India is losing interest in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization

Posted on July 11, 2024 by Chellaney

India appears to be having second thoughts about its involvement in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as the group’s anti-Western orientation is increasingly at odds with the subtle pro-Western tilt of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s foreign policy.

New Delhi’s creeping doubts about the SCO were first evident last year when as rotating host of the group’s annual leaders’ summit, Modi chose to convene the meeting online rather than in person. And this month the prime minister skipped the latest summit held in Astana.

India’s growing discomfort stems in part from the fact that rival China is increasingly in the driver’s seat at the SCO. In fact, except for India, the other members of the SCO are all participants in China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which New Delhi has opposed since its launch as a neocolonial enterprise. India can also be said to be the only full democracy among the SCO’s nine member states.

The SCO was launched in Shanghai in 2001 by the leaders of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. China has spearheaded the subsequent evolution and expansion of the group, while calling on other members to uphold shared values that it labels as the “Shanghai Spirit.”

Much as China has blocked India from joining the 48-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group pending agreement that its strategic ally Pakistan be simultaneously admitted, Beijing also made sure Islamabad was brought into the SCO alongside New Delhi in 2017.

The Sino-Pakistan strategic alliance against India is just one example of the disparate interests at play in the SCO, hindering its transformation into a more powerful and cohesive bloc like the Group of Seven.

Against this backdrop, why did the Modi government agree to join the SCO in the first place?

The decision related in part to India’s known proclivity to hedge its bets. In an era of sharpening geopolitical competition, New Delhi has remained loath to be associated with any power bloc, preferring to be seen as the world’s ultimate “swing state” amid the transition from the post-World War II U.S.-led international structure to a new global order whose contours are still not clearly visible.

In this way, India likely believed SCO membership could help balance its international relationships, including the perception that it was tilting toward the West. The SCO was also viewed as the only multilateral forum that could link India with the countries of Central Asia.

In line with the ancient saying, “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” advocates of India’s entry argued that the presence of China and Pakistan in the SCO should not be a reason to hold back from participating.

Seven years later, however, it is becoming apparent that the SCO carries diminishing value for Indian foreign policy.

To be sure, the participation of India, the world’s largest democracy and now the fastest-growing major economy, has helped confer a new level of international legitimacy on the SCO, which can otherwise be branded as an anti-Western club of autocracies, especially following Iran’s admission last year.

For Beijing and Moscow, the SCO is a symbol of their deepening cooperation, which has included holding joint military exercises with other bloc members, including drills with Iran in the Gulf of Oman in March.

Indeed, China and Russia see the SCO as constituting an Eurasian alliance to counter Western domination. It serves as their response to U.S. President Joe Biden’s narrative that the world is witnessing a “battle between democracy and autocracy, between liberty and repression, between a rules-based order and one governed by brute force.”

India’s presence in the SCO not only undermines the framing of global tensions as pitting democracy against autocracy, but also helps to blunt the tagging of the SCO as an anti-Western grouping.

But what does New Delhi get in return? In truth, India secures little tangible strategic benefit. At best, the SCO holds just symbolic value for India by underscoring the independence of its foreign policy and its commitment to multialignment.

In the new global divide between the Western bloc and the emerging China-Russia strategic axis, India wants to serve as a bridge. But India, Russia and China are also members of the BRICS bloc, launched in 2009, so New Delhi does not need to be in the SCO to act as a bridge between world powers.

Furthermore, India’s membership of the SCO, originally established as a regional security bloc, appears incongruent with its close ties with the West and its support for a free, open and democratic-led Indo-Pacific region. Notably, China and Russia reject the very term “Indo-Pacific,” insisting that the region still be called the Asia-Pacific.

In fact, China’s championing of the Shanghai Spirit, which it says is anchored in mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality and consultation, seems hollow, given how its furtive encroachments on Indian borderlands have triggered a tense military standoff for more than four years.

In this light, Modi has made a good call by deciding to give the Astana summit a miss. Government officials are offering the excuse that he will be tied up with parliamentary proceedings. But Modi has previously traveled overseas even when Parliament has been in session.

India increasingly appears to be a misfit in a grouping whose aims and objectives it does not fully share. Even as it hews to its independent approach to international affairs, Modi has come to be seen as the country’s most pro-U.S. prime minister ever.

India has now ratified the four “foundational” agreements that all close U.S. defense partners are expected to sign. Under Modi, India has also become more closely integrated into the Quad, including hosting its fellow members in drills wrapped into its annual Malabar naval exercises.

Modi’s withdrawal from the Astana summit does not mean of course that India intends to opt out of the SCO. Rather, it signals that India recognizes not only the SCO’s limitations but also the grouping’s declining salience for its foreign policy.

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.”

The China Factor in Modi’s Mission to Moscow

Posted on July 10, 2024 by Chellaney

The alliance of convenience between Russia and China threatens not only to accelerate an increasingly overstretched America’s relative decline, but also to erode Indian security. India now must take advantage of its relationship with Russia to mediate an end to the Ukraine war and drive a wedge between Russia and China.

BRAHMA CHELLANEY, Project Syndicate

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first visit to Russia in five years underscored the strategic importance India attaches to its relationship with Moscow. Indian leaders view that relationship as essential to a balanced foreign policy – especially at a time when India seems, at least to some, to be subtly tilting toward the West – and to provide strategic leverage against China.

Russia and India started holding annual summits in 2000. After Russian President Vladimir Putin’s 2021 trip to New Delhi, it was Modi’s turn to visit Moscow in 2022. But in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine – which spurred the United States and its partners to impose unprecedented sanctions on the country – Modi kept deferring his visit. (He did meet Putin in 2022 on the sidelines of a regional summit in Uzbekistan, where he told the Russian leader that it was no time for war.)

Today it is apparent that Russia has neither been isolated internationally nor hobbled economically, despite the West’s best efforts. So, after narrowly winning a third term last month, Modi announced that he would take his long-delayed trip to Moscow. The objective is not to take Russia’s side; on the contrary, at last month’s G7 meeting in Italy, Modi embraced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and engaged in bilateral discussions with him. Rather, Modi seeks to affirm India’s enduring foreign-policy independence, while reaping the strategic benefits of closer ties with Russia.

India’s relationship with Russia dates back to 1971, when India was at its most vulnerable. The Pakistani military was attempting to crush the independence movement in then-East Pakistan – now Bangladesh – by any means necessary. Up to three million Bangladeshi civilians (mainly Hindus singled out by Pakistan’s Muslim army) were slaughtered, some 200,000 women were coerced into rape camps, and about ten million people fled to India.

