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East Asia: Watching and Waiting
The fourth quarter will be an unstable one for East Asia. This instability can be interpreted through two lenses.
First, though Russian opportunism is intended to focus largely on the United States, Moscow has been uncharacteristically active in Asia as well. As the Kremlin racks up successes, it will naturally seek to capitalize on its momentum, and this will bring it into growing contact with an increasing number of East Asian states. For Asia, the Russian expansion brings a great deal of uncertainty. Russia — even in Soviet times — has never really been an Asian power.
For East Asia, therefore, the fourth quarter will be a time of evaluation as the local powers attempt to understand Russia’s motivations, strengths and arrestors. Alignment with or opposition to Russian goals cannot happen until the Asians know what Russia is up to, but everyone has an initial opinion. Japan perceives the Russian intrusion as unwelcome, seeing Russia as a competitor for political, economic and military influence. Indonesia sees Russia as a potential investor, and few understand how investment and political influence meld better than Jakarta. Taiwan views a Russian expansion as a potential lure to draw the United States deeper into the region. It is unlikely that any Asian states will take any but the most tentative steps to deal with the Russians in a meaningful way, but all will be watching closely.
However, there might be one exception: China. Beijing will be paying the most attention to Russian activities because, after 16 years of pretending that all is friendly in bilateral relations, the two giants’ national interests are beginning to overlap in uncomfortable ways.
Beijing’s regional and global actions will continue to be driven and shaped by its hunger for energy assets, and that hunger is taking it to the one place in the world where U.S. naval-based aircraft cannot interrupt China’s supply chain: Central Asia. China’s need for energy is leading it to fund the development of several pipeline projects aimed at tapping Central Asia’s oil and natural gas resources. This infrastructure — and not by design — threatens to reorient the entire region away from Russia’s previous dominance.
But the last thing Russia wants is a tussle with China in Central Asia while Moscow is attempting to expunge Western influence from its western and southwestern peripheries. For now, Stratfor expects Russia to work via the Central Asian states themselves to hold China at bay — a strategy that has very little chance of success unless it is married to deeply personal threats against the Central Asian leadership that the Russians are willing to make good on.
Last but not least, East Asia is set for a season of political transitions this quarter.
The Chinese Communist Party’s 17th Congress on Oct. 15 will give the world an idea of where and how Chinese domestic and international policies will be heading for some time to come. President Hu Jintao’s choices for new ministerial positions also will give the world its first good look at who is likely to replace Hu in 2012. Where politics and economics collide, Beijing plans to firmly establish a sort of leadership over foreign businesses via the use of increasingly institutionalized anti-corruption campaigns.
Thailand’s Dec. 23 general elections will mark the beginning of the end of the coup government and a return to what passes as stability in Thailand, no matter how chaotically the electoral campaign progresses. Elections in Australia (in late November or early December) and South Korea (on Dec. 19) also will generate much noise and drama, limiting these states’ international impact but ushering in few changes of geopolitical significance.
Taiwan may yet attract some attention, however. As Stratfor forecast last quarter, Taiwan has moved noisily of late to keep the prospect of its U.N. membership on the front burner, forcing China to repeatedly work against it in the U.N. General Assembly, Security Council and Secretariat. With the Beijing Olympics drawing nearer, the rising rhetoric on this politically sensitive issue could be seized by a Democrat-dominated U.S. Congress to embarrass the Bush administration. Such a move would force the U.S. administration to pull the Taiwan issue back into its top-level negotiations with Beijing, something both sides are loath to do. As noted in Stratfor’s last quarterly forecast, China has proven very successful at managing its relationship with the United States when it remains focused on bilateral trade and currency issues.
Ultimately, any Taiwanese concerns will lead the Chinese to signal Washington that, while they do not want a fight and do not have a horse in the Iraqi race, they do have options since the United States is tied down.
Yet, the combination of U.S. preoccupation with Iraq and Russian aggression throughout the former Soviet space is perhaps the best of all worlds for the Chinese. Not only can the United States not afford to dicker with Beijing, but China could trade the United States a favor and offer to serve as a check on Russian ambitions on at least one front: Central Asia.
Related Links:
China: Anti-Corruption Drives and Corporate Control
China: A Banking Deal and Securing African Investments
China: Central Asian Rumbles
South Asia: Focus on Pakistan
The coming quarter will be a noisy one for Pakistan, but that noise will not reverberate too far beyond its own borders.
After nearly eight months of intense political jockeying, Pakistan has finally reached its breakpoint. Pakistani presidential elections are to be held Oct. 6, but so far the only serious candidate is President Gen. Pervez Musharraf — and the Supreme Court may well strike his candidacy down. With institutional coherence fraying, what remains is a contest of credibility between a presidency characterized by authoritarianism, a split opposition suffering from an exiled leadership, a military unable to keep order and an aggressive court system that can smash — but not crown — pretenders to the throne. In short, the old Pakistani political order is collapsing under its own weight, giving way to something new.
The most likely scenario will be sharply intensifying unrest and uncertainty as a weak and divided coalition government takes the reins — even as a military demoralized by an ongoing insurgency attempts to maintain control of the country’s economic life.
A new coalition government in Pakistan also spells trouble for U.S. counterterrorism operations. One of the few points the new government will agree on is a display of its ability to stand up to U.S. demands. With political sensitivities stark and the military in crisis mode, cooperation from Islamabad will be hard to come by.
Though India will be paying more attention to Pakistan this quarter, things have not reached a point where instability in the region warrants an Indian response. Pakistani instability does, however, give India an incentive to move closer to the United States.
India will be almost completely consumed this quarter with domestic issues. The one with international implications is the pending U.S.-Indian nuclear deal. India’s leftist parties, fearful the deal will turn New Delhi into a U.S. lackey, are putting up a strong front and trying to kill the agreement. And with the U.S. election season gearing up, India cannot count on the U.S. Congress having the bandwidth to approve the deal before year’s end.
Despite domestic opposition, India will inevitably reorient itself — albeit clumsily — toward the United States for its own geostrategic imperatives, but only over the long run. Such irresistible interests pushing India in this direction include: India’s dire energy situation and a need to diversify its nuclear energy supply, the substantial military advantage it will have over Pakistan from the reorientation of the United States’ alliance posture away from Islamabad and toward New Delhi, shedding the nuclear pariah status and gaining recognition among the world’s major powers as a legitimate member of the nuclear club, and growing business ties with the United States.
For its part, the United States is interested in developing India as a strategic ally in the Indian Ocean basin because it would serve as a hedge against China’s military expansion, safeguard U.S. interests in the Persian Gulf, diminish Russia’s ties with New Delhi and sustain pressure on Pakistan for its counterterrorism operations.
Russia will exhibit its concern over the growing Indo-U.S. relationship, but ultimately there is little it can do shy of restarting Cold War-style subsidization — something well beyond Moscow’s means. Russia will turn to its traditional national champions — energy and industrial defense — to remind India of the benefits of staying “neutral.” As Russia refocuses its defense priorities for its own growing needs, India finds itself far more interested in working closely with the West on defense matters.
India also faces a growing problem as Islamization in its restive northeast and instability in Bangladesh have created the conditions for Islamist militants to reach into India’s southern financial hubs. This is a major security concern for India, and a good reason for New Delhi to pay closer attention to its northeastern regions and borders. As Stratfor forecast last quarter, the first hints of public backlash against the Bangladeshi military have surfaced, as the country’s two traditional power brokers are working to undermine the military-backed interim government. This will intensify in the fourth quarter, with riots becoming a common manifestation of the rips in the national fabric.
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