On this episode, Anita interviews Dawn Murphy, an Associate Professor of National Security Strategy at the US National War College, specializing in research on China and the Global South. We talk about China’s Belt and Road Project, its relationships in the Middle East, and China’s use of multilateral organizations.
We begin the episode by discussing the recent Turkish elections, where hopes were high for the opposition to oust the autocratic President Erdogan. As the country heads to a runoff, what are the odds of the opposition succeeding?
Biden attended the G7 meeting in Japan but cut the rest of the trip short to deal with the debt crisis at home. What does this say about US commitments in the Pacific and the confidence of these nations in dealing with the United States?
Topics Discussed in this Episode
Articles and Resources Mentioned in Episode
Turkish Elections
G7 Meeting and US Debt Crisis Distraction
Talking China in the Global South with Dawn Murphy
Follow Us
On this episode, Anita interviews Dawn Murphy, an Associate Professor of National Security Strategy at the US National War College, specializing in research on China and the Global South. We talk about China’s Belt and Road Project, its relationships in the Middle East, and China’s use of multilateral organizations.
We begin the episode by discussing the recent Turkish elections, where hopes were high for the opposition to oust the autocratic President Erdogan. As the country heads to a runoff, what are the odds of the opposition succeeding?
Biden attended the G7 meeting in Japan but cut the rest of the trip short to deal with the debt crisis at home. What does this say about US commitments in the Pacific and the confidence of these nations in dealing with the United States?
Topics Discussed in this Episode
Articles and Resources Mentioned in Episode
Turkish Elections
G7 Meeting and US Debt Crisis Distraction
Talking China in the Global South with Dawn Murphy
Follow Us
Anita Kellogg: [00:00:00] Welcome to Kellogg's Global Politics, a podcast on current events in US foreign policy and international affairs. My name is Dr. Anita Kellogg, an international relation scholar specializing in the relationship between economics and national security. I'm here with my co-host, Ryan Kellogg, an expert in energy investment and policy.
Ryan Kellogg: Thanks and glad to be here. So this is episode 34, and we're recording this on May 19th, 2023.
Anita Kellogg: On this episode, I interviewed Dawn Murphy, an associate professor of National Security Strategy at the US National War College, who specializes in research on China and the global south. We talk about China's belt and road project, its relationships in the Middle East and China's use of multilateral organizations.
We begin the episode by talking about the recent Turkish elections where hopes were high for the opposition to the autocratic President Erdogan. As the country heads to runoff, what are the odds of the opposition succeeding? Biden is currently at the G7 meeting in Japan, but we'll cut the rest of the trip short to deal with the debt crisis at home.
What is the say about US commitments in the Pacific and the confidence of these nations in dealing with United States?
Ryan Kellogg: Yes. I know this has been a big week for you in terms of a big video game, actually a big, big week for everybody. Mm-hmm. So you had Zelda Tears of the Kingdom, came out on the Nintendo Switch, highly anticipated follow up to Zelda, Breath of the Wild.
So what's, what's your take? I know you've been putting some, putting some hours into it. Assume you're three quarters of the way through the game by now, right?
Anita Kellogg: Yeah. So funny. So funny. I haven't even done a fourth of the storyline. No. So, I mean, I guess the thing about Zelda is anyone who plays even casually likes to play.
I really fell in love with the breath of the wild. So it seems like anyone I know who's ever played a video game is playing Zelda right now. [00:02:00] And , it's different when you're someone like me who hardly ever plays a game and, , trying the mechanics of fighting and things like that. It's harder, but, but it's fun.
It's a fun game because on one hand you have the main storyline, but then because it's open world, I just spend a lot of time wandering around doing other tasks that are not related to the main story. Usually when I get to part in the main story, that just seems hard and I know I'm eventually gonna have to do it, but I wanna procrastinate, so, and it is probably good.
I don't play a lot of games because I get obsessive when I do play, so, yeah.
Ryan Kellogg: So how are you finding, so I know Breath of the Wild had a lot of different sort of puzzles and manipulating objects and things, but it seems like this game takes a whole new step where it's actual engineering and, and it's, it seems more complicated.
So has it been a lot more challenging completing the, the puzzles?
Anita Kellogg: Yeah, to some extent I've skipped a lot of the puzzles. Okay. I just bypassing it all. Yeah. But just in the regular gameplay, yeah. There's a lot more engineering involved and sometimes that's just a pain, but you get more used to it.
You just get used to building things and , some people have a lot of fun. I was listening to some people are like just all kinds of things they think to do that aren't related to the game at all, but just in terms of building stuff, torturing the poor little ke season.
Ryan Kellogg: Yeah. I have seen videos of that, like shooting them off into space, like building contraptions and catapulting them all over the place.
Anita Kellogg: Yeah, man. When I figured out how you can shoot into space, like that was a revelation that's actually really useful.
Ryan Kellogg: Yeah.
Anita Kellogg: Because you have this whole sky area too, and then you have the in depth, so it's a lot bigger than breadth of the wild. And this someone I was listening to pointed out it's, it's more.
More game-like, I guess more like a typical game in the sense of some of the challenges are harder and more systematic, I guess, but, but still has that open world feel. That's fun. Well, let's go into [00:04:00] politics, international politics and the Turkey elections.
Ryan Kellogg: Yep. So we saw on May 14th, Turkey held both its presidential and parliamentary elections, and the, the result of that was a runoff that's gonna be held on May 28th between the current incumbent who's been in power for 20 years now, president Raje, Taip Erwan, and the main opposition leader Kamal Klu.
So the results from that 14th election er Dewan ended up capturing 49.5%, which was his. Were showing in the previous two elections, but still came to think well, short of the polling expectations and definitely the opposition expectations as well. Heading into the election, college Darlow ended up with about 45% and the turnout was extremely high, 90%.
So I think, and generally what I've read, , was seen as a, a free and fair election. That being said, erde won over the last 10 years or so, has taken control so much of the, the, the state apparatus, including the media. So, Yeah, it's free and fear in a sense that, , everybody got their say at the poll and there didn't seem to be any manipulation in the votes, but in terms of control of state power and the media, Erwin had a significant advantage heading in, I think heading into the runoffs on the 28th.
