Daniel S. Markey, China’s Western Horizon: Beijing and the New Geopolitics of Eurasia

we are so delighted to welcome Daniel Marquis of Johns Hopkins to be with us today to talk about his new book China's western horizon um I have to say one of the things I was most excited about this book is that it provides both literally and politically a different vantage point a different way of thinking a different lens of thinking about China and its relations with the rest of the world including the u.s. it also provides just very literally a different lens a different part of the world to think about and for all of us sitting wherever we're sitting on our laptops so we're maybe getting a little bored of the views out of our window dance dance writing and Dan blends provides some really welcome changes of scenery so I'm going to invite my colleagues to put up the map and while I introduce Dan I'm going to invite you to to take a moment to really think about what it means if you see the world looking west from China and what that looks like dan is a research professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies before that he was a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations where he produced a book on Pakistan with the wonderful title that I think will will perhaps get into later called no exit from Pakistan before that he served on the State Department's policy planning staff under secretaries of State Powell and rice home of many deep and profound thinkers on the issues and before that he was a professor at Princeton University so Dan has had many years and much experience including a deep travel and reporting experience for this book back when we all took that for granted of thinking not so much directly about China but about the countries on China's periphery which gives us a different lens for this and so Dan I'm gonna I'm going to start you off by inviting you to be maybe a bit more travelogue Ethan than we usually are in in this kind of a setting um because usually when we talk about China China's apparitions on the world stage and its attempt to build global power but can can sound quite abstract in an American context are sitting here in Washington DC but your book offers visited specific examples of how China's actions are changing changing communities and changing geopolitics at the regional and national level and some of them might be surprising to those of us who are used to an America centric or even East Asia centric view so I'm gonna pick a few of my favorites and ask you to start by sort of telling stories about them and the first one because it's so deep in your own your own research in your own professional life is the the Pakistani port at Gwadar which I'm not even did I get that right pretty close yeah water like water yeah I'll start there first of all let me just Thank You Heather for moderating this but also to New America and to solid state for making this possible just as an aside now has not been the easiest time to launch a new book in a pandemic and so it's really great to to be able to see you and also to be able to explain the book to your audience so so thanks for that so water yes the book opens with this story of Pakistan's deep-sea port along the Arabian Sea and it's a relatively new port but it has a long history this is part of Pakistan that not too many people outsiders tend to go to in fact a lot of Pakistanis don't go there because it's not all that safe it's been an area of active insurgency and secessionist movements for decades now but this the story of the book opens there because in January of 2000 the then President of Pakistan pervez musharraf who has also had been the army chief military dictator traveled to China and out of the blue at least according to Chinese sources that I've talked to asked if they would build him a port Atwater and their immediate reaction was one of surprise and they even sent some junior that's too kind of skirty back and say you know was he serious about this why would he want this part and the reason they were so surprised is because this location wasn't really connected to anything it didn't have a commercial rationale that seemed like in the middle of nowhere and worse than that actually a kind of a dangerous part of the world but he said no he wanted it and the reason I tell this story and he had his reasons and I can get into those but he had his reasons and the reason I tell this story though is subsequently over the past couple of decades Gwadar has come to be one of the so called part of the string of pearls or locations that outside analyst some Western analysts and Indian analysts have seen as evidence of China's deep strategic plan for the region where it intends to project its power into other places on the map and what I learned in this story was that this was a Pakistani idea this was a port that the Pakistanis came to China and trying to reluctantly took this project on board with some reservations and the reason why I thought that was so relevant is because again and again as we look to China's West in places like Pakistan and well beyond and some of the other countries that I focus on we see evidence that the opportunities available for China's expansion are opportunities that are created defined in some cases limited by the countries themselves and this is a really important message I think especially for us sitting in Washington and especially now as we seem to be engaging evermore in a new kind of cold war with China it isn't enough for us to as we think about that to contemplate what is trying to want or what is trying to up to we have to do that but we also have to ask ourselves what are these other countries want what are they up to because that really shapes outcomes in fundamental ways the port of water wouldn't have been a Chinese project if it wasn't first Pakistani project and I'll conclude with the observation that a couple of years ago a few years ago now I had an opportunity to then interview President Musharraf and ask him about this very thing and to confirm that what the Chinese diplomats who I had spoken to before that said was correct and in fact it was he was very proud of the idea that water was his idea that he had approached the Chinese to help develop it and that he had his own goals strategic goals to push the Indians off to make it clear