.

TAIWAN, THE NEXT UKRAINE?

The big question facing the world today is whether Taiwan could become the next Ukraine. If China were to succeed in incorporating Taiwan, Chinese military and strategic pressure on India would intensify. Indeed, India could bear the brunt of the geopolitical fallout from such a development.

Just as Russian President Vladimir Putin was clear about his plans for invading Ukraine, so has Xi been explicit about absorbing Taiwan.

The live-fire Chinese military drills around Taiwan last August, by simulating an air and sea blockade, demonstrated China’s combat capability to accomplish Xi’s “historic mission” to absorb that island. The drills allowed Chinese troops to practice enforcing Taiwan’s gradual economic strangulation or quarantine, suggesting that Xi could prefer a strategy of calibrated squeeze so as to force that island democracy to merge with China.

Make no mistake: Chinese aggression against Taiwan would likely have a greater global fallout than Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Conflict over Taiwan would shape the new global order. A Chinese takeover of Taiwan would upend the balance of power in the Indo-Pacific region, and irreparably damage America’s reputation as a reliable ally, prompting US allies to re-evaluate their alliances.

The US National Security Council has projected that China’s annexation of Taiwan “could disrupt the world economy to the tune of more than $1 trillion.” Taiwan, after all, is the world’s unrivalled superpower in semiconductors. Just the giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) accounts for more than 90% of the global output of the most advanced semiconductors.

Xi seems pleased that the war in Ukraine is revealing Western military shortcomings, with weapons in short supply, critical munitions being depleted, and US capacity to restock insufficient, even as the American and European political consensus on the war is weakening.

Such shortcomings could tempt Xi, before moving on Taiwan, to help further deplete US weapons arsenals through indirect arms shipments to Russia, forcing the West to increase arms supplies to Ukraine. Xi is already aiding Putin’s war to a limited extent by supplying navigation equipment, jamming technology, fighter-jet parts, and semiconductors to sanctioned Russian entities.

Those in the West that say a negotiated armistice in Ukraine would only embolden Beijing’s designs against Taiwan overlook the fact that Xi, given his own cost-free expansionism from the South China Sea to the Himalayas, does not need to learn from Russia that aggression works. As a recent report from the influential think tank Rand Corporation suggested, a protracted Ukraine war — with its constant flows of US money and weapons and dangerously elevated risk of NATO-Russia conflict — would crimp a US pivot to the growing China challenge.

Xi, after changing the territorial status quo in the South China Sea and the Himalayas, is itching to move against Taiwan. With Russia tying the US down in the European theatre, Xi has greater strategic room to forcibly incorporate Taiwan. The issue is no longer if but when Xi will move against Taiwan.

Taiwan’s autonomous existence presently ties up a sizable portion of the armed forces of China, which also faces a strong US-Japan alliance in the defence of that island.

India likewise is helping Taiwanese defences by tying down a complete Chinese theatre force, which could otherwise be employed against Taiwan. Admiral Mike Gilday, the US Navy chief, said last August that India presents China a two-front problem: “They [Indians] now force China to not only look east, toward the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait, but they now have to be looking over their shoulder at India”.

Still, given the looming spectre of Chinese aggression, deterring an attack on Taiwan has become more pressing than ever. Admiral Philip Davidson, who led the US Indo-Pacific Command, told the US Congress in 2021 that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan could happen by 2027. But US intelligence now reportedly believes that Xi could move against Taiwan much earlier, possibly during President Biden’s current term. As US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said some months ago, China seems determined to absorb Taiwan “on a much faster timeline” than it had previously contemplated.

Biden’s surrender of Afghanistan to a terrorist militia in August 2021, and his growing involvement in the Ukraine war after failing to deter a Russian invasion of that country, have presented the US in a weakened position. Xi’s designs against Taiwan are also being encouraged by the failure of the unprecedented US-led Western sanctions to bring about economic collapse or regime change in Russia or even to force Russian forces to retreat from Ukraine. Economic war on this scale has never been waged against any country before.

Taiwan’s fall would significantly advance China’s hegemonic ambitions in Asia, not least by enabling China to break out of the “first island chain” that runs from the Japanese archipelago, through Taiwan, the Philippines, and on to Borneo, enclosing China’s coastal seas.

The security implications for India of Taiwan’s annexation would be particularly ominous. The largest Asian territory Beijing covets is the northeastern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, which is almost three times as large as Taiwan. If Taiwan’s falls, China’s attention would shift to Arunachal Pradesh.

Against this background, it has become imperative for India, the US, Japan and Australia to step up consultations with each other, and with Taipei, on how they could contribute to shoring up Taiwan’s defences and deterring a Chinese attack on that island.

To be sure, America’s role is central to Taiwan’s autonomous future. If the US fails to prevent Taiwan’s subjugation, it would be widely seen as unable or unwilling to defend any other ally, including Japan, which hosts more American soldiers than any other foreign country.

The only thing that can deter China from attacking Taiwan is an understanding with certitude that it would incur unbearably high costs.