It's definitely college Darlow is, is seen as a major underdog. And that's just given the fact that yeah, , there's only a 5% gap. And you did have a third candidate that ran in the initial May 14th election sent in Horon, but he's a right wing nationalist, so it's very likely that the 5% of his voters are going to switch over to Air Dewan.
So I think it would come as a huge surprise [00:06:00] if Coach Darlow would, would be able to actually overcome that, that deficit at the end of the day.
Anita Kellogg: Right. When you have 90% of the population already voting, that means it's really, yeah. There's almost nowhere to pick up extra votes.
Ryan Kellogg: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I think the other thing that was encouraging from Erdogan's point of view, so his party, the Justice and Development Party, so the a KP did very well within the parliamentary elections.
So again, they did better than expectations. Out of the 600 seats, AK P'S governing alliance retained the majority of the seats. So 322 I think that came, and this is despite all of the headwinds that frankly, er, Dewan was, was facing given, , one, what was seen is a wide mishandling of the response to the earthquake in, in February where 50,000 people died in, in Southern Turkey, as well as the rampant inflation that's going on within the
Anita Kellogg: country.
Yeah. Some of the commentary I read was sort of like, well, if you can't defeat him under these circumstances, then there may not be circumstances to defeat him. And I know there was a lot of optimism going into this election. I follow a couple Turkish expats that I know, and they were very, for weeks, they were very bullish on the opposition and a lot of.
At that momentum, not only in the polls, but just thinking about how terrible the economy is right now and the general economic situation for the average tur citizen. So I think there's also a lot of, I mean, part of the hope is not just within Turkey. It's outside of Turkey because Erdogan has made so many autocratic reforms and there's hope that you could see a more democratic Turkey with the opposition win.
Ryan Kellogg: Yeah, exactly. And I think what what has really carried him is the almost cult-like following that he has amongst the rural class and more [00:08:00] religious within the countryside. And this is really built up over. , frankly, a fairly successful first decade when he was in power, so he became Prime Minister in 2003.
During this time, Turkey had significant economic growth. I think people's lives and poverty rate generally fell during that first decade and was really seen around the world is a, a model of democratic Islamists within a secular in the, within the region. Yeah, they still, they still had highly secular respect for, , cuz Turkey was founded as a secular republic and he generally respected those, those norms.
And it was really during that second decade as he consolidated power that you saw this increasingly autocratic rule and the abandonment of secularism. And that was one of the, the key drivers of the July, 2016 coup attempt with, , you had part of the Turkish military attempt to seize power. Ultimately it failed because not enough of the rest of the military leadership went along.
And then you had significant civilian opposition going to the streets. Therons again, very loyal supporters going to the street, blocking these troops. So the coup attempt fell apart really quickly. And then following that you had the massive arrest. And government purges of, , 40,000 plus bureaucrats.
So that's when it really consolidated. A lot of the secularism has been slowly deteriorating as more and more emphasis on Islamic religious practices are, are put in place and made mainstream. So it's really part of this, this greater narrative that, that he's told around, well, the restoration of, of the Ottoman Empire and Turkey Central place within, within
Anita Kellogg: the world.
Yeah, I know academic freedom around that time was very much under attack. I remember seeing lots [00:10:00] of letters of support go around for academics in Turkey at the time. There's also, , as it becomes more religious, more limiting of women's rights and L G B T Q individuals, which is sort of what you see with more authoritarian turns, unfortunately.
So it's a very classic right wing religious that we're seeing too much of in the United States too. But around the world, of course, we talked about India quite a bit and it follows a similar playbook. But of course, when Iwan changed from a presidential system, from the previous parliamentary, he was able to then take near complete power.
Mm-hmm. And one of the commentary was everyone pretty much expected that they would win the parliamentary, his party would, but that he would lose the presidency. And some people were like, well now he's gonna regret not allowing the parliamentary to have any power. Right, right. But of course, if he wins, that's not so much the case.
Yep. So to me there's just so much classic, , so much the same. When I studied Venezuela, , a major protest in coup was, was also a, the precipice for arresting and getting rid of tons of bureaucrats and making loyalty key feature. So it's interesting those similarities as you watch countries go from stable democracies to more authoritarian governments.
Yeah.
Ryan Kellogg: And it is, it's extraordinary with this, this loyalty around culture war issues. And this is despite, and we, we didn't really go into just how bad the economy is. I mean, they had straight up 80% inflation rates last year, and they're still in the mid forties. So the economic impact on. The average citizen, , somebody living in the countryside is, is extreme.
Anita Kellogg: And we, it's not recent either, so this has been happening since
Ryan Kellogg: 2018. Oh, yeah, yeah. 2018. And then the deterioration against the dollar. I mean, it used to be that it was, I [00:12:00] think, two lira to a dollar back in like 20 15, 20 16, and now it's nearly 20 L to a dollar. Yeah. So the deterioration on, on the, the exchange rate, of course, that's been reflected in Euros and in other currencies as well.
So the economic impact, yeah. Over this period is just horrible. Mm-hmm. And yet, and yet, mm-hmm. Because Erdogan just possesses that charisma. He really weaves that nationalist story so well that Yeah. You get people that, Hey, , this guy. He's fighting for us. , religious education is back in schools.
This guy converted the ha HAkia mm-hmm. Of course fit the most famous Orthodox, originally Orthodox Christian Church in Istanbul, formerly Constantinople, which under O Turk. And the original Turkish government was just a museum, just a world heritage site. But three years ago was converted back to a working mosque.
So seen as, , again, this Make Turkey great again, sort of philosophy. And the fact that people are voting for that over their economic interest is, is pretty extraordinary.
Anita Kellogg: Yeah. And what is scary about it is, , his opponent, the opposition candidate, ran this very positive campaign. , he wasn't just gonna like, focus on Erdogan and attack him, but just all the .
Democratic liberties that he would bring as well as economic relief. And it didn't work. And what's scary to me is just how powerful nationalism and religious nationalism, culture wars are, how effective they are. And I don't think anyone knows of like, what is the good counter to that? And if we don't, there's not a formula that can counter it, then, , what is our confidence that we can keep countering in the United States when we've lost in so many significant places, , many, [00:14:00] many states not only limiting women's rights, but , diversity, even mental health funding.
Which is ironic, but it scares me that how powerful that cultural war rhetoric is and how difficult it is to counter it in any way.
