Beijing is using threats and aid to pressure other
governments to toe the line. Wherever did they get that from?
In a new official strategy of confrontation
against the People’s Republic of China, the Trump administration has announced
its intention “to compel Beijing to cease or reduce actions harmful to the
United States’ vital, national interests and those of our allies and partners.”
Explains the strategy paper:
Given Beijing’s increasing use of economic leverage to extract
political concessions from or exact retribution against other countries, the
United States judges that Beijing will attempt to convert [One Belt One Road]
projects into undue political influence and military access. Beijing uses a
combination of threat and inducement to pressure governments, elites,
corporations, think tanks, and others—often in an opaque manner—to toe the CCP
line and censor free expression. Beijing has restricted trade and tourism with
Australia, Canada, South Korea, Japan, Norway, the Philippines, and others, and
has detained Canadian citizens, in an effort to interfere in these countries’
internal political and judicial processes.
All true. But which government pioneered the use of economic
resources to reward and punish other nations? Hint: it was not China.
The U.S. has long used foreign aid as walking around money for the
secretary of state. Countries with American bases have always gotten more cash,
as have nations that have made peace with American allies, such as Egypt and
Jordan.
In contrast, governments that have crossed Washington have lost
money. In 1956, the Eisenhower administration punished Egypt’s Nasser
government by revoking its offer to finance the Aswan High Dam. In 1990,
Secretary of State James Baker told Yemen’s UN ambassador, “that was the most
expensive no vote you ever cast,” after he voted against the UN Security
Council resolution authorizing war against Iraq.
Washington has also used trade barriers to reward and punish other
states. The U.S. embargoed Cuba six decades ago, and has since applied
secondary sanctions that have hit other nations as well. The use of financial
sanctions has become Washington’s modus operandi.
Indeed, the Trump administration has dramatically escalated
economic warfare, applying “maximum pressure” to Iran, North Korea, and
Venezuela, hitting Cuba, Russia, and Syria with multiple new penalties,
threatening to sanction Europeans if they try to avoid Iranian restrictions,
and targeting Germany’s Nordstream 2 natural gas pipeline to Russia. The White
House treats sanctions as the default response to governments that resist
Washington’s dictates.
All of these measures were imposed “in an effort to interfere in
[other] countries’ internal political and judicial processes.” In fact, despite
Washington’s fervent objections to Russian election meddling in 2016, the U.S.
has intervened in more than 80 democratic elections in other nations, including
the 1986 presidential contest in Russia.
Yet although America remains number one, China’s economic clout is
significant, including with important countries such as South Korea. Indeed,
without any sense of irony, Matthew Ha of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies
recently expressed concern that China was thwarting U.S. pressure on
Seoul to follow Washington’s policies. For instance, Beijing “launched an
economic warfare campaign that cost South Korean companies operating in China at least $15.6
billion in losses” because the Republic of Korea deployed the THAAD missile
defense system.
Complained Ha: “To placate China, Seoul eventually agreed not to deploy further
THAAD systems, not to join a U.S.-led regional missile defense architecture,
and not to form a trilateral U.S.-Japan-ROK alliance.” Moreover, claimed Ha,
“due in part to concerns over Chinese retaliation, Seoul has not
completely divested its telecommunications
infrastructure from the Chinese company Huawei.” Further, “China’s hand is also
evident in Seoul’s aversion to the U.S.-and Japan-led ‘Free and Open
Indo-Pacific’ (FOIP) initiative,” instead favoring its own policy directed at
Southeast Asia.
If all this is due to a $15.6 billion hit, then Washington should
take lessons. The Trump administration has caused economic damage to many
countries, yet its wrecking-ball sanctions have so far failed in every
case: Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, Syria, and Venezuela all have
refused to give into U.S. demands.
The president has been reduced to begging Tehran to negotiate,
promising a better deal if it surrenders before November 3 to help his
reelection prospects. Iran and Venezuela ridiculed Washington’s threats to
interdict Tehran’s tankers. The communists still rule Cuba. Despite two
summits, North Korea’s Kim Jong-un is strengthening his country’s nuclear
deterrent. No one believes that Russia will give up Crimea.
