Beijing Fills the Mideast Vacuum China’s projection of power isn’t only a regional concern. It will eventually pose a threat to the U.S. By Robert D. Kaplan
https://www.wsj.com/articles/beijing-fills-the-mideast-vacuum-11611183756?mod=opinion_lead_pos7
The Biden administration’s Middle East policy will reportedly focus on rejoining the Iran nuclear deal and renewing Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. This could undermine key allies in Israel and Saudi Arabia while ignoring a core geopolitical challenge that few in Washington are addressing: growing Chinese influence in the Middle East.
Through its trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative, China has invested in a port near the Persian Gulf in Gwadar, Pakistan, and a military base by the entrance to the Red Sea at Djibouti. The Chinese also envision a military base at Port Sudan, further north on the Red Sea, and a naval facility at Jiwani, Pakistan, on the Iranian border. Then there are the new Israeli port facilities at Haifa and Ashdod, which the Chinese will likely be administering. Afghanistan could one day become a branch line for the Belt and Road corridor from western China through Pakistan to the Arabian Sea. China is the largest trading partner for both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. China is investing billions of dollars in Egypt and more billions as part of a strategic pact with Iran.
Unlike many in Washington, who separate regions in order of perceived importance, Chinese strategists think organically about geography. They recognize that in a smaller, more interconnected and confining world, regions and continents work together and flow into each other. Thus, the Chinese know that the road, railway and port system they are building across the Middle East will one day give them a strong hand in Europe and East Asia—not to mention East Africa.
Beijing doesn’t take sides. China is happy to work with Iran, Israel and Saudi Arabia. Rather than promote a liberal vision—or any vision—the Chinese are remorselessly mercantile and imperial in their approach. It’s all about money and transportation links: classical geography fitted to a postmodern world.
For centuries British foreign policy was aimed at preventing any one power from dominating continental Europe. Similarly, American foreign policy should now aim at preventing any one power from dominating Afro-Eurasia—what the great British geographer Halford Mackinder labeled the “World-Island.” By linking Europe with East Asia through the Middle East, China would eventually develop the ability to threaten North America economically and militarily. This is ultimately what Belt and Road is all about. The Biden administration must focus on stopping it.
If Washington has appeared unconcerned about China’s Middle East maneuvers, it is because of the way the region has been stigmatized in Beltway discourse. This is understandable. Over two decades the U.S. expended considerable blood and treasure in Iraq and Afghanistan with little to show for it. In fact, these so-called forever wars have been in the steady process of ending for several years. The Biden administration isn’t likely to reverse this trend. The only issue is how to complete the final withdrawals cleanly.
While there are plenty of tragedies in what has transpired in Iraq and Afghanistan, using them as an excuse to turn away from the Middle East altogether would invite yet another tragedy: a great-power imbalance of such magnitude that it could fatally weaken America’s position vis-à-vis Russia as well as China. Russia is upgrading its military bases in Syria and establishing a naval logistics center in Sudan on the Red Sea, the vital link between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean.
The U.S. has many clear interests in the Middle East. Among these are ensuring the security of Israel and other regional allies, thwarting Iran or any other Islamic autocracy from developing nuclear weapons, and protecting the maritime choke points for the sake of world trade and access to hydrocarbons. Pursuing and defending these interests will prevent China from dominating the Afro-Eurasian World-Island.
America’s political class was almost universally wrong about China’s desire to become a “responsible stakeholder” in global affairs. It is wrong again, as the Hudson Institute’s Michael Doran and Peter Rough observe, to believe that China’s intentions in the Middle East are benign and purely economic. In a January 2016 white paper, the Chinese Foreign Ministry promised to “deepen China-Arab military cooperation and exchange,” and “deepen cooperation on weapons, equipment and various specialized technologies.” To read the whole thing is to encounter the long-range ambition of a great power trying to influence all political, cultural, economic and technological facets of Arab state behavior, including the development of nuclear energy.
The anarchy in Libya and the heightened possibility of a naval conflict between Greece and Turkey are only the curtain raisers for an American retrenchment in the greater Middle East. The creeping shadow of China will be the feature presentation. The incoming Biden administration has signaled that it wants to concentrate on containing China and, in the process, de-emphasize the Middle East in favor of the Indo-Pacific and Europe. This gets strategic geography wrong.
The Biden team doesn’t seem to realize that the Indo-Pacific encompasses the maritime Middle East, and containing China requires a sturdy presence in the region. Presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt through George H.W. Bush managed a deep and abiding commitment to the Middle East without embarking on endless wars. The U.S. can do so again.
Mr. Kaplan holds the chair in geopolitics at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and is author of “The Good American: The Epic Life of Bob Gersony, the U.S. Government’s Greatest Humanitarian,” out this month.
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