that the Chinese were backing Pakistan and so on and that he was pursuing those goals by this approach and so now we see this as a potential Bastion or outpost of Chinese power on the Arabian Sea in the future but we have to remember how it got there and what the origins are and perhaps that'll also give us some ideas as to where the limits on the use of water and other places will be to China as we go forward great so I should have said Daniel and I are gonna talk for about half an hour and then we will be taking your questions which you can contribute through the Q&A button at the bottom of the page as we as we go through a whole range of these topics but so um two further questions about gladder first you were not able to go there is that right and you or I or most of us would not be able to go there either which which is quite different from how we usually think of commercial port facilities even those being developed by one country in another country yeah so I have been to Pakistan I've been to Pakistan many times but access to water has been over the past few years and as I was conducting the research for this book relatively limited to internationals there have been a number of journalists who have gotten access on occasion but even that has been somewhat constrained their movements have been limited there are security concerns that clearly would drive part of that I think part of it is that the stories that come out from the port haven't always played to the advantage of the Pakistani government or the Chinese government in ways that make them uncomfortable so some of the reports suggest for instance the severe limits that the port construction has imposed on local populations the frustrations of the Baloch people who live nearby including fishermen and their villages that no longer have access to traditional areas where they would go fishing and the limitations on access to to good drinking water and so on and the political frustration that that engenders that tends to be the focus of a lot of the stories that they get when they allow outsiders Westerners mainly to go there and report and so they've been inclined I think not to let you Westerners go back and that's that's the way it's been over the past few years which brings up another point that you make repeatedly in the book that although it might look to us now that the location was chosen by China for its its maritime security and naval purposes but in fact Musharraf had much more domestic political purposes in mind I mean why would you try to stick a major port facility in the midst of a restive and generally unfriendly province well it's still not clear that that is a good idea or sharp did have a kind of a two-fold gameplan or at least he claims that on one hand really was actually a more of a a broader regional strategic initiative that is if you could open a Chinese back port another one on the Arabian Sea that would be another port for Pakistan as well in the event of a naval conflict with India shutting down Karachi wouldn't be sufficient Pakistan would have multiple options Pakistan could also use the port of water which as you probably saw from a map is close to the Persian Gulf would be able to threaten Indian shipping going in and out of the Gulf so so these were kind of broader strategic aims that military man like Musharraf would think about but they also came and he's cloaked in a sense of the potential for domestic economic development that this would be a place that an engine of growth for the regional economy this would provide opportunities for locals and for other Pakistanis and the interesting story there in a story that I go on too at greater length in a chapter on Pakistan is that you know all of these outside investment efforts by China or in fact by other countries tend to come with mixed outcomes and often there are winners in Pakistan people who stand to gain from these but they're also losers and in an already fairly conflicted country with deep political cleavages ethnic cleavages socio-economic cleavages like Pakistan creating additional areas of competition domestically has as much chance of creating greater on the instability as it does of improving economic outcomes and creating greater stability which is claimed to be the goal of both Musharraf and now increasingly of China itself because of course as this story if we update this story it didn't end there with water we have now got the china-pakistan economic corridor tens of billions of dollars promised at least about 20 billion actually delivered of Chinese outside investments in Pakistan so we're seeing greater Chinese involvement in all of these areas but not necessarily a stabilizing outcome coming up all of us you make that point both with respect to the situation within Pakistan and the other countries you highlight but you also make it with respect respect to regional power relations and you say that there was maybe this hope that China could or China would find itself forced to take on the role of regional peacemaker and that somehow in this part of the world that China would help help defuse conflict between India and Pakistan and both here and in the other regions you look at you you come away instead with it with the conclusion that you think in the long run the Chinese activities are actually going to make regional instability worse rather than better stay a little bit about that with respect to the India Pakistan conflict and then I'm going to pivot you to collect them sure yeah it's not it's not a good news I tell you know there are there are many analysts I've heard a number of them in Washington who will say look this is a messy part of the world and the United States has rarely had success in all of its efforts bringing about greater stability between say countries like India and Pakistan bringing peace between them it seems like a fool's errand but if China wants to get more invested in this part of the world let them and let them suffer with and potentially solve the problems that we've had so much trouble grappling with and unfortunately the the conclusion that I have reached at least tentatively so far is that China has no intention of shouldering those responsibilities or burdens that you can have simultaneously an extension of Chinese influence an economic influence of political influence even