Ryan Kellogg: Yeah. No, no, for sure. I mean, I think it is, and it, it's something, , I think also what helped is he, similar to what we talked about with Modi, is he had an active campaign of eliminating his more dangerous political opponents.
I think the reason that Cartilage, Dar Lou snuck through is because he was, , he's a, was a mid-level bureaucrat for most of his career. Comes across as a nice guy. Kind of reminded me of like a Jimmy Carter sort of presentation. You have er, Dewan in his campaigns, talking from the Thousand Room Palace that mm-hmm.
He built after becoming president versus car cartilage Dar Lou, who's speaking from the kitchen, chopping up onions and talking about, , common matter things. But yeah, it just, it didn't resonate. What do you
Anita Kellogg: do with a thousand rooms? I don't know.
Ryan Kellogg: I don't know what you do. Have all your cronies have their families?
I
Anita Kellogg: don't know. I mean, I think even like places like Versa, reside didn't have a thousand rooms, ?
Ryan Kellogg: Yeah, no. The only place I can think of similar was in Brunai where the, the Salton had a palace. I don't know if it was a thousand rooms. It was probably 500. It was huge. It was much bigger than Versai.
Yeah, it was very large palace. So I can only imagine what this
Anita Kellogg: cannot just fathom what you do with it on that after that side note. So there are significant consequences to, for US foreign policy, as might you might expect, the autocratic turn of Turkey has made it more favorable to Russia and China relations.
So that's complicated. Its relationship as a NATO partner, although there are some difficulties in China relations due to the Uyghur issue. But it is Turkey's third largest trading partner behind Russia and [00:16:00] Switzerland. So, so yeah. So I think that just kind of trickiness that we've seen, but it has filled its NATO commitments in regard to the Ukraine war.
And because of the relationship with Russia, it has been able to be go-between with Moscow having brokered the Ukrainian grain shipment deal and potential investment in eventual peace stocks.
Ryan Kellogg: I thought the other interesting thing is there is high expectations that Turkey, which has been together with Hungary withholding approval for Sweden's admission into nato that everybody's expecting even with, with this likely result that Erwan will win in next week.
That really being held up for domestic politics and Sweden's done enough. Passing anti-terrorism bills, cuz again, it was around Sweden support for the Kurds. Right. But because this is gonna be such a hot button, domestic issue for Turkey anymore, the thought is that they'll go along and, and approve Sweden's membership going forward.
So I guess that's
Anita Kellogg: positive. I wonder why Hung's object, objection. I
Ryan Kellogg: don't know. Maybe just the pressure then of just having one single hold out. Mm-hmm. They feel like they can, can break that opposition with Hungary. I'm not even sure what Hungary's opposing suite and other than what that they're pro-Russian.
Anita Kellogg: Why? But they prove Finland. Finland was a, they did prove Finland. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know why Hungary has an interest. I dunno. Yeah, just progression, just curious there. So, yeah, so I think it's a really, it's an important election. Turkey's a very important country to NATO and to the west and seeing what happens.
It is definitely disappointing to see the opposition feel.
Ryan Kellogg: Yeah, and I think you're, you're spot on in terms of, , would, it could potentially signal if the far right in the US gains power. I mean they obviously have models Orban and Hungary is one that they [00:18:00] mentioned. I don't know if they've brought up so much Air Dewan as kind of example probably cuz he is Muslim.
Not a good example, but definitely the policies Trump's come out and said the cleansing of the deep state, what er Dewan did after the 2016 coup is, is that's exactly what he wants to do. He'd love to get rid of 50,000 bureaucrats Yeah. And, and fire them immediately and put in loyal list.
Yeah. So it's, it's clearly a game plan. And, and again they're, it's this feedback loop where they're using the same talking points. I was surprised to see, yeah, George Soros was mentioned. Bear de one in the campaign mentions the American deep state. Which I guess is fairly typical abroad, but has become common here as well.
It's always the CIA interfering with, with your elections. And then of course, , the assaults that you mentioned on, on L G P D Q activist as a, as a central part of the campaign. So it's like they're, they're influencing each other and this just this circulation of, of kind of nastiness and, and ideas That's obviously very disturbing.
Anita Kellogg: Yeah, very. So another reason why it's disappointing to see that tactic to be so effective. So, going on to other news, although we're not dealing with the debt crisis specifically, but Biden's meeting the G seven right now emphasizes how the debt crisis has a very important foreign policy component to it.
To one extent, just the, if we don't pay, if we default, the, it'll do real harm, not only to the American economy, but to the global economy. So there's a lot of concerns over that in maybe smaller but certainly important ways when we think about different efforts to count to China. So Biden, who's currently in Hiroshima, Japan, focusing on coordination and assistance to Ukraine and sanctions against Russia, although as we'll talk about there are many other important issues that there is also on the table.
He had to cut the rest of his trip. He was planning on going to [00:20:00] Australia and it was gonna be the first presidential visit to pop in New Guinea. And I'll get into why that's important a little bit later. He had to cancel both of those efforts and those are really critical into our strategy against countering Chinese influence and Chinese security.
And it just really frustrates me where you have this house committee, , looking at the China threat. We talk about the China threat all the time, but we focus so much on just punitive actions towards China. Where we again, fail to follow through on our promises and our commitments to actually increase influence and counter Chinese influence and be more effective, I think in, in just countering China as it is.
So, and there are both security and economic consequences of that. So one of the things that Japan has been pressing that is also a topic on the agenda for the G seven is countering Chinese economic coercion, which Japan has been especially sensitive to since there was the temporary rare earth minerals ban in 2010.
So there are. Our different perspectives. One of the difficulty though is the discrepancy between the European leaders and countries like Japan and the United States, where just the perception of the threat from China, whereas it's coming from and what to do about it. So on one hand, in particularly, we see the split as we've talked about on recent shows on Taiwan and countries like France saying that it's not really Europe's problem and we're concerned about the hawkishness of the tone and that, , you're inviting conflict.
Whereas, , and there's still some discussion of how much decoupling is needed. , in Europe they call it some de-risking. So some countries are for de-risking, which is more semiconductors may be in very specialized military applications, but increasing economic ties elsewhere. So there's not complete [00:22:00] unity on that.
