The scheduling of the QUAD ministerial meeting in Canberra on February 9 right in the middle of the Ukraine crisis and cascading U.S.-Russia tensions served to highlight that China remains Washington’s top foreign policy priority.

Possibly, Washington also gave a nuanced message that it has the capability to simultaneously tackle China and Russia. Washington probably hoped that such messaging would resonate in the Asia-Pacific region, which largely refuses to take sides between the U.S. and China.

Conceivably, the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken set out for Canberra with a plan to persuade the QUAD to get on board its “dual containment” strategy. The QUAD ministerial was held just five days after the joint China-Russia statement issued in Beijing on February 4 heralding a new era in the world order. When China and Russia support and supplement each other, it is a game changer. Simply put, they pose a strategic defiance of the so-called “rules-based order” that QUAD notionally upholds.

Whether Blinken tried to insert “Russian aggression” into the agenda of the Canberra ministerial is a moot point. In all probability, he tried. Blinken’s deputy, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel J. Kritenbrink and the Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne who hosted the ministerial disclosed to the media beforehand that the grouping would discuss the “challenges” that China and Russia posed.

Blinken reportedly exhorted the QUAD partners to stand up for a rules-based system threatened by “Chinese aggression” and warned that a Russian invasion of Ukraine could happen any time now. The Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi told Blinken that Tokyo “shared grave concerns” over Russian military buildup while Payne went several steps ahead to say that the “Russian military build-up on Ukraine’s border has deeply concerned Australia and our allies and partners.”

Interestingly, India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar refused to be drawn into the topic of Russia. Curiously, Jaishankar also openly disagreed with the U.S.’ policy to sanction Myanmar, saying that as a neighbouring country, Delhi needs a working relationship with the military leadership in Nay Pyi Taw over security issues.

The Americans used to regard Jaishankar as something of a godfather to the QUAD in the good old times. But India, like most countries, is increasingly unsure about the consistency and dependability of U.S. policies and strategies. Above all, between now and the 2024 parliamentary elections, the government will be preoccupied with the post-pandemic recovery of the economy. Biden’s America First policy has nothing to offer India on that front. There is realisation that India’s tensions with China must be kept under check. Washington, on the contrary, thrives on — and even fuels — India China tensions.

All the same, the Biden Administration’s Indo-Pacific Strategy document, which was released by the White House last week (coinciding with the QUAD ministerial), says effusively that “We (U.S.) recognise that India is a like-minded partner and leader in South Asia and the Indian Ocean, active in and connected to Southeast Asia, a driving force of the QUAD and other regional fora, and an engine for regional growth and development.” The Americans know that such a characterisation of India as a larger than life friend and ally would annoy Beijing. But it is a sound investment, given the Biden Administration’s stated plans to “strengthen the QUAD as a premier regional grouping and ensure it delivers on issues that matter to the Indo-Pacific.”

In the final analysis, the joint statement issued after the Canberra ministerial steered clear of the topic of Ukraine and/or Russia. The Australian media reports attributed this entirely to India’s reservations. At the joint press conference after the ministerial too, Jaishankar brusquely shrugged off a question on the topic, while his Australian counterpart Payne and Blinken gleefully condemned “Russian aggression”.

Suffice to say, the QUAD is a queer entity, as each of its four members has own expectations out of the grouping. The Indian officials saw the Canberra meeting as an opportunity to “review ongoing QUAD cooperation and build on the positive and constructive agenda… to address contemporary challenges such as the COVID pandemic, supply chains, critical technologies (and) climate change.” During the past year or two, signs began appearing that India hoped to “depoliticise” its QUAD membership, lest its optics as an anti-China clique needlessly antagonised Beijing and might only complicate the ongoing bilateral efforts to resolve the border tensions. But all the same, India continues to look for opportunities behind the closed door to push back China. It is a difficult manoeuvring since India is also loathe to subserving as a geopolitical tool for the U.S. against China.

Basically, the QUAD is yet to prove itself to be a capable mechanism that can yield concrete results in countering China’s deep and extensive ties all across the Indo-Pacific region. All hopes are now pinned on the unveiling of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) that U.S. President Joe Biden announced last October during the East Asia Summit. Biden indicated that the IPEF is expected to define shared objectives around trade facilitation, standards for the digital economy and technology, supply chain resiliency, decarbonisation and clean energy, infrastructure, worker standards, and other areas of common interest.