extension of Chinese ability to project its military power over land into parts of Pakistan or beyond into Central Asia you can have all of that without having a stabilizing presence that is China's not terribly interested in investing in these societies in ways that at least I think would be more likely to bring about that kind of peace or stability over over time now in the specific India Pakistan example we'd like to hope that say strengthening Pakistan and making Pakistan a more wealthy country with Chinese investment and further Chinese investment into India might make both sides India and Pakistan more inclined to get along to see all of the benefits of peace that would be a hope and it's conceivable but what we've seen in practice is that China's backing of Pakistan maybe as are more likely I think to embolden Pakistan to make Pakistan feel like it has a patron and to believe that it can in fact continue to push its revisionist agenda with India that is a change in boundaries and things changes in the status of Kashmir and so on in ways that if felt weaker it would have to step back from similarly India and I do get into India's perspective in all of this because we look at the Indian point of view India sees China's involvement in Pakistan is not stabilizing but increasingly threatening threatening both because it does encourage Pakistan or Indians perspective bad behavior and also because it suggests that China will be a major player in India's neighborhood which is something that New Delhi has been deeply concerned about would like to see less of not more of and so it's inclining India to be more wary and to arm itself and prepare itself and possibly to contemplate and even participate in more kind of violent exchanges with Pakistan just to convince China that this is not a good idea that its involvement there is not a good idea so this doesn't add up as I say in a stabilizing way it actually adds up in a worrisome way that makes me want to jump ahead a bit to the u.s. strategy part of the conversation because there has been considerable thought in Washington circles in recent years that Washington should should move more and more and this is a bipartisan idea to see India as a key ally in in that both countries are democracies I'll be at both countries are somewhat challenged democracies at the moment with the countries are somehow natural allies to help blunt or contain Beijing in a commercial sense in a sort of spreading of autocratic technology sense but also in a straight-up military sense you you seem to make the argument that in fact that's going to be more complicating and tension accelerating than it is straightforwardly beneficial but I'd love to hear you make your case sure yeah look I think you're right one of the consistent features not just of certainly not just at the Trump administration but of the Obama administration before it and the bush administration before that and even going back to Clinton was a recognition of the potential of India's strategic promise as a counterbalance or a counterweight big Democratic huge populous country in society in part of asia or part of asia that would balance china and i generally support that I mean I think that India has huge potential in that we have every reason to want to explore that the caveat there that the question mark is has to do with the specific ways in which we engage with India and if by our engagement with India and China's engagement with Pakistan we end up in a kind of a two-block South Asia scenario where India and Pakistan are arming themselves to the teeth to engage in an arms race with one another and then we are egging them on and that US resources rather than broadening the base of Indian power and creating as they say a counterweight to China both politically and economically as well as security-wise if we're principally invested in the security side and India is principally seeing those investments tools weapons military platforms that defense platforms and so on as a means to deal with Pakistan then what we're doing is we're just feeding into kind of I think a wasteful dangerous potentially very dangerous arms race dynamic in a region where we've seen this game before this was in a sense in Reverse the game that we played during the Cold War with us more or less on Pakistan side in the Soviet Union frequently more or less on India's side and what we learned from that or what we think we learned from that is it didn't work to anyone's particular advantage it didn't work to the superpowers advantage there's a lot of waste of resources and in the region it fueled a conflict that might not have gone away but might also not have been quite so violent and bloody as it was had it not been for superpower support so that's the kind of thing that I worry about well speaking of them aftermath of the Cold War that seems like a good moment to shift us up to Central Asia and I'm gonna invite my New America colleagues to pop the Mac back up for one second because one of the really fun nuggets of history about this about your book was the idea of that for a significant portion of [Music] history there were major civilizations that located the center of the world in Central Asia and much as for for much of Anglo American history we maybe thought of the center of the world is being London or Greenwich or in the Cold War Washington but there is this history and these residual cultural diplomatic economic links that go that go back to this time which was fascinating and fun to read about and so maybe point to why it shouldn't be as surprising as it as it may be to many Americans to to see the enormous ly large and wealthy country of Kazakhstan as as a balancing in some very astute and interesting ways between Russia and China and and really you you depict an autocratic ruler that at least as long as he's able does the last of the post-soviet rulers in the region who at least as long as he's able to stay in power seems to be able to pick and choose and the the asterism that you quote is that Russia is the gun and China is the purse which is you know you could be and you could find yourself in worse situations and a number of cuz offends the neighbours have so um the you what you described very vividly in the book that what the has a China border economic zone looks like and and maybe you could start