But it was a, a critical. Issue for sure. And then another really important thing I think that we've talked about is how the I R A infrastructure reduction. The Inflation Reduction Act has caused a lot of tension between the US and its allies in favoring US companies over our foreign ones, including our allies.
So it was interesting to see that there we're working to build on the March deal with Japan that allowed battery materials made in Japan to qualify for the RA benefits while the EU is pursuing, pursuing a similar agreement. And here, like if you get enough countries getting exceptions to also qualify for the benefits, then you have more of the French drawing situation, but then you decrease these.
Domestic foreign policy for the middle class because you're no longer favoring the US companies and things built in the
Ryan Kellogg: us Right. So you're just not getting the, you're, you're treating them like a US company in terms of, let's say the US companies paying whatever 20% tax rate with these tax benefits of fulfilling the 80% sourced material for battery manufacturing.
So a Japanese company can come in and get that same tax rate, let's say, as opposed to a country that's not doing that and they get taxed. We're tear. I don't, I don't know exactly the mechanisms of it, but I'm assuming it would be something like that. So it's not actually money out of pocket as opposed to Right.
Exactly. Tag collection and, okay, I got it. So, yeah, no, I, I found that encouraging, , to see that, and this is what I was talking about. In our last episode of, , this, using the IRA as kind of a, a stepping point. I was not aware that they had reached the deal back in March with Japan around this and that they're, they're pursuing something similar with the eu.
So, yeah, I'll be, it'll be interesting to see, , how much, how much traction. , they can, they can get going forward on [00:24:00] that in, in those sort of discussions. I thought the other interesting thing going back to the, the G seven meeting was around Japan's role and with their fairly new Prime Minister Khi of Fuo and the fact that he's been really active on the, the diplomatic front and taking a lead, particularly within Asia on bridging the gap between the G seven, of course seven of the, the richest countries within the world and the, the global south.
So Prime Minister of Fuo has, Gone on a number of visits and really been a proponent of raising the alarm that China is outcompeting the West in these countries. And of course, we've talked about these issues a lot, but I know the Economist did a good job in terms of interviews with the Japanese envoys and just reporting on all the complaints that we've talked about in terms of the, the, the flaws within US global leadership, the fact that because US straight policy is, is shut off.
There's a lack of economic offerings or access to the US market, the lack of respect diplomatically, and then just this constant fear, which is of course, Emphasized by the whole debt ceiling crisis is the, the instability of, of US domestic politics. And it serves as a real contrast to what China offers, which is stability.
They're bringing the infrastructure, the roads and bridges and, and the lack of, of lectures. They know Japan's been a real proponent of toning down, which you have, have seen the Biden administration tone this down, the whole democracy versus autocracy and focusing much more on the rule of law and respect for the country's borders, which is probably the only issue in respect to Ukraine that, , the global south could really get on
Anita Kellogg: board with.
Yeah. So as we've talked about, that's. That's really important and frustrating. And I think particularly we can't underestimate as you [00:26:00] reference the instability of US domestic politics from ranging from sort of the state crisis, which again, could have a huge impact on the global economy. The uncertainty of US promises is just a huge win because there is just a huge difference between the type of foreign policy Trump and his ilk bring and current US foreign policy.
And what's really notable about that is before you didn't see these large shifts. I mean, certainly republicans had a more hawkish mm-hmm. And whenever I say there wasn't a huge difference, people are like, well, what about George W. Bush and things like that. I'm like, okay. But a lot of, there was a lot more consensus than foreign policy generally as well.
You could just, but you had com when the US made commitments to its Asian partners, to its European partners mm-hmm. You didn't have any sort of like, oh, well the next president is gonna come and undermine that statement, or that there was just no sense of that whatsoever. Yeah. Yep. And now there is like how you're making these commitments, but we don't know that they're gonna last between, , two to three years and, , foreign policy can change dramatically and how are we supposed to calculate against that?
So I think this is an issue that couldn't get enough importance and attention to, and, and , to some extent it does, but I think is a really huge problem for the United States. I, I, I think
Ryan Kellogg: it goes back to that the whole. Having our hands tied by populous forces, both on the right and left around trade and the fact that we can't come and offer them anything in terms of material benefits, access to US markets and the the things that China has been a lot more effective at.
Now mind you, you have kind of the whole their own developing world debt crisis caused by by China, which we've been negotiating relief on, and they've certainly invested a lot less over the last five years. But nevertheless, the perception is that China doesn't come in [00:28:00] and lecture us. China comes in and builds roads and bridges and provides financing.
What are you guys
Anita Kellogg: offering, right, besides lectures And comes back to though what really frustrated me about spa. About Sullivan speech that we covered in our last episode was this, this idea that we don't need a reduction in tariffs and that's all that trade agreements are and ignoring what these countries actually want from the United States.
Yeah, and it's funny
Ryan Kellogg: you mentioned that tariff thing. So there was a thing on Twitter, so there's a new bill from two unlikely senators have powered up Again, populous on both sides. It's called the Sanders Haw Act, and that's insane. And its proposals is to establish tariffs. Huge tariffs on all Chinese goods and not strategic at all.
Like for instance, toys would have a 70% tariff on 'em, clothes would have a 60% tariff. I think electronics had like a 35% tariff. So this is, this is the direction that, , significant leaders within the Senate are proposing in terms
Anita Kellogg: of Sure. That's a good solution to inflation. Let's make off. Yeah, exactly.
Ryan Kellogg: Yeah. The one place, the one things that have been like inflation proof were dropping in price over the last like 20 years have been toys and TVs. I mean, yeah. The fact you can get a 65 inch TV for a couple hundred bucks, that's, that's cuz they're made in China. Mm-hmm. And , they're decent enough quality.
Anita Kellogg: I mean, a lot of people thought reducing the Chinese tariffs that Trump placed on Chinese goods would've led. To 1% reduction in inflation. And while critics were like, one percent's not very much. Yeah. I mean 1% is huge when it, , when you're, oh yeah. So yeah, I was always puzzled by that argument, but that would definitely bring inflation up again.
But yes, Sanders
Ryan Kellogg: and Hall, I wonder how that conversation went. I wonder if they get get along.
Anita Kellogg: It's hard to imagine because of Holly's role in January 6th. That's the part I don't get. Sanders sitting down and having this conversation with [00:30:00] Holly, who has just been so awful about January 6th.