The US was more than complicit in the carnage. Far from pushing back against Pakistan’s military dictator, General Yahya Khan, US President Richard Nixon’s administration maintained friendly relations with him, in order to advance US interests in Asia. While Khan’s army carried out the genocide in East Pakistan, Nixon sent his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, from Pakistan to Beijing on his now-famous secret trip, which led to Nixon’s own visit to China in February 1972.

At a White House meeting, Kissinger credited Khan for the success of his “cloak and dagger” diplomacy with China, joking coldheartedly, “Yahya hasn’t had such fun since the last Hindu massacre!” On a memorandum from Kissinger regarding the crisis, Nixon wrote, “To all hands: Don’t squeeze Yahya at this time.”

But that was not all. In an effort to prevent Bangladesh from achieving independence, Nixon pressed China to open a military front against India. It was Kissinger’s job to goad the Chinese into initiating troop movements toward the Indian border, according to declassified White House tapes and documents. Nixon went so far as to tell Kissinger that India needed a “mass famine.”

Faced with such hostility, India’s then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi concluded a friendship treaty with the Kremlin. The pact’s security provisions helped to deter China from opening a front against India when Indian forces eventually intervened to help Bangladesh gain independence in a swift, 13-day operation.

Nixon’s dissatisfaction was obvious: in a show of force aimed at coercing India into limiting its involvement, the US deployed a nuclear-capable naval task force off the southern tip of India. This gunboat diplomacy led India to conduct its first underground nuclear test in 1974; the US responded by imposing technology sanctions on India that remained in place for almost three decades. Meanwhile, the US and China helped Pakistan to build its own nuclear bomb.

Today, India maintains deeper and broader ties with the US than with Russia, but Nixon’s China opening still haunts the bilateral relationship. With its decades-long policy of aiding China’s economic rise, the US not only created the greatest strategic adversary it has ever faced, but also saddled India with a formidable military foe that is aggressively striving for regional hegemony. One manifestation of this is the Sino-Indian military standoff in the Himalayas, which is now in its fifth year.

This is a key motivation behind India’s efforts to strengthen its relationship with Russia, which India believes can counterbalance China. After all, Russia extends across 11 time zones and possesses huge reserves of natural resources, an enormous nuclear arsenal, increasing space prowess, and veto power at the United Nations Security Council. Moreover, Russia and China are natural competitors, with sharply diverging interests in Central Asia, Northeast Asia, and the Arctic, which each country regards as part of its strategic backyard.

Even so, Russia and China have been growing progressively closer in recent years – and it is largely America’s fault. This alliance of convenience – which Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping have termed a “no-limits partnership” – threatens not only to accelerate an overstretched America’s relative decline, but also to erode Indian security. Already, China has leveraged its position as an economic lifeline for Russia to gain access to advanced Russian military technologies, which were previously sold only to India. In fact, no country is profiting more from the Ukraine war than China.

Someone must drive a wedge between Russia and China. With the US unwilling to take the lead, it is up to India to convince Russia not to align itself too closely with the People’s Republic. Fortunately, this is hardly an unrealistic proposition: though Russia’s promise to provide North Korea with immediate military assistance in the case of war is not good news, its new defense pact with China’s estranged client does suggest that Putin is willing to chart his own course.

The first step for India must be to try to mediate an end to the Ukraine war. This would allow the US to focus on bolstering security in the Indo-Pacific, thereby improving Taiwan’s chances of survival.

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 Water: Asia’s New Battleground (Georgetown University Press, 2011), for which he won the 2012 Asia Society Bernard Schwartz Book Award.

America’s vulnerable global moment

Posted on July 10, 2024 by Chellaney

BY BRAHMA CHELLANEY, The Hill

For over three years, all signs of President Biden’s cognitive decline have been ignored or obscured by his allies and the mainstream media. Even Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report just months ago highlighting Biden’s “poor memory” was dismissed as partisan hackery. Now America faces a leadership crisis at home when it is at a crossroads in a rapidly changing and increasingly volatile world.

Just when its principal adversaries, China and Russia, are more firmly aligned than at any time since the 1950s, and the dangers of an accidental NATO-Russia nuclear war cannot be discounted, the U.S. is looking overextended, with its military resources stretched thin due to its involvement in the wars in Europe and the Middle East.

The crisis in American leadership, and the fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggression in Ukraine has largely tied down the U.S. in Europe, might make Chinese President Xi Jinping believe that China has a window of opportunity to achieve the “historic mission” of forcibly incorporating Taiwan into the mainland Chinese state. Xi recently made his Taiwan goal clearer by declaring that the “essence” of his national rejuvenation drive is “the unification of the motherland.”

Putin, for his part, seems determined to get back at the West for its recent actions against Russia, including seizing Russian money to arm Ukraine.

Despite Putin’s warning of “serious consequences,” Biden has let Ukraine use American-provided weapons to strike deep inside Russia. Biden’s action to take the war inside Russia came after the U.S. followed Britain and France in sending long-range missiles to Ukraine for use far beyond Russian front lines.

Biden’s memory issues, including doing things that he had earlier pledged not to do, may well explain why his risk appetite has grown.

With the flow of sophisticated Western weapons to Ukraine failing to stem Russian advances or force Russia to retreat from the areas it has occupied, Biden has progressively escalated American involvement in the war by embracing ideas that he had earlier said were taboo. For example, he had categorically declared earlier that any Ukrainian attack on Russian territory with U.S.-supplied missiles would go against his mandate to “avoid World War III.”

To launch strikes deep inside Russia with U.S., British or French long-range weapons supplied to Ukraine, satellite reconnaissance data is needed, which Kyiv lacks. So, in effect, the supplier states have control over target selection and transmission of coordinates to Ukraine for striking Russian positions beyond Ukrainian borders.

Biden’s punitive focus on Russia has come at the expense of effectively countering the threat from America’s bigger challenger — China.

China has more than doubled its nuclear-weapons arsenal since 2020. It is also expanding its conventional forces faster than any other country has since World War II.

China already dwarfs Russia in terms of economic output, military spending and other material measures. As Biden acknowledged in his 2022 national security strategy, 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.”