Basically, the hype notwithstanding, IPEF seems to be another geopolitical tool for the U.S. to energise the Indo-Pacific Strategy in the economic field focused on China’s exclusion from supply chains, access to high technology, infrastructure development, digital trade, etc. It is driven more by the unease over America’s glaring absence from any major regional trade agreements and the angst over China’s expanding influence in the region rather than offering a new platform to stimulate economic growth. The regional countries are unlikely to feel enthused.

The joint statement issued at Canberra lacks substance. But that doesn’t mean the QUAD’s time is up. Paradoxically, all four partners cannot do without the QUAD format. It provides an umbrella to huddle together behind closed doors and give vent to their grouse against China in hushed tone — a safety valve for pent-up frustrations. The attempts to create a “QUAD Plus” with the induction of countries like South Korea and Vietnam have failed.

The latest spin is that QUAD isn’t about “standing against anyone in particular,” as Blinken stated in an interview in Canberra. “It is about standing up for a rules-based order, making sure that we uphold those rules and principles if they’re being challenged,” he claimed. There is an apparent unwillingness to single out China by name while discussing the QUAD’s goals. This is intriguing. Thus, the Canberra meeting of QUAD ministers ended up discussing a range of issues, from coronavirus vaccine to maritime and cyber security to countering disinformation, climate change and so on. But it did not mention China.

For sure, the QUAD is running against time and tide. On the same day of the QUAD ministerial, reports appeared that the European Union and China are set to hold a virtual summit on 1st April in a high-stakes diplomatic effort to bring to the centre stage their partnership and economic competition for more attention, relegating to the back burner the U.S.-induced “systemic rivalry” with China. Both Chinese President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang will join the meeting.

Due to Washington’s Cold-War-style confrontational policy towards China there is now an ever-growing rift with U.S. allies in the European Union and Asia-Pacific.

This was evident from G20 and ASEAN discussions this week where numerous countries expressed deep misgivings about Washington’s relentless push for divisive relations with China.

France’s Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire, while attending a G20 summit in Washington DC, told the New York Times of the stark difference emerging between the U.S. and the EU. “The United States wants to confront China. The European Union wants to engage China,” said Le Maire who added that the bloc needs to become more independent from American policy.

This call for European independence from Washington has been growing for some time. It reached more vocal levels during the presidency of Donald Trump owing to his hectoring style towards allies over NATO military spending and various alleged trade complaints. What has amplified these dissenting calls is the formation last month of the tripartite military pact between the U.S., Britain and Australia – known as AUKUS – which completely blindsided European allies. France was particularly aggrieved because it lost a submarine contract with Australia worth about €50 billion.

The new pact has been condemned by China as a provocative threat to security in the Asia-Pacific.

It’s not just about French national pride. The European Union counts China now as its biggest trading partner, having overtaken the United States. Germany’s export-led economy – the main driver of EU growth – is heavily dependent on China’s vast market.

It is becoming evident that Washington’s confrontational policy towards China – for example, the establishment of AUKUS – is detrimental to Europe’s strategic interests and trade with Asia. France takes over the rotating EU presidency soon and is showing that it will not indulge Washington’s divisive dynamic.

The same can be observed among Asian nations which are alarmed by Washington’s Cold War atavism.

Members of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), including Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam and others, have protested the way in which U.S. confrontational policy towards China is forcing them to choose sides between superpowers. The nations of Asia-Pacific have historic territorial disputes and other differences, but nevertheless there is a consensus that there must be cooperation and mutual development through dialogue and partnership.

It is notable how two of the three AUKUS members – the United States and Britain – are not geographically part of Asia-Pacific and yet these two powers have stoked much unrest since unveiling the military pact with Australia. Readers are recommended to check out this interview published by us on the subject this week with Professor Michael Brenner.

Singapore’s Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan said last week that the Asian hemisphere wants peace and prosperity, and that nations do not want to be forced to take sides in any U.S.-China rivalry.

“We do not want to become an arena for proxy contests or even conflict,” he said.

Nations are well aware of the harmful impact of a previous Cold War. During the former Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union the stand-off was distorting normal development as well as increasing the risk of nuclear war. It seems incredible that in this day and age, there is still the shadow of Cold War looming over nations.

The main culprit for this pernicious polarity is the United States. Washington claims that it is not seeking a Cold War with China, yet it routinely incites provocations towards Beijing and casts international relations in a zero-sum manner. Washington tells other nations, in effect, that you are either with us or against us. This divisive policy is of course an essential element of American hegemonic ambitions.

