Nukes, C02, and Hong Kong
The United States is now formally withdrawn from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF). Russia had previously suspended its adherence to its treaty obligations, although as of the date of writing (August 2, 2019) remains party to the agreement.
American officials will tell you, publicly, that the U.S. decision was taken in response to Russia’s willful flouting of its treaty obligations; Moscow, the opposite. But in truth, this is a story about China. The INF assumed a world that no longer exists; it was overrun by events. China’s non-participation within the INF framework left both the United States and Russia at a structural military disadvantage. The INF has been collapsing for over decade for precisely this reason. Given the rate of growth in China’s military capacity, it was only a matter of time before the United States and Russia found their continued observation of their INF obligations untenable.
The tenor of our times evinces a general preference for an unwinding of formalized ties between states. There certainly are exceptions - the European Union recently signed a major trade agreement with the South American Mercosur trade bloc, for example - but the appetite for international institution-building is waning. The collapse of the INF regime reflects this. Predictions of convergence upon a single set of political norms remains as unlikely as ever.
Andrew Yang, candidate for the Democratic Party’s nomination for U.S. president, at least as judging by his performance in the most recent television debate, appears to be fatalistic about the odds of any political or regulatory response to anthropogenic climate change. The Atlantic is horrified, as is the Intelligencer, pronouncing Yang to a “doomer” - shades of the “Dark Mountain” project, perhaps? Regardless, Yang clearly likes math, and he’s obviously done the numbers on this one. The binding international approach to climate change died at Copenhagen, and the Paris Accords are purely voluntary, again reflecting the international shift away from formal agreements and institutional arrangements discussed above in the context of arms limitation. Certain high-income economies have reduced their carbon emissions, including the world’s second-heaviest polluter, the United States (primarily due to fracking), but these gains are less impressive once you account for the imputed emissions represented by trade, as these economies have typically outsourced substantial fractions of their industrial base, especially to the East Asia. Regardless, 2018 saw record carbon emissions at 37 billion tons. Local declines in the magnitude of carbon emissions are certainly possible, as are per capita declines. But globally there appears no evidence for a peak - or a plateau. As Yang is doubtlessly well aware, those regions of the globe - South Asia and Africa, especially - that have continued strong population growth also have low per capita rates of emissions. India’s current rate is approximately 1.8 tons, and sub-Saharan Africa less than 1.0 tons per annum. Assuming no change in the per capita figure (an absurdity), and incorporating the current best population growth projections, Africa will be emitting 4 billion tons of carbon each year, and India 3 billion tons. Both regions are further well-placed for an emissions breakout to the upside: don’t forget that as late as 2002 China was approximately producing only 3.5 billion tons per year. Over the next seventeen, it increased total emissions by a factor of 2.9. This increment alone accounts for 60% of the cumulative growth since 2002, China’s breakout emissions year. This upside surprise in emissions was not a priori anticipatable from China’s previous emissions curve; there is a clear break in 2002, and underlines the possibility of an upside surprise in emissions.
If Africa were to emit at the level of Turkey (c. 4 tons per capita), its total emissions would be 16 billion tons; at the level of China (c. 7 tons per capita), the figure is 28 billion. For India, the emissions under both scenarios would be 6 billion and 10.5 billion, respectively. The math is bleak, indeed.
Beijing will not consent to a politically active Hong Kong. The “one country, two systems” in practice relied on Hong Kong’s quietist equilibrium. If the current round of protests have injected a permanent activist element into the special administration region’s politics, then the operative condition for Hong Kong’s political settlement has been violated, and we are at point of possibly radical departure. Either the Hong Kong authorities will internally generate a path to re-bottling their restive citizenry, or Beijing will impose an outside solution, which likely would accelerate the end of Hong Kong’s autonomy, at present scheduled for 2047 (the details of which are undefined). The third option is the collapse of the Communist government itself. A fourth does not exist.
There should be little doubt that Zhongnanhai will act, irrespective of the international response. Beijing is long past the point at which opinion in Western capitals is weighted heavily in the context of its internal deliberations. If the calculus favors intervention, China will intervene. This is the clear lesson not only of Tiananmen, but of more recent history, for example the ongoing widespread detentions in Xinjiang, or island-building in the South China Sea.
Many in the West believed that China’s Tiananmen decision spelled the end of China’s economic miracle, and that force would inevitably fail to achieve its objectives. In the context of 1989, this seemed like nothing more than common sense. But from the perspective of 2019, it is revealed as willfully, perhaps purposely, naive. China was sanctioned, but events demonstrated the ineffectiveness of the restrictions imposed. China redoubled its efforts at reform, and twelve years later entered the World Trade Organization. Whatever desire existed amongst the foreign policy or national security community to restrict China strategically was overmatched by the American business community to buy and sell in the China market.
In 1989, China was a marginal economic player. Now, it is central. In the “rules-based” international order that the United States built during the postwar period, Washington reserved for itself the unique power to violate those rules. China today enjoys this same privilege as well. If China determines to act, it will, and the consequences may well be minimal.
The unknown variable is the U.S. response if Beijing selects for the exogenous solution. The international community will take its cues from the U.S. If Beijing acts, and the U.S. response is muted, then Beijing’s decision will come at little cost. At present, there is a deep divide within the U.S. executive regarding China. The national security culture, more strategy-minded, is staking out pieces on the geopolitical chessboard in a neo-“great game” of power politics. Any use of force will clearly strength its hand, as the crossing of the 38th parallel in June, 1950, by Communist Korean forces reinvigorated NSC-68, otherwise a dead letter upon delivery in the spring of 1950.
On the other hand, what might be termed the business culture (or tendency) in American politics is more circumspect. It has much less appetite for confrontation with China, and sees much more downside than upside to such an approach. The business community understands that continued U.S. investment in China has the effect of prolonging China’s low- and mid-range dominance of global supply chains, while the U.S. - and to a lesser extent Western Europe - own the upper end. With many fewer points of connection to the Chinese market than their business counterparts, the national security culture believes that growth in Chinese capacity can be capped, or curtailed. This appears unsophisticated to those outside national security circles, as a retreat of American companies from the China market will necessarily offer many rich opportunities for exploitation, some percentage of which will be capitalized upon by Chinese corporations at the expense of their American or Western competitors. Business culture looks at market share; for the national security mindset, it is metrics of power that are the relevant unit of measure. The former’s objection would be that continued U.S. economic engagement reduces the absolute level of Chinese market power globally, keeping Chinese companies in a downstream position; the latter’s retort would be that U.S. economic engagement increases China’s absolute technological capacity, maintaining an option for China to - inevitably? - eject Western corporations from its market and massively assert itself on the international stage (this is, more or less, the Martin Jacques thesis).
Between these two positions there is no obvious correct choice. In some fundamental sense, the two tendencies are incommensurate, although in practice they overlap, even within the same person. Over the past thirty years, U.S. policy towards China has broadly reflected the business preference. Trump Administration practice has highlighted the national security or strategic tendency in a way that has not been true since the Nixon Administration. It is this dynamic’s interaction with the ongoing protests in Hong Kong, coupled to the brute reality of China’s power, that elevates the protests to a matter of world historical importance.
Book Recommendation: Adam Tooze’s “Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy.”