Yet China has been the main beneficiary of Biden’s efforts to punish Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. Unprecedented sanctions, which have included weaponization of international finance, have been a boon for Beijing, turning it into Russia’s banker and expanding international use of the Chinese yuan. Russia now generates much of its international export earnings in the Chinese currency and keeps these proceeds mostly in Chinese banks, in effect giving Beijing a share of the returns.

For China, the longer the U.S. battles political malaise at home and stays distracted by conflicts elsewhere in the world, the better.

In fact, the likely defining moment that formally brings the era of America’s global preeminence to an end would be surprise Chinese aggression aimed at subjugating Taiwan. Such aggression could come sooner than many in Washington expect, given ominous signs that Xi is preparing his country for this war.

China’s recent military drills that encircled Taiwan seemed to be a rehearsal for implementing at least a blockade with the aim of slowly throttling the island democracy. Indeed, this was the third Chinese dress rehearsal in less than two years for an assault on Taiwan, with the latest drills more sophisticated, elaborate and geographically expansive than the previous exercises.

If Xi perceives a strategic opening to move against Taiwan without triggering a full-fledged war with the U.S., he will likely employ military force. Is the U.S. prepared for a Taiwan contingency?

America today is at a vulnerable moment. Political tumult and uncertainty at home could make it even more vulnerable to international geopolitical shocks.

Even if pressure from fellow Democrats and donors compels Biden to drop his bid for a second term, he would stay president for another six months. And he will still be dogged by doubts about his mental acuity and fitness to lead America in an increasingly turbulent and dangerous world. By advertising weakness, such a situation could embolden America’s adversaries to test U.S. resolve.

Much of the democratic world would like the U.S. to remain the preeminent global power. But, with hyper-partisan politics and profound polarization already weighing down American democracy, the U.S. confronts a leadership crisis at a critical juncture — when its adversaries are intent on reshaping the world by ending the era of American primacy.

Unfortunately, at home and abroad, the U.S. has become its own worst enemy. And it seriously risks accelerating its relative decline through strategic overreach under shortsighted leadership.

Brahma Chellaney is a geostrategist and the author of nine books, including the award-winning “Water: Asia’s New Battleground.”

China Must Not Choose the Next Dalai Lama

Posted on June 23, 2024 by Chellaney

With his relentless espousal of non-violence, the Dalai Lama embodies Tibetan resistance to Chinese occupation. This helps to explain why China is so intent on choosing his successor, and why the US and India must make sure that it does not.

BRAHMA CHELLANEY, Project Syndicate

As the Dalai Lama – the spiritual leader of Tibet – visits the United States to receive medical treatment on his knees, concerns over who will succeed him have become acute. While Tibetans around the world pray that the 88-year-old Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, still has plenty of life ahead of him, China is eagerly awaiting his demise, so that it can install a puppet successor.

Tibetans regard the Dalai Lama as the living incarnation of Buddha. Since 1391, the Dalai Lama has been reincarnated 13 times. When one Dalai Lama dies, the search for the next one begins, with a council of senior disciples taking responsibility for identifying him, based on signs and visions. But in recent years, the Chinese government has insisted that only it has the right to identify the next Dalai Lama.

This would not be the first time China selected a leader of Tibetan Buddhism. In 1995, it anointed its own Panchen Lama, whose spiritual authority is second only to that of the Dalai Lama, after abducting the actual Panchen Lama – a six-year-old boy who had already been confirmed by the Dalai Lama. Almost three decades later, the real Panchen Lama is among the world’s longest-serving political prisoners.

China also appointed the Karmapa, Tibetan Buddhism’s third most important spiritual leader and the head of the Karma Kagyu sect. But in 1999, its appointee, Ogyen Trinley Dorje, fled to India. The ease with which the 14-year-old Karmapa escaped China raised suspicions among Indians about his loyalties. After imposing travel restrictions on him, India decided in 2018 no longer to recognize the China-anointed Karmapa as the legitimate head of his sect. Now, he and his rival Karmapa, Trinley Thaye Dorje, have issued a joint statement pledging to cooperatively resolve the leadership split in the Karma Kagyu sect.

But the Dalai Lama is China’s “white whale.” The incumbent – who was identified as the Dalai Lama in 1937, at age two – has been a thorn in the side of the Communist Party of China (CPC) since China’s 1951 annexation of Tibet. With his relentless espousal of non-violence, the Dalai Lama, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989, embodies Tibetan resistance to the Chinese occupation. (Had Tibet remained self-governing like Taiwan, it would be the world’s tenth-largest country by area.)

In his past incarnations, the Dalai Lama was not only Tibet’s spiritual leader, but also its political leader, making him a kind of cross between a pope and a president. But the Dalai Lama ceded his political role in 2011 to a Tibetan government-in-exile, which is democratically elected every five years by Tibetan refugees living in India and elsewhere.

Moreover, the Dalai Lama has declared that he might choose not to be reborn – a decision that would undermine the legitimacy of any Chinese-anointed successor. He knows that, for China, a Dalai Lama devoted to the CPC is much more useful than no Dalai Lama at all. He also knows that, while he has retained his mental acuity, his body is weakening. In 2016, he underwent radiation therapy for prostate cancer. He says he was “completely cured,” but he continues to struggle with his knees. Given his advanced age, more health problems are to be expected.

The Dalai Lama’s frailty is one reason why his travel schedule has slowed considerably. But it is not the only one: bowing to Chinese pressure, most countries – including European democracies and Asia’s Buddhist states (except Japan) – are unwilling to grant him entry. Fortunately, some countries have retained their backbones. The US is hosting the Dalai Lama for knee treatment, and India has proudly been his home for more than 65 years. India has officially designated the Dalai Lama its “most esteemed and honored guest,” while the Tibetan leader describes himself as a “son of India.”

In fact, India is home to the vast majority of Tibetan exiles, and has played a central role in helping to preserve the Tibetan culture, including by supporting Tibetan-language schools. By contrast, China has been working actively to destroy Tibetan culture and identity, especially since Chinese President Xi Jinping has been in charge.

Meanwhile, China’s appropriation of Tibetan natural resources has gone into overdrive, with consequences that extend far beyond the Tibetan Plateau. Resource-rich Tibet is a source of fresh water for more than one-fifth of the world’s population and a global biodiversity hotspot. The plateau influences Asia’s weather and monsoonal patterns, as well as the Northern Hemisphere’s “atmospheric general circulation” – the system of winds that helps transport warm air from the equator toward higher latitudes, creating different climate zones.