Ryan Kellogg: But yeah, that's where the populace on both sides around economic issues and trade, they, they find little pockets of agreement and enough to sponsor the Senate bill.
So it's, so that's out there. So yeah, that's what makes it, so it seems like there's zero path to, , effectively going back to the, the days where you could actually negotiate, , these bigger bilateral multilateral trade deals. It just seems like. That's not where, , I'd say the American population, but in terms of when it's framed in polling, I mean free trade is popular, but in terms of the political class, it's seen as absolute toxic.
Cuz I assume you just get hammered in the
Anita Kellogg: primaries. I don't know. It's really frustrating and again, it's sort of makes me feel like our China policies and, and just global policies are completely on the wrong track. Basically the Chinese. Thread, if you wanna call it, is not just primarily about Taiwan, it's about its growing influence.
And we can't grow our influence without being able to offer more economic partnerships, which is what countries really want from us. And we can't just lecture them on democracy and expect them to be like, oh, I'm gonna align my values with the US and choose the US over China when I'm getting these real economic benefits.
I'm getting stability from China and what are you offering me? And sometimes, , things in name only. So what's also interesting that came out of the interview with Don is just the use of multilateralism of, of China. So we mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. We've been very focused, , because we won't do these multilateral trade deals and , one-on-one partnerships, whereas China has that too.
But they are increasingly dealing with countries through multilateral institutions, some that they've set up, some that are already existing and offering different types of economic and political partnerships that way. So getting to that aspect, [00:32:00] one thing I didn't even know until it was canceled was that was Biden's trip to Papa New Guinea.
And which would be the first time a US president would be there, which is not too surprising. I didn't even know how many people lived there. So I looked this up and it was 10 million people, which was bigger than I thought. And so there's been more emphasis on the Pacific Islands because China has been expanding its influence there.
And the US feels like this should be their domain, really. And so the US has been putting more money into aid deals, peace Corps coming back to some of these countries. One thing with, there are a lot of deals with Papua New Guinea that are on the table, and this is all part of, in September, 2022, the US announced its Pacific partner Strategy, which is its first ever roadmap for the region.
Emit increasing geopolitical competition between China. And so the four pillars of that is strengthening US partnerships and Pacific regionalism resilience and prosperity. But what was interesting is that there, obviously a lot of this is supposedly revolved around economics. I mean, that's definitely what these countries want, but one of the things that of course we're giving them more is insecurity and that they're working toward a defense cooperation agreement with BAP New Guinea.
Going back to what the Japanese brought out that the. The rest of the world complains about the US is having the president. There is a sign of huge respect and commitment. And , as they, as the Japanese have mentioned that, , the feeling that American diplomacy doesn't treat them with respect.
Mm-hmm. And so that's why I think Biden's visit was so important and canceling it, it's not, , basically the White House said, well, we're still gonna, , pursue these sort of deals with Papua New Guine. We're confident we'll get them. But you lose some of that [00:34:00] respect and belief that the United States is committed to this, this regional Right.
Yeah. Partnership strategy. Yep. So I think that's really unfortunate. I mean, the other one is Australia, so a lot of people, , that has to do with the quad. But , my feeling is like, okay, it's Nabbing Australia. But at the same time it's Australia. We can, I feel like we can make that up, but it's not the same level of lack of respect that, , canceling a trip to Papa New Guinea shows.
Ryan Kellogg: Yeah, yeah. It's definitely a, a huge missed opportunity, which is, which is a shame, but I mean, I think it's, it's probably the right call to come back
Anita Kellogg: and Well, he has to. Yeah. Because they have to negotiate the deal within a day or two, right? Yeah. They don't have much time because of Congress not being there, but
Ryan Kellogg: June, yeah.
They have to get it done within the next week. I mean, cuz Yellen's already announced, I mean, June 1st is really the, the end of the line. Unless they, they meant that trillion dollar coin, which I know a lot of Democrats are encouraging that we just use the 14th amendment to bypass Congress. But that's a whole other, that doesn't give the markets great confidence either, that you have to use a legally questionable maneuver in order to honor your dads.
Yeah,
Anita Kellogg: I mean, it's such a manufactured crisis and the fact that, Republicans feel like this is a good use of being able to get economically what they want, leverage, but not considering any of the other consequences. And I do say Republicans because when we are a Republican president, it's not like the, the Democrats put up some sort of protest and use it as a negotiating point, right?
They raised it twice under Trump and there was no opposition whatsoever. There were no deals that were needed to be made. So the lack of consciousness of how this effects foreign policy, or even if there was maybe just not the same interest in it at the same time when foreign policy is [00:36:00] really something that's very important to us interests.
And our own
Ryan Kellogg: prosperity. Yeah. Yeah. But again, it's gonna be positioned on, on domestic political concerns and for them, they've gotten it both ways. So. What we haven't seen, but we may see in the next week if they really take it up to the limit, is you haven't seen the financial punishment within the markets yet around the debt limit like we saw in 2011.
So that's the first time that the US lost its AAA status. Credit rating status was in the lead up to almost defaulting on the debt. They were able to get it done a few days, which just seems like we're heading in that same direction. But I think because of that experience, markets have been pretty calm.
Mm-hmm. So far you've seen a little bit increase in the 10 year treasury yields over the last week, but it's really seen as a very low chance. I'm hoping there's not an unpleasant surprise coming up, cuz that could be tremendously bad for, for everybody as we said. Yeah,
Anita Kellogg: definitely. So, I mean, there's a lot of not logical economics behind this, but really just about partisan politics, unfortunately.
Well, I think. We should go on to the interview. I really enjoyed being having the opportunity to speak with Don Murphy. She's a colleague at the National Defense University, but I had known her before that and she has a lot of insight. She has an excellent book on China in the global south, and as I mentioned in the intro, GU sent the Beon Road project, which which is something we haven't covered on the show before.
I thought one of the interesting things that came out of that was when she was talking about, we always talk about, well, don't the global south countries understand that if they accept all this like technology from China, that there's this threat that China will have back doors into surveillance and aspects of that and how from their perspective, like there's just a risk dealing with asymmetrical relations period.
That, yeah, there's [00:38:00] that risk with China, but who's to say there's not that risk with the United States as well? So I thought that was an interesting point she brought up, and I hope you all enjoy. I'm here with Dr. Don Murphy, an associate professor of the National Security Strategy at the US National War College, who specializes in Chinese foreign policy and domestic politics, US China relations and international relations.
