China is expected to take advantage of global chaos from Covid19 by squeezing vulnerable countries. US can thus regain moral leadership by leading a program of international debt relief & reconstruction.
My piece in @ForeignPolicy
foreignpolicy.com/2020/03/23/chi…
Short thread: 1/10
My piece in @ForeignPolicy
foreignpolicy.com/2020/03/23/chi…
Short thread: 1/10
China’s growing sphere of influence uses “debt-trap diplomacy” as a model of imperial control. Countries like Sri Lanka lost sovereign control of key national assets like the Hambantota port when they could not service Beijing’s debt. 2/10
Poor countries with small, undiversified, fragile economies can be utterly broken by the global economic shock. That will leave them at the mercy of Beijing. Countries like Djibouti, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Maldives, Mongolia, Pakistan, and Montenegro are all at risk. 3/10
Right now, China, with its relief flights and medical outreach, is winning the soft power battle against a US that has only just begun to tackle the problem at home. But US policy makers need to be thinking about a future beyond the virus. 4/10
Post WW2, US pioneered a model of global hegemony based on sponsoring economic reconstruction which became a model to contain the Soviets. Lessons of the Marshall Plan and the Bretton Woods system should be revived. 5/10
In a globalized world, any number of things happening anywhere can have profound consequences for the homeland. Given the economic might of the US, helping entire continents out of economic devastation is relatively cheap—and pays economic & security dividends for decades. 6/10
Conversely, China is likely to squander its influence with its practice of weaponizing debt. Beijing's arrogance is seen with the People’s Daily trumpeting virus cases overtaking those in China and to use China’s manufacturing to force political concessions from others. 7/10
The US should therefore weaponize debt forgiveness through the Bretton Woods institutions, the IMF and World Bank (call it “debt restructuring”) to countries that are buckling under Chinese-issued debt. 8/10
If the approach is taken, it would mark a second dawn for America as a “benevolent empire,” after two decades of Washington trying and failing to impose its will on the world through its overwhelming military prowess. 9/10
The United States has been given a second chance to become the hegemon the rest of the world wants and needs it to be. If it has the wisdom to seize this chance, the world will be bound to it by the strongest kind of debt there is: a debt of gratitude. 10/10
