This week, President Joe Biden is traveling to Europe for meetings with NATO and Group of Seven (G7) leaders. The White House has plans to use the summits to increase Western pressure on China.
Biden is currently in the German Alps on the first leg of his trip. On Sunday, he met with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to kick off the G7 summit. During the meeting, Biden announced a $600 billion global infrastructure initiative to combat Chine’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Washington claims Beijing’s BRI invests money in developing countries but uses the debt to coerce governments into adopting pro-China policies.
A senior US official speaking with reporters said Western nations believe early participants in BRI are experiencing buyer’s remorse, and the G7’s initiative would have an edge. "There’s no doubt that BRI has been around for several years and it’s made a lot of cash disbursements and investments," the official said. "But I would argue that it is definitely not too late. And I’m not even sure that it is late."
The President said the US will contribute by mobilizing $200 billion in grants, federal funds and private investment over five years. According to Biden, the five-year plan – dubbed the Partnership for Global Infrastructure – will target climate change, global health, gender equity and digital infrastructure. He indicated the initiative will also be used further his foreign policy goal of promoting democracy. We will “see the concrete benefits of partnering with democracies,” Biden said.
The initiative is similar to a proposal made a last year’s G7 summit, called Build Back Better World. POLITICO labels Partnership for Global Infrastructure a mere re-brand of Build Back Better World and claims the new proposal will likely meet the same fate. "Much of the funding behind the new plan appears aspirational and seems to fall short of its lofty goals," POLITICO reported.
After the German-hosted G7 summit, Biden will travel to Spain to meet with NATO leaders. While Russia will be at the forefront of discussions, the White House hopes the alliance will adopt a more aggressive China policy. “Russia’s war against Ukraine has galvanized our partnerships around the world. It’s also showing how Ukraine is not causing us to take our eye off the ball on China. In fact, quite the opposite,” a US official said last week.
At the meeting in Madrid, NATO will release a new strategy document. Washington intends to influence other Western leaders to include "strong" language targeting Beijing. “Leaders will also advance a vision of the world grounded in freedom and openness – not coercion, not aggression, not spheres of influence. They will strengthen our cooperation on economic issues, cyberspace and quantum [computing], and in particular, the challenges posed by China,” the official added.
While previous NATO security documents mention China, the new security strategy identifies Beijing as an adversary. Chinese officials have condemned the American plans. Foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said, “NATO is a product of the Cold War and the world’s biggest military alliance dominated by the US. It is a tool for the US to maintain its hegemony and influence Europe’s security landscape [which] is clearly against the trend of our times.”
“NATO has already disrupted stability in Europe. It should not try to do the same to the Asia-Pacific and the whole world,” he added.
Kyle Anzalone is the opinion editor of Antiwar.com, news editor of the Libertarian Institute, and co-host of Conflicts of Interest.
The US isn’t a democracy, we are a kleptocracy, as the GOP has proven with their theft of the supreme court using lies and partisan abuse of procedure. We have no democracy to export. Btw money and weapons gifts to select regimes only exports our kleptocracy.
“Private investment”
“Gender equity”
“Promoting democracy”
🤣🤣🤣 this is the countermeasure to bri
No matter how corrupt or incompetent the leadership of the 3rd world countries r they came out on top of the deadly power struggles to lead their countries so they r not retarded and will see through this joke and act accordingly.
Erstwhile ally China is now the main challenge to America: historically, this suggests world war. But since 1945, the birth of the atomic age, it has been impossible to fight world wars. Wars are fought for interests: nuclear Armageddon serves no one’s.
https://patternofhistory.wordpress.com/
I’d like to say: Well said! But…
They are finding ways to fight, despite nuclear weapons.
““Leaders will also advance a vision of the world grounded in freedom and openness – not coercion, not aggression, not spheres of influence. ”
Lofty goals indeed. We can ask Panama, Grenada, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Afghanistan how well those policies worked for them. As far as coercion we can ask Cuba, Venezuela and Iran ho well the non-coercive policies pursued by Washington have worked.
Without coercion there would be no NATO either.
I wonder what Biden would do, say, if Ukraine would win the war against Russia? Who determines when the war ends, Zelensky or Biden or Asov Nazis and how will Ukraine continue? In Iraq they just wanted to walk away, scorched earth and oil were the goals. What would be the goal for Ukraine? NATO MEMBER, if there is a NATO and EU LEFT, it will be nothing but scorched earth, then what comes next???
Alien invasion…
Whatever its issues, BRI is about infrastructure: roads, rail, ports, air … real things get built that will serve the nation for many years. The western system, which has been around for decades now with the World Bank etc. s about empowering a local elite and raping nations of their wealth. The choice is obvious …
There may be vulnerabilities for the host nation, in the way China finances that help, which could leave China owning more of it than expected.
However, we must be fair and realistic comparing those vulnerabilities to the alternative vulnerabilities in what the IMF has done, what the US offers as alternatives — often nothing at all, often the same foreign control, often even more corruption and theft.
It is not all bad vs all good. It is potential small risk against proven large risk.
Biden is such a f&ck up, and I voted for him just to get Drumpf out of the White House.
The main challenge from China is this: China is smarter…..
I agree but I should also add that I’ve seen mice smarter than some of the bozos on this bus…
One war isn’t enough? He needs to get Europe to pick fights with China too?
Do you think he’s lonely?……Nah. Still, he’s not the brightest banana in the bunch…
“the challenges posed by China,”” such as advances in space exploration, quantum computing, AI, electric vehicles, taking 700 million people out of poverty, hydrogen energy, vaccines etc.
A better policy would be to find a way to cooperate in all these fields and label China a competitor. But nooo, Biden’s business is to export war and conflict so our oligarchs can become richer so lets label China an adversary.
Some people have penis envy, some people have China envy. 😉
Biden needs trouble with China like a hole in his head, the same goes for all NATO member officials. How can all these people be so insane? BoJoe, Macron, and Scholz may not make it in government than for more than a few weeks or months, Biden already is a lame duck accomplishing nothing. After the mid term election he is likely to be a dead duck in the water. And Putin did not do it, they did it to their nations, these guys are in lala land.
Interesting, isn’t what we accuse China of exactly what we’ve been doing around the world for the past 80 years with the IMF and World Bank?