It is imperative that the US and India work together to foil China’s plan to handpick the next Dalai Lama. Already, America’s Tibetan Policy and Support Act, which took effect in 2020, says that “the wishes of the 14th Dalai Lama, including any written instructions, should play a determinative role in the selection, education, and veneration of a future 15th Dalai Lama.” And it calls for sanctions on Chinese officials who interfere with Tibetan Buddhist succession practices.

But more must be done. For starters, US President Joe Biden should take the opportunity presented by the Dalai Lama’s knee treatment to fulfill a 2020 campaign promise to meet with the Dalai Lama. More broadly, the US should work with India to devise a multilateral strategy to counter Xi’s plan to capture the more than 600-year-old institution of the Dalai Lama. This must include efforts to persuade the Dalai Lama to spell out, once and for all, the rules that must be followed to identify his successor.

Is the U.S. prepared for a Taiwan invasion?

Posted on June 16, 2024 by Chellaney

Brahma Chellaney, Taipei Times

Preserving its global dominance appears to have driven the West’s expanding involvement in the Ukraine conflict, with former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson recently arguing in a column that a Russian victory would be “a turning point in history, the moment when the West finally loses its post-war hegemony.” Such a decisive outcome, however, seems doubtful, given the attritional character of the Ukraine war and the progressively escalating Western involvement in the conflict.

The defining moment that formally brings the era of Western preeminence to an end is more likely to be a surprise Chinese aggression aimed at subjugating Taiwan.

With the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East testing U.S.-led alliances and with America already looking overextended, Chinese aggression against Taiwan could come sooner than many in U.S. policy circles expect.

There are ominous signs that Chinese President Xi Jinping is preparing his country for a war over Taiwan. But whether the U.S. is prepared to respond to such a contingency is becoming a vexed question, especially as international concerns grow that Xi might view America’s preoccupation with extended conflicts in Europe and the Middle East as a window of opportunity to act, without triggering a full-fledged war with the U.S.

The defense of Taiwan is assuming greater significance for international security for two other reasons. The first is the possibility that Xi might seek to replicate in the Taiwan Strait the techniques of incremental expansionism that his regime has successfully honed in the South China Sea without drawing a concerted U.S. response.

Tellingly, three successive U.S. administrations have failed to credibly push back against China’s intensifying expansionism in the South China Sea, relying instead on rhetoric or symbolic actions. As a result, the American debate now largely centers on how the South China Sea was effectively lost and what can be done now to respond to China’s increasingly aggressive sea tactics aimed at tightening its grip on this strategic corridor between the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

These tactics are triggering a number of incidents with other claimant states, particularly the Philippines and Vietnam, even as China seeks to interfere with U.S. and allied air and maritime transits.

China’s recent menacing military drills that encircled Taiwan seemed to be a rehearsal for implementing at least a blockade with the aim of slowly throttling the island democracy. In fact, this was the third Chinese dress rehearsal in less than two years for an assault on Taiwan.

Compared to the first large-scale Chinese military exercise in August 2022, when then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taipei, the latest drills were more sophisticated, elaborate and geographically expansive.

The second reason is the U.S. failure to genuinely pivot to Asia and the wider Indo-Pacific, despite U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin claiming that this region is “our priority theater of operations” and “the heart of American grand strategy.”

A just-released book, “Lost Decade: The U.S. Pivot to Asia and the Rise of Chinese Power,” by two former American policymakers, Robert Blackwill and Richard Fontaine, bemoans that America’s “pivot to Asia” strategy (first unveiled in 2011) has failed thus far because a coherent approach to the Indo-Pacific remains largely absent. Consequently, the U.S. has been unable to respond adequately to China’s aggressive rise, in what the authors call one of the greatest mistakes in American foreign policy in the post-World War II period.

The plain fact is that, as long as conflicts elsewhere distract the U.S. from the pressing Asian security challenges, the Indo-Pacific is unlikely to become the hub of its grand strategy.

The latest American foreign assistance package that provides $60.8 billion for Ukraine and a meager $8.1 billion for Indo-Pacific security, including Taiwan, has dimmed the prospects of a correction in skewed strategic priorities. In fact, U.S. President Joe Biden recently plunged the U.S. deeper into the Ukraine war by permitting Kyiv to use American-donated weapons to strike inside Russia.

More fundamentally, the drawn-out Ukraine war is crimping America’s China policy and weakening its deterrent posture in the Indo-Pacific, thereby making a Taiwan Strait crisis more likely.

In an effort to forestall the U.S. from realizing its worst geopolitical nightmare, a formal Sino-Russian alliance, and to dissuade China from directly aiding the Kremlin’s war machine, Biden has been compelled to adopt a more conciliatory approach to Beijing.

This approach, in turn, is emboldening China vis-à-vis Taiwan. While stepping up coercive pressures on Taiwan, Beijing is making its ultimate goal clearer. Xi recently declared that the “essence” of his national rejuvenation drive is “the unification of the motherland.” And his new defense minister, Dong Jun, while accusing the U.S. of “malign intentions [that] are drawing Taiwan to the dangers of war,” told the annual Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore that, “Anyone who dares split Taiwan from China will be smashed to pieces and court their own destruction.”

Yet some in the West insist that the U.S. must first rout Russia on the Ukrainian battlefield before turning to deter China. As if Xi would wait to move against Taiwan until the U.S. has humiliated Russia in Ukraine in a long war and then turned its attention to containing China. Indeed, the last thing Xi wants is an end to the Ukraine war because that would leave the U.S. free to pivot to Asia.

Make no mistake: With China’s lengthening shadow belligerently darkening Taiwan’s doorstep, the risks of failing to deter Chinese aggression against the self-governing island are increasing. Consequently, calls are growing in the U.S. that Washington must embrace strategic clarity in relation to Taiwan’s defense by abandoning its outdated strategic ambiguity policy, which was formulated when China was still backward and in no position to annex Taiwan.

America’s deepening involvement in the Ukraine war at a time it seems ill-prepared for armed conflict over Taiwan is a strategic mistake that could eventually come to haunt its long-term security.

Brahma Chellaney, professor of strategic studies at the independent Center for Policy Research in New Delhi, is the author of nine books, including the award-winning Water: Asia’s New Battleground (Georgetown University Press).

India’s global role will grow in Modi’s third term

Posted on June 6, 2024 by Chellaney

Photo by AFP: Supporters of Narendra Modi, India’s Prime Minister and leader of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), celebrate vote counting results for India’s general election, at BJP headquarters in New Delhi on June 4, 2024.