PROVOKING INDIA

The enduring costs of China’s stealthy land grabs in Ladakh in April 2020 have transformed the Himalayan frontier, fostering rival military buildups and raising the risks of armed conflict. External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar acknowledged recently that the India-China border situation remains “very fragile” and, with rival forces deployed in close proximity, “dangerous”, while the Army chief Gen. Manoj Pande said China is building new military infrastructure along the border “at a very hectic pace”.

More fundamentally, China’s actions, including the forward deployment of artillery, missiles and bombers, are turning what was once a lightly patrolled frontier into a perennially hot border. The Tibetan Plateau has become a vast military base for China, which enjoys the advantage of a relatively flat terrain against India.

For India, a hot border means the diversion of even greater resources for frontier defence. This development would not only make it more difficult for India to focus on its broader strategic competition with China, but also further strengthen China’s alliance with Pakistan with the shared goal to box India in and present it with a two-front war scenario.

Not content with the military standoffs in Ladakh, China has more recently built up offensive new forces along the Arunachal and Sikkim borders and in occupied Doklam. Over the past winter, it aggressively deployed thousands of additional troops along the border of Arunachal Pradesh and thousands more near India’s “chicken-neck”, a narrow, 22-kilometer-wide corridor that connects the country’s northeast to the mainland. Xi’s Lunar New Year inspection in February of the Chinese military’s combat readiness against India showed how involved he is in the Himalayan military confrontation.

Relations between Beijing and New Delhi may be at a nadir, but that hasn’t stopped Xi’s regime from continuing to provoke India. This only exposes India’s China policy as ineffectual.

In December, Chinese forces attempted to seize key mountaintop positions in the Yangtse area of Tawang, which is the birthplace of a previous Dalai Lama. Tawang controls access to Bhutan’s Sakteng Wildlife Sanctuary, which China has claimed since mid-2020.

China, meanwhile, has stepped up its campaign to Sinicize names of places in India’s sprawling Arunachal state. It released this month a new set of Chinese names for places in Arunachal Pradesh. Enacting a Land Borders Law in 2021 and then accelerating the Sinicization of places in Arunachal seem part of a well-thought-out revanchist strategy.

Yet India’s Ministry of External Affairs issued a tame response to Beijing’s latest provocation, that too a day late, which allowed China to hog the headlines with its action. The MEA has yet to grasp that timely communication is critical for foreign policy in an era in which social media and mass media increasingly help shape narratives. It invariably is slow to respond to China’s infowar, psy-ops or lawfare. At times it even fails to respond.

Meanwhile, China is possibly seeking to open a front against India in the Bay of Bengal by assisting Myanmar’s militarization of the Coco Islands, which are a northern extension of the Andaman and Nicobar chain. Myanmar’s military regime, increasingly isolated and squeezed by US-led Western sanctions, is in no position to build military facilities on its own on the Coco Islands. The plain fact is that Western sanctions are counterproductively pushing Myanmar into China’s arms.

Separated from India’s North Andaman Island by the 20-kilometer-wide Coco Channel, the Coco Islands were historically Indian possessions. But in 1887, after a British lighthouse keeper was killed by an Indian, the Calcutta-based British colonial authorities transferred jurisdiction of the Coco Islands to Rangoon. India gained independence before Myanmar, yet Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s government failed to assert Indian control over the Coco Islands.

The fact that Xi’s regime is seeking to open new fronts against India — from Tawang to the Coco Islands — casts an unflattering light on the Modi government’s China policy. China is also continuing to build up force levels along the Himalayas even as its military standoffs with India enter the 35th month.

To Modi’s credit, India has refused to buckle to the increasing Chinese military pressure. India has more than matched China’s Himalayan military deployments. By locking horns with China in this manner despite the risk of a full-scale war, India has openly challenged Chinese capability and power in a way no other power, including the US, has done in this century.

China’s April 2020 land-grabs in Ladakh and the consequent military standoffs have set in motion a major Indian defence buildup. India has ramped up construction of new border infrastructure, and last month appointed a committee of secretaries to fast-track all such projects.

So, why has India, despite its strong military response, failed to persuade China to end the border crisis or deter it from committing other acts of aggression?

The answer is that Indian policymakers have failed to comprehend that deterrence can never be effective without a comprehensive approach that extends beyond military-power projection to the use of all available tools, including economic and diplomatic leverage. The Modi government’s ban on numerous Chinese mobile phone apps, its restriction of Chinese companies’ access to official Indian contracts, and its launch of tax and customs probes against Chinese phone makers have been no more than an annoyance for Beijing.

India’s overly defensive, risk-averse approach, including a reluctance to impose tangible costs, is aiding China’s strategy of having its cake and eating it too.

In fact, New Delhi has allowed China’s bilateral trade surplus to far surpass India’s total defence budget (the world’s third largest). Last year, China’s trade surplus with India jumped nearly 50% — from $69.38 billion in 2021 to $101.02 billion in 2022. This means that the Indian trade deficit with just one country, China, now accounts for about 64% of India’s total global trade deficit.

China’s international trade surplus is now the main engine of its slowing economy, allowing it to finance its aggressive manoeuvres in the Himalayas and other Indo-Pacific theatres. And India last year contributed 11.51% to China’s overall trade surplus of $877.6 billion.

