The challengeThe Biden administration has been trying to diplomatically
reengage with China, although so far with little
response from Beijing.
اضافة اعلان
Any broad reengagement would necessarily include
reengagement in the Middle East and North Africa.
Both sides have a long list of common interests in the
Middle East; the areas where their interests diverge relate mainly to
suspicions of the other side’s long-term strategy and global ambitions.
How can Washington and Beijing build on common interests in
the region while addressing their long-term concerns, reducing some of them and
accommodating robust competition or even sharp adversarial attitudes in other
areas?
The commons
In any listing of US interests in the Middle East, the
following would be highlighted: maintaining the free flow of energy and trade
through critical regional waterways, including the Persian Gulf and the Red
Sea; countering terrorism and pre-empting risks from armed extremist groups;
preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction, especially nuclear
proliferation; de-escalating and ending civil wars in order to shrink the ungoverned
space exploited by terrorist groups and to stem the flow of refugees; and
favoring regional stability and de-escalating inter-state conflict that could
drag the US into another Middle Eastern war.
In the longer term, the region is an important player both
in a successful global energy transition and in reinforcing global climate
action.
Interestingly, on the list of Chinese interests are many
that overlap with those of the US: maintaining the free flow of energy and
trade (from which China benefits tremendously); countering terrorism and
Islamic extremist groups (which China identifies as a national security threat
in its western-most province); countering the spread of weapons of mass
destruction, especially nuclear weapons (China was a key signatory to the 2015
Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, and wants to keep the nuclear
club, of which it is a member, small); ending civil wars and rebuilding broken
states (China lost much in the outbreak of civil war in Libya and has attempted
to play a mediation role in many of the region’s internal conflicts); and
favoring regional stability and de-escalating inter-state conflict (as the US
brokered the Abraham Accords in 2020, China brokered the Saudi-Iranian
normalization agreement in March of this year).
While America’s main fear is being dragged into another war, China’s is that any inter-state regional war would skyrocket energy prices and disrupt energy and trade routes. China, like the US, also has a longer-term interest in a stable energy transition and a successful global climate change effort.
While America’s main fear is being dragged into another war,
China’s is that any inter-state regional war would skyrocket energy prices and
disrupt energy and trade routes. China, like the US, also has a longer-term
interest in a stable energy transition and a successful global climate change
effort.
The differencesOf course, the US and China have conflicting interests or
values as well.
Ideologically, China presents an authoritarian and command
model of governance, while the US presents and (occasionally) promotes
democracy and human rights.
However, these elements have not been a central pillar of
either side’s actual foreign policy. China does not impose its model of
governance (although some of its surveillance technologies enable it in the
region) and deals equally with dictatorships and democracies and all shades in
between; and American interests have dictated partnerships with multiple
authoritarian and repressive governments as well as continuing support to
Israel despite the latter’s colonization of occupied Palestinian territory and
other violations of international law.
China and the US have been on opposing sides of the war in
Syria and have taken different approaches to Iran.
Notwithstanding their converging interests in the present,
the US and China are crossing swords about the future.
They are shadow boxing based on their interpretations of
each other’s long-term intentions. While the US has a dominant strategic
position in the MENA region today, it is concerned that Chinese commercial
ports, industrial parks, and other forms of economic engagement could provide
dual-use opportunities and political leverage that could accumulate over time
to challenge America’s strategic dominance; and it is also concerned that
China’s currently modest arms sale to the region could, over time, rise to
threatening proportions. China has made no secret of pushing back on the
US-dominated global order; President Xi Jinping has crisscrossed the region
challenging America’s erstwhile unipolar position; and Chinese strategists are
clear that their economic projects and companies could and should serve as an
enabler for China’s overseas hard power projection over time, if and when that
might be needed.
In China, it is no secret that Beijing currently benefits
from the US military presence in the Middle East, which ensures the free flow
of Chinese energy supplies and exports out of and into the region. And China
has not made any major moves to challenge America’s current strategic
burden-shouldering there. But there are voices in Beijing warning that if China
and the US are destined for conflict in the coming decades, then China cannot
leave the waterways on which it relies for hydrocarbon supplies and trade under
the control of a potentially hostile US military.
Under mutual worst-case scenario thinking, both countries
risk drifting into exaggeratedly hostile relations today that not only overlook
and fail to build on their shared interests but also become part of a self-fulfilling
prophecy that confirms negative biases and increases large-scale risk in the
Middle East and globally.
US principles
What would a more careful and considered US policy toward
China in the Middle East look like?
In a recent address at the Washington Institute for Near
East Policy, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan outlined five
principles for overall US policy in the Middle East: partnerships,
deterrence, diplomacy and de-escalation, integration, and values; in three out
of these five principles, the US and China have room to engage.
Diplomacy and de-escalation
The Biden administration has been serious about leading with
diplomacy, both globally and in the Middle East region; and indeed, it has been
trying to re-engage China diplomatically with limited success in the last few
weeks.
There are voices in Beijing also calling for a resumption of
diplomacy to ease the heightened tensions. It is elementary that the US
and China should also lead with diplomacy in trying to manage their common and
conflicting interests in the MENA region to boost the former and limit the risk
of conflict over the latter.
In terms of de-escalation, there is much the US and China
could coordinate on.
