The tussle for global influence is about to intensify, as China, Russia, the US and its allies step up efforts to win over governments in a deepening competition for hearts and minds in strategic third countries.
The advent of a multipolar world comprising rival factions, most clearly seen in attitudes to Russia’s war on Ukraine, would be on show in a series of high-profile summits in the coming months, starting with the annual G7 meeting from today to Sunday in Hiroshima, Japan. There, G7 and EU leaders are preparing to roll out plans to court a select group of nations in what they are calling a global “battle of offers” with Beijing and Moscow, people familiar with the discussions and documents seen by Bloomberg News said.
The strategy involves enhanced work with so-called middle ground countries, such as Brazil, Vietnam, South Africa and Kazakhstan. High-level engagements, better coordination between existing infrastructure projects and bespoke action plans for each nation identified as a key partner are among the program’s objectives.
Illustration: Mountain People
The move is tantamount to recognition that China’s granular diplomacy and provision of infrastructure investment, together with Russia’s supply of weapons, nuclear-energy technology and fertilizers, is winning out over Western appeals. At the core of the reinvigorated G7 effort is somewhat of a tilt away from a primarily values-driven approach to one based on more tangible offerings in areas such as trade and security, the people said.
“It’s important that we give countries in our hemisphere and around the world options,” US Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Brian Nichols said.
Washington needs to offer countries “a clear perspective and vision on what they can do to have successful economies,” while making clear “that some of the promises that countries like China make, they’re not delivering,” he said.
However, G7 allies, all of whom have sanctioned Russia and broadly share their US colleague’s national security concerns over China, are far from the only offer in town. Even as US President Joe Biden sits down with his fellow G7 leaders in Hiroshima, Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is holding a China-Central Asia Summit from yesterday to today in the Chinese city of Xian.
In July, Russian President Vladimir Putin is to host African leaders in his hometown of St Petersburg, building on Moscow’s efforts to blame Western sanctions — without evidence — rather than Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for energy-price inflation and grain shortages that have hit poorer African nations hard.
Then in August, leaders of the BRICS group comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa are to meet in Johannesburg, with expansion to include a potential 19 hopeful entrants and the feasibility of introducing a common currency on the agenda. Both topics are a boon to China, which favors an alternative to the US dollar in trade among BRICS nations.
Two government officials from separate middle-ground countries said that the world has dramatically changed in the past few years, and Western powers have lost the leverage they once had to pressure developing countries politically and economically. One official put it simply: Western powers need us more than the other way around.
Those sensitivities were on show last week, when the US ambassador to South Africa accused Pretoria of supplying weapons to Russia — sending the rand to a record low against the US dollar — only for both sides to move quickly to tamp down the friction. While South Africa has been a regular guest at G7 summits, this year Japan invited the African Union, currently chaired by Comoros, in its place.
“When President Biden at the beginning of his term spoke about his values approach, I think he had a lot of currency and was attracting a great deal of interest,” South African Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Naledi Pandor said in an interview last week before the US spat. “But I think the current situation in which they find themselves as a leading part of this conflict makes it more difficult to be convincing.”
G7 allies have tried before to counter China’s influence and compete with its initiatives, with mixed results. However, Russia’s war has instilled a renewed sense of purpose to those efforts, the people said, especially as Moscow has increasingly trained its disinformation and influence operations on exploiting anti-Western sentiment in Africa, Latin America and the wider “Global South.”
“The international community is at a historic crossroads,” entering “an era in which cooperation and division are intricately intertwined,” Japanese Cabinet Secretary for Public Affairs Noriyuki Shikata said.
That makes the G7’s strategic cooperation on global issues with emerging countries and developing countries all the more important, he said.
“I think we spent about two-thirds of our time on issues of concern to the Global South,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on April 18 at a joint press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, the G7 host, who himself undertook a trip to Africa this month.
The scale of the challenge still appears daunting given a prevailing sentiment that is mistrustful, even resentful, and at odds with G7 thinking.