from that as a way of talking about what the Kazakh case looks like and and we can put away the map now thank you sure yeah and thanks there's a lot to a lot to play with there and you know the for me the history also learning better history of of continental Eurasia and the interconnections between parts of the world that that I at least and I think many Americans tend to see as fundamentally distinct for instance South Asia is not the same thing as Central Asia and Central Asia's in our mind I think often considered very far from East Asia or China but yet these places do have a kind of a gray quality where one intertwines with the next and historically they've been bound together at times now we're talking about during a Silk Road period so it's been hundreds of years but at times they were culturally intertwined through the communication of major religions Buddhism Islam and so on and economically intertwined with critical resources including warhorses being routinely imported from China sorry from Central Asia to China right China was was really relied on these types of things not to mention the actual silk of the Silk Road or the silk weird so this is an area of cultural interconnection and in particular we see this now in the context of the nature of the identity the ethnic and religious identity of weekers inside of China but you asked about the specific question of the border area between Kazakhstan and China where I had an opportunity to visit and I've read a number of travel logs this I'm not the first or and certainly won't be the last you know Washington based person to go up to ghosts and to actually see the trade and economic zone that's being built on the dry port that being built right on the Kazakhstan China border but it was still fascinating and a little bit sleepy at the time when I went to visit it happened to be a holiday but what you could see was the early stages of in terms of the dry part of a an opportunity for Chinese goods to be kind of reloaded onto trains and then trans shipped across the continent and into and onto Western Europe as an alternative to maritime shipping and in the economic zone which you could see was the birth potentially of what looked like a bi-national new city Kazakhstan China city of potentially in the future hundreds of thousands to millions of people where you could have commercial interchange between the two all of this would have seemed completely unfathomable because we're talking about a part of the world that is kind of in the middle of nowhere I mean it feels that way you've got enormous step sweeps of step going on as far as the eye can see and not much other than horses and mountains in the background and and for hundreds of years there hasn't been a lot going on there and now you see the physical manifestation of China's economic power and potential for regional economic integration in a very new way and this is not the old Silk Road it is something fundamentally new and different and we have to kind of map wrap our minds around how that will change the map in ways that you were you were describing earlier and let me wrap up here with the observation of tie this to the political consequences of all of this Kazakhstan is an unusual country an autocratic regime basically still run although titular responsibility has been handed off now but basically still run by the same man and as a buy of who's been in power since the end of the Soviet Union and came out of that system so he's deeply familiar with that and is I think perhaps uniquely qualified to balance the competing agendas of Moscow and Beijing as they go forward and of course the interests of Kazakhstan itself and to try to weave his way between two major powers one on either other's two giants on either side Kazakhstan itself is relatively weak all the wealthy from from energy or relatively wealthy doesn't have the wherewithal to withstand either side and so has to play them against one another one of the core questions I asked in the book is what happens after nas abideth how does that balance potentially shift possibly dramatically and potentially in ways that would really favor Chinese influence over what has traditionally at least now for hundreds of years been a sphere of Russian influence and a direct Russian control of course during the Soviet period and what would that mean what would that mean for the balance in the relationship between China and Russia with Russia be willing to accept that I have deep concerns about how the tensions or the underlying potential tensions between Russia and China could be exacerbated by that extension of Chinese influence in through Central Asia this doesn't happen overnight and it hasn't happened overnight this is something gradual but it could happen stepwise with China sort of dramatically enhancing its its role in the region at various points and I think we saw one of those at the last financial crisis and I think we could be voiced to see another one of those now with aftermath of the of the pandemic of kovat 19:00 and the economic consequences of that which china seems to be likely to weather better than russia and may put china again into the into a pole position to extend its influence first through economic means and then potentially through political and even security means after that before before we get to the the Kovach part of the conversation I do want to ask you about the week's because as you write the week or the borders in this region like many regions are somewhat artificial and Uighur presence and influence in Kazakhstan is may be stronger than many Westerners understand on the other hand as China's mistreatment of the weekers becomes better and better known that doesn't seem to be having any impact on its engagement either in central asian societies or in muslim societies which make up the majority of the ones you talk about in the book so what does what what in Kazakhstan in particular and more broadly are is China's treatment of the weaker is going to matter well I think that it will matter but it's not a direct consequence in other words you know I think it's a little bit more complicated than simply Muslims around the world will be upset about the way that China has treated Muslims in China including readers I mean worst of all leaders but also other Muslims in China and will respond