BY BRAHMA CHELLANEY, The Hill

India’s election, the world’s largest democratic exercise, may have delivered a stunning surprise by denying Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party an outright majority in parliament, but this setback is unlikely to affect the stability or direction of his third-term government.

The primary reason is that the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, contested the election in alliance with several small political groups, with the coalition winning a majority of seats in parliament’s ruling lower house.

Still, the BJP’s loss of its commanding majority in the lower house represents a blow to Modi’s political standing, including puncturing his air of invincibility. After stacking up political win after win, an overconfident Modi had predicted even before the campaign formally began that the BJP would secure more than two-thirds of the seats in the lower house.

The BJP’s failure to win a simple majority on its own, however, is unlikely to have a direct bearing on Modi’s national agenda or foreign policy. The allied parties Modi will depend on are provincial groups with no national vision or ideas.

Moreover, while the fragmented opposition may have unified to stop Modi’s juggernaut in the election, it lacks a common agenda or leader, which raises the question of whether its unity will endure. In fact, the combined number of seats won by the multiple parties in the opposition coalition is slightly less than what the BJP secured on its own.

Modi, 73, is entering a second decade as prime minister, despite a strong anti-incumbency sentiment in Indian society. Only one other Indian leader, Jawaharlal Nehru, secured a third term decades ago.

Modi’s leadership has given India political stability, robust economic growth and accelerated military modernization. India’s international profile and geopolitical weight are rising, partly because the end of China’s economic boom has thrown into relief the emergence of Asia’s other demographic giant as a geopolitical and economic force. India is now the world’s fastest-growing major economy.

After the election results, Modi declared that his third term would represent a “new chapter of big decisions.” But, given India’s fractious politics, big decisions often tend to fuel division and polarization, especially when they challenge entrenched interests. In his second term, Modi, for example, was compelled to repeal farm reform laws after a year of opposition-backed grassroots protests.

With his pro-growth and pro-market agenda, Modi is aiming to transform India into a global manufacturing hub at a time when Western companies are interested in shifting production away from China. Consequently, his new term is likely to see greater government spending not just in manufacturing and infrastructure but also on human capital, particularly in education and training.

The new government will have to urgently consider the nation’s foreign policy challenges, above all the military standoff with China, which recently entered its fifth year. The tense standoff, triggered by furtive Chinese encroachments on some Indian borderlands, may not be grabbing international headlines, but China persists with a frenzied buildup of force deployments along the Himalayan border, as if it is preparing for war. China recently deployed its most advanced J-20 stealth fighter jets near the India frontier.

India’s most-pressing foreign policy challenges relate to its troubled neighborhood, not least a strengthening strategic axis between China and Pakistan, with both these nuclear-armed allies staking claims to swaths of Indian territory. India is already the world’s third-largest defense spender, behind the U.S. and China.

More fundamentally, Modi has helped shape a pragmatic foreign policy vision. Shorn of ideology, Indian foreign policy has sought to revitalize the country’s economic and military security, while avoiding having to overtly choose one power over another as a dominant partner.

In practice, however, closer cooperation with the U.S. has remained Modi’s signature foreign policy initiative, despite some new irritants in the bilateral relationship, including the role of U.S.- and Canada-based Sikh militants.

While tilting toward the West, India remains loath to enter into a formal military alliance with the Western bloc. President Joe Biden’s reluctance to say anything on the Sino-Indian military standoff, let alone side with New Delhi, reminds India that it must defend itself all on its own.

India’s independent approach to international affairs is unlikely to change given that New Delhi believes in friendship without dependence. This makes India the world’s ultimate “swing state” in the current transition from the post–World War II American-led order to a new global order whose contours are still not clearly visible.

In contending with China, its sole challenger at the global level, the U.S. needs a degree of adaptability in forging partnerships, instead of hewing to the Cold War–style “us versus them” approach. A country as large as India cannot become just another Japan or Britain to America. Yet no anti-China alliance can play a strategically meaningful role without India, which has locked horns with the Chinese military in a way no other power has done in this century.

To be sure, India’s size and diversity pose enormous challenges. It is now the world’s most populous nation and is demographically and culturally very heterogeneous.

Still, as the latest election highlights, India’s democratic framework serves as a pillar of inclusion, stability and strength. By empowering people at the grassroots level through participatory processes and open dialogue, the Indian political system has enabled members of historically marginalized classes and castes to gradually gain prominence in politics and bureaucracy. Modi’s own humble beginnings illustrate this.

India today is an ascendant global player, and Modi’s focus in the third term will likely be on enabling India to play a bigger role on the world stage. India’s accelerated rise will not only increase its salience in the global balance of power but also help advance American goals in the Indo-Pacific region, the world’s new economic and geopolitical hub.

Brahma Chellaney is a geostrategist and the author of nine books, including the award-winning “Water: Asia’s New Battleground” (Georgetown University Press).

Growing China-Russia alignment signifies Biden policy failure

Posted on May 31, 2024 by Chellaney

U.S. has pushed natural competitors into becoming strategic collaborators

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on May 16: Their countries are more firmly aligned now than at any time since the 1950s. (Pool via Reuters)

Brahma Chellaney, Nikkei Asia

The strategy of driving a wedge between China and Russia helped the West win the Cold War, not militarily, but geopolitically.

Richard Nixon’s most lasting achievement as U.S. president was orchestrating a diplomatic opening to China two years after Beijing had engaged in seven months of bloody border clashes with the Soviet Union.

Nixon’s co-optation of China, crowned by his February 1972 visit to Beijing, resulted in an informal alliance geared toward containing and rolling back Soviet influence and power. This two-against-one tag-teaming contributed to the Soviet Union’s imperial overstretch and ultimately to the West’s triumph in the Cold War without global combat.

Today, however, the U.S., instead of playing China off against Russia, is becoming the glue that holds the pair together. As a result, an already overextended U.S. seriously risks accelerating its relative decline through strategic overreach.

Alas, it is U.S. President Joe Biden’s foreign policy that has helped turn two natural competitors into strategic collaborators.

A forward-looking approach would have avoided confronting Russia and China simultaneously, lest it drive the two nuclear-armed powers into an unholy alliance. But Biden has managed to lock horns with both Moscow and Beijing simultaneously, though it should be noted that his China policy is comparatively softer and more conciliatory.

It is striking that China and Russia today are more firmly aligned than at any time since the 1950s. Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin openly share a vision of reshaping the world by ending the era of Western dominance.

