Maroc - EURASIAREVIEW.COM - A la une - 13/Sep 16:01

The Quad Is Not An Asian NATO – Analysis

In March 2021 renowned newspaper The Diplomat printed an article titled The QUAD is not an Asian NATO, but was a reply to security threat posed by China to international order.  China along with Russia replied that QUAD was a fitting reply to the domination by Western powers since the days of the defeat of Japan and her surrender after the nuclear explosion that obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the order of then US President Harry Truman. Analysts have been perplexed as to why though Japan was an adversary and the main theater of war was Germany which too was defeated leading to the suicide of Adolf Hitler and subsequent trial of Nuremberg leading to the trial and punishment of the leading military lights of Hitler.  Decades have passed since then and new world has emerged where QUAD has been welcomed as a fitting reply to China’s aggressive behavior in South Asia, and in the disputed areas in South and East China sea. Forgotten are the days of the Rape of Nanking when the US had been an arms supplier to beleaguered China to confront the Japanese. Military developments drew Americans and Chinese closer together. United States support for China increased dramatically soon after the outbreak of the second Sino-Japanese War (1937–45). After Japan launched an all-out offensive in China in the summer of 1937, American popular opinion shifted overwhelmingly in China’s favor. Over the next few years, the U.S. Government extended aid to the Nationalist Government, first through credits for purchases and then through the Lend-Lease program. At the same time, it increased pressure on Japan, ultimately enacting an embargo after Japan expanded its military offensive into Southeast Asia. Individual Americans also made important contributions to the Chinese war effort. In addition to providing food, medical care, and the protection afforded by their status as non-Chinese, they tried, with limited success, to raise international support for China by publicizing accounts and pictures of the Japanese assault on Nanjing. While these Americans protected Chinese from the war, others launched a plan to help China fight it. American aid also appeared in the form of direct combat involvement. Claire Lee Chennault, a retired Army Air Corps pilot, went to China in 1937 and became one of Jiang Jieshi’s military advisers. Together with Chinese officials, he soon began lobbying the U.S. Government for military supplies and support for the Nationalists’ resistance. In 1940, he finally achieved his goal when President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave 100 fighter planes to China and allowed Chennault to recruit pilots from among the U.S. military ranks to fly the planes and train Chinese pilots. Collaboration between the United States and China Collaboration between the United States and China reached its zenith after Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941. The United States no longer had to limit its assistance to China and immediately engaged in a formal alliance to fight the common enemy. President Roosevelt sent General Joseph Stilwell, who had completed several tours of duty in China after World War I, to the wartime capital of Chongqing (Chungking) to serve as a military adviser to the Chinese Government and as the leader of United States forces in the region. Roosevelt funneled as much aid as possible to China to support the anti-Japanese resistance. Franklin Roosevelt also took the symbolic step of making China one of the Big Four allied powers of World War II and one of the ABCD powers (American, British, Chinese, Dutch) fighting Japan in Asia. In addition, in 1943, the United States abolished its exclusionary immigration laws and joined with Britain in ending extraterritoriality, and in recognizing China’s future sovereignty over Taiwan and Manchuria once Japan was defeated. The combination of U.S. supplies and training and Chinese military forces proved effective in keeping Japan tied down in China for years, while the United States pressed the battle by air and sea. Relations between China and the United States improved during the waning stages of World War II.  Relations after World War II After Richard M. Nixon took office in 1969 did the United States and the PRC start decisively down the path towards formal relations. From the start of his administration, President Nixon privately signaled his willingness to change American policy toward China and begin a dialogue with Beijing. To do so, he enlisted the leaders of both France and Pakistan as intermediaries. In February 1971, Nixon referred to China as the People’s Republic of China for the first time, and in March the Department of State removed all restrictions on the use of U.S. passports for travel to China. On April 14, the United States allowed France to ship vehicles with American-made engines to China, breaking the long-time trade embargo. In April, Premier Zhou Enlai replied to a December 1970 message from President Nixon, paving the way for more intense bilateral exchanges. Diplomatic backchannel communications culminated in National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger’s secret visit to Beijing in July 1971. Kissinger