The United States talks piously about upholding a “rules-based global order”. That is simply a euphemism for Washington’s decreed order according to its self-interests. What Washington always seeks is dominance over others. This is an indispensable function of U.S. global power.

In other words, mutualism, multilateralism, cooperation and co-development are anathema to U.S. global power. Cold Wars and confrontation are the essence of world relations, according to American designs for dominance. Lamentably, that ultimately means that world peace and security are in contradiction to Washington’s aims. That’s quite a damning revelation.

One salutary effect, however, is the growing realization among nations, especially among supposed allies of the United States, that their own self-interests are being sacrificed to placate Washington’s diktat.

How bitterly amusing that when Joe Biden was elected U.S. president he promised to bring allies together. The world is ineluctably diverging from the United States no matter who sits in the White House. And that’s because the world is finding that American power is the fundamental, irreconcilable problem.

By Prabir PURKAYASTHA

The Quadrilateral group’s leaders’ meeting in the White House on Sept. 24 appears to have shifted focus away from its original framing as a security dialogue among four countries: the United States, India, Japan and Australia.

Instead, the United States seems to be moving much closer to Australia as a strategic partner and providing it with nuclear-powered submarines.

Supplying Australia with U.S. nuclear submarines that use bomb-grade uranium can violate the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) protocols. Considering that the United States wants Iran not to enrich uranium beyond 3.67 percent, this is blowing a big hole in its so-called rule-based international order — unless we all agree that the rule-based international order is essentially the United States and its allies making up all the rules.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had initiated the idea of the Quad in 2007 as a security dialogue. In the March 12 statement issued after the first formal meeting of the Quad countries, “security” was used in the sense of strategic security.

Before the recent meeting of the Quad, both the United States and the Indian sides denied that it was a military alliance, even though the Quad countries conduct joint naval exercises — the Malabar exercises — and have signed various military agreements. The Sept. 24 Quad joint statement focuses more on other “security” issues: health security, supply chain and cybersecurity.

Has India decided that it still needs to retain strategic autonomy even if it has serious differences with China on its northern borders and therefore stepped away from the Quad as an Asian NATO? Or has the United States itself downgraded the Quad now that Australia has joined its geostrategic game of containing China?

AUKUS

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on video with U.S. President Joe Biden during Sept. 15 announcement of the AUKUS pact. (C-Span clip)

Before the Quad meeting in Washington, the United States and the U.K. signed an agreement with Australia to supply eight nuclear submarines — the AUKUS agreement.

Earlier, the United States had transferred nuclear submarine technology to the U.K., and it may have some subcontracting role here. Nuclear submarines, unlike diesel-powered submarines, are not meant for defensive purposes. They are for force projection far away from home. Their ability to travel large distances and remain submerged for long periods makes them effective strike weapons against other countries.

The AUKUS agreement means that Australia is canceling its earlier French contract to supply 12 diesel-powered submarines. The French are livid that they, one of NATO’s lynchpins, have been treated this way with no consultation by the United States or Australia on the cancellation.

The U.S. administration has followed it up with “discreet disclosures” to the media and U.S. think tanks that the agreement to supply nuclear submarines also includes Australia providing naval and air bases to the United States. In other words, Australia is joining the United States and the U.K. in a military alliance in the “Indo-Pacific.”

Earlier, French President Emmanuel Macron had been fully on board with the U.S. policy of containing China and participated in Freedom of Navigation exercises in the South China Sea.

France had even offered its Pacific Island colonies — and yes, France still has colonies — and its navy for the U.S. project of containing China in the Indo-Pacific.

France has two sets of island chains in the Pacific Ocean that the United Nations terms as non-self-governing territories — read colonies — giving France a vast exclusive economic zone, larger even than that of the United States.

The United States considers these islands less strategically valuable than Australia, which explains its willingness to face France’s anger. In the U.S. worldview, NATO and the Quad are both being downgraded for a new military strategy of a naval thrust against China.

Australia has very little manufacturing capacity. If the eight nuclear submarines are to be manufactured partially in Australia, the infrastructure required for manufacturing nuclear submarines and producing/handling of highly enriched uranium that the U.S. submarines use will probably require a minimum time of 20 years. That is the reason behind the talk of U.S. naval and air bases in Australia, with the United States providing the nuclear submarines and fighter-bomber aircraft either on lease, or simply locating them in Australia.

