The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat (38 page)

The “we don’t want trouble” approach sounds nice, in other words, but it may prove increasingly hard to sustain, exhibit one being the current saber rattling in the South China Sea. But the current spat over the South China Sea is not all that puts the United States and China on a collision course or makes China’s rise a source of global tension, for that matter. China is, after all, increasingly an imperialist power. Imperialism emerged in the nineteenth century as growing European economies looked around the world for commodities and markets to fuel their gathering industrialization.
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European powers then—much like China today—invested heavily in securing trade routes and building infrastructure for resource extraction.

Journalist Steve Coll has described what he calls China’s “mercantilist approach to energy” and the premium that it places on physically owning oil supplies. This flies in the face of the fungibility of the global oil market. Whereas America thinks of global oil markets as an integrated whole, governed by rules of free exchange, China seeks a direct supply-and-demand relationship between itself and wherever the oil comes from. That harkens back to nineteenth-century colonialism. The upshot will be greater Chinese control of the supply–demand relationship and deepening political involvement with, and dependency on, energy-producing regions and countries. The scent of nineteenth-century colonialism is not lost on Coll, who calls China’s approach “neo-colonial.”
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“Peaceful rise” will not go hand in hand with mercantilism. And if a peaceful rise does not work, then, as Henry Kissinger has warned, America’s relationship with China could start to look like a version of the Anglo-German rivalry that haunted Europe on the eve of World War I.
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Germany was the rising, insurgent power then, hungry for energy and other commodities that would aid its expansion, eagerly seeking markets for the products of its burgeoning factories. Germany’s
mercantilist approach collided with Britain’s dominance over the global economy—a dominance that was secured not only by the reach of a British Empire “upon which the sun never set,” but also by a Royal Navy that protected the commercial interests of many other nations before German expansionism.
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Germany turned to militarism, forming its High Seas Fleet, which supported the growth of its influence beyond continental Europe and set in motion a race to war in the first decade of the twentieth century.

Similarly, America’s response to China’s mercantilist push against open trade and commerce puts us on a collision course with China. The Middle East will be at the center of that clash when it happens.

The example of European imperialism holds other lessons too. The initial outflow of capital from Europe to the New World (British capital played a large role in building the iconic cattle-ranching and railroad businesses of America’s Old West) was soon followed by the flow of capital back to Europe as cheap commodity prices and industrial exports sold to the New World yielded European countries huge profits. Things did not run smoothly everywhere, however. Some local populations balked at the unfair terms of trade with Europe, and European powers reacted in some cases with the use of force and even outright territorial-political conquest. Imperialism evolved into colonialism, which made sense because European powers were struggling not only to deal with restive locals but also to protect their holdings from rival powers.

Yesterday’s imperialism has gradually shifted east as a latecomer to the party, China, has begun investing heavily in Africa, Latin America, and western Asia.
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It is building railways and ports in sub-Saharan Africa and Afghanistan, much as Britain and France once did in India or Africa.
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Chinese managers and workers are moving to Africa, living and working in colonies that are reminiscent of British cantonments in colonial India. These Chinese are there to stay for the long haul.

China is also doling out cash to rulers, such as Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, as Britain, France, and the Netherlands once did. In the “game of nabobs” that Britain played with its European rivals in India, the object was to win the allegiance of local rulers in order to control trade routes. In a contemporary version of the ploy, Beijing’s deep investment in Cambodia has separated that country from its Southeast Asian neighbors
on issues that matter to China, creating discord in the ranks of ASEAN just when the United States is trying to rally the regional grouping to resist Chinese domination of the South China Sea. The game of nabobs goes on.

Across Africa and Asia today, country after country is happy to have Chinese money building railways and ports for moving commodities to China. As for what floods of cheap Chinese imports are doing to local manufacturing, that is another, less happy story. In Nigeria and Pakistan, Chinese textiles are driving local producers out of business. One Pakistani textile manufacturer told me: “Everyone worries that if we open trade with India its textiles will put us out of business, but the Chinese are already doing that.” Soap manufacturers and even producers of crockery are saying the same. According to some estimates, China now accounts for a staggering 90 percent of that market in Pakistan.