This shows that India, instead of establishing disincentives to Chinese military belligerence, has handed Beijing a potent incentive to sustain its aggressive behaviour and even seek to open new fronts.

India is reluctant to even impose any diplomatic costs on China. Far from launching a diplomatic offensive to spotlight the Chinese aggression, New Delhi remains reticent to name and shame China, even as Beijing has had no hesitation in raking up the Kashmir issue at the United Nations Security Council. Indeed, New Delhi maintains a normal diplomatic relationship with Beijing.

Furthermore, New Delhi still uses euphemisms to describe the Himalayan crisis: “unilateral change of status quo” for China’s aggression; “friction points” for captured areas; and “full restoration of peace and tranquillity,” or rollback of the Chinese intrusions, for bilateral relations to become “normal” again.

While publicly contending that bilateral ties cannot return to normal as long as disengagement and de-escalation don’t happen, India is pursuing normal relations with China in the economic and diplomatic realms. In effect, despite its rhetoric, India is doing exactly what China wants — separating the border confrontation from the rest of the relationship. It is thus no wonder that Beijing gloats over what it calls a “recovery momentum” in ties with India.

The long-term implications of China’s actions are ominous for Indian security. Consider, for example, China’s frenzied construction of new military infrastructure along the inhospitable Himalayan border. This big buildup either signals that Beijing sees war as likely, or that it intends to ramp up sustained pressure on India over the long-term.

Indeed, tying India down along the long Himalayan frontier could even help China secure a greater foothold in the Indian Ocean. Opening a maritime front against India, including by gaining a foothold on the Coco Islands, would complete its strategic encirclement of India.

Since Sardar Patel’s forewarning to Nehru that the Chinese communists intended to annex Tibet—a warning Nehru dismissed—India has repeatedly failed to take China’s words and moves seriously, only to pay a heavy price later. Some in India today are scoffing at China’s stepped-up campaign to Sinicize names of places in Arunachal Pradesh, terming it silly.

But there seems a method to the Chinese madness. China enacts a Land Borders Law one and a half years after its land-grabs in Ladakh and then accelerates the Sinicization of places in Arunachal, which suggests that this is part of a well-thought-out revanchist strategy.

By renaming places in Arunachal Pradesh, China is perhaps laying the groundwork for waging war to “reclaim” that region. Whether it would succeed or not in such an endeavour is a moot point, but it would be a mistake on India’s part to dismiss the Chinese move as little more than a meaningless effort to rename places under Indian control.

The 2021 Land Borders Law was enacted primarily with the aim of advancing China’s territorial revisionism in the Himalayas. The law effectively negates the possibility of peacefully resolving the territorial disputes with India. Instead of mutually settled borders, the law enables unilaterally imposed borders.

The Land Borders Law also extends to transboundary river waters. With Xi’s regime approving the construction near the India border of a “super dam” larger than even the Three Gorges Dam, this law seeks to uphold China’s “legitimate rights and interests” over the Tibet-originating cross-border rivers.

Xi is increasingly using lawfare (or the misuse and abuse of domestic law for strategic ends) to underpin China’s expansionism. Xi, for example, used a new national security law to crush Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement and bring the city into political lockstep with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in breach of China’s United Nations-registered treaty with Britain.

Who predicted that Xi-led China would redraw the geopolitical map of the South China Sea without firing a single shot or without incurring any international costs? No one. It would be a serious mistake to discount the possibility of Xi launching aggression against Taiwan.

If Taiwan falls, China’s next target in the name of “reunification” would likely be Arunachal Pradesh.

Against this background, India needs to rethink and recalibrate its China policy. India needs a wiser, more forward-looking China policy that leverages Indian buying power and diplomatic strength. India should be less reactive and more proactive. For example, why should salami-slicing be the prerogative of only the Chinese side?

Given that Beijing’s claims on Indian territories are based on its occupation of Tibet, including calling Arunachal Pradesh “South Tibet”, it is self-defeating for New Delhi to still hew to the stance that Tibet is an integral part of China. New Delhi must adopt a more nuanced approach, including referring to the Himalayan border as the “Indo-Tibetan” frontier and showing in its official maps that India borders Tibet.

India also needs to find ways to stop Beijing from reaping rewards of aggression. For starters, it must address its burgeoning trade deficit with China, including by slashing non-essential imports. It is very counterproductive to India’s interests that New Delhi is effectively underwriting the economic and geopolitical power of an adversary that is playing the long game in the Himalayas and the Indian Ocean.

BRAHMA CHELLANEY, Project Syndicate

After more than a year of fighting, it is clear that neither side in the Russia-Ukraine war can win on the battlefield. A negotiated ceasefire is the only way out of the current military deadlock, and it must happen before Russia and China cement a strategic axis that weakens the West and leaves Taiwan more vulnerable than ever.

The recent face-to-face meeting in New Delhi between US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov – the first such high-level interaction since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine – suggests that diplomacy may no longer be a dirty word.

The ten-minute meeting on the sidelines of the G20 gathering occurred after US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan reportedly urged Ukraine to show Russia that it is open to negotiating an end to the war. Together, these recent developments offer a glimmer of hope that a ceasefire is within the realm of the possible.

