By M D Nalapat
US’ Atlanticist establishment will not surrender without a fight.
Given
that three of the top four economic powers of the world (US, China,
Japan and India) are in Asia, it ought to have been a given that the
only non-Asian power in this list smell the coffee and re-calibrate its
policies to reflect geopolitical reality, rather than cling on to the
myth that the immediate post-1945 global order is still a valid
construct. Certainly the United Nations, which was born out of the
1939-45 war, continues the architecture of 1945, with India and Brazil,
for example, still being excluded from the permanent membership of the
UN Security Council, while the UK and France still retain their
membership, despite being overtaken in most metrics that count in global
influence by Japan and Germany. Given the lack of unanimity about
exactly which country should be given the privilege of joining with the
present five UNSC permanent members (P-5), it is unlikely that there
will be any change in its composition for quite some time, the exertions
of wannabe powers such as India, Japan, Brazil and Germany
notwithstanding. As has been pointed out by this columnist, India’s
chances would have been higher were it to have acted solo, rather than
along with the other three powers. Given that the four have presented
themselves as a package, it is difficult to see the US push for India
separately from its longer-term allies, Germany and Japan. As for Tokyo,
while there may be some situations in which China would accept India as
a non-veto wielding permanent member of the UNSC, there is zero chance
of Beijing agreeing to a similar boost for Japan. As for Brazil, despite
its size making it the most deserving candidate in South America for
membership in the UNSC, this is not a view shared by Argentina or Chile,
both of whom believe themselves to be at least as deserving as their
bigger neighbour. And it is unfair should Africa be entirely left out of
an expanded permanent membership of the UNSC, and in the continent,
South Africa is the lead candidate, although this will be disputed by
Nigeria.
The only way the permanent membership of the UNSC will get expanded
will be if the existing P-5 unanimously recommend a short table of names
to the General Assembly, which would then vote its preferences. Should
deft diplomacy get carried out with China, India would be among that
list, given that the other four members back its bid. However, should
Delhi insist on moving in tandem with Brazil, Japan and Germany, our
wait will be long. Each year that goes by without expansion of the
permanent membership of the UNSC lessens the credibility of that group
as representative of the international community. Of course, the P-5
largely meets NATO’s definition of the “international community”, given
that the organisation sees only its own membership as worthy of that
title. The United Nations and affiliates such as the World Bank and the
IMF cannot for long avoid the reforms that would make it as
representative of global realities as the three were in 1945, without
getting replaced by more representative organisations. The Atlantic era
is the past, while the Indo-Pacific age is the present. However, this
would mean the US replacing Europe with Asia as its global pivot. It
would also mean the switching of Moscow with Beijing as the main
challenge to US primacy, and in that case, it would not be Germany and
France that are the core US allies (apart from the UK, which seems
permanently linked to the US, irrespective of which continent’s century
it is), but Japan and India. During his months of campaigning, it was
clear that Donald Trump understood this new reality, and the need for
the US to focus on Asia, a continent with which it already had three
times the trade carried out with Europe. He was particularly clear about
the need to work together with Russia, rather than cast it in the role
of permanent foe. However, the Atlanticist establishment will not
surrender its predominance in the policy calculus of the US without a
fight, and for this, the weapon of choice has been the “Russia smear” on
Trump. The allegation that the New York businessman was prepared to
sell out his own country to Vladimir Putin in Moscow is laughable, but
unfortunately, has been taken seriously by both politicians and the
media. Rather than any assessment of the reliability of the charge
against President Trump, it seems clear that personal pique and hatred
of the man is still giving the “Russian agent” falsehood wings, despite
the fact that from Reince Priebus to James Mattis, from H.R. McMaster to
Nikki Haley, most of his high-level picks are wholly Atlanticist in
their thinking. However, the 45th President walked into the oft-repeated
chemical weapons trap of the Ankara-backed rebels, and believed that it
was Assad who was responsible for the Khan Sheikoun deaths. The
subsequent launching of cruise missiles at an Assad air base has shown
the falsity of the Russia smear against Trump. Atlanticists will now be
hoping that President Trump will forget his campaign promise to lead the
US out of an outdated policy matrix into a formulation better suited to
present-day realities. However, whether such an expectation gets
fulfilled or not will depend on the administrative picks of President
Trump. If these continue to be dominated by unapologetic Atlanticists,
expectations of the Indo-Pacific replacing the Altantic as the main US
sphere of interest will fade. However, and despite a Clinton-Bush belief
that Beijing will save the US from the North Korean missile and bomb
threat, facts on the ground are likely to ensure a set of policies that
accepts the realities of the 21st Indo-Pacific century. Even the
Atlanticists in his Cabinet are of a calibre such that they are likely,
within a few months, to make their policy peace with Indo-Pacific
reality, rather than Atlanticist romance. However, this is only if staff
selection at the assistant secretary, under-secretary and director
level places into position mostly those free of the intellectual chains
of a policy matrix grounded in the 1939-45 World War and its immediate
aftermath.
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