In her recent book, China's Rise in the global south, the Middle East Africa, and Beijing's Alternative World Order. She examines China's relations with the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa. I highly recommend you give this one a read. Hello Dawn, welcome to the show. Hi, Anita. Thanks for having me. So, yeah, so I thought I would start.
I wanna begin by talking about China's recent diplomatic victory by brokering a deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran to resume relations between these two countries. When I was speaking to Jonathan Fulton in a previous interview, he stressed that China knows it cannot supplant it. The US' deep security ties in the Middle East.
But thinking on this issue more, I wonder if China has greater influence over the behavior of countries in the Middle East by having the capacity to use economic deals as incentives for cooperation. Whereas the states know that regardless of their behavior, the US will not pull back from its security agreements because of its own interest in the region.
What do you think of this observation? Does China have more leverage than the US?
Dawn Murphy: So Anita, the first thing I should say is that the views I express on the podcast are my own, and they don't represent the National War College Department of Defense or the US government more broadly. And Jonathan Fulton obviously is an amazing scholar looking at these issues.
I would actually, the way that I tend to frame it, especially in relation to the more recent events, is that China in some ways is uniquely positioned in that increasingly it is the top economic partner of a number of countries [00:40:00] in the region or all the countries predominantly in the region. But it also has this characteristic of having a.
Positive relations with every country in the Middle East and to focus on non intervention and non interference. And so it from a mediator standpoint, it's not offering its own solutions to conflicts in the region, but it has been trying to play the role of mediator for quite a while. So back in 2002, they established a special envoy for trying to contribute to the Middle East peace process.
In 2016, they established an envoy for trying to help with resolving the Syrian civil war. So bringing Saudi and Iran together is the, the latest development in their wanting to to be a mediator. But I don't think it's just economic leverage. I think in many ways they may be seen as a different type of great power compared to the US at this point, because in the region and because outside of its territorial perimeter, China doesn't really have a unilateral mili military presence at this point.
Anita Kellogg: That's, yeah, that's such a great observation about China being a different type of actor because it doesn't have those military ties, so that's really helpful. One thing we haven't talked much about on the show is China's Belt and Road project. I was wondering if you could speak to this by describing what it is.
What are the current status of these projects and what does the future look like, particularly as China reduces its investments abroad?
Dawn Murphy: So builtin road for, for those that are listening, , back in 2013, China announced land belt in a maritime road, these two different initiatives that in 2015 was actually branded as builtin.
Road. And the way I look at Bolton Road is it's China's articulation of how it wants to interact with the rest of the world. So geographically, originally it included Asia, Africa, and Europe. And since China considers the Middle East to be [00:42:00] West Asia, the Middle East was included in that as well. And over time it grew to include Latin America, the Arctic, other regions.
And so really even from the beginning, China made it clear that if the US or Canada wanted to join Belton Road, that was also completely acceptable. So the first thing to point out is it's a global. Initiative. It's not about specific countries or specific projects, and it focuses on connectivity broadly defined.
So there's the aspects of infrastructure, , ports and, and roads, railroads, those type of things that, that a lot of analysis tends to focus on. But even from the beginning it was about financial connectivity, policy connectivity, people to people, interactions, , all different types of connectivity.
And, and over time it's really grown to encompass other functional areas, whether that's health cooperation. Digital cooperation, green technology space, et cetera. So I really do see that it's a way in which China sees its connectivity with the broader world in order to pursue its its objectives globally in order for its to leverage, its its instruments of power, whether they be economic, diplomatic, military, other instruments of power towards broader objectives.
And there is a dynamic in Milton Road that from the very beginning, You could see part of it as a reaction to tensions with the US and tensions in Pacific Asia. So if you think back all the way to 2012 you had a scholar named Won still who's with Beijing University. He came out with an article called Go West, and it was arguing that China needed to not only look towards Pacific Asia, but increasingly to look towards Central Asia to look to its west for connectivity with Europe.
And so part of the dynamic, and that was that China going forward because relations with the us, with Japan, with other countries in Pacific Asia, those [00:44:00] may sour, that China wanted to have more alternatives in the longer term. So there's been this broader geostrategic dynamic, and I would say that as relations between the US and China have been deteriorating in certain ways, that back and forth has been increasing.
And so if you think about Belton Road now, arguably the global South is becoming more and more important for China's engagement with the world. And as I was saying earlier, belt Bolton Road, it. It contains some aspects that, that are very tangible as far as infrastructure, et cetera. But increasingly, I would say Bolton Road is really an umbrella under which China puts almost all of its foreign policy tools in dealing with much of the world under.
And if you think about the Global Development initiative, the global security initiative, , and other foreign policy efforts that China's been engaged with recently, I think those are more tied to Belt Road and China increasingly articulating its vision of itself in the international system, broadly defined.
Anita Kellogg: That's such a great definition and one I hadn't really heard of before, and I think that is a, a great way of, of thinking about it. So what are the kinds of economic ties. That come out of this that are beyond securing primary goods, which is another thing a lot of people have focused on and, yeah. Yeah.
Dawn Murphy: So I was gonna say one example that I think a lot of your viewers may or may not be familiar with, but during Covid you had a real, , robust cooperation, especially between China and States in the Middle East and Africa. First for distributing personal protective equipment and having doctors from China going to these regions and providing support, providing masks.
And of course there were critiques regarding the, the quality [00:46:00] of some of those. Materials and supplies that were being sent. But China was engaged in a a large scale effort. And then as China developed its own vaccines, it was involving many countries in the global south in particular, and especially in the Middle East and Africa in its trials.
And then as you started to have China actually producing vaccines, it engaged in co-production and joint joint ventures with a number of countries. So if you think about the United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Morocco, Egypt, South Africa, all of these countries actually started co-production of vaccines that would be produced and then distributed more broadly out to these regions.
So that would be one example of robust cooperation. And as that cooperation increased, you also had a lot of follow on effects. So for example, as you're very well aware, I'm sure during covid, many societies started to use more technology in order to monitor individuals, , their status associated with being tested, , their movements, et cetera.