The war in Ukraine, which has shaken the foundations of the international order, is in many ways a proxy war between the world’s two major powers, with Russia backed by China and Ukraine backed by the United States. Over the past year, the war has triggered global energy and food crises, spurred higher inflation amid slowing global growth, and heightened the risks – underscored by Russia’s recent downing of a US drone over the Black Sea – of a direct Russia-NATO conflict.

And yet, after more than a year of fighting, it is clear that the conflict has settled into a war of attrition, with both sides struggling to make significant advances on the battlefield. A ceasefire is the only way out of this military deadlock, but reaching an agreement could take a long time. The 1950-53 Korean War, for example, was deadlocked for two years before an armistice agreement was reached.

Russian President Vladimir Putin clearly believes that a prolonged war of attrition works in his favor, enabling his army to wreak havoc on Ukraine and testing Western resolve. To overwhelm Ukrainian air defenses, Russia is launching more missiles simultaneously, including its Kinzhal hypersonic weapons, which are all but impossible to shoot down. Despite the flood of Western weapons systems it has received, Ukraine is in no position to thwart Russia’s intensifying aerial assaults.

But it is also becoming increasingly clear that Russia cannot achieve its strategic objective in Ukraine. It may have occupied nearly one-fifth of the country’s territory but it has created a more hostile neighbor and reinvigorated NATO, which is now poised to admit Finland and most likely Sweden. Moreover, many of the unprecedented sanctions the West has imposed on Russia will likely endure beyond the war and inflict long-lasting damage on the Russian economy.

At the same time, US President Joe Biden’s “hybrid war” strategy, which seeks to cripple Russia through soft-power techniques and the weaponization of global finance, has failed to bring about Putin’s downfall or turn the ruble into “rubble,” as Biden vowed in the early stages of the war. The US-led sanctions regime has severely limited Russia’s ability to resupply its forces but has fallen short of halting the Kremlin’s war machine. While the sanctions have dented its earnings from energy exports, Russia has found willing buyers for its oil and natural gas in non-Western markets (albeit at a discount).

Short of a collapse in morale causing Russian soldiers to surrender en masse – which is a possibility, given the history of the Russian army – it is unlikely that Ukraine will be able to force Russia to withdraw fully from the territories it has occupied in the country’s east and south. While the US has committed to upholding Ukraine’s territorial integrity, restoring Ukrainian control over these regions seems like a distant goal at best.

Meanwhile, China is the only country that stands to benefit from a protracted conflict. As a recent report by the Washington, DC-based Free Russia Foundation says, China is already the “biggest winner” from the Western sanctions on Russia. China has become Russia’s banker and most important trade partner, using the war to implement an energy safety net by securing greater Russian oil and gas supplies that could not be disrupted even if China decided to invade Taiwan.

The more the US is dragged into the war in Ukraine, the greater the likelihood that China invades Taiwan and America realizes its worst geopolitical nightmare: a Sino-Russian strategic axis. The US may remain the world’s foremost military power for now, but taking on the combined force of China and Russia would be a herculean task.

The war has already exposed the West’s military shortcomings, such as depletion of supplies of critical munitions, America’s struggle to scale up weapons manufacturing, and the weakening of the US-European consensus on Ukraine. All this could tempt Chinese President Xi Jinping to seek to deplete Western arsenals further before invading Taiwan, by indirectly shipping arms to Russia and forcing the US and other governments to increase weapons supplies to Ukraine. Xi is already aiding Putin’s war to a limited extent by supplying Russia and sanctioned Russian entities with drones, navigation equipment, jamming technology, fighter-jet parts, and semiconductors.

While some in the West believe that a negotiated ceasefire in Ukraine would embolden China to attack Taiwan, Xi does not need Russia to show him that aggression works. China’s own cost-free expansionism, from the South China Sea to the Himalayas, is all the proof he needs.

As a recent RAND report points out, a protracted Ukraine war is not in America’s interest. A prolonged conflict would lead to increased flows of US money and weapons into Ukraine, elevating the risk of a NATO-Russia conflict and hindering the ability of the US to respond to the China challenge. As Biden has already acknowledged, a “negotiated settlement” is the only way to end the war – better to seek it now than after months or years of bloodshed and devastation.

Brahma Chellaney, Professor of Strategic Studies at the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research and Fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin, is the author of nine books, including Asian Juggernaut; Water: Asia’s New Battleground; and Water, Peace, and War: Confronting the Global Water Crisis.

© Project Syndicate, 2023.

Trade penalties have tended to benefit China, Washington’s top rival

Brahma Chellaney, Nikkei Asia

Russian President Vladimir Putin holds talks with Chinese leader Xi Jinping via a video link from Moscow on Dec. 30, 2022: The sanctions are bringing America’s two main adversaries closer together. © Sputnik/Kremlin/Reuters

The flight of a Chinese reconnaissance balloon across the continental U.S. for several days before it was shot down has put into stark relief the fact that a rising China, not a declining Russia, poses the biggest threat to America.