The outcome of the recent Xi-Putin meeting marked a defining moment in the two leaders’ commitment to bringing about a “new era.” Their joint statement cast the U.S. as an aggressive hegemon with a Cold War mindset that fosters global insecurity and divisions. “The U.S. must abandon this behavior,” the statement demanded.

China and Russia seem to be providing cover to each other’s expansionism, with Putin extending support to Beijing over Taiwan and Xi endorsing Russia’s efforts to ensure its “sovereignty and territorial integrity” in oblique reference to Putin’s war on Ukraine.

Meanwhile, the rapid advance of Chinese and Russian space capabilities has prompted the Pentagon to quietly embark on a new “Star Wars” plan.

At the global level, the U.S. has only one real challenger — China, which dwarfs Russia in terms of economic output, military spending and other material measures. It is Beijing that seeks to supplant America as the world’s foremost power.

Yet China has been the main beneficiary of Biden’s forceful response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Unprecedented sanctions, which have included the weaponization of international finance, have been a boon for Beijing, turning it into Russia’s banker and expanding international use of the yuan. Russia now generates much of its international export earnings in the Chinese currency and keeps these proceeds mostly in Chinese banks, in effect giving Beijing a share of the returns.

The sanctions, and America’s deepening involvement in the Ukraine war, have left Russia with little choice but to move closer to China, with which it has had a checkered history marked by periods of both cooperation and bloodstained rivalry.

Bilateral trade reached $240 billion last year, a jump from 2020’s $108 billion level. In return for providing a lifeline to the sanctions-stricken Russian economy, China has gained access to some of Russia’s most advanced military technologies.

China has racked up strategic win after win. Nixon’s rapprochement with Beijing led to a 45-year U.S. policy of aiding China’s economic rise, which resulted in the creation of the greatest strategic adversary America has ever faced.

Biden’s punitive approach toward Russia is now effectively further strengthening an aggressive and expansionist China by helping it to accumulate greater economic and military power.

With Russia’s Ukraine aggression tying the U.S. down in Europe, Xi might believe that China has a window of opportunity to achieve the “historic mission” of forcibly annexing Taiwan. Xi recently made his Taiwan goal clearer by declaring that the essence of his national rejuvenation drive is “the unification of the motherland.”

Still, there are limits to how far Beijing is likely to go to cement its “no limits” partnership with Moscow, given the underlying competitive dynamics between the two neighboring powers, including in regions like Central Asia, Northeast Asia and the Artic which each side regards as part of its strategic backyard.

America’s sanctions on Moscow might have spurred China to strengthen its energy security through greater overland imports from Russia that could not be interrupted even if Xi invaded Taiwan. Yet China is wary of overreliance on Russia, which is why it continues to look to other sources of energy supply, in the Middle East and even the U.S.

Russia, for its part, is doing what it can to avoid being seen as China’s junior partner. To Xi’s chagrin, Putin has openly co-opted North Korea as a strategic partner.

Yet the perceived strategic imperative to join forces against their common American enemy, is tying Beijing and Moscow closer together.

Biden’s personal diplomacy with Xi has achieved little in terms of stemming Beijing’s growing alignment with Moscow, which threatens to unravel America’s global preeminence and undermine its national security.

A formal strategic and military alliance between China and Russia, by effectively spawning a pan-Eurasian colossus, would be America’s worst geopolitical nightmare come true.

To forestall that scenario, the U.S. must recalibrate its foreign policy by focusing its attention less on regionally revanchist Russia and more on globally ascendant China. This should include shoring up its deterrent posture in the Indo-Pacific region. If it puts its mind to it, Washington can find a strategy to exploit the historical strategic mistrust between Moscow and Beijing.

Biden’s focus on Ukraine risks Indo-Pacific security

Posted on May 28, 2024 by Chellaney

The U.S. should use diplomacy to achieve a cease-fire in Ukraine as a prolonged conflict could reshape global power dynamics and strengthen China. | RIA NOVOSTI / VIA REUTERS

BY BRAHMA CHELLANEY
CONTRIBUTING WRITER, The Japan Times

U.S. President Joe Biden has steadily deepened America’s involvement in what is now a war of attrition with Russia in Ukraine. The U.S. congressional approval, after months of wrenching debate, of a $95.3 billion foreign assistance package came after CIA Director Bill Burns warned that, without additional American aid, Ukraine could lose the war to Russia by this year-end.

The assistance package reflects the Biden administration’s skewed strategic priorities: It provides $60.8 billion to help sustain Ukraine’s war effort (with much of the funding going to U.S. defense contractors and the Pentagon), $26.4 billion for Israel and America’s supporting military operations in the Middle East and a stepmotherly $8.1 billion for Taiwan and other security challenges in the Indo-Pacific region, the world’s center of gravity.

Strategic challenges in the Indo-Pacific are mounting, with China stepping up coercive pressures on Taiwan and pursuing aggressive tactics in the South and East China Seas. Meanwhile, the tense military standoff along the long Himalayan frontier between China and India — triggered by furtive Chinese encroachments — is entering its fifth year.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, after snuffing out Hong Kong’s autonomy and redrawing the geopolitical map of the South China Sea, appears to be preparing his country to unify Taiwan by force, although that self-governing island, for most of its history, had no relationship with China and has remained fully outside Chinese control for the last almost 130 years.

Under Xi, China has invested heavily in building up amphibious-assault and other sea power and missile capabilities to overwhelm Taiwan’s defenses and deter the U.S. from coming to its aid. Xi bluntly told Biden at their summit meeting last November that his regime will absorb Taiwan and that the only matter left to be decided is when to take over the island. And recently, Xi cautioned Biden during a phone conversation that Taiwan is “the first red line that must not be crossed in China-U.S. relations.”

One would expect the Biden administration to respond to the looming threat by strengthening deterrence, including urgently bolstering Taiwan’s defenses. Yet, there is a huge backlog in U.S. military sales to Taiwan, with weapons deals announced as long ago as 2017 still unfulfilled.

In fact, Biden is the third straight U.S. president to commit to shifting America’s primary strategic focus to Asia and the wider Indo-Pacific, a region central to the global balance of power and peace. Yet, as he nears the end of his term, Biden, too, has been unable to make that pivot, with U.S. attention and resources now focused squarely on the conflicts in Europe and the Middle East.

