Over the last decade, we have transitioned from a bi-polar world order to one that is increasingly multi-polar, with China competing to be recognized as a global leader. China competes with the US “across all dimensions of power”, but thrives particularly in the economic dimension, using its economic influence to bully its neighbors and monopolize the abundance of natural resources needed for renewable and other technologies. In another part of the world, the US is trying to renegotiate its relationship with Iran while also recalibrating its strategy in the Middle East. Developing a comprehensive strategy for countering China and for stabilizing the Middle East while advancing mutual goals with traditional allies are indicative examples of major foreign policy challenges the US faces today. 

Stability in the Middle East Requires More Than a Deal With Iran

Sanam Vakil, Foreign Affairs

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One of the major foreign policy challenges facing the Biden administration is the country’s complex and tense relationship with Iran. President Joe Biden has publicly affirmed his desire to return to the 2015 nuclear deal. Iran has also demonstrated a willingness to return to its commitments under the deal but only if the US lifts sanctions. Beyond the difficulty of getting Iran to come back to the negotiating table without giving up too much leverage, the 2015 nuclear agreement has many vulnerabilities that need to be addressed to protect it against future political reversals. Furthermore, the US needs to develop a comprehensive and coherent Middle East policy overall if it wants to keep Iran in check. 

Chatham House researchers, including the author of this article, interviewed 210 current and former policymakers and experts from 15 different countries, including countries who are signatories to the nuclear deal and those that are involved in active Middle East crises. The majority of respondents did not believe that regional issues could be addressed in a single direct dialogue with Iran and felt that isolating Iran was counterproductive. About 45% of the interviewees favored a return to the 2015 nuclear deal as a first step towards stabilizing the region but stressed that the US should reenter the deal with a clear plan of action to address the deal’s deficiencies. More than 50% said a first step should be bringing together all of the parties involved in the war in Yemen, followed by supporting dialogue between Gulf states and creating region-wide confidence-building measures. While the interviewees emphasized regional solutions, many also stressed that the US should continue to play a role in stabilizing the Middle East.

Will Renewable Energy Change the Power Balance in Geopolitics? Q&A

Leslie Hook and Henry Sanderson, Financial Times

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In this article, Financial Times’ clean energy and metals correspondents took a look at a variety of questions surrounding the clean energy transition. One major question revolves around natural resources as companies look to acquire the basic materials necessary for clean energy technologies.  Bringing Chinese corporations on board with sustainable sourcing is one of the primary needs of the initiative, as most metals needed for lithium-ion batteries are processed in China. On the other hand, clean energy is not reliant on any one raw material in the same way traditional energy depends on crude oil, which will weaken the monopoly power of most producers.  As more and more companies transition to clean energy, there will be a corresponding drop in demand for traditional energy, but given the slow speed of transition, countries with low production costs are unlikely to stop production in the near future as oil will still be profitable.  Indeed, some traditional energy companies are diversifying their portfolios through mergers and acquisitions, but the high valuations of many renewables companies have not made this practice widespread.

In No Region is China’s Influence Felt More Strongly than in South-East Asia

The Economist

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Against the heavy hand of the Chinese authoritarian presence in southeast Asia, citizens of Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, India, Myanmar, and others in the region formed a loose coalition.  The so-called “Milk Tea Alliance” (a lighthearted moniker highlighting a difference in tea preferences between China and other southeastern Asian cultures) is far from cohesive, but the temperature of the underlying conflict is already hot and still rising. One of the primary disputes relates to the status of ethnic Chinese immigrants, who form the largest minority group in most of the region. While Chinese business brings investment to the ASEAN region, it comes with strings attached.  Enterprising Chinese migrants are the forerunners of China’s economic presence, and it is often hard to tell where business efforts cross the line from individual to state initiative; indeed, the distinction may be entirely moot from China’s perspective. Even those ethnic Chinese whose ancestors left the mainland years ago and who have integrated into foreign societies have been claimed by Chinese leadership as part of the “revival of the Chinese nation,” saying they have an “obligation to the ancestral nation.” Corruptive paranoia has suffused the national climates of Southeast Asian social life. All this comes as China looks to capitalize on “vaccine diplomacy,” as the promised supplier of much of the region’s vaccine supply. Concerns about the safety and efficacy of Chinese vaccine candidates remain strong, and should their offering fall short, the loss of face will be difficult to recover, especially among the ethnic Chinese diaspora. As China continues its game of soft power politics in southeast Asia, many of its neighbors are cautious to engage for fear of angering the dragon.

The end of Cold War thinking

Ishaan Tharoor, The Washington Post 

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In February of 1946, US diplomat George Kennan wrote an 8,000-word telegram, later named the “Long Telegram”, which would become the basis of US strategy towards the Soviet Union during the Cold War, also known as containment. Over the decades, policymakers have studied the telegram to extract lessons they could use for current policy issues. Most recently, the Atlantic Council published what it called the “Longer Telegram” by an anonymous former senior official which called for a comprehensive strategy to counter China. The report explains that the US’ strategy should be to “dominate the regional and global balance of power across all the major indices of power” and replace Xi Jinping with more moderate leadership. Unsurprisingly, the report received criticism from both Chinese officials who called it a “malicious attack” and American experts who said the report overstated the ideological threat that China poses to the global order. Scholars caution against using the same Cold War logic used to counter Russia, however, the author of the “Longer Telegram” does point out a critical difference between then and now: “When George Kennan wrote the ‘long telegram’ … with his analysis focused on what would ultimately cause the Soviet Union to fail, he assumed that the U.S. economic model would continue to succeed of its own accord…The task at hand goes beyond attending to China’s internal vulnerabilities, extending to U.S. ones as well. Without doing both, the United States will fail.” The world is no longer bipolar like it was in much of the 20th century and China is a competitor that competes “across all dimensions of power”, unlike the Soviet Union. Furthermore, the US has its own weaknesses that need to be addressed. Strategic competition with China will play a critical role during Biden’s presidency, but global crises like the pandemic and climate change present an opportunity for strategic collaboration. As professor Daniel Nexon from Georgetown University put it, “All of these problems call for cooperative solutions, not unnecessarily deepening rivalries.”