US Asian Policy Distracts the Core Issues

By N. GUNASEKARAN

After his first face-to-face White House summit with Japan’s prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, President Joe Biden said: ”Prime Minister Suga and I affirmed our ironclad support for the US-Japanese alliance and for our shared security.”

This summit meeting indicated the direction of the Biden administration’s foreign policy. The new US administration seemed to be determined to work further on to revitalize US alliances in Asia. The history of international relations has ample evidence that US-led alliances have all along served the hegemonic interests of the US.

Now, President Biden intended to forge such alliances to use them as the effective counter to an increasingly assertive China. Citing issues such as the East China Sea, the South China Sea, North Korea, and Taiwan, the US have resolved to take on the challenges from China.

In this regard, the US have planned a summit with South Korea, both to counter China and longtime US foe North Korea, and try for intensified joint efforts with Australia, India and Japan through a grouping, called the QUAD (The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue). Instead of focusing on vaccines, climate change and emerging technologies, the bedrock of the QUAD grouping was to weaken China and maintaining the primacy of the US in the Indo-Pacific region.

It was clear that forming many groupings, like QUAD, and building military alliances, would be the main international efforts to be pursued by Washington in the coming days. It is now confirmed that President Biden would follow the aggressive hegemonic policies, economically and militarily; and, that was followed by all previous US presidents. Donald Trump was different only when he chided allies in Asia for their insufficient defense spending and funding for US troop presence, but he never deviated from hegemonic, destructive policies.

Another significant announcement by the Biden administration was that it would withdraw all US troops from Afghanistan by Sept. 11, 2021. Whether it would undo the damage, his predecessors had caused in this region, is a moot question. Both the Afghan government and the Taliban have to adopt reasonable responses to the US announcement. President Biden has also announced to re-enter the negotiations on the Iranian Nuclear Deal that Trump exited. All these developments showed that the US mainly desires to focus on the issue of containing China.

In 2009, President Obama announced his Asian policy, which was named as “pivot to Asia.” It was meant that the US would be directly engaging China, encouraging Chinese rivals like Japan, and striving for a big Asian trade deal that would benefit America and contain China. Now, the same “pivot to Asia “is moving forward under the Biden administration.

So, it seems that China would be the Biden administration’s biggest foreign-policy priority and occupy the centre-stage in the US Asian strategic approach. Taking hard line on China, the Biden administration is expected to deal all issues of Asia, including South Asia, through the lens of US-China rivalry. Biden’s central foreign policy of ‘Keeping China Second’ after America would really help the American political and big corporate elites to distract the core issues facing the people, living in Asia.

The most important issues of the people in Asia are not the issues related to the hegemonic competition of the big powers in the international arena. The poor and working people have serious livelihood and health issues at this juncture, when the second and third wave of corona virus is affecting the millions of people in this region.

According to the World Bank’s April 2021 Economic Update for East Asia and the Pacific, economic contraction was severe and persistent in many countries in this region, with the output remaining on average around 5% below pre-pandemic levels. The report revealed that poverty stopped declining for the first time in 20 years with 32 million people suffering from acute poverty in this region.

Across Asia, inequality and unemployment have further increased due to the pandemic and the resulting shutdowns. In the coming decades, many countries in Asia are vulnerable to natural resource stress and climate change. The people in the coastal region in Asia have suffered 70% of the world’s natural disasters, which have affected more than 1.6 billion people since 2000.

So, instead of nurturing enmity and rivalry between nations, the US will have to seek greater consensus and cooperation with China and Russia to save the interests of the global working people, including those in Asia. On all contested issues and conflicts, the US should pursue diplomacy and negotiations and that would be the way forward for a peaceful and better world.

N. Gunasekaran is a political activist and writer based in Chennai, India.

From The Progressive Populist, May 15, 2021

Populist.com