We know from history that the imperialist formula of monopoly control over commodity exports plus plentiful manufactured goods imports will lead to political trouble. The initial enthusiasm for Chinese investment will give way to anger at the net outflow of wealth to China as it extracts commodities and dumps cheap manufactured goods in country after country. To sustain the economic arrangement, China will have to get involved politically. It will have to delve into the domestic politics of countries, taking sides in messy internal fights, but also take a position on regional disputes. And when its interests warrant making important decisions for desired outcomes, persuasion will be the method of choice, and force the method of last resort.

China will also encounter other global players looking for the same commodities and resources. America, Europe, India, Japan, and South Korea, as well as other emerging nations, will all be looking for the same iron, copper, manganese, bauxite, rare earth metals, and oil. The gold rush boom in Mongolia—which has attracted $15 billion in foreign investment and is pitting the United States against China in the vast but sparsely populated country of 3 million people—along with the South China Sea disputes provide a window into this. After all, China has already seized the Spratly Islands, a collection of rocks near undersea oil deposits. Elsewhere, China has the first mover’s advantage in Africa and is trying to elbow its way to domination in Southeast Asia. But to
protect its investment and prevent supplying countries from playing it against its rivals, China will have to exercise more political control. As China faces the same kind of challenges protecting its assets that once led Europe to embrace colonialism, a “peaceful rise” may grow considerably less peaceful.

The Chinese, however, are not looking that far ahead. For now, the U.S. security presence in the Persian Gulf and other regions is providing the stability upon which Beijing can free-ride as it develops its interests abroad. China gets to have it all. It enjoys the luxury of engaging a region’s troublemakers and unstable states—Iran or Pakistan, for instance—while at the same time benefiting from advantageous trade conditions.

As we have seen, America has been lobbying the Saudis to sell China more oil in order to gain Chinese help in reining in Iran and Pakistan. But why should that be? Why shouldn’t Beijing be offering
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concessions in order to get America to maintain its costly investment in regional security? Many observers muse that in the not-too-distant future, when any U.S. need for Middle Eastern oil is a fading memory and the only customers for Persian Gulf oil are in East Asia, China will be in the unenviable position of relying entirely on U.S. security to protect the Gulf’s crucial wellheads. And yet, it is not that simple. China is happy with free-riding now because its relations with America have been, generally speaking, quiet. Since 9/11 we have been focused on the Middle East, ignoring China’s rise for the most part. But as China finds itself in America’s crosshairs, the benefits of freeing its Middle East interests from the clutches of American influence will outweigh the security dividend it gains from American presence in the region. China will soon welcome the American exit from the region even at the cost of shouldering the security cost itself. American retreat from the Middle East will be welcomed in China as a strategic boon; and this is exactly why it should not happen. This is already evident in the Chinese attitude toward Central Asia. This region is not only a source of valuable energy for China, but owing to its cultural and ethnic ties to the Turkic Muslim minority living in China’s westernmost provinces, it is also of security and geostrategic interest to China. Beijing has sought to tightly integrate Central Asia into its economic orbit. This has also meant allying
with Iran and Russia—the other key players in the region—to limit American presence in the region. The Chinese-founded and -backed Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO)—a rival to American power wrapped as a counterweight to NATO and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)—reflects this approach. It should be America using its presence in the Middle East to deny China hegemony over commerce. That would be for the greater good of the global economy.

America may not have announced that it is closing any bases in the Persian Gulf—for now it is our diplomatic and economic footprint that is visibly shrinking—but President Obama has declared that with mounting economic pressures at home America is considering a different sort of military footprint in the Middle East, one that will be designed not to wage new land wars, but primarily to carry out precision counterterrorism missions. The example of America’s precipitous withdrawals from Iraq and then Afghanistan looms large and could well extend to the Persian Gulf in years to come unless we have a global agenda associated with our military presence in the Middle East—as was the case in Europe and East Asia during the Cold War. The military presence should be tied to a growing diplomatic and economic engagement, the goals of which are treaties, alliances, and multilateral organizations. All this would promote regional stability and the inclusion of the Middle East in the international economic order.

