The New Silk Road – A strategic blow to the United States?
The New Silk Road – A strategic blow to the United States?
Par Valentin Weber
The euro zone is still recovering from the economic crisis and struggling countries are in a desperate need for money and investors. Greece for example, maintains that it will not be able to make a loan payment scheduled for June 6. It turned towards Russia to find easy money. However, apart from Greece one can find few countries wooing for Russian financial support, considering Moscow’s involvement in the Ukraine conflict.[1]
It might be worth looking further east for European governments. Namely, China plans to revive the ancient Silk Road, which was hundreds of years ago a trade highway for all kinds of goods, but has since lost its appeal. In 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping first laid out the “One belt, One Road” vision. It entails two plans: the “Silk Road Economic Belt” and the “Maritime Silk Road”. The former should transport goods from China to Europe across Central Asia and Russia and the latter following the same purpose via the maritime route.
Financing for the project , comprising streets, oil and gas pipelines, telecommunication networks, will ostensibly flow through the newly created Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank ($ 100 billion), the government subsidized Silk Road Fund ($ 40 billion) and the New Development bank.[2] The amount of money envisaged for the project may be a blessing for the Central Asian countries concerned and for Europe. By improving infrastructure, European luxury and high-technology goods could travel quicker across land than by the slow sea corridor.
However, European and other concerned governments should examine the idea of a new Silk Road cautiously. Not every opportunity is beneficial. The “One Belt, One Road” strategy, reminds Ian Bremmer, a political scientist at Eurasia Group, of the American-driven Marshall Plan. Mr. Bremmer claims that the Chinese strategy is to accept in the short-term the United States military dominance, but to challenge the superpower on the economic stage. The Marshall Plan, conceived in 1948, was an American tool to impose its economic view on the world and to protect Europe from communism. Similarly, Mr. Bremmer argues that the “Chinese Marshall Plan” serves similar goals. The main aim of Beijing’s strategy is not only to gain access to natural resources, but to make foreign governments accept its conception of finance, telecommunications and internet standards.[3]
One may argue that the American Marshall Plan has had a benign influence on the European continent. Why should the Chinese Marshall Plan be inherently different? In hindsight, the American Marshall Plan has spread democracy, free market economy and deepened European integration. The Chinese Marshall Plan will unlikely be a herald of American ideals, but it will be mostly constrained to project Chinese influence on its backyard as well as the world.
If China wants to be the leading country of the Silk Roads it will have to make sure that they are secure. This will give Beijing the opportunity to use its blue navy capabilities. At the same time it will collide with another great power, the United States. The U.S. has provided for security on the oceans for the last decades and will be reticent to entrust its strategic counterweight with this task.
George Magnus, an associate at the China Centre of the University of Oxford, maintains that the “One Belt, One Road” strategy and the new Chinese led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, are a westward pivot of China aimed at containing the eastward pivot of the United States.[4] Maybe this is one of the reasons, why China opposes the analogy of the Chinese and the American Marshall Plans.[5] Acknowledging the idea of a “Chinese Marshall Plan” would translate into saying that China intends to lead a policy of containment towards the U.S. in its region. In a broader historical context it would mean that Beijing follows the post-WW2 footsteps of the United States in becoming the new indispensable superpower. The Silk Road to achieving this may be long, but the path to reach the destination has been laid down.
[2] http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2015/03/28/china-lays-out-path-to-one-belt-one-road/
[3] http://derstandard.at/2000016129119/Chinas-Marshallplan-dient-der-eigenen-Macht
[4] http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6e8e7f74-f26d-11e4-b914-00144feab7de.html#axzz3al9tTQEx
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