G7’s ‘contain China’ policy and its impact on Pakistan

Normally, G7 summits setting broad policy parameters have only a general relevance for Pakistan. This time at Carbis Bay however, when the G7 leaders met along with their special invitees to grapple with the China ‘threat,’ it was different. As they proceeded to announce the G7 policy response to counter Pakistan's special partner and ally China’s growing global influence, Pakistan knew it was a summit with a difference.

What has emerged from the G7 summit in the UK is interesting: to ‘contain’ long-risen China.

On the project, to counter China's gigantic 2013 global Belt and Road initiative, whose flagship project is the Pakistan-China multi-billion dollar CPEC project, the G7 concluded a comprehensive approach and blueprint for a new infrastructure investment initiative called Build Back Better World (B3W) partnership.

B3W was long in the making.  Building on the US’s 2011 New Silk Road initiative, this $46 billion proposed initiative is packed up with good values, good environment, gender balancing etc. The US and G7 members would like the world to view it as a visionary, better life, better world project which factors in values-- human, environmental and political.

The oft-repeated critique of the China OBOR project was again repeated-- a lack of transparency in labour standards, poor environmental standards etc, which a USA administration official insisted at a White House briefing, had left many countries worse off.

Alternatively, the G7 initiative is presented as a higher quality alternative. By also factoring in climate digital technology, gender equity, health and health security, the G7 are claiming that their initiative is one that seeks a holistic better world transformation among its recipients. The UK projected it as a better and faster infrastructure investment for green economic growth in developing countries.

Framing it as more than just an infrastructure project, the Biden administration called it a “bold new global infrastructure initiative” built on “values driven high standards and transparent infrastructure partnership... by major democracies to help narrow the 40 plus trillion infrastructure needs in the developing world.”

Significantly, this US-led containment of the China initiative harkens back to not only the famous George Kennan’s ‘Mr X’ 1947 Foreign Affairs magazine containment of the Soviet Union article, but even earlier to Woodrow Wilson’s 1917 containment initiatives. Then, the US saw the Soviet Union posing a global ideological threat and now its only surviving communist power, China.

Biden’s new ways of containing China are reminiscent of President Woodrow Wilson’s post WWI policy. As the Bolshevik revolution swept through Russia preaching the rule of the proletariat, the US’s ideological response came with the slogan of national self-determination. Wilson, America’s liberal President, also pushed the formation of the League of Nations as a global response to the Bolshevik revolution with the potential to spread influence beyond its own borders.

Given Pakistan’s elaborate relationship with China, Islamabad has largely ignored Washington’s urgings.

Nasim Zehra

Interestingly, Wilson created the League of Nations after World War I, but the liberal American president supported Zionism at the cost of Palestinian rights. His Secretary of State Robert Lansing had concluded that self determination was a phrase “simply loaded with dynamite.” In his secret memo of December 1918, Lansing wrote: Will it not breed discontent, disorder and rebellion? Will not the Mohammadans of Syria and Palestine and possibly of Morroco and Tripoli rely on it? How can it be harmonised with Zionism, to which the president is practically committed?”

In the same way, when Biden and his team of G7 raised the issue of human rights in China as a reflection of their commitment to human rights globally, they chose to remain indifferent towards the plight of Kashmiris living in Indian-administered Kashmir.

Meanwhile, this G7 economic response comes alongside the US-led conventional security response to the China threat, QUAD to counter China’s military and political influence in the Indo-Pacific region. Last November, a major naval exercise comprising Australia, India, Japan and the US navies with warships, submarines and aircraft in the Indian Ocean was held and Chinese scholars referred to it as the Asian NATO.

The key question hence is the impact, if any, this G7’s ‘contain China’ policy will have on Pakistan's policies and its relations with China and the US.

For long, Washington has being sceptical of Pakistan’s relations with China. Ranging from the leasing of Gwadar port to undertaking China financed CPEC projects, Washington has repeatedly called for sharing project costs, project loans and tendering procedures. Given Pakistan’s elaborate relationship with China, Islamabad has largely ignored Washington’s urgings.

Nevertheless, Pakistan has been a forthcoming recipient of funding from Washington’s New Silk Road funding for its regional connectivity projects including feasibility studies, project designs etc. Pakistan has carefully pursued, in keeping with its own national interest, mostly a win-win as opposed to a zero-sum foreign policy, with the guiding policy principle of deriving advantage where possible without compromising its core relations and interests.

For example, having turned down America’s request for military bases in Pakistan, Islamabad is willing to participate in maritime security to ensure safety of sea lanes.

Meanwhile, whatever the message from Carbis Bay, Pakistan will continue to pursue its win-win policy-- a policy that has held it in good stead. And it may likely even open up better and increased financial and commercial options for its regional connectivity project.

- Nasim Zehra is an author, analyst and national security expert. 

Twitter: @NasimZehra