Indeed, a number of observers believe that the biggest beneficiary of Western sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine has been Beijing, not Kyiv. This reminder of sanctions’ side effects should be moving Washington to rethink its approach, rather than relying ever more heavily on trade penalties.

Sanctions have long been a favorite foreign policy tool of the White House and the U.S. Congress, even though they rarely change the behavior of targeted countries. But with the relative decline of American power, the efficacy of sanctions has been noticeably eroding.

The unprecedented American-led sanctions against Moscow have had a global impact without reining in the Kremlin’s war machine or pushing Russian President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table. At the same time, they are helping China to advance its economic and strategic interests.

“China has emerged, by a wide margin, to be Russia’s most important trade partner. It now receives about 20% of Russia’s total exports and is the source of over 35% of Russia’s total imports,” the Free Russia Foundation, a Washington-based advocacy group, said last month in a study based on 40 million customs records. It called China the “biggest winner” from Western punitive measures.

The sanctions are bringing America’s two main adversaries, China and Russia, closer together, cementing their anti-Western partnership and boosting bilateral trade in military technologies and equipment.

In exchange for greater access to Russian military technology, China has been aiding Moscow’s war in Ukraine by supplying navigation equipment, jamming technology and fighter jet parts to sanctioned entities, according to customs records reviewed by Washington research center C4ADS and The Wall Street Journal.

Russia and China, although natural competitors, have grown closer since the U.S. started to sanction Moscow over its 2014 seizure of Crimea from Ukraine.

But Chinese President Xi Jinping does not need to learn from Russia that aggression works, given his own expansionistic maneuvering from the South China Sea to the Himalayas. Indeed, none of his actions, including redrawing the geopolitical map and his mass incarceration of more than 1 million Muslims in Xinjiang have drawn a sanctions response remotely comparable to that imposed on Russia.

But the largely ineffectual sanctions campaign against Moscow looks likely to embolden Xi’s designs on Taiwan, especially since comparable penalties against Beijing would have even less impact given the much larger size of China’s economy and the countermeasures it has undertaken. Just as Putin was clear about his plans for invading Ukraine, so has Xi been explicit about absorbing Taiwan.

Meanwhile, Europe’s shift from cheap Russian energy to importing costlier supplies from elsewhere has opened the path for China to build a safety net that could withstand Western sanctions and even a blockade in the event of war over Taiwan. China has significantly boosted overland oil and gas flows from Russia at heavily discounted prices, setting up a supply line that would be difficult to interrupt.

U.S.-led sanctions have failed to change the behavior of other targets, too, including North Korea, Myanmar, Iran, Cuba, Syria and Venezuela. In each case, the penalties have only reinforced the regime’s renegade behavior.

Iran and North Korea have made significant advances in their nuclear, missile and drone programs while facing some of the harshest sanctions that the U.S. and its allies have ever imposed. Iranian drones are also playing an important role in Russia’s bombing campaign in Ukraine, while North Korea recently surprised Seoul by flying five drones through South Korean airspace for five hours, with one nearing the president’s office and none being shot down.

China has usually been quick to seize opportunities arising from a sanctions-hit country’s isolation. As a result, U.S. sanctions often help advance Beijing’s commercial and strategic interests.

For example, American trade penalties have pushed resource-rich Myanmar and Iran into China’s arms. China has not only emerged as a top investor in, and security partner of, Iran, but also has almost cornered Tehran’s oil exports at a hefty discount.

Asked about European Union sanctions over human rights violations, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen told attendees at Nikkei’s 2021 Future of Asia conference, “If I don’t rely on China, who will I rely on?”

The fact that sanctions often tend to be a blunt instrument prompted U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration in its early days to order an internal review of American sanctions programs to understand their utility and consequences.

According to a declassified version of the review released in October 2021, the U.S. should assess whether sanctions are “the right tool for the circumstances” before imposing them, and coordinate punitive measures with allies to magnify their impact and achieve clear policy objectives.

The review, however, has done little to moderate the growing U.S. use of sanctions. While the Biden administration often acts in coordination with America’s allies, this support does not guarantee the penalties’ effectiveness as the West is no longer economically dominant.

Washington, instead of developing objective criteria for the circumstances that would justify sanctions, allows moral outrage and narrow geopolitical considerations to drive its sanctions policy. This needs to change, or its overreach could accelerate the relative decline of U.S. wealth and power.

Brahma Chellaney is professor emeritus of strategic studies at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi and a former adviser to India’s National Security Council. He is the author of nine books, including “Water: Asia’s New Battleground.”

The details of China’s loan contracts with developing countries are only beginning to come to light. But it is already clear that China’s creditor imperialism holds far-reaching risks, both for the debtors themselves and for the future of the international order.

BRAHMA CHELLANEY, Project Syndicate

Recently released details of Kenya’s 2014 loan agreement with China to finance a controversial railway project have once again highlighted the predatory nature of Chinese lending in developing countries. The contract not only imposed virtually all risk on the borrower (including requiring binding arbitration in China to settle any dispute), but also raised those risks to unmanageable levels (such as by setting an unusually high interest rate). With terms like that, it is no wonder that multiple countries around the world have become ensnared in sovereignty-eroding Chinese debt traps.