violently and negatively to China across the board that's clearly not the case and I see that in although all the countries that I really focus on whether it's Pakistan Kazakhstan Iran Saudi Arabia all of them including their clerical establishments but also their political leaders and more or less looked the other way or have kind of tried to just deflect attention from China's treatment of Muslims inside of China and the reasons are I think fairly obvious they have economic interests and in some cases also political interests riding on their relationship with China and they can't sacrifice that by criticizing China openly and so they won't do so however Kazakhstan ease ethnic Kazakhs many I think Iranians many Pakistanis are still I think going to be and increasingly are aware of what China is doing and this makes them deeply upset in the case of Kazakhstan this can be very personal it's gonna be family members who have been swept up in these Chinese camps either by accident or on purpose being the wrong place inside of China meeting with family and so on and in other places it's more of a kind of a solidarity of religion of common faith this will make publics deeply unhappy will get them to see China as a problematic and although their countries tend to have fairly good control over the flow of information I think over time will create new divides between the people in a sense and their leaders again between the losers and a closer place with China and the winners and those kinds of cleavages particularly in these societies which are either authoritarian or autocratic liberal-leaning these kinds of cleavages can be dangerous and they can play into broader kind of potential for social discontent and revolutionary movements in these types of places I don't need to overstate it but I I think it's a it's a cause political tension and danger and it will be replayed in the context of how these publics respond to their own leaders so for instance just one last example in Iran some of the protesters over the past years have been heard to chant death to China when they are protesting against their own regime and they're doing that not because of the leaders this time but they're doing that because they think that China has supported the current regime in Tehran and they reject that and they're deeply frustrated by that so these are the kinds of tensions that could crop up that China is only beginning the early stages of feeling the consequence of that but I think they'll be quite meaningful over time you also on the on the death to China front in Iran you you write about how China is able to take advantage of openings in Iran created by by us Iran policy but that only works so well and that again to make everyday Iranians are not all that happy with with what they get from China as a substitute for what what they get from the US so how did how does the US Iran conflict look from this China looking westward lens well interestingly every time that Iran and its economy have been shut down by US sanctions the Chinese role in Iran has grown that doesn't mean that it's grown necessarily in real dollars or real economic terms it's grown relatively but as China's gotten a bigger piece of the Iranian pie because everybody else has been forced to the exits and we saw that during the earlier period prior to the negotiation jcpoa where china assumed an ever-greater role in Iran's economy but you're right average Iranians often deeply troubled by this because as China came in it didn't come in with the highest quality goods to sell to Iranians it came in with junky second-rate goods and it engaged in barter trade that typically Iranians believed was really benefiting Chinese sellers to the detriment of their own economic interests and quite often access to Iran's market Chinese access to Iran's market irani and businesses out of business so there were a lot of Iranians who have suffered from that now the premise interestingly of the jcpoa part of it was what was so appealing from an Iranian perspective ultimately about the deal the reason that deal was possible at all was because it would open the door to economic and interchange with Western Europe and potentially even in the United States over time and not make them so vulnerable to China so you can tell that even just from that from the logic of the deal that Ryan's in general prefer not being vulnerable to indebted to and completely in bed with the Chinese this is not their preference and yet the consequences of the deal and now the unilateral withdrawal from the deal by the United States and the slapping of sanctions back on to Iran have reopened the door for China to re to continue to deepen its role inside of Iran and have again pushed certainly Western Europeans to the exits in ways that create those opportunities and make Iran fundamentally vulnerable and dependent upon China deeply dependent upon China now the point here is not that China is necessarily doing all of this with strategic intent to take over Iran or to embed itself deeply in Iran but it may seize that opportunity and the opportunity will be a lot cheaper because in part because of the actions that we've taken of course we didn't do those with China in mind but as we move forward and we think about countries like Iran our relationship with countries like Iran we also have to be thinking about what the implications of our decisions on Iran policy will mean for our competition with China so we need to have the complexity build in that additional complexity in ways that decades ago we didn't have to do you predict that China will increasingly supplant Russia as Iran's main main ally which was quite a surprise to me given the historical and geographic closeness of Iran and Russia so maybe unpack that I mean and that's certainly very relevant to the question of the broader question of us-china policies so maybe unpack that a little more absolutely so I mean right now Iran is not just economically but they're deeply dependent upon Russian political patronage but also Russian arms and so right now if you had to point to Iran's probably single most important outside partner it would be Russia but I do think that if we play this out over time two trends tend to suggest the China will supplant Russia or two elements of this relationship the first thing is that Russia is in