So you started to have a lot of implementation of surveillance technology for health purposes in, especially in the Arab Gulf, for example. That was a follow on effect. And you also have a situation where, Because some of these linkages have been made in the health arena. The same companies, for example, G 42 in the United Arab Emirates is now engaged in more and more biomedical research with China, et cetera.
So that, that would be one area. Another would be in green technology, and this is something that. Predating Belton Road going back a long time, China has expressed a desire to cooperate with countries in the global South in order to provide sustainable alternatives and, , more environmentally friendly alternatives for their energy needs.
And that takes on different characteristics. If you're operating in the [00:48:00] Arab Gulf versus Sub-Saharan Africa, there's different types of projects, but they've been working on those type of technologies and trying to distribute that type of technology in these regions for quite a while. And that increasingly has become an important part of Belton Road.
Another way in which China's engagement's changing that actually is in the economic sphere in the more traditional economic sphere, but that its behavior is changing, is that if you think back to before Covid, you were having more and more criticism of China for example, from sub-Saharan African countries that the Projects weren't sustainable or they weren't receiving this, the, the level of quality that they were expecting in some of the projects.
And you had similar critiques coming from Middle Eastern countries. And so even before Covid China was, I think, increasingly receptive and changing some of the terms of its engagement in Builtin Road to make sure projects were more sustainable, that they would involve more local labor, that they would not have a significant of an impact on the either debt situation of the country or on the environment, et cetera.
And I. Decreased China's economic activity so much, and you had this scaling back of many projects, it, it provided an opportunity for a further reflection on what those initiatives are gonna look like going forward. So I think it's way too early to tell what Builtin Road is going to look like after Covid, but I do think you, you, we are starting to see a bit of a contraction of some of the projects.
They're, they're a bit smaller on scale, they're, they're more targeted. And as I said, they have moved into some other functional areas.
Anita Kellogg: Yeah. That completely anticipated. One of my next questions was, was just about relations and the tension over with their, there's enough local labor and those sort of, so it's , it's, I find it really interesting your observation about how these projects are changing in a post covid world.
It'd be interesting to [00:50:00] see how, what the result of that is in overall relations. And I, I just know from the data too that they've scaled back the, the amount of money that they put into investments. They have their own debt problems right now. And so I'm just curious to see how that, that plays out and how it affects relations.
So part of the Belton Road or an extended part, I guess I would say it has a different name is building like a digital infrastructure in many countries in the global south. Do these countries perceive any security risks? I know, , it's funny cuz I always critique the US saying they just tell countries don't work with China without providing alternatives.
But one of the things that, that the US does warn about is, is this setting up infrastructure and kind of back doors that China might have. So do you think countries themselves perceive any of these risks?
Dawn Murphy: So before I address that question, I wanna go a little bit back to the, the last comments that you made just quickly on the amount of money.
Cuz I spoke about the slowing e economy, which is an important piece. But even going back to 2016, China was putting in place capital controls that meant that it's foreign direct investment globally decreased dramatically. Right. And that had an impact on Belton Road and, and was a significant, I I'd say scaling back that we probably won't see those levels again on the, the digital infrastructure piece, I think it, it's an interesting topic in that.
It ties into much broader threat perceptions. And you've already mentioned this at the certain levels. So the regions that I look at in the Middle Eastern Africa, in many ways China is not seen as the same type of threat that the US right there, there's not that same dynamic. Although countries in these regions, I think of course are always gonna be a bit apprehensive regards regarding great powers and what their motivations could be.
And I think are very aware of asymmetric relations with any great power [00:52:00] could be detrimental to their interests. Right? So I do think in many ways they look at China, although China may play a unique or a different role in certain ways. I do think they see China as another great power coming in that has advantages of having a larger economy, having a, a larger impact politically on a global scale, et cetera.
So on the digital piece specifically, I think it's really complicated. In that, for example, putting in telecommunications infrastructure. The US concern, as you said, is about the potential for dual use associated with that. And the argument from a number of countries, whether it be in the Middle Eastern or Africa, is on one hand they don't see the security concerns.
On the other hand, China often is providing less expensive alternatives that will meet their needs. And so that they're arguing that, that Western companies are not. And then another piece of, of the debate, I think, occurring domestically within many of these societies is that having China operate those networks introduces a certain level of risk, but having.
Any other country operate those same net networks introduces similar risks from the standpoint of if Western companies have a monopoly over that, then that gives them access to data. And, and , of course there's different philosophical approaches of western companies in China regarding data and privacy, et cetera.
But I think many countries in these regions, they have similar concerns regarding any country that's gonna come in. And so often when the US criticizes China's role in that infrastructure, they see it as hypocritical. They see it as a narrative of. Competition between the US and China, which tends to minimize the perception of, of potential actual security risks.
So I think it's, it's a very complicated domain that we're entering into, especially cuz when you look in Sub-Saharan Africa, [00:54:00] a a large portion of the telecommunications infrastructure has already been built by China, right? Mm-hmm. And so in countries like the Middle East, , whether it's United Arab Emirates, et cetera, they're trying to exercise their own autonomy and their own sovereignty in making these decisions.
But if they want to continue to have a. Positive military relations, , very strong military cooperation with the us. I think the US does need to think through what risks having a Chinese dominated presence in a port or in a telecommunications infrastructure or, or in other technologies. I think the US has to look out for its interest as well.
So I think it's a very complicated story.
Anita Kellogg: Yeah, and it's a great point that, , from their perspective, they see that either way, , there's some security risk regardless of what country is, is operating it. And while the US has to think about its security ties and the consequences of having this infrastructure built, built by China So
Dawn Murphy: it's not even, I just wanna say I think it's not even just the global south, right.
Europe has different views about this in many cases. Mm-hmm. And doesn't see China as much of a security risk, although that has been changing. I mean, I think yeah, development in Xinjiang and regarding a level playing field. And I mean, the dynamic in Europe is changing, I think quickly and is quite fluid.
But compared to the US I think many European countries also don't have the same level of threat perception in relation to China with the
Anita Kellogg: US death. That's true. And it is interesting to see the ways, I mean, the US put a lot of pressure to get rid of the infrastructure of Huawei in Europe and profuse those deals.
So It is, it's interesting the US is having to make this case and the differences in, in what people's perceived interest is, nations perceived interest and how they receive that. The definitely. Us sees that threat more[00:56:00] strongly than other countries do, even in Europe, sort of on the security topic, , much has been made about China's single overseas military base in Jibouti.