No doubt, South Korea worries about China’s clout, since the
Chinese trade more with them than America and Japan combined. But Beijing is
also a good excuse to resist U.S. demands seen as unreasonable, especially
given that the current president is Moon Jae-in, a man of the left who has no
natural affinity for President Trump.
China sees THAAD as part of a U.S.-directed containment system.
And South Korea is not the only ally less than enthused by the administration’s
demand to displace Huawei. These issues are about more than money. China will
always be South Korea’s neighbor and has a long memory. The U.S.’s national
government effectively bankrupt and beset with manifold other challenges, is
not likely to stick around Korea forever.
The point is, contra Washington’s delusions, South Korean
officials do not believe that taking part in an anti-China campaign
serves South Korea’s interests. Ha writes: “Beijing’s sway over this key
U.S. ally is especially risky amid growing Chinese aggression and competition
with the United States. Most recently, Beijing pushed Seoul to bless China’s
new national security law designed to crack down on pro-democracy protesters in
Hong Kong. Seeking to avoid conflict, Seoul took a neutral position, thereby
undermining the protesters and revealing an alarming inability to support the
liberal democratic values that underpin the ROK-U.S. alliance.”
What evidence does Ha have that Seoul wanted to join the
complaint? Most of America’s European allies and Asian friends took similarly
cautious positions. Even Tokyo ostentatiously refused to join America’s
statement on Hong Kong, though the former now says it wants to take the lead
on the issue at the next G-7 meeting, to uncertain effect.
Moreover, the U.S. routinely sacrifices other people’s democratic
aspirations and human rights for policy ends. Without shame, the administration
is assisting the brutally totalitarian and aggressive Saudi dictatorship as it
slaughters Yemeni civilians and denies its own people political and religious
liberty. Washington stands by as the Egyptian and Bahraini dictatorships
brutally crush democracy activists and protesters.
Yet Ha demands action to push—or is that force?—South Korea onto
the battlefield against China. He writes: “If its China strategy is to succeed,
the Trump administration must counter Beijing’s attempts to undermine U.S.
alliances.” Which requires that Washington “assuage ROK concerns about Chinese
coercion by committing to proportionately punish China for any attempted
coercion and to provide South Korea with immediate economic support to cope
with Beijing’s retaliation.”
So Washington, the world’s chief proponent of economic warfare, is
going to sanction another country because it organizes a boycott, cuts
investment, or restricts trade to another country? And Washington, with a
skyrocketing national debt, is going to create a new dole for wealthy countries
like South Korea? Imagine the long line of claimants that will develop
demanding compensation for following America! But what if Washington’s friends
still balk at following U.S. dictates? Will America then sanction them, making
them pay for their perfidy?
This bizarre strategy is doomed to fail. Despite Washington’s
presumption that it speaks for the world, its allies often disagree. Seoul
currently disputes American policy toward North Korea. Unsurprisingly, South
Korean policymakers want to preserve peaceful, stable relations with both the
U.S. and China.
“If we antagonize China,” observed Moon Chung-in, an adviser to
South Korea’s president, “China can pose a military threat to us. Plus, China
can support North Korea. Then, we will really have a new Cold War on the Korean
Peninsula and in Northeast Asia.” Of course, some Americans don’t care about
the possibility of war “over there,” as Senator Lindsey Graham famously put it.
South Koreans understandably see it very differently.
When I ask South Korean diplomats whether they are prepared to
allow the U.S. military to use their bases against China in a war over Taiwan,
they blanch. There ain’t no way their country is going to be turned into a
battleground and made an enemy of the Chinese at Washington’s command.
Washington has enough problems dealing with China without creating
a new battleground with little practical benefit to America. The U.S. already
is running a trade war, seeking to force compensation for the COVID-19
outbreak, and threatening Chinese concerns with sanctions tied to Iran and
North Korea.
America will be sorely disappointed if it believes it can
convince—or compel with money and threats—its allies into following whatever
policies it promulgates. Joining an American campaign against China looks
suicidal to Seoul. Demanding that South Korea choose between Washington and
Beijing could wreck the alliance. Right now, hubris poses a bigger threat than
China to U.S. foreign policy.
Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato
Institute. A former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he is author
of several books, includingTripwire: Korea and U.S.
Foreign Policy in a Changed World and
is co-author of The Korean Conundrum: America’s Troubled
Relations with North and South Korea.