Editorial | Foreign policy in the new Cold War

While some might conceive it as a fight of elephants to be merely observed from the periphery, two recent global events demand that Jamaica not only pay attention, but urgently engage in the strategic analyses of, and responses to, the developments. Indeed, our Government must act now so as not to find itself scrambling for coherent policy responses down the road, and repeating some of the errors that dogged Foreign Minister Kamina Johnson Smith’s challenge to be secretary general of the Commonwealth.

The first of the matters we refer to is the summit, near the end of June, of NATO, the western military alliance, held in Spain. There was the expected condemnation of Russia’s “war of aggression” against Ukraine, NATO’s commitment of support for Kyiv, and a rearticulation of Russia’s position as the alliance’s primary foe.

“The Russian Federation is the most significant and direct threat to Allies’ security and to peace and stability in the Euro-Atlantic area,” the leaders said in the summit communiqué.

Indeed, an indication of how the Russia-Ukraine conflict has spooked neighbouring countries and reinvigorated the alliance, Sweden, and Russia’s next-door neighbour, Finland, jettisoned their historic neutrality and applied for NATO membership. Additionally, the group endorsed a new strategic concept “in line with our 360-degree approach, across the land, air, maritime, cyber, and space domains, and against all threats and challenges”. A corollary of this was the alliance’s agreement to scale up its European defence by deploying “additional robust, in-place, combat-ready forces on our eastern flank” from battle groups to “brigade-size units where and when required, underpinned by credible rapidly available reinforcements, prepositioned equipment, and enhanced command and control”. In other words, NATO will always be ready for war in Europe.

In keeping with the alliance’s new strategic objectives and the rhetoric of the summit, most leaders left the meeting pledging to beef up defence budgets, to bring them closer to the agreed two per cent of gross domestic product.

MILITARY RIVAL

These, however, were not the sum of NATO’s critical declarations. The alliance, for the first time, formally declared China – with which NATO’s preeminent member, the United States, has been sparring over the South China Sea and the future of Taiwan, which Beijing considers a renegade province – as a strategic and potential military rival.

Said the conference communiqué: “We are confronted by cyberspace and hybrid and other asymmetric threats, and by the malicious use of emerging and disruptive technologies. We face systemic competition from those, including the People’s Republic of China, who challenge our interests, security and values, and seek to undermine the rules-based international order.”

The naming of China, the world’s second-largest economy, and a rapidly emerging global power, underlined the widening and deepening cleavage between the world’s biggest powers. But it is not only on the military front that the West is preparing to confront China.

Days after the NATO summit, the leaders of the world’s seven largest, or most influential, economies (G7) met for their annual summit in Germany. They announced a US$600-billion infrastructure spending package for emerging economies over five years. The initiative is a direct response to China’s multitrillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), launched in 2013, for investment in infrastructure in most regions of the world.

Jamaica is among the beneficiaries of the flow of Chinese capital. Beijing has loaned Jamaica hundreds of millions of dollars for infrastructure projects, and its firms have invested hundreds of millions more in the island’s sugar industry, ports and toll roads.

The West has criticised the BRI as driving developing countries into debt traps, which allow Beijing to seize assets when the beneficiaries cannot pay. So, according to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, the G7 project would “show our partners in the developing world that they have a choice”.

The tension between China and the West, and in particular the US, preceded the war in Ukraine, and Beijing’s disinclination to join in the condemnation of, and sanctions against, Russia. The Americans have long claimed that China’s emergence benefited significantly from Beijing failing to play by global trade rules, including stealing business secrets and subsidising exports.

Indeed, the administration of the former president, Donald Trump, launched a trade war against China; and his successor, Joe Biden, has, in many respects, gone further. His criticisms of the Chinese have been sharper and he has even suggested that the US would defend Taiwan if it were invaded by Beijing, in effect erasing Washington’s historic opacity on the question under the One China policy.

In effect, there is the simmering of a new Cold War, which Mr Biden has framed as a contest between democracies and countries and leaders with authoritarian impulses. China sees the development as an effort to contain its rise, while Russia perceives the re-emergence of historic attempts to keep it in its place. The war Moscow launched on Ukraine was premised, in part, as pushing back against a NATO move closer to its borders.

Jamaica and its Caribbean neighbours should be prepared to respond to these emerging challenges and resist being shoved into either of the two developing blocs – and possibly a third, depending on how Russia emerges from its Ukraine war. Indeed, this newspaper believes that the times call for a rescripted and updated non-alignment, which is not the same as a foreign policy based in transactional relations or pettifogging attempts to play one power off against the others. Rather, it is a foreign policy based on principled, clear, internationally consistent and defensible goals.

In this regard, we reiterate our suggestion for the establishment of a taskforce – similar to the Bruce Golding Commission that Prime Minister Andrew Holness assigned in 2016 to review Jamaica’s membership of the Caribbean Community – to look at Jamaica’s current conduct of its foreign policy and make recommendations for the future. This commission should include retired but skilled and respected former policy hands, experts in international relations in academia, Jamaicans who work in global organisations and other stakeholders directly impacted by the conduct of foreign policy.