many ways economically and even politically historically is a competitor with Iran it sells the same goodness it sells hydrocarbons and it has not and so therefore economic complementarity is not there but with China China is a buyer of hydrocarbons Iran is a seller and so there is greater complementarity so I think there's a kind of a inbuilt tension in the relation with Russia that isn't there with China and there's also historical tensions you know if you look back and Runyon's have no love for Russia they have less of a sense that China is dangerous I think then Russia is dangerous strategically there's there's no there's no trust there so I think that creates an opening but the other big point is that Russia is on the decline Russia's economy certainly but also its capacity to be a principal arms dealer in the world and to be still a leading supplier of military technologies is on the decline whereas China's is on China's on the rise and with every passing year Russian technology that has put it at or near the front in many areas seeps into China is either purchased by China and reverse engineered by by Chinese companies and then becomes available from those very Chinese companies and so if we just look into the future as others have we see that China is poised to steal Russia's mantle in all of these areas and then you can imagine a wrong turn into trying to rather than Russia as its principal supplier outside supplier of military technology so we have an audience question about how Iran's nuclear weapons program and the choices that it will have to make around its nuclear weapons program in the coming months how that affect the Iran China relationship well I think at the moment a lot more in terms of Iran's choices on its nuclear program have mainly to do with waiting out the United States to our next election that is seems to be what Tehran's principled strategic logic is they wait and see who wins and then they will decide how to play the game from there China too has also interestingly played a bit more of a waiting game on all of this than I would have expected and I think a number of other analysts thought so too you know if asked how China would have managed the past few years I really would have assumed that they would be somewhat more aggressive in extending their influence in Iran as the United States kind of basically cut off other options stent China has has been reticent and the principal reticence comes from Beijing's recognition that actually in real terms it has much more to lose by upsetting Washington than it has to gain by increasing its its opportunities its investments and it's purchasing from Iran so it's been balancing Beijing has been balancing concerns about upsetting Washington with opportunities of Iran and so far in many instances that has led it to actually scale back its involvement in Iran rather than extended if I can imagine a situation where in the future if us-china relations deteriorate further Beijing may make a different calculation that its relationship with the United States is deteriorated to the point that it can without paying significant greater costs that can extend its influence in Iran and it can be more supportive of Iran and that would be even more likely if the United States and Iran also at the same time don't return to any kind of negotiated settlement and prospect of getting back to some version of a jcpoa which would bring back the Europeans into Iran seems to have disappeared then China will be the only game in town for Iran and China will see less downside risk or harm from enhancing its hand with Iran starts to move us into the question of what US strategy should be given these observations which we we have a number of questions about and I want to start with an observation that you make in the book where you say the region a long time is western horizon should not be America's first priority and I think I just heard you say at least with respect to Iran that this region is not China's first priority either so does that does that open up chances that this policy in this part of the world can unfold in ways that are different from how the us-china challenge unfolds in East Asia in particular or is everything inevitably going to be drawn into sort of one one vat of us-china competition whatever that looks like well I think it's really important that we not begin cold war like to see all of the world purely through the lens of us-china competent that has to be a part of how we see things you have to ask that question I think I will come increasingly naturally to US policymakers to contemplate or consider how this plays into the global competition with China and yet in many instances won't be the first or most important calculation so if we go back as a good example I think is the india-pakistan relationship I still think that a war between India and Pakistan is much more dangerous than seeing China extend its influence into Pakistan and so as we look at that part of the world I think we still have to ask ourselves you know might there be opportunities to work with China to avert the downside risks of an india-pakistan war or to manage that conflict if it goes back into a crisis so we have to be kind of nimble enough to see the individual consequences of regional issues for what they are and then also to flip it upside down and say okay but then how does that play in the short medium and long term into the global competition between the United States and China we have to be able to do both of those things but to come back to your first question you know is this region of greatest significance to the United States and you know having written this book and focus so much of my attention on this region I'd love to be able to say yes this is the single most important region but my conclusion is no actually when it comes to prioritizing parts of the world for the United States in terms of strategic investment I think first of all we have to obviously get our own house in order and that's particularly important at this moment as we're suffering as we are economically and otherwise but after that our traditional Alliance partners in Western Europe and East Asia still are our priority areas that is the core I think of the United States is strength geopolitically in the world with that we continue and those kinds of