The congressional breakthrough on the security assistance package, after a monthslong logjam, will help to shore up Biden’s credibility when his leadership has been questioned on the global stage. But this likely will be a short-lived boost unless Biden uses his new political capital to persuade Europe to take a leadership role on Ukraine and get Israel to end its devastating war in Gaza, whose staggering human toll is also affecting America’s moral standing in the world.

The new Ukraine-related funding can become a significant political asset for Biden in his reelection campaign if he leverages it to push Moscow toward a peace deal, thereby yielding a cease-fire before November. If not, Biden could open himself to political attack at home for sinking tens of billions of additional tax dollars in an endless war that, by deflecting America’s attention away from the pressing Indo-Pacific challenges, is making Taiwan more vulnerable to Chinese aggression.

Indeed, without a peacemaking component, Washington’s new funding for Kyiv could take the pressure off European governments to step up and take primary responsibility for Ukraine.

Without a cease-fire effort, there is also the risk — given how Russia’s military-industrial complex is churning out new missiles and munitions at a frenetic pace — that Russian forces could triumph over Ukraine in a longer war of attrition, despite the fresh U.S. assistance package.

The Biden administration has already provided Ukraine more than $44 billion worth of weapons, maintenance, training and spare parts since the 2022 Russian invasion. Ukraine has also been receiving battlefield targeting data from Western powers.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has faced some flak for inadvertently exposing the role of Britain, France and possibly the U.S. in militarily helping direct attacks on Russian targets from Ukraine through “target control.” Scholz said that if Germany followed Britain and France in supplying Ukraine long-range missiles, it would make it a “participant in the war,” too.

Ukraine, however, is losing hope of regaining the 20% of its territory already occupied by Russia. The additional massive U.S. assistance of $60.8 billion may help Ukraine to stave off defeat but it is unlikely to dramatically reverse its fortunes. Indeed, the longer the war extends, the greater the devastation in Ukraine, making reconstruction very costly and onerous.

It would be in America’s own interest to encourage quiet, back-channel diplomacy to explore ways to bring about a cease-fire in a war that continues to have an adverse global impact, including through higher energy and food prices.

A long war could profoundly reshape America’s position in the world, especially by further emboldening its main rival, China, which, despite U.S. threats of punitive action, has become the principal contributor to strengthening the Russian military-industrial complex.

An extended Ukraine war could even formalize a Sino-Russian strategic axis while opening greater space for Xi to accomplish his “historic mission” of incorporating Taiwan.

The plain fact is that the more the U.S. has deepened its involvement in the proxy war against Russia, the more it has hamstrung its China policy, compelling the White House to pursue an approach that is now clearly more carrot than stick.

Faced with difficult choices, leveraging the latest $60.8 billion U.S. funding for Ukraine to bring Russia to the negotiating table is the least bad option for Biden. A cease-fire will create a frozen Ukraine conflict that will keep Moscow preoccupied while letting the U.S. focus less on Russia, the world’s most-sanctioned country, and more on a globally expansionist China.

Brahma Chellaney, a longtime contributor to The Japan Times, is a geostrategist and the author of nine books, including the award-winning “Water: Asia’s New Battleground.”

Is the Quad Becoming a Potemkin Alliance?

Posted on May 25, 2024 by Chellaney

With conflicts in Europe and the Middle East draining US attention and resources, US President Joe Biden seems to hope that a more conciliatory approach toward China will be enough to maintain stability in the Indo-Pacific. Strengthening the Quad grouping of regional democracies would be a much better bet.

BRAHMA CHELLANEY, Project Syndicate

When four of the Indo-Pacific’s leading democracies – Australia, India, Japan, and the United States – revived the long-dormant Quad in 2017, their objective was clear: to create a strategic bulwark against Chinese expansionism and reinforce a stable regional balance of power. But the coalition is now adrift, and the security risks this poses should not be underestimated.

The Quad’s resurrection reflected a paradigm shift in US foreign policy. After decades of engagement with China, including aiding its economic rise, US policymakers – Democrats and Republicans alike – realized that America’s biggest trade partner had become its biggest strategic adversary, bent on replacing it as global hegemon. As US President Joe Biden indicated in his 2022 National Security Strategy, China is “the only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to advance that objective.”

Biden, like his predecessor, Donald Trump, viewed the Quad as an essential instrument to uphold a “free and open Indo-Pacific” – a concept formulated by the late Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzō. So, Biden elevated Quad discussions from the level of foreign ministers – who had been meeting annually since 2019 – to heads of state or government, initiating a flurry of leaders’ summits in 2021-23. But it has been more than a year since the Quad leaders last met, and with the US focused on the upcoming presidential election, their next summit is unlikely to be held before 2025.

The reason for this drop-off is simple: America’s priorities have changed. Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine – together with the hybrid war the West is waging in response, not to mention renewed conflict in the Middle East – has stymied US efforts to position the Indo-Pacific at the “heart” of its grand strategy. It is striking that the latest US foreign-assistance package provides $60.8 billion for Ukraine but only $8.1 billion for security in the Indo-Pacific, including Taiwan, on which China has set its sights.

With limited resources to dedicate to the Indo-Pacific, Biden seems to hope that he can prevent a war over Taiwan through personal diplomacy with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Last month, in a telephone call with his Chinese counterpart, he stressed the importance of maintaining peace across the Taiwan Strait.

Biden seems to believe that a more conciliatory approach toward China can also forestall the emergence of a comprehensive Sino-Russian alliance. The “no-limits partnership” between China and Russia, reaffirmed during Russian President Vladmir Putin’s recent visit to Beijing, is problematic enough; China already has undercut Western sanctions by providing an economic lifeline to Russia, in exchange for cheap energy and some of Russia’s most advanced military technologies, including air-defense and early-warning systems. A full military alliance, with China supporting the Kremlin’s war machine directly, would be America’s worst geopolitical nightmare.

The problem for Biden is that appeasing China and strengthening the Quad – which Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has decried as the “Indo-Pacific version of NATO” – are fundamentally incompatible. It might not be a coincidence that the Quad leaders have not met since Biden sent a series of cabinet officials to Beijing and met with Xi in California last November.

In fact, Biden has lately shifted his focus to less provocative initiatives like the “Squad,” an emerging unofficial regional grouping involving Australia, Japan, and the Philippines – countries that already have mutual defense treaties with the US. But what good is an anti-China alliance without India? It is, after all, the only power that has truly locked horns with the People’s Liberation Army this century: the tense military standoff along the disputed Himalayan border, triggered by China’s stealthy territorial encroachments, has just entered its fifth year. Moreover, as the leading maritime power in the Indian Ocean, India must play a central role in checking China’s westward naval march from its new citadel, the South China Sea.