Over the last decade, China has become the world’s largest single creditor, with loans to lower- and middle-income countries tripling in this period, to $170 billion at the end of 2020. Its outstanding foreign loans now exceed 6% of global GDP, making China competitive with the International Monetary Fund as a global creditor. And through loans extended under its $838-billion Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China has overtaken the World Bank as the world’s largest funder of infrastructure projects.

To be sure, since the start of the made-in-China COVID-19 pandemic, China’s overseas lending for infrastructure projects has been on the decline (until 2019, it was rising sharply). This is partly because the pandemic left partner countries in dire economic straits, though growing international criticism of China’s predatory lending has likely also contributed.

One might hope that this downward trend augurs the end of colonial-style lending by China. But the decline has been offset by an increase in bailout lending, mostly to BRI partner countries – including Kenya – which were already weighed down by debts owed to China.

The scale of the bailout lending is massive. The top three borrowers alone – Argentina, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka – have received $32.8 billion in rescue lending from China since 2017. Pakistan has been the biggest borrower by far, receiving a staggering $21.9 billion in Chinese emergency lending since 2018.

This highlights the self-reinforcing debt spiral into which China thrusts countries. Because China, unlike the IMF, does not attach stringent conditions to its loans, countries simply borrow more to service outstanding debts, thus sinking ever deeper into debt.

Crucially, China’s loan contracts are typically shrouded in secrecy; Kenya’s revelations, for example, were technically in violation of its agreement’s sweeping confidentiality clause. In many cases, the loans are hidden from taxpayers, undermining government accountability. China also increasingly directs its lending not to governments directly, but to state-owned companies, state-owned banks, special purpose vehicles, and private-sector institutions in recipient countries. The result is crushing levels of “hidden debt.”

Consider Laos, where hidden debts to China eclipse official debts. To stave off default following the pandemic shock, the small, landlocked country was forced to hand China majority control of its national electricity grid. And it may find itself with little choice but to barter away land and natural resources.

There is ample precedent for this. Already, several of China’s debtors have been forced to cede strategic assets to their creditor. Tajikistan has surrendered 1,158 square kilometers (447 square miles) of the Pamir mountains to China, granted Chinese companies rights to mine gold, silver, and other mineral ores in its territory, and approved the Chinese-funded construction of a military base near its border with Afghanistan.

Sri Lanka’s debt crisis first attracted international attention in 2017. Unable to repay Chinese loans, the country signed away the Indian Ocean region’s most strategically important port, Hambantota, and more than 6,000 hectares of land around it, by granting a 99-year lease to China. In Sri Lanka, the port transfer was likened to a heavily indebted farmer giving his daughter to an unyielding money lender. Despite this sacrifice, Sri Lanka defaulted on its debts earlier this year.

Similarly, Pakistan has given China exclusive rights to run its strategically located Gwadar port for four decades. During that time, China will pocket a whopping 91% of the port’s revenues. Moreover, the China Overseas Ports Holding Company will enjoy a 23-year tax holiday to facilitate its installation of equipment and machinery at the site.

Near Gwadar, China plans to build an outpost for its navy – a move that follows a well-established pattern. Debt entrapment enabled China to gain its first overseas naval base in Djibouti, strategically situated at the entrance to the Red Sea. China is also now seeking a naval base on the West African coastline, where it has made the most progress in Equatorial Guinea, a heavily indebted low-income country.

This is the result of a lending strategy that is focused squarely on maximizing leverage over borrowers. As one international study showed, “cancellation, acceleration, and stabilization clauses in Chinese contracts potentially allow the lenders to influence debtors’ domestic and foreign policies.” China often exercises this policy leverage by reserving the right to recall loans arbitrarily or demand immediate repayment.

In this way, China can use its overseas lending to advance its economic and diplomatic interests. If China can dim the lights in Laos, for example, it has a certain ally in multilateral forums. If it can drive a country to debt default, it can secure all the trade and construction contracts it wants. And if it can control a country’s ports, it can strengthen its strategic position.

The details of China’s loan contracts with developing countries have not yet come fully to light. But it is already clear that China’s creditor imperialism carries far-reaching risks, both for the debtors themselves and for the future of the international order.

Brahma Chellaney, Professor of Strategic Studies at the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research and Fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin, is the author of nine books, including Asian Juggernaut; Water: Asia’s New Battleground; and Water, Peace, and War: Confronting the Global Water Crisis.

© Project Syndicate, 2022.

Biden claims U.S. leverage over China is lacking. But he thinks the U.S. has leverage to cause economic collapse and regime change in Russia, an approach clearly based on hope. His focus on the wrong foe while seeking to appease China threatens to accelerate America’s relative decline.

Brahma Chellaney, Nikkei Asia

The new export curbs U.S. President Joe Biden recently imposed on the Chinese chip industry to help slow Beijing’s technological and military advances have obscured his administration’s relatively conciliatory stance since taking office.