partnerships and alliances we continue to be a real superpower without that the world looks a whole lot less unipolar or even where the United States is a serious superpower we lose an enormous amount from that after those priorities come having to play through all of these other regions and then the argument of the book is think locally act locally see these issues that is with our competition with China and individual concerns like Iran's nuclear program through local lenses think about how these states themselves are calculating their interests and then focus American priorities accordingly look for opportunities where for instance if we want to partner with Kazakhstan we want to create opportunities for Kazakhstan not only to see it's only option as being China but still keeping the door cracked open for them to work with us say on science and technology or education or other areas the same would be true in other parts of the Middle East make ourselves a potential valuable partner for a lot of these societies even as we are not their principal partner and we are not likely to be quite as important to them going forward as China's role in the region does increase so that gets to another audience question what are the risks or possible negative impacts of the u.s. trying to grow influence with China's Western neighbors I guess if you could imagine a return to the early post Cold War period where there was quite a bit of Washington effort if haphazardly to grow US influence in Central Asia what would that do what would that kind of a policy now do - us-china relations frankly I think it's it's not so much a matter of the risks of doing it it's the implausibility of us having the resources to do it in any way that would be meaningful and if we think about the the apex of American involvement say in Central Asia came to my eyes a kind of a dual consequence of the war in Afghanistan and a sense of potential opportunity for the post-soviet moment of extending more democratic or civilian type of leadership throughout that region and we saw what happened it was frustrating extremely costly and has left I would say relatively little in the way of a sense of success in most Americans Minds and so the I would say the the critical issue is a matter of the resources and our sense that we can do something that would make a significant strategic difference in this part of the world and those are both at a relatively low ebb right now so I'm less worried about us doing too much in a sense and more worried that we may retrench far too much and just to effectively give up the region or we may militarize everything and see everything through kind of through the lens of it's it's all about a us-china competition and forget about what regional interests might be in areas where we might actually do more over the long term I will say you would asked earlier what is trying to get from this region if we play this out over again this is now a longer-term story this is the means that is continental Eurasia is the means by which I think China can build itself into a more continental scaled superpower with resources with capacity to project its military and with political influence throughout a much wider zone of the earth than it currently enjoys and that changes I think the the basic calculation of the us-china competition globally as we go forward in ways that are critically important and so this part of the world it isn't our priority it is as I said we have other priorities but it will be critically important and I think we need to recognize that for what in my offer over time you point to a new jobs out in the book at some more length the challenge or the risk of the u.s. over militarizing its response where Beijing is pursuing this strategy through majority economic and cultural if you will approach or economic and political approach and that brings us to the Belton Road and we've had a couple questions asking you to talk more specifically about the Belton Road how the Belton Road is viewed from the perspective of the countries you write about the book and specifically is or its benefit to China mainly geopolitical or does it in the end actual per actually produce economic benefit for China well great questions I mean the Belton Road has clearly been the seminal and leading foreign policy global policy President Xi Jinping and it has I thank both the commercial elements and the geopolitical elements behind it but crucial parts of it simply don't make sense as purely commercial and there are other parts that don't look all that strategic and so you need both to understand it in Pakistan the case that I that I tend to know better than the others we have seen sort of the the great promise of the china-pakistan economic corridor which is kind of its piece of the Belton Road initiative promise of upwards of 60 billion dollars of Chinese investment over a decade or so and then we've seen some of the already we've seen over the past five years some of the frustration an unmet promise in part because some of the projects that were envisioned had no commercial viability whatsoever and have also been seen as not terribly important strategically for trying to undertake without that commercial benefit so the commercial element does play a role if the project doesn't seem to make any sense whatsoever commercially had better have a good strategic rationale but have also seen broadly somewhat retrenchment in a sense of at least rhetorically of China's goals for the belton Road initiative across the board it is it's had to think for a second time about what it's really up to in part and respond to a global challenge that had to do with questions about the debt that was being incurred by recipients of the road initiative projects the environmental consequences the labor consequences the political and economic and other consequences and there was some initial frustration so trying to send to rethink about some of these efforts scaled some of them back I imagine that the kovat will force an additional retooling of the Bevin road project across the board or projects across the board but it hasn't given them up that road is still at the core of the brand President Xi and I don't think it can be done away with it can't fail even in places where it hasn't been terribly successful it can't be thrown overboard and