Maritime Powers

Ships from the navies of the U.S., Australia, India and Japan participate in Malabar exercises in the North Arabian Sea on Nov. 17, 2020. (U.S. Navy, Elliot Schaudt)

I have previously argued that the term Indo-Pacific may make sense to the United States, the U.K. or even Australia, which are essentially maritime nations.

The optics of three maritime powers, two of which are settler-colonial, while the other, the erstwhile largest colonial power, talking about a rule-based international order do not appeal to most of the world. Oceans are important to maritime powers, which have used naval dominance to create colonies. This was the basis of the dominance of British, French and later U.S. imperial powers. That is why they all have large aircraft carriers: they are naval powers that believe that the gunboat diplomacy through which they built their empires still works. The United States has 700-800 military bases spread worldwide; Russia has about 10; and China has only one base in Djibouti, Africa.

Behind the rhetoric about the Indo-Pacific and open seas is the U.S. play in Southeast Asia. Here, the talk of the Indo-Pacific has little resonance for most people. Its main interest is in the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which was spearheaded by the ASEAN countries. Even with the United States and India walking out of the RCEP negotiations, the 15-member trading bloc is the largest trading bloc in the world, with nearly 30 percent of the world’s GDP and population. Two of the Quad partners — Japan and Australia — are in the RCEP.

The U.S. strategic vision is to project its maritime power against China and contest for control over even Chinese waters and economic zones. This is the 2018 U.S. Pacific strategy doctrine that it has itself put forward, which it de-classified recently.

The doctrine states that the U.S. naval strategy is to deny China sustained air and sea dominance even inside the first island chain and dominate all domains outside the first island chain. For those interested in how the U.S. views the Quad and India’s role in it, this document is a good education.

A virtual Quadrilateral group summit with Australia, India and Japan at the White House on March 12. (White House, Adam Schultz)

As India found to its cost in Lakshadweep, the U.S. definition of the freedom of navigation does not square with India’s either. For all its talk about rule-based world order, the United States has not signed the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) either.The United States wants to use the disputes that Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia have with China over the boundaries of their respective exclusive economic zones. While some of them may look to the United States for support against China, none of these Southeast Asian countries supports the U.S. interpretation of the Freedom of Navigation, under which it carries out its Freedom of Navigation Operations, or FONOPS.

So, when India and other partners of the United States sign on to Freedom of Navigation statements of the United States, they are signing on to the U.S. understanding of the freedom of navigation, which is at variance with theirs.

The 1973 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty created two classes of countries, ones that would be allowed to use a set of technologies that could lead to bomb-grade uranium or plutonium, and others that would be denied them.

There was, however, a submarine loophole in the NPT and its complementary IAEA Safeguards for the peaceful use of atomic energy. Under the NPT, non-nuclear-weapon-state parties must place all nuclear materials under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards, except nuclear materials for nonexplosive military purposes.

No country until now has utilized this submarine loophole to withdraw weapon-grade uranium from safeguards. If this exception is utilized by Australia, how will the United States continue to argue against Iran’s right to enrich uranium, say for nuclear submarines, which is within its right to develop under the NPT?

India was never a signatory to the NPT, and therefore is a different case from that of Australia. If Australia, a signatory, is allowed to use the submarine loophole, what prevents other countries from doing so as well?

Australia did not have to travel this route if it wanted nuclear submarines. The French submarines that they were buying were originally nuclear submarines but using low-enriched uranium. It is the retrofitting of diesel engines that has created delays in their supplies to Australia. It appears that under the current Australian leadership of Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Australia wants to flex its muscles in the neighborhood, therefore tying up with Big Brother, the United States.

For the United States, if Southeast Asia is the terrain of struggle against China, Australia is a very useful springboard. It also substantiates what has been apparent for some time now — that the Indo-Pacific is only cover for a geostrategic competition between the United States and China over Southeast Asia.

And unfortunately for the United States, East Asia and Southeast Asia have reciprocal economic interests that bring them closer to each other. And Australia, with its brutal settler-colonial past of genocide and neocolonial interventions in Southeast Asia, is not seen as a natural partner by countries there.

India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi seems to have lost the plot completely. Does it want strategic autonomy, as was its policy post-independence? Or does it want to tie itself to a waning imperial power, the United States? The first gave it respect well beyond its economic or military clout. The current path seems more and more a path toward losing its stature as an independent player.

consortiumnews.com