American Foreign Policy

Annual Mid East Politics, Society Congress

Keynote speech by political scientist and international lawyer Robert Bianchi

Anadolu Agency, November 15, 2020

China wants the US to remain bogged down in the problems of the Middle East because this diverts US forces and attention from the Asia-Pacific region, the Indian Ocean and Central Asia.

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/turkey/annual-mid-east-politics-society-congress-begins-/2044111

Bianchi said Beijing aimed to weaken US influence on Asia by diverting Washington’s strategic resources to the Middle East.

He pointed out that there were different voices in the country regarding China’s Middle East politics, adding: “Many caution against strong engagement in the Middle East, and argue that China should not go down the path of former colonialists and imperialists as the Middle East has long become the ‘graveyard of empires.'”

The Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Mustin, left, the guided-missile cruiser USS Antietam, top, and aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan sail in during a drill in the South China Sea on July 6. Photo: EPA/EFE

Confrontations Between America and China Will Escalate

المواجهات المباشرة بين آمريكا والصين ستتصاعد

Arab 21, November 23, 2020

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China-Middle East Relations in Light of Obama’s Pivot to the Pacific

China Report, Sage Journals Online, June 2013

As the United States perceives the westward expansion of China’s influence as threatening both regional and worldwide balances of power, it has responded with an understandable but ill-conceived counter-action—the ‘Obama pivot’ from the Middle East to the Western Pacific. The new American thinking aims to divide the intercontinental and transoceanic regions that China and other nations want to integrate, while encouraging an ‘encircle China’ coalition among smaller maritime powers from India and Singapore to Australia and Vietnam and on to the Philippines, Japan and South Korea.

The blind spot in the American plan is that all of these countries need China more than they need the United States. None of them wants a military alliance with Washington that will antagonise Beijing because their economic futures pull them inexorably towards greater integration with the mainland’s vast and growing markets.

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https://doi.org/10.1177/0009445513479456