prepared the way for President Nixon’s historic trip to China in February 1972, dubbed by Nixon as “the week that changed the world.” Nixon and Mao agreed on the Shanghai Communiqué, a statement of broad principles rather than a plan for action, and an agreement to begin the process of reestablishing diplomatic ties. In 1973, both governments set up Liaison Offices in the other’s capital. After a prolonged series of talks, the two sides agreed to normalize relations on January 1, 1979, during the administration of President Jimmy Carter. Under the terms of this agreement, the United States recognized the PRC as the sole legal government of China, “acknowledged the Chinese position that there is but one China and Taiwan is a part of China,” and stated that it would maintain cultural, commercial, and other unofficial relations with the people of Taiwan.  Deng Xiaoping Visit the USA In February 1979, Deng Xiaoping became the first leader of the PRC to make an official visit to the United States. Normalization did not mean the end of all disputes; rather, it brought with it a new emphasis on using diplomacy to deal with those disagreements that had previously been handled with generally antagonistic unilateral statements. In fact, these diplomatic channels both kept U.S.-China relations moving forward, and guided the two nations towards areas of growing common interest. The first contact between the PRC and a major American corporation took place even before President Nixon’s visit to Beijing. During the early years, the Americans sold more goods to China than they bought, since China produced few export products. However, that began to change in September 1975, when a delegation from one of China’s foreign trade corporations visited the United States to get a better idea of the kind of products that Americans would buy. As trade grew from $5 million in 1972 to $142 million in 1978, individual Chinese and Americans began to come in contact with each other. The process of reform and opening initiated by Deng Xiaoping, the de facto leader of China at that time, was the single most important factor in pushing trade to the forefront. In their plans, Deng and other reformers emphasized the acquisition of Western technology to modernize China’s defense and its industrial, and consumer production capabilities. As China developed exchange programs with the United States, it placed the highest priority on such activities as sending Chinese doctors and scientists to the United States for study and training and bringing U.S. engineers to China as advisers. For China, the most significant trade issue in the 1990s was gaining admission to the World Trade Organization (WTO). Admission held numerous economic advantages, along with the symbolic value of being included in the world’s largest trading organization. China received Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR—previously MFN status) from the U.S. Congress in May 2000, and entered the WTO the following year. During the second half of the 20th century, the number of Chinese immigrants to the United States grew rapidly. Chinese-Americans made important contributions to academics and research after World War II. Several Chinese-Americans entered into U.S. national politics at the highest levels. In 1959, Hiram Leong Fong became the first Chinese-American—in fact, the first Asian-American—to serve in the U.S. Congress, when he was elected as a Senator from Hawaii. In 1964, Fong also sought the Republican nomination for President. David Wu became the first Chinese-American to serve in the House of Representatives, when he won the seat for the First Congressional District of Oregon. In 2001, Elaine Chao became the first Chinese- American to hold a cabinet level post in the U.S. Government, when President George W. Bush appointed her as Secretary of Labor. Gary Locke became the first Chinese-American Governor in U.S. history in 1997, when he was inaugurated in the State of Washington. The Quad’s recent resurgence The March 12 summit meeting of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue or Quad, comprising the United States, India, Japan, and Australia, has not been fully grasped by most analysts. The Quad’s recent resurgence – after an abortive start in 2007 – has been driven by uneasiness about the rise of China and the security threat it poses to the international order. Yet there is no direct reference to China, or even military security, in the Quad’s first-everJoint Statementor the Washington Postop-edpenned by its four leaders. Commentators often cast it as an “alliance” in the making, perhaps an “Asian NATO.” It is not. Rather, the Quad is designed as a loose-knit network of like-minded partners aiming at a broader purpose. Post-summit statements, which stressed the humanitarian origins of their collaboration in the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, set out the group’s uniting principles – democracy, a rules-based order, and a free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific – and emphasized its role as a “force for global good.” These provide the broad framework within which the Quad will operate with the aim of shaping global order in an age of transition from the U.S. “unipolar” world to one in which China is seeking a decisive role. The threat