The US has also been touting its AUKUS security partnership with Australia and the United Kingdom. But this grouping will not be able to play a meaningful role in Indo-Pacific security until Australia is equipped with nuclear-powered submarines, and that will not happen for another decade.

So far, Biden’s overtures to China have yielded few positive results. On the contrary, Xi has lately intensified coercive pressure on Taiwan, and Chinese provocations in the South China Sea have been increasing. Unless the US changes its approach, it may well fail to deter China from attacking Taiwan or cementing a strategic axis with Russia, just as it failed to deter Russia from invading Ukraine.

To maintain security in the Indo-Pacific, there is no substitute for a strong Quad with a clear strategic mission. Rather than unraveling years of efforts to build a coherent and credible regional strategy, thereby enabling yet more Chinese expansionism, Biden and his fellow Quad leaders must get to work defining such a mission and then commit to pursuing it. Otherwise, the Quad risks becoming a kind of Potemkin grouping. The façade of an alliance will not fool China.

Kishida’s zeal on Ukraine comes at Japan’s expense

Posted on May 25, 2024 by Chellaney

Japan should be worrying about Taiwan, not Ukraine.

A Patriot missile unit outside the Ministry of Defense in Tokyo in 2017: The government should not be taking weapons out of its air defenses at this time. © AP

Brahma Chellaney, Nikkei Asia

Japan has become one of Ukraine’s most-important financial backers, pouring in some $12.1 billion in aid to support the country’s war-battered economy and its defenses with nonlethal equipment such as anti-drone systems.

“As I often say, Ukraine of today may be East Asia of tomorrow,” Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told a joint session of the U.S. Congress two weeks ago, underlining the rationale for aligning Tokyo closely with America’s de facto proxy war against Russia.

But how does Kishida’s leadership role on Ukraine, including sanctions on Russia and a long-term commitment to support postwar reconstruction, tangibly advance Japan’s strategic interests at a time when its own neighborhood is becoming increasingly dangerous?

Oddly, there has been little debate in Japan on this issue. Yet the country’s deepening engagement with Ukraine at a time it is ill-prepared for armed conflict over Taiwan is a huge strategic mistake.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, left, with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida at the reconstruction conference held in Tokyo on Feb. 19. © Reuters

The drawn-out Ukraine war is not just impeding the U.S.-led attempt to rein in China’s aggressive expansionism, it is also stretching American resources thinly and weakening Washington’s deterrent posture in the Indo-Pacific region, thereby making a Taiwan Strait crisis more likely.

Kishida’s surprise move in December, at Washington’s urging, to ship Patriot air-defense systems to the U.S. to cover for ones being sent to Kyiv illustrates the risks of a Ukraine-centric approach.

Any Chinese operation to blockade or attack Taiwan would likely intrude into Japanese airspace and waters, conceivably pulling Tokyo into a war over the island democracy. Yet amid signs Chinese President Xi Jinping is preparing his country to go to war over Taiwan, Kishida has agreed to take weapons out of Japan’s air defenses for an increasingly hopeless war in distant Europe.

In fact, with U.S. attention and resources focused on conflicts in Europe and the Middle East, China’s efforts to alter the territorial and maritime status quo in Asia and secure strategic dominance are reaching a tipping point.

Yet some in the West myopically insist that the U.S. must first defeat Russia in Ukraine before pivoting to deter China. As if Xi would wait to move against Taiwan until the U.S. has humiliated Russia in a long war and was then ready to direct greater attention his way. Indeed, the last thing Xi would like is an end to the Ukraine war because that would leave the U.S. free to focus on the Indo-Pacific region.

This explains why China, as Washington now acknowledges, is quietly aiding the Kremlin’s war machine by supplying technologies and geospatial intelligence. The transfers suggest that, before making a move on Taiwan, Xi wants the Ukraine war to further deplete America’s weapons and munitions stocks.

The flip side to America’s deepening involvement in conflicts elsewhere is a desire to avoid direct confrontation with China. This explains U.S. President Joe Biden’s more conciliatory approach to Beijing in recent months, including a greater emphasis on diplomacy than on deterrence.

The U.S. may still be the world’s foremost military power, but it is in no position to meaningfully take on Russia and China simultaneously. According to its own official national security doctrine, the U.S. maintains the military capability to fight and defeat China or Russia with some allied support — but not both simultaneously.

In recent decades, the U.S. has waged overlapping wars, but these were against much weaker states, namely Iraq and Afghanistan. Still, these protracted wars exposed shortcomings in America’s ability to pursue two military missions simultaneously at full tempo.

In this light, Biden has stepped up his administration’s outreach to Beijing to help avert a Chinese attack on Taiwan that could result in a direct war between the U.S. and a near-peer adversary. But with the U.S. looking overextended and Xi viewing Biden’s conciliatory posture as one of weakness, the risks of failing to deter aggression against Taiwan are increasing.

The risks are particularly acute for Japan, whose southernmost islands lie close to Taiwan. As former Prime Minister Taro Aso has warned, if Taiwan falls, “Okinawa could be next.”

Japan should recall that U.S. appreciation of its generous financial support for previous missions has been fleeting.

A classic example is the 1991 Gulf War campaign against Iraq for which Japan contributed $13 billion. Yet then-U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker III said, “Your ‘checkbook diplomacy,’ like our ‘dollar diplomacy’ of an earlier era, is clearly too narrow.”

Today, Japan needs to shed its zeal toward Ukraine and focus squarely on Taiwan. This should include not sending more Patriots or other defense systems to backstop Kyiv.

An overstretched America and a Japan straining to avert recession must persuade Europe to step up and take primary responsibility for Ukraine, its own neighbor.

To safeguard Asian security and the region’s balance of power, there can be no substitute for a prudent, balanced and forward-looking approach.

With China’s lengthening shadow darkening its doorstep, Japan needs to focus primarily on its combustible neighborhood and prepare for a Taiwan Strait contingency.

This should include assuring its ability to respond to a scenario in which Xi seeks to bring Taiwan to its knees by employing the techniques of incremental expansionism that his regime has successfully honed in the South China Sea without triggering a concerted U.S. response.

Not Ukraine, but the South China Sea of today could be the Taiwan of tomorrow. This means that Japan, without being unduly distracted by developments afar, must find effective ways to beat back China’s hybrid warfare.