Ultimately, Washington is acting with the same folly as Beijing. Even as Washington adopts realpolitik to convince the third world to contain China, the third world could simply pit China and the USA against one another while extracting taxpayer money in a never-ending competition for influence with China.
https://mises.org/wire/stop-trying-contain-china-southeast-asia
It was a laughable moment when President Joe Biden said at a press conference during his visit to Hanoi that the United States wasn’t seeking to contain China. Despite efforts by the Biden administration to send its top officials to quell any suspicion that Washington, DC, was trying to contain China, Beijing has realized that the efforts were merely a cover-up. By restricting access to chips and their manufacturing components as well as spending billions on subsidies for semiconductor manufacturing and rare earth mineral refineries (similar to how Beijing treats its tech sector)—combined with numerous high-ranking members of the Beltway wanting containment, including Mike Pompeo, Nikki Haley, and others in Congress—it doesn’t take long to realize that the containment of China is Washington’s top goal.
However, outside of the Western bloc, many have been sitting on the fence with anxiety over an increasingly factionalized world. When the invasion of Ukraine started, more than 140 countries condemned it compared to over thirty that abstained from the vote, with only five backing the invasion. Over the past year, however, the ambivalence toward the invasion has been starker, with only the countries that are part of the Western bloc consistently maintaining their opposition to the Kremlin. With China lumped together with Russia as a challenge to the West, the Global South has to tiptoe around China and the West, hoping to maximize foreign investments while not getting caught in the bad parts of a geopolitical campaign between China and the West or incur the wrath of Western sanctions and potential political machinations.
In Southeast Asia, long-standing principles of neutrality championed by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) bloc have become a divisive topic. For Indonesia, Laos, and Cambodia, relations with China aren’t constrained by territorial claims made over their land. Thailand, Malaysia, and Brunei have maintained a more neutral position by positioning themselves not too close to either China or the West whereas Vietnam and the Philippines appear confrontational toward Beijing. With Biden skipping this year’s ASEAN summit in favor of attending the G-20 summit in India and meeting with the Vietnamese regime to announce a strategic partnership while also building further military ties with Manila, the once-favored neutrality of the bloc has broken down into each country pursuing its own national interests.
Be seeing you
MCViewPoint 