Even the export curbs have been undercut by exemptions granted to major Taiwanese and South Korean companies for their chipmaking facilities in China.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, meanwhile, wants Biden to live up to “Five Nos” which Beijing claims the U.S. president has committed to: No to changing China’s authoritarian system; no to containing China; no to seeking U.S. economic decoupling from China; no to a policy of “one China, one Taiwan;” and no to conflict or a new Cold War with China.

According to the official Chinese readout of the two leaders’ recent meeting in Bali, “President Xi said he takes very seriously President Biden’s ‘Five Nos’ statement.”

The White House may not have directly corroborated such commitments, but similar formulations can be found in Biden’s comments and his administration’s public declarations and documents.

For example, in sharp contrast to predecessor Donald Trump’s ideological offensive against China as a predatory communist state without political legitimacy or the rule of law, Biden and his national security team have repeatedly disclaimed any intention to transform the country’s political system.

Biden himself assured Xi in a virtual summit a year ago that the U.S. would not seek to change China’s political system or direct alliances against it. On a call with Xi in September 2021, Biden sought to explain American actions toward China “in a way that [is] not misinterpreted as … somehow trying to sort of undermine Beijing in particular ways,” a senior administration official told reporters.

Similar reassurances have been embedded in Biden’s Indo-Pacific strategy, which declares that, “Our objective is not to change the [People’s Republic of China] but to shape the strategic environment in which it operates.” In Bali, Biden went a step further by telling Xi that the U.S. “respects China’s system,” according to Beijing’s account of the meeting.

China is not just the world’s largest autocracy. It is a technology-driven Orwellian surveillance state that is seeking to stamp out the cultural and linguistic identities of ethnic minorities whose sprawling homelands the Communist Party seized after coming to power in 1949. In the largest mass incarceration on religious grounds since the Nazi period, more than 1 million Muslims have been detained in Xi’s Xinjiang gulag.

Contrast Biden’s reassurances to China despite the country’s totalitarianism with his narrative that the Western conflict with Russia symbolizes a “battle between democracy and autocracy, between liberty and repression, between a rules-based order and one governed by brute force.”

While publicly seeking economic collapse and regime change in Russia, the Biden administration declared in May that it is seeking neither to block China’s “role as a major power” nor to “sever China’s economy from ours or from the global economy.” It added that it remains committed to its “One China” policy.

More recently, Biden assured Xi in Bali that the U.S. is “not looking for conflict” with China. “I absolutely believe there need not be a new Cold War,” the American president said.

Indeed, the Biden administration is seeking to “coexist and cooperate” with China, resisting labeling it as an outright enemy, despite Beijing covering up the origins of COVID-19, its oppression in Hong Kong and other territories, its redrawing of the geopolitical map of the South China Sea, and its forcibly changing the territorial status quo in the Himalayas.

The Biden-Xi agreement in Bali to empower senior officials to engage in a sustained effort to manage bilateral differences is scarcely going to stabilize U.S.-China relations, given that Beijing is a revisionist power. Indeed, Biden’s conciliatory approach may only embolden Xi.

Sensing weakness on the U.S. side, Xi has upped the ante on several fronts, from his frenzied buildup of nuclear weapons to hypersonic missile testing. Biden, who just turned 80, claims U.S. leverage on China is lacking, so he wants to work with U.S. allies to shape Beijing’s behavior.

Deterrence of further Chinese expansionism must start with Taiwan, whose Chinese takeover would upend the world order. Yet in Bali, Xi warned Biden that Taiwan is Beijing’s “first red line that must not be crossed in China-U.S. relations.”

More broadly, Biden’s emphasis on “outcompeting China and restraining Russia” runs counter to the statement in his 48-page national security strategy last month that China is “the only country with both the intent to reshape the international order and increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to advance that objective.”

While Russia is trying to mitigate a perceived security threat in its neighborhood, China is seeking to supplant the U.S. as the preeminent global power.

China’s population and economy are each about 10 times the size of Russia’s, and its military expenditures are more than four times greater. Yet the U.S. proxy war with Russia, which has led Washington to commit a total of $91 billion for Ukraine and ask Congress for more than $37 billion in additional emergency aid, is deepening Biden’s conciliatory approach toward China while simultaneously pushing Moscow closer to Beijing.

The U.S. is in no position to meaningfully take on China and Russia simultaneously. The Biden administration’s goal to “see Russia weakened” and allow the U.S. to single-mindedly focus on the threat of China is based on hope, not reality.

The worst outcome for the U.S. from the present international crisis would be the creation of a pan-Eurasian, China-Russia axis which would compound America’s strategic overreach and accelerate its relative decline. In fact, with the blowback from the economic war on Russia exacting an increasing toll on the West, China is likely to emerge as the only winner from the conflict over Ukraine’s future.

Brahma Chellaney is professor emeritus of strategic studies at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi and a former adviser to India’s National Security Council. He is the author of nine books, including “Water: Asia’s New Battleground.”

Tensions stemming from the war in Ukraine and the American withdrawal from Afghanistan have strained the strategic partnership between the US and India. But President Joe Biden cannot afford to alienate America’s most important partner in countering China’s rise.

