As China-India competition continues unabated, Afghanistan is somewhat insulated from their more sensitive security concerns. Unlike in Iran and other countries, where the competitive aspects of the relationship are emphasised due to geopolitical reasons, Afghanistan allows the two Asian giants to compartmentalise touchy issues and cooperate on common interests such as counterterrorism.
When executives at the biggest U.S. technology companies are confronted with the argument that they have grown too powerful and should be broken up, they have a ready response: breaking up Big Tech would open the way for Chinese dominance and thereby undermine U.S. national security. In a new era of great-power competition, the argument goes, the United States cannot afford to undercut superstar companies such as Amazon, Facebook, and Alphabet (the parent company of Google).
Although the global coronavirus epidemic has only recently made international headlines, some in China have known about it since the beginning of December. Thanks to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s high-tech dictatorship, that information was not made public, and the virus was allowed to take off.
Unipolarity is over, and with it the illusion that other nations would simply take their assigned place in a U.S.-led international order. For the United States, that will require accepting the reality that there are spheres of influence in the world today—and that not all of them are American spheres.
The United States and China are locked in a rivalry over trade, technology, military control of the South and East China seas, and increasingly over ideology and human rights. The two countries have been in a cyberwar for years already, featuring Chinese attacks on the Pentagon’s personnel system and the U. S. Navy’s ship maintenance records. There is a military build-up on both sides in the direction of great power conflict. Yet, neither side sees it remotely in its self-interest to initiate a violent clash. In short, this is a cold war, but vastly different from the cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union.
South Korean carmakers are the first of China’s global customers to feel the direct impact. The nation’s largest carmaker Hyundai Motor suspended all production for a week because it ran out of a crucial wiring component after a worker at its supplier’s factory caught the coronavirus in China, forcing the entire plant to shut.
India today is not only on a path toward becoming an authoritarian, Hindu majoritarian state, but its economic engine is also sputtering, and its military will remain ill-equipped to balance China. Rather than serving as an ally or vital strategic partner, India may end up becoming a liability for the United States. As India chooses the path of diversification, or “multi-alignment,” in Asia, so too must the United States—especially in South Asia.
These days, many people in the Washington foreign policy establishment seem to agree that most of the world’s problems can be put down to either Beijing’s purported insistence on building a new, nefarious world order comprising “all under heaven,” or Moscow’s wily attempts to spread its tentacles everywhere from Madagascar to Libya and possibly even America. Thus, Russian “stooges” and Chinese “useful idiots” are lingering around every corner, so it seems.
The interim accord has not completely prevented a full-blown trade war between the world’s two largest economies. Nor does it address the rapid deterioration in Sino-US relations, amid their increasing divergence in geopolitics, strategic goals and ideologies.
Innovation is built upon an ecosystem that takes decades to mature. Yet, China has already made substantial advances in computer science, chemistry, engineering, and robotics, all of which pose a direct challenge to U.S. technological supremacy. However, the U.S. will remain dominant and largely unchallenged in biotech and medicine for the foreseeable future.
