Geopolitics too, like every other aspect of the physical world, responds to precise laws and axioms. Including that ofhorror of the story, already theorized in antiquity by Aristotle, according to which in Nature the void does not exist, as any possible gap is immediately replaced and filled with new material. Similarly, where indecision, stalemate or hesitation occurs, a more assertive decision-maker immediately takes over to occupy the vacated square, saturating it and at the same time trying to make proselytes.
The same dynamics can be found in the geopolitical settlement / repositioning of the Indo-Pacific countries, after the signing of the trilateral Aukus security pact between the USA, the United Kingdom and Australia, from an anti-Chinese perspective. The agreement, which ousted Paris from an epochal order for the supply of nuclear submarines to Camberra, effectively redesigns the strategy of containing Chinese appetites in the area. And it does it in a new way, with a created covenant to this and kept secret until the moment of formalization. And despite the fact that similar experiments already existed on site, or at least with the same purpose: to stop the advance of the Dragon.
The TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) was in fact a free trade agreement between 11 countries in the area, originally negotiated by the Obama presidency to make a common front against Beijing. Underestimated by Donald Trump, who had withdrawn the participation of the United States, the treaty has gradually become empty of meaning, orphan of the main (and most interested) originating nation. With the signing of Aukus and the proclamation of a different structure, which sees the prevailing model of the anglosphere in the strategy of control and deterrence towards Beijing, the TPP (in the meantime renamed CPATPP, Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership) could evolve in only two ways. Disappear or change.
However, since, as we have said, Nature shuns emptiness (and human nature, physiologically led to the defense and affirmation of power, shuns it to an even greater extent), here is filled the box left empty by the States with a protagonist at first unexpected glance … But actually quite logical. The China.
A brilliant move by Beijing, as reported last week by the Wall Street Journal: “until ten years ago there was a US-led trading club whose purpose was to limit the influence of the Chinese economic model. But now that Washington has called itself out of the TPP, Beijing wants it, and wants to be the majority shareholder“. With the obvious intent to seek allies in the area.
In short, damage accompanied by insult, because – observes Analyst Thomas L. Friedman in the New York Times, “Beijing’s request to join the TPP is the diplomatic equivalent for the US to become a member of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative in Asia“! A counter move that, in addition to promptness and reflex spirit (as well as reflection), also reveals a certain amount of sarcasm on the part of Xi Jimping.
How to react to the Dragon’s initiative? L’esprit originating from the TPP was to bind member countries – United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore, Mexico, Chile and Peru – on some common goals: from restrictions on foreign state-owned companies that want to flood the market with their products below cost, to the protection of intellectual property, from the affirmation of human rights against forced labor, slavery and child exploitation, to the fight against the food consumption of endangered wildlife (very common practice in China, pandemic of COVID-19 teaches). The recovery of these intentions could and should constitute the prerequisite for the birth of regional agreements, which do in situ from embankment and dam towards the ravenous claw of the Dragon, taking away from China the physical space on which to exert its virulent influence.
An already active model exists and is Quad, the multilateral agreement to which the United States, Australia, Japan and India adhere, and which President Joe Biden wanted to revitalize last Friday, organizing the first meeting in the presence of the four leaders at the White House. During which it was reiterated that the agreement, which has no military purposes, nevertheless reveals a broader horizon and a more ambitious goal than the simple Quadrilateral Dialogue for Security, also embracing the great themes of the fight against the pandemic, vaccines, environmental sustainability, up to the new front of global geopolitical competition: Space.
Biden had already anticipated it on March 12th, during a joint videoconference with Scott Morrison, Yoshihide Suga and Narendra Modi, respectively at the helm of Australia, Japan and India. The desire to build, in the Indo-Pacific, “a free, open, inclusive, healthy region, anchored in democratic values and not bound by coercion”.
Purpose that unites all the signatory countries, albeit with different sensitivities. According to Martijn Rasser, an expert in Technology and National Security at the “Center for a New American Security” in Washington, the US has supported the summit “to emphasize the need for a comprehensive technology cooperation strategy […] that increases the competitiveness and security of each nation, […] drawing the contours of a new model of techno-democratic government”, As opposed to the techno-authoritarian one of Beijing.
Therefore an agreement different from the military partnership represented by Aukus, but with a deeper meaning than that of a simple diplomatic institution, which for Tokyo serves a fundamental purpose of deterrence. “The reason why Japan joined Quad “, says Mitoji Yabunaka, former Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, “Is China’s highly aggressive policy, which no one can deny”.
With the caveat that the priority lines of action, at least for the first period, will be those that are absolutely shared (distribution of vaccines, quality of infrastructures, protection of critical and emerging technologies, as well as of the supply chain). Hayley Channer, former Australian Defense Officer, argues, so the countless lines of action reveal how it has not yet been decided on which objectives to aim and really focus: “Agenda [di Quad] seems to be mostly dictated by the USA – which strongly encourages the inclusion of the fight against climate change – and by the bureaucratic capacities of individual countries, rather than by high-level and impactful political decisions”.
Nonetheless, the potential is unanimously recognized as remarkable. India, an emerging power and the second most populous country in the world after China, undoubtedly assumes a particular role and significance, especially after the botched withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan, which has cemented the liaison between Beijing and Pakistan, New Delhi’s historic rival. According to Harsh Vardhan Shringla, at the top of Indian Diplomacy, “the coalition represented by Quad will give rise to a positive and constructive agenda“, Especially as regards the technological dimension and the supply of essential raw materials for computers (do not forget in fact how 70% of rare earths are extracted in China, and as always in China 85% of processing and of the final manufacture of minerals).
The one with India is truly a strategic and priority alliance, which the United States knows it must strengthen by all means. Hence the words of Joe Biden on the sidelines of the summit on September 24, for which relations between the US and the Indian giant “they can help solve a large number of the world’s most pressing problems”, Anchoring the partners to the defense of democratic values, diversity, non-violence and tolerance. This is echoed in the words of the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken who, during his visit to New Delhi on 28 July, had already underlined the importance for the States of the rule of law and respect for fundamental freedoms.
That said, and considering the extension of the Quad to other partners (South Korea, Vietnam and New Zealand, united in the “Quad Plus”), in the face of this remodeling of the global geopolitical scenario unfortunately remains a guest of stone: Europe.
Where are you going to Europe? It is really the case to say it, and to ask oneself, because the choice that the Old Continent will be obliged to make will concern two antithetical models. The establishment of regional alliances and agreements in the Indo-Pacific, which concretely curb the advance of Beijing, or sterile glances to China, such as the infamous Comprehensive Agreement on Investment of last December (whose repercussions were euphemistically deleterious) and the deafening silence regarding the Chinese boycotts suffered by Camberra, guilty of having asked for an investigation into the genesis of Covid.
It could be observed that much will depend on the outcome of the elections in Germany: an observation that is only partially admissible, as it is likely that the next Bundeskanzlerin will also imagine a German Europe, and not, unfortunately, a European Germany.
Meanwhile, India is also trying to heal the cracks in the western block, which opened after the signing of Aukus and the ouster of France from the order for Australian submarines. For New Delhi, Paris is a permanent and indispensable power in the Indo-Pacific, a hot area where skirmishes and friendly fire only benefit China.
Will Europe be able to occupy its spaces? Or will the many silences, and the many voids left to the opponent, inevitably end up favoring the Dragon again? An increasingly ravenous Dragon, of which we must not become the meal.