India, which holds the G20 presidency, wants to preserve its strategic autonomy and will have a transactional approach in its dealings with the US, people familiar with the government in New Delhi’s thinking said. When it comes to choosing between the West and China, it would back Washington and the Quad security alliance with the US, Japan and Australia. However, when choosing between the West and Russia, New Delhi would tilt toward Moscow while taking a neutral line in public to cover its tracks, the people said.
India relies on Russia for weapons, including along its border with China, and India’s security and foreign policy establishment is deeply suspicious of the US. Everything the West offers has a price tag, whether overt or covert, such as using human rights and media freedoms against India when required. Such apprehensions are absent in dealings with Moscow, the people said.
Vietnam, another middle-ground country in the G7’s focus, illustrates a further hurdle to the outreach. While it is a beneficiary of moves to diversify from China, with US companies like Apple Inc building out manufacturing production in the country, Vietnam cannot afford to ignore the giant consumer base just over the border. As a result, China remains Vietnam’s top trading partner, with the US a distant second.
Vietnamese officials have been relatively quiet about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as it has had a durable security partnership with Russia dating back to the Vietnam War.
That is a consideration that also features in Africa, where Russia supplied weapons to liberation movements — “and the African continent knows that,” Pandor said.
One of the documents sets out EU action plans to boost relations with four pilot countries: Brazil, Nigeria, Kazakhstan and Chile. However, it could prove an uphill task, particularly in Latin America, where the US is losing some of its traditional heft as China builds its presence.
For Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves, a staunch US ally, Washington needs to “rebalance the level of attention” it is paying to the region, where the alliance “seems more tenuous than ever before,” he said in an interview.
“Very few countries remain strong allies of the United States,” he said.
Brazil has become something of a bellwether, all the more so as Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva strives to reassert himself as a global statesman. As part of its plan, the EU is looking to relaunch a strategic partnership with Brazil, conclude a trade deal with the Mercosur bloc, and enhance security and defense cooperation.
The US has announced plans to seek US$500 million to bolster Brazil’s strategy to protect the Amazon, despite tensions over Lula’s approaches to China and prior comments suggesting Ukraine shared part of the blame for the war. US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield visited Brazil this month, stressing the investment and jobs yielded as part of the “strategic relationship” with Latin America’s biggest economy.
While invited to the G7, Lula initially hesitated to go out of concern over which place at the table would be designated for him: He was not prepared to travel only for a photo opportunity, three people familiar with the matter said. There is a prevailing opinion in Lula’s government that the G7 represents the old and declining order, even if it still has symbolic importance, they said.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who has made the concept of a multipolar world central to his policy, visited Brasilia, Buenos Aires and Santiago earlier this year, and plans joint government consultations with Lula’s Cabinet in Berlin later this year. He wants the EU to strike agreements that better reflect the idea that Europe would not simply import raw materials like lithium, but would encourage steps in the value chain like processing to be located in the countries of origin, a senior aide said.
The G7 and the EU are also putting an increased focus on tackling sanctions circumvention, especially enhancing the monitoring of so-called dual-use goods that can serve either a civilian or military purpose. Russia has been working to get around restrictions on banned technologies by importing them through third countries such as Kazakhstan, the United Arab Emirates and China.
Ensuring there is no circumvention through Kazakhstan is one of the key interests identified by the EU in its action plan. US and EU officials last month undertook a joint trip to Kazakhstan, offering help to minimize any economic impact of averting sanctions evasion rather than wielding cudgels.
Biden administration officials say they are not asking countries to choose between the US and China, but are fostering an international environment in which governments are free from coercion by foreign powers. Still, Xi has accused Washington of pursuing “containment,” and even US allies have been compelled to comply with export controls aimed at denying Beijing access to advanced dual-use technologies.
China is forging ahead with its own diplomatic push, having laid the groundwork during the COVID-19 pandemic that allows it to now take “the big step,” in the words of one Western diplomat in Beijing. That often takes the form of small-state diplomacy to complement meetings with global leaders, a key difference to the US that allows Beijing to line up votes at the UN and “take everybody by surprise,” China Global South Project cofounder Eric Olander.
“While we’re all looking the other way, Xi is having a phone call with the prime minister of Dominica, a Caribbean island of 75,000 people,” he said.
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