posed by China is at one level military, as evidenced by its proactive pursuit of territorial claims in South Asia, the South China Sea, and the East China Sea. At another, it is economic and technological. China is a pivotal player in global supply chains, most visible today inits major role as a vaccine supplier, a major investor of surplus capital globally through the Belt and Road Initiative, and arapidly rising technological power. It is this broader aspect of global order that the Quad aims to address, as is clear from two of the joint statement’s specifics, which focus on the establishment of working groups on vaccine development and critical technologies. Both these efforts seek to constrain China’s central position in the global system, but also to develop a world order that is broad-based and inclusive. The third working group being set up is on climate change, an area in which China is a cooperative player and not a competitor, and thus downplays the notion that the Quad is simply an instrument of containment. Together, the three initiatives are designed to create an environment that encourages China to be a positive player and persuades other states to shed their hesitancy toward the Quad. Though the summit focused on non-military initiatives, the Quad by no means downplays the military dimension. Its members have established the basis for regular defense cooperation through naval exercises, and the sharing of intelligence and military logistics. Adding further heft to previous bilateral efforts, the trilateral India-U.S.-Japan Malabar naval exercises expanded to include Australia last year. The four states have consolidated their military responses by building a set of nested strategic partnership: linking their bilateral relationships with the India-Japan-U.S., India-Australia-Japan, and U.S.-Japan-Australia trilateral. The Quad is a logical extension of this network and has the potential to build a “Quad Plus” arrangement involving Canada, France (scheduled to join in a five-nation military exercise in April), and perhaps New Zealand and the United Kingdom. With these arrangements doing the heavy lifting on the security front, the Quad has the bandwidth to focus on countering the challenging non-security frontiers of Beijing’s influence. Addressing the latter, the group has promoted Japan’s Partnership for Quality Infrastructure – rechristened the Expanded Partnership for Quality Infrastructure – and introduced the multi-stakeholder Blue Dot Network process, both intended to create a globally recognized evaluation and certification system for investments in sustainable developmental projects in the Indo-Pacific region. The Quad has also prioritized restructuring supply chains to wean them away from Chinese interference. WithChina leveraging vaccine diplomacyto a large number of recipient states, the four members have decided to test the Resilient Supply Chain Initiative (conceived by the India-Australia-Japan trilateral) through vaccine production with India as their production hub. If the vaccine initiative is to counter China’s vaccine diplomacy and influence, their cooperation over critical technologies is a second non-military action aimed to undercut the potential of China to achieve a dominant role in telecom and biotech (both mentioned in the joint statement) and other strategically significant areas. Attention to climate change as a third area of mobilization underlines the interdependence and “global common interest” aspect of our world and demonstrates that this is ultimately an open-ended effort to alleviate a serious universal problem. Therein lies the Quad’s unique selling point: offering value to all states and banking on the network effect that underpins an emerging world order. The Quad is not so much a tight alliance as a core group that seeks to enlist the support and cooperation of other states in both military and non-military actions. The notion of a “Quad Plus” captures this well without focusing on membership. The elasticity of this framework incentivizes other states who may want to link to and unlink themselves from specific Quad initiatives as and when useful. Importantly, the open-ended nature of the Quad belies China’s criticism of “enclosed small cliques” that will “destroy the international order.” What does India stand to gain from the Quad? First, the security dividend will be significant, though not immense since India can take care of the more severe threats to its security, as is evident from the Ladakh crisis, and is already benefiting from bilateral U.S. arms transfers. The Quad will bring additional gains from sharing of intelligence and logistics and from the skills obtained through military exercises. Second, greater gains can be expected from the steady restructuring of regional and global trade and investment relationships, which will reduce India’s dependence on China and bring in increased investment and manufacturing activity. Third, India’s status as a major power will be further enhanced through its expanded role in the making of a redesigned world order less susceptible to Chinese power and associated with more widely accepted values. Above all, India stands to gain from the creation of a more stable, cooperative world which it has the capacity to shape in unprecedented way