By M D Nalapat
Trump’s aim is to reverse Xi’s drive to overtake the US in technological innovation.
“America First, and Donald J. Trump first
in America”, at least for the next six years. This is the evolving
Trump Doctrine in a single sentence. No other US President during the
post-1945 period has sought to so ignore the recommendations of the
Washington DC bureaucracy as the nation’s 45th President has, although
as yet the Beltway has prevented his plan of distancing Moscow from
Beijing, thereby leaving the world’s second most powerful economy
without the support of what remains a potential Great Power, albeit
severely diminished since the Brezhnev-Gorbachev-Yeltsin years. However,
he is trying to break free on North Korea in a manner not yet emulated
by National Security Advisor John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike
Pompeo, both of whom remain anchored to the establishment view that
North Korea must render itself defenceless before any sanctions against
it can be relaxed. As the practical New York businessman who is now
Commander-in-Chief knows, such a policy would only snuff out any hopes
that the DPRK would desist from going any further in accumulating deadly
weapons, technologies and operations than is already the case. It is
illustrative of why US policy in the 21st century has substantially
destroyed the very countries it intervened to rescue (such as
Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and Iraq) that the Washington Beltway sees it
as “extreme and illogical” that Kim Jong Un would not agree to surrender
his most potent defences against a US attack in the absence of a formal
end of the 1950-53 Korean war. The present occupant of the Blue House
in Seoul, Moon Jae-In, does not suffer from such delusions, and seems
increasingly in a mood to ensure that conditions get created that would
end in at the least a mutual non-aggression pact between Pyongyang and
Seoul. The thought of Koreans killing Koreans, as happened during the
blood-soaked conflict 68 years ago, has entered the Korean psyche with
such force that public opinion in South Korea would be thrown into
violent protest and turmoil against the elected authority, were Moon to
agree to join hands with Trump and Abe in a pre-emptive war on the DPRK.
In any such war, the North would be almost completely obliterated,
while the South would be damaged to an extent that would reduce it to
something close to the pitiable condition that Syria is in today, after a
“War of Liberation” was accelerated in 2012 against Bashar Assad by
NATO and the GCC. And while Japan would suffer significant damage, the
US is likely to escape relatively unscathed, barring perhaps Guam. It
will take some more time for North Korean scientists to fashion bombs
and projectiles sufficient to reach the US West Coast, and each time any
policymaker in Washington demands full disarmament without any
corresponding concession or even gesture on the US side, those North
Korean scientists and technicians must be working at an even more
feverish pace than usual. The North Korean regime has to feel confident
that Kim will not meet the fate of Saddam Hussein or Muammar Gaddafi,
and thus far both the words as well as the body language of the Pompeos
and the Boltons (not to mention the “Attack North Korea” crowd in the US
Congress) emanate no such assurance. It is only Trump who, on occasion,
talks in a manner that could get results, but the North Koreans are as
avid readers of the Washington Post
and as eager viewers of CNN as the writers and anchors in these media
outlets, hence, Kim Jong Un cannot be faulted for believing that Donald
Trump may soon get deposed, so that all the promises and progress made
through engagement with him would be lost.
In contrast to his policy towards both
North Korea as well as Russia, which are still “work in progress” as a
consequence of bureaucratic recalcitrance, President Trump seems to have
secured sufficient support within the Beltway to ensure that he
implement the first stage of his policy towards China, the aim of which
is to ensure (through lower growth and stunted technologies) that
Beijing remain well behind the US during the present century. In other
words, Trump’s aim is to reverse Xi’s drive to overtake the US in
technological innovation by 2035 and by 2049 make China the world’s
leader in the manufacture of hyper-tech items now dominated by the US.
The ten sectors specified by the Chinese leadership include aerospace,
robotics and Information Technology. As Hiroyuki Akita has pointed out,
Beijing is within reach of Xi’s tech targets. Recently, China—albeit
briefly—even had a faster supercomputer speed than the US, while the PRC
is second only to the US in the number of companies active in
Artificial Intelligence and in the use of supercomputers. As for
international patent applications, China is second only to the US and on
track to catch up with the US within three years. Although Trump has
talked about the mammoth trade deficit with China, it is not that figure
which is creating anxiety within America Firsters, but the fact that
tech breakthroughs such as the 5G technology rolled out by Huawei may be
30% cheaper than that of its nearest US competitor, giving the company a
global edge sought to be blunted by recourse to “national security”
prohibitions. The only credible way those seeking (naturally for reasons
of “national security”) to prevent a Huawei 5G rollout in India will
succeed is if they offer 5G alternatives that are cheaper and better.
That seems much too big an ask at present. Given the slow pace at which
India’s governance system operates, expecting the Modi-Abe Alternative
Intelligence and Advanced Technology Tokyo partnership to challenge
Chinese competitors seems a faraway goal. Given Trump’s “Can Do, Must
Do” mindset, there is unlikely to be an end to severe US-China frictions
until either the US succeeds in preventing Beijing from displacing
Washington as the “Tiger on the global mountain of economy and
technology”, or President Xi is able to beat back US attacks and succeed
in his objective of ensuring Chinese leadership in cutting edge
technologies within a fistful of years. Given that Trump is capable of
using any means at hand, including possibly attempting to inflict a
short but humiliating military defeat on China in air or sea in the
Korea, Taiwan or South China Sea theatre so as to humiliate Xi, expect
“interesting times” in the Sino-US dynamic. When America First meets
China First, only one will prevail.
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