BRAHMA CHELLANEY, Project Syndicate

The strategic partnership between the United States and India is pivotal to maintaining the balance of power in the vast Indo-Pacific region and counterbalancing China’s hegemonic ambitions. The US is India’s second-largest trading partner, and deepening the ties between the two countries is one of the rare bipartisan foreign policies that exists in Washington today.

The upcoming October 18-31 joint military exercise known as Yudh Abhyas (War Practice), in a high-altitude area less than 100 kilometers (62 miles) from India’s border with China, highlights the partnership’s growing strategic importance. India holds more annual military exercises with the US than any other country, as the two powers seek to improve their forces’ interoperability. As Admiral Michael M. Gilday, the US Navy’s Chief of Naval Operations, put it recently, India is a “crucial partner” in countering China’s rise.

But President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw US forces from Afghanistan and effectively surrender the country to a Pakistan-reared terrorist militia, in addition to tensions related to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, have strained the relationship between the world’s most powerful and most populous democracies.

Like many other countries, including US allies such as Israel and Turkey, India has taken a neutral stance on the war in Ukraine. Much to the chagrin of the US and Europe, the country has continued to purchase discounted oil from Russia, rebuffing the Biden administration’s offer to replace Russian oil with US supplies. Instead, India has increased its imports of Russian crude.

At the heart of India’s decision is fear of losing out to China. Since 2019, the US has used the sanctions on Iran’s oil exports to deprive India of cheaper Iranian oil, thereby turning it into the largest market for US energy exporters. The main beneficiary of the sanctions is China, which has increased its purchases of Iranian oil at a discount and developed a security partnership with the Islamic Republic without facing US reprisal.

While the US has already surpassed Russia as India’s largest weapons supplier, the American defense sector views the war in Ukraine as a “great opportunity” for arms sales to India to “surge.” Moreover, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has urged Indian officials to avoid buying Russian equipment and purchase US-made weapons from now on.

Yet Biden’s overriding focus on punishing Russia could exacerbate India’s security challenges, especially if the international efforts to pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin inadvertently empower an expansionist China. The US-led sanctions and Europe’s shift away from Russian energy effectively put Russia – the world’s most resource-rich country – in the pocket of the resource-hungry Chinese. Its alliance with Russia has allowed China to build an energy safety net through an increase in land-based imports, which, unlike sea-borne deliveries, cannot be blockaded if Chinese President Xi Jinping decides to invade Taiwan.

Meanwhile, America’s recent $450 million deal to modernize Pakistan’s F-16 fleet – unveiled days after the US helped the country stave off an imminent debt default through an International Monetary Fund bailout – has evoked bitter memories of the US arming Pakistan against India and supporting the initial development of the Pakistani nuclear-weapons program during the Cold War.

The Biden administration’s disingenuous claim that upgrading Pakistan’s US-supplied F-16 fleet would advance counterterrorism has prompted a sharp response from India. During a recent visit to Washington, Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar publicly condemned the deal, saying that the American explanation “is not fooling anyone”: Pakistan would undoubtedly deploy the upgraded fighter jets against India.

Against this backdrop, some observers have revived the old theory that US-India ties fare better under Republican administrations. Bilateral relations thrived during President Donald Trump’s administration, which relied heavily on India in developing its Indo-Pacific strategy. Trump instituted new US policies on China and Pakistan, whose increasingly close partnership has raised the prospect of India fighting a two-front war. In a major policy shift, Trump ended the 45-year US policy of aiding China’s rise. He also cut off security aid to Pakistan for not severing its ties with terrorist groups.

Biden, on the other hand, has resumed America’s coddling of Pakistan, made outreach to Beijing a high priority, and said nothing about China’s encroachments on Indian territory in the Himalayas. But by locking horns with China in a 30-month military standoff, India has openly challenged Chinese power in a way no other world power has done in this century.

Nothing better illustrates Biden’s neglect of the relationship with India than the fact that, since he took office, there has been no US ambassador in New Delhi. Meanwhile, the US ambassador to Pakistan, Donald Blome, caused an uproar during a visit to the Pakistani-held part of Kashmir, which he called by its Pakistani name – “Azad [Liberated] Jammu and Kashmir” – instead of “Pakistan-administered Kashmir,” as the United Nations calls it.

Moreover, the Biden administration has been trying to leverage human-rights issues against India. In April, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken alleged a “rise in human-rights abuses” in the country, prompting Jaishankar to counter that India is similarly concerned about the state of human rights in the US. Likewise, prominent members of the US Democratic Party can barely conceal their hostility to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his brand of Hindu nationalism.

Given that the US and India are both bitterly polarized democracies, officials should avoid statements that could inflame domestic tensions. If the US wishes to shift strategic focus to the Indo-Pacific, it must improve relations with its most important strategic ally in Asia. To that end, Biden must not squander the historic opportunity to forge a “soft” alliance with India. If the US is to prevail in its escalating rivalry with China and Russia and avoid strategic overreach, it needs India more than ever. But without mutual respect, the bilateral partnership is doomed.

Brahma Chellaney, Professor of Strategic Studies at the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research and Fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin, is the author of nine books, including Asian Juggernaut; Water: Asia’s New Battleground; and Water, Peace, and War: Confronting the Global Water Crisis.

© Project Syndicate, 2022.