so it won't be so it'll persist and it will continue to have this twofold element of commercial commercially viable exercises that will over time up the region regional economic integration and more strategic and even military oriented efforts that are purely in Beijing's interests which the opportunities and openings have been created by local realities thank you for brilliantly answering the next question I was going to ask which is is there a strategic and military dimension to this so thank you for anticipating the question and we're coming up on the last five minutes so we will be able to squeeze in one or maybe two more questions although given what the next question is that may end up being the last one reminder to the audience that if like me this conversation has suggested to you that this book might reorient your view of this part of the world and interesting ways you can go to the new America event page where you will find a link to purchase the book and of course Dan you knew you weren't going to get through an hour-long conversation without being asked whether we are in a cold war with China and so are we in a cold war with China how much of that cold war framing the questioner wants to know is due to the current administration and would you describe there being a consensus among foreign policy experts yes we right we're I think the way I like to frame it and I'm just stealing from other seers we're in a new type of cold war with China yes and no I don't think that it's been purely the consequence of decisions made in Washington not not remotely it is the consequence of interchange between us perspectives and frustrations with China and a kind of waking up to the reality of China's power and influence globally combined with increasingly internationally oriented and aggressive Chinese leadership under President Xi Jinping and the combination of the two has been already a big shift and but it's consolidated a shift that was underway I think for in some ways for decades that is China's power didn't rise out of nowhere as wealth didn't come from nowhere and it shouldn't have taken anybody by surprise nor should China's ability to translate as all countries I think throughout history I've tended to do to translate great wealth into political influence and also military power that's not surprising but the shift that I think has caught all of our imaginations and certainly our attention in Washington DC this shift has been exacerbated by the kinds of rhetoric angry rhetoric that are being thrown around by both sides right now and that is unusual and certainly I think that the Trump administration's approach here is not what we would have seen in some other administration just in terms of the its its use of words its Twitter Wars and so on but neither is the Chinese approach something that we've seen from China before we now hear about so-called wolf warrior diplomats who use all kinds of angry language to describe American officials and Americans more generally totally undiplomatic in ways that you know I guess we saw some of that back when and the Maoist era of you know the Chinese early Chinese Revolutionary era but trying to become a more staid diplomatic player over decades and now to see this come out and a playing to Chinese nationalism at home and a kind of a stiff arm to public opinion overseas is new on the Chinese side and so that kind of tension I think maybe kind of momentary and we may be seeing the apex of that hopefully if we're lucky we'll see that kind of resolve but the broader strategic competition I'm afraid is here to stay and we just need to figure out how we're going to grapple with it and that will be up to of course whoever's in office and in January to to figure that out I just have to say that the question that I was recently on a zoom call with about a dozen academics representing a variety of intellectual and ideological tendencies who preview as as much as you can get into a screaming fight on zoom' who got into a screaming fight about this question so no there is no consensus on this subject in Washington DC stands up to wrap this up really quickly um if you were writing this book in the time of kovat what else would you what else would you have to say well I think that most of what I depict in the book it's likely to be accelerated by that is outside potential for Chinese wealth and economic resources to sway its regional neighbors one way or another particularly its neighbors as they say to its West has probably been exacerbated by this moment and not just by Co vid the public health crisis but really the economic crisis and beyond that it's particularly devastating effects for countries that are dependent on energy exports as their principal economic support and a lot of those are to china's west these countries are going to be feeling deep deep pain and china may be the best placed country in the world to make up for their their losses in a way that would permit their leaders to salvage themselves hurt their people but to salvage their own positions and to continue keep the game going at home and so that would extend China's influence otherwise I think that Koba has also hurt the United States so far very deeply and America's global leadership I think if anything has just taken a major hit and that is worrisome because as we think about our ability to to appear to be a useful valuable beneficial partner to any of these countries in China's western horizon or elsewhere they have to see us in those terms we have to present some positive vision of leadership of resources of knowing what we're doing and at the moment I'm afraid even on all those scores were far more diminished than even we were before Sunday new America will give me a happy book to do a book event about but um Dan thank you so much for taking your lunch time to bring your book buy new America at least virtually and thank you to all of our audience members who spent your lunch with us and again you can go to the event page for this conversation on our website new America org and find a link to purchase Dan's book and find more events to come back for Thank You Heather I appreciate it

Channel: New America

Views: 1,238

Rating: 4.8400002 out of 5

Keywords: new america, renewing america

Id: 0zCvKfgdKNA

Length: 58min 50sec (3530 seconds)

Published: Tue May 19 2020