Beyond US-China tussles, geopolitics will be shaped by India, Russia

China continues to be the target of US security and strategic concerns. An abiding policy focus since Donald Trump’s first presidential term in 2017-2021, the anxiety about Beijing has been reiterated in Joe Biden’s current tenure with all the early signals suggesting the policy will continue when Trump assumes office again on January 20. With his many senior appointments announced being well-known China hawks, the concern about China is clearly recurring. This was more than evident when Trump recently attempted to re-stake America’s claim over the Panama Canal and urged Denmark to give up Greenland, invoking China as the trigger. In the wide-ranging, rambling, headline-grabbing press conference at his private residence Mar-a-Lago in Florida on January 7, Trump accused China of controlling the Panama Canal and adversely affecting US national and economic security. In relation to Greenland, he cited Chinese and Russian activity in the region as degrading US national security. Many of the assertions are counterfactual and have been refuted, but China’s threat to the US-led global order will be an abiding theme in Trump 2.0. With mere weeks left in office, Biden’s team last month released the Pentagon’s annual report on China’s military and security developments. The comprehensive report is rich in detail about China’s growing military capabilities across the board – from nuclear weapons to conventional forces, across space, cyber and new technologies – and how this would affect US security interests. Referring to the US 2022 national security strategy and 2022 national defence strategy, the Pentagon said that China “is the only competitor to the United States with the intent and, increasingly, the capacity to reshape the international order” and that it remains the “pacing challenge” for the defence department. The report identifies China’s grand strategy as one that “determinedly pursues political, social, economic, technological, and military development to increase [China’s] national power and revise the international order in support of [its] system of governance and national interests”. In a continuation of its policies to address the China challenge, and in one its last executive decisions, Biden’s administration last week added Chinese tech giant Tencent and top battery producer Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL) to a list of companies the Pentagon says are working for the Chinese military. There are at least 134 firms on the list. Companies have challenged the charge and the issue is likely to be pursued through bureaucratic channels. Beijing has denounced this latest US decision, with a foreign ministry spokesman urging the US to “immediately correct its wrong practices and lift illegal unilateral sanctions and long-arm jurisdiction on Chinese companies”. This is in contrast to the US relationship with India, which the Biden administration wants to showcase as enabling and beneficial to America. In the same week that Chinese companies were added to Pentagon’s list, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan visited New Delhi with a delegation of senior officials to discuss bilateral cooperation in technology, defence and security. The US-India relationship moved from bitter estrangement to cautious engagement during George’s W. Bush’s presidency and the China factor was the unstated catalyst. But cooperation in the civilian nuclear power sector and hi-tech industries remained moribund. With the Biden administration, this was prioritised under the India-US Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technologies, a major focus of Sullivan’s recent India visit. Will the robust Washington-Delhi partnership – of which the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue is a visible manifestation in the maritime domain – continue under Trump 2.0? There have been murmurs of disappointment in Washington about India not being as reliable a partner as it can be when it comes to China, and this has been more pronounced with the nascent rapprochement between the two Asian giants in recent months. The first quarter of this century has seen the global strategic framework move from Cold War bipolarity to an uneasy period of US hegemony and the steady rise of China as a peer competitor. The US co-opted India to deal with the China challenge and this was noted in Beijing. How global geopolitics unfolds in the second quarter of the 21st century will be shaped to a considerable extent by the US-China dyad and Washington’s and Beijing’s individual relationships with India and Russia, as well as by the bilateral geopolitical permutations within this critical quadrilateral. The US-India relationship in Trump 2.0 may not follow the earlier template despite claims of a special personal chemistry between US president-elect Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. While Chinese President Xi Jinping has been invited to Trump’s January 20 inauguration – an offer Beijing reportedly declined – the Indian leader is, it appears, not on the invitation list. However wayward, mercurial and malice-laden Trump’s recent statements may be, the US will pursue its core national interests, which have been arrived at over the decades by the professionals within the system, and the president will have to stay within this grid. Yes, the inclusion of technology tsars like Tesla founder Elon Musk at the high table of US governance will undoubtedly add to the expected Trump turbulence. Will reality television with menacing overtones become the new model for international relations, which are now moving into unscripted and uncharted waters? Fasten your seat belts.

Beyond US-China tussles, geopolitics will be shaped by India, Russia

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}As the global strategic framework moves on from the uneasy period of US hegemony and China’s rise, a critical quadrilateral is forming

As the global strategic framework moves on from the uneasy period of US hegemony and China’s rise, a critical quadrilateral is forming