This is not America’s current trajectory. China without America in the Middle East will have a free hand to impose its own economic system on the region, and when conflicts arise, to referee them from the exalted perch of the Middle Kingdom—as it is now doing between warring Sudan and South Sudan.

In this endeavor China would need allies and local enforcers. Those in America who argue that we should reduce our footprint in the Persian Gulf because we will no longer need its oil and gas should consider what could fill the vacuum: a greater role for Iran and Pakistan, backed by China. That should give us pause, given the illiberal nature of both countries and the state of our relations with them.

For a period in the 1970s, the Shah’s Iran did in fact serve as the gendarme of the Persian Gulf. Britain had pulled back from the “east of Suez,” and America, preoccupied with and then exhausted by its war in
Vietnam, was none too keen to step into the breach. The Shah offered to take responsibility for Persian Gulf security.

The deal was that Western powers would recognize Iran’s regional role if Tehran would recognize the sovereignty of Bahrain and other Persian Gulf emirates and use some of its newfound oil wealth to build up Iranian naval strength so it could contribute to the defense of American interests. Soon, Iranian ships were patrolling the Gulf, and when a communist-backed rebellion in the Dhofar region of Oman threatened the pro-Western monarch there, it was Iran that sent troops to wage a counterinsurgency campaign (which is the main reason why Oman remains to this day the most Iran-friendly of the Persian Gulf emirates). The Persian Gulf security arrangement worked until the Shah fell in 1979. But it had not all been smooth sailing. In 1974, Iran had occupied three strategic islands at the mouth of the Straits of Hormuz, claiming them as Iranian territory. Even today, the dispute continues to mar relations between Iran and the United Arab Emirates.

Pakistan too has played a security role in the Persian Gulf region. After extremists occupied the Grand Mosque in Mecca in 1979—posing the most serious threat to the Saudi monarchy since its creation—the kingdom turned to Pakistan for help. Pakistan sent divisions of troops to Saudi Arabia to serve as the monarchy’s praetorian guard. The Muslim and highly experienced Pakistani forces gave Saudi rulers peace of mind throughout the 1980s, and a good reason to deepen security ties with Pakistan—setting the stage for what many believe was Saudi investment in Pakistan’s nuclear program.

The Pakistan option is still Saudi Arabia’s trump card when its interests diverge from those of the United States. In March 2011, when the Arab Spring was in full swing and just after protests rocked Saudi Arabia and Oman and nearly toppled the pro-Saudi monarchy in Bahrain, Prince Bandar bin Sultan flew to Islamabad to ask for help. He wanted assurances from Pakistan that it would deploy troops in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia if and when protests grew out of hand (he knew the United States certainly would not). He was asking, in other words, for a return to the Saudi-Pakistani security arrangement of the 1980s.

The help ultimately arrived in Bahrain, the Gulf state where the regime had come closest to falling. With the Pakistan army’s blessing,
thousands of Pakistani veterans and experienced tribal fighters were recruited through newspaper ads to join the Bahraini security forces, which were desperate to beef up their capabilities ahead of surging unrest.

However, it is worth noting that managing Persian Gulf security with Iran and Pakistan for allies could prove a difficult undertaking for Beijing. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, Iran and Pakistan were the best of friends. At the time, the main strategic fault line in the region was between Iran and Pakistan on one side, and Afghanistan and India on the other. By the 1990s, however, Iran and Pakistan had grown apart. Pakistan saw Iran’s revolution as a menace—it was stoking sectarian tensions between Shias and Sunnis. Sectarian violence plunged Pakistan into sporadic chaos throughout the 1990s, as radical groups on both sides, backed by patrons in Iran and Saudi Arabia respectively, carried out bombings and assassinations in campaigns of violence that continue to this day.
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Iran and Saudi Arabia first crossed swords over regional power in Pakistan in the 1980s and 1990s. Saudi Arabia mobilized Pakistan’s radical Sunni groups to stand in the way of Iran-backed Shia politicians and militias seeking to influence politics next door.
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Saudi Arabia won that battle.