China has been effective in de-escalating the Saudi-Iranian
conflict, while the US has been effective in finding breakthroughs between
Israel and Arab states.
China can similarly be useful in helping to find both
political settlements and reconstruction plans for conflict-ridden countries
like Yemen, Sudan, and Libya and possibly, eventually, even Syria.
Integration
Sullivan emphasized that regional integration is essential
to “advancing regional peace and prosperity.”
In terms of encouraging regional integration, China is
already playing a large-scale role. Integration will require building up
regional trade, transportation, and energy networks and connectivity.
China can similarly be useful in helping to find both political settlements and reconstruction plans for conflict-ridden countries like Yemen, Sudan, and Libya and possibly, eventually, even Syria.
The challenge for both sides is how to encourage investment
in integration from both sides without simultaneously escalating strategic
concerns and tensions over these same investments.
Partnerships
Even in terms of the first principle of partnerships, among
the examples that Sullivan highlighted is the I2U2 initiative that engages
India and the US — alongside Israel and the United Arab Emirates — in
addressing regional challenges related to water, energy, transportation, space,
health, and food security.
Although it is hard to imagine in today’s heated political
climate both in Washington and Beijing, there are several issue areas where the
US and China could beneficially cooperate in the region.
The first is on the Iran file: China was a key member of the
P5+1 that brought about the JCPOA, and will have to be a key player in whatever
scenarios unfold in dealing with the Iranian nuclear file in the years ahead.
Second, China competes with the US-based International
Monetary Fund and World Bank as the biggest lender in the MENA region.
As middle- and low-income countries in the region struggle
under the multiple blows of Covid-19, high food and energy prices, high
interest rates, and high inflation, some have economically collapsed, like
Lebanon, and others are dangerously strained, like Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, and
Morocco.
The US and China have an interest in coordinating
international lending to shore up dangerously strained economies and avoid
further state collapses.
Thirdly, there can be no meaningful global climate action
without better US-Chinese cooperation; indeed, a few decades from now, with the
world potentially in the cataclysmic throes of profound climatic upheaval on a
global scale, we might look back at the nationalist and geopolitical conflicts
of the 2020s as we now look back uncomprehendingly at medieval conflicts.
The 2023 UN Climate Change Conference (28th Conference of
the Parties, COP28) is convening this fall in the UAE. It behooves the US and
China to work together to make this COP — already several COPs too late in
terms of urgent climate goals — a global success.
Our multipolar allies
The main powers in the region, many of them America’s
long-term partners, recognize the need for a more cooperative and less
conflictual and risky direction in US-China relations.
While US partners in the region want to maintain their
strategic and multi-layered partnership with the US, they are also clear that
China is their main trading partner, both in terms of energy exports and a wide
array of infrastructure, consumer, and other products.
While they agreed with the U.S. in previous epochs that the
Soviet Union or Iran or al-Qaeda were common strategic enemies, none of
America’s partners today agree that China — or for that matter, Russia — is their enemy
as well. They understand that Russia poses a threat to the US and its European
allies in Europe and that China poses a threat to Taiwan and America’s allies
in Asia, but they do not see China or Russia posing a threat to them or
their societies in the Middle East.
How the US manages this new divergence of perspective with
its partners in the region, who want to remain America’s partners, and indeed
want to expand and deepen that partnership, is a clear challenge for American
policymakers. In order to sustain and strengthen these partnerships, the US
should unpack its “strategic competition” strategy and make clear to
partners what cooperation with China is fine with the US or even encouraged,
what is concerning and why, and what are clear red lines from the US
perspective.
The US can also engage its partners not only to help shape
their own engagement with China but also to influence the outlines of China’s
presence and activities in the region.
Engage and guard
Of course, the US and China will continue to have valid
security concerns as they eye their long-term global competition.
The US would understandably continue to de-risk with its
security partners in the region by flagging particularly worrisome
security-related issues, like the use of Chinese 5G or 6G technology and
dual-use maritime bases.
China will also continue to review its interests in the
region and guard against threats. But this wariness should not define the whole
relationship.
Even in the security realm, the US often complains about the
lack of burden sharing; in a process of constructive engagement, there are
surely areas of common security concern — piracy was recently one of them —
where security cooperation and burden sharing is low-risk, high-reward.
Shape the future
There will be nothing simple or unidimensional about the
global — and regional — competition between the US and China over the next few
decades.
However, policy on both sides should not be defined by our
worst-case scenarios. As Sullivan mentioned in his address, “We are in the
early years of a decisive decade — unseen perhaps since the end of the Second
World War — where the terms of competition with great powers will be set and
the window to deal with shared challenges will narrow dramatically even as the
intensity of those challenges grows.” In other words, what we do now is going
to shape the rest of the 21st century.
Let us not go quietly into that good night; the US and China
are not inevitably destined for worldwide cold or hot war.
Much will depend on choices made by leaders on both sides.
Part of the policy of guarding against worst-case scenarios is to try, as much
as possible — through constructive engagement — to bring about more positive
outcomes, while still guarding against major risks. Our better future is one in
which both global powers are still in competition, yes, but in a peaceful
manner, while engaged in areas of cooperation and common effort as well.
Paul Salem is president and CEO of the Middle East
Institute. He focuses on issues of political change, transition, and conflict
as well as the regional and international relations of the Middle East.
This article was previously published on the Middle East
Institute website
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