Do you think that China is seeking to increase its military presence abroad? And if so, what might that look like in the future?
Dawn Murphy: And I think I'll, I'll keep most of my comments more focused on Middle East and Africa because I, I look at that more closely. And I do think the dynamic is a bit different when, when you look at other regions, , so as you said, Jabuti, that's China's first declared overseas base, but many of the militarization of features in the South China Sea have very base like qualities.
Right. And so these two regions, middle East and, and Africa, I would say that at this point, China's primary Military and security engagement tends to be through multilateral organizations. It's through United Nations peacekeeping, it's through multilateral anti piracy. Right. It, it tends to very much focus on using multilateral mechanisms.
And the base in Jabuti itself, the justification behind that was China wanted to be able to evacuate out its citizens in situations. For example, in 2011 with Libya, China had to evacuate out 35,000 of its citizens, and that made it feel quite insecure in the fact that it, it had challenges doing that.
Right. It also is stating that it wants to participate in anti piracy. , it, it's very much. Framing its base as wanting to protect those interests, to be able to help protect Siemens of communication, et cetera. And so I think if you have any future basing activity, especially on the continent of Africa, it's likely gonna be tied to similar concerns.
And China's still being very hesitant in having any sort of unilateral military presence. So I don't, I don't personally see. A big shift in Chinese thinking or in kind of rhetoric associated with moving towards [00:58:00] having a more robust facing presence. So if you look at the department defense annual report to Congress about China's military power, there are a number of countries that the US has labeled as countries that, that the US is concerned about this type of activity.
But my assessment at this point is, although China may establish a base somewhere in the world, right? I, I don't think we're, we're entering an, an era at this point that China's wanting to have a, anything mirroring the US basin presence and that it's still very hesitant to be seen as a military power in regions outside of Asia.
So I, I would say it's, it's unlikely that they would pursue basing at this point.
Anita Kellogg: It makes a lot of sense to me and is sort of my perception of the situation as well. Glad to have that confirmed. But , it's, it's interesting to think about how a country, you knows soft power versus hard power, and I do wonder if China does ever think about the role of global influence.
To what extent can that just be accomplished economically? To what extent has US been able to do that, in part because of its military presence across the world? So
Dawn Murphy: I think at, at this point, I think the way China looks at it, and this could change, I mean obviously intentions can change situations. , there's been dramatic changes in c American relations over the last, , five to 10 years.
So things can change. But at this point I think China very much sees that having military alliances, having, , playing the type of security guarantor role that the US does, taking sides in conflicts and regions. I think at this point China very much sees that as potentially exposing itself to risk of Chinese businesses being targeted of China, , being targeted.
And, and part of what I think of in [01:00:00] this, in this realm, I don't look at Afghanistan. Closely in my own research, but back in December there was an incident where you had a Chinese owned hotel, which was very visibly Chinese, and you had a lot of Chinese business people , workers, et cetera, staying at that hotel.
And ISIS actually targeted that hotel. And the reason they claimed that they did was that China had two cozy of relations with the Taliban. Mm-hmm. Right. So this, I think, is an example of the type of dynamic that they don't want to have in countries in the region. And they've been very hesitant. And so to your point, , can China continue to grow as a great power and have influence without the military component?
I, I think it is possible from the standpoint that increasingly in middle least in Africa, they are the predominant. Economic partner. When you look at trade for example, , they're a growing i investment partner, and politically they, they have a lot of sway. And, and at the beginning of the podcast, you brought up the issue of the Iran Saudi deal.
I think this is probably a perfect illustration in some ways of China playing a more predominant role and attempting to be a bit more of a peacemaker, but using their own approach of still focusing on sovereignty, of leveraging their close partnerships with every country in the Middle East. And, and I didn't say this earlier, but , China has strategic partnerships with every single.
Major country in the Middle East minus Israel. Right. So for them to have positive relations with Iran, Saudi, uae, Turkey and they have very good relations with Israel as well. Right. And they have this ability, I think, to bring parties to the table. And as I said, they've expressed an interest in doing this in, in the Middle East.
They, they've set up special envoys in Africa as well. So I think it's [01:02:00] too early to tell the, the ways in which China can have global influence without a, a military component. But I can't say from my own interviewing in, in the region in the Middle East, I was over in the fall and, and I don't think, at least the countries that I'm looking at right now, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, I don't think that they believe that China is gonna step in and play the same role as the us.
They don't expect that China's gonna provide security guarantees. I think they do view China differently in that way, which is part of why in an ideal world, they want to maintain the security relations with the US while expanding their economic and political relations with China. So I think many countries in Middle Eastern Africa, they don't want to pick sides and, and increasingly they're feeling as though they're being forced to on various issues.
But I think ideally they want to have multiple partners and to be able to leverage their relations with one in order to get a better deal or better relations with the
Anita Kellogg: other. Yeah, that's something definitely Ryan and I have talked about on this show, this fact that, that they don't wanna choose sides and that they can find sometimes more autonomy in being able to have choices between those sides.
, talked about China's, , neutrality by not having, , military presence. And I was just very fascinated by the Saudi Arabia and Iran deal and their ability, their unique ability to be able to broker it because having such good relations with both, which is, , something a little bit unusual since, especially from a US perspective, which is, , sees Iran as such a security threat.
And the difference is there, but sort of one thing that China has not been completely neutral about, and that's. , on Russia, so you have about a hundred countries that have refused to take slides between the [01:04:00] west and Russia since the invasion of Ukraine. Does China's strategic alliance with Russia hurt help or neutral to its goal to promote its ability to speak for the global south on issues common to developing nations?
I
Dawn Murphy: think I, in some ways it's too early to tell, but it's a very complicated story because a lot of China's legitimacy is tied with its promotion of sovereignty as a fundamental norm in its relations with the global south and with the rest of the world. And obviously Russia's the aggression towards end invasion of Ukraine flies in the face of that sovereignty in, in countries in, in the global south for the most part.
Understand that that is, that there's a real contradiction there between those norms. That said, I think part of why. It hasn't deteriorated China's relations with some countries in the global south more, and it really does vary by region and by country. But a number of countries in the global south either ha have very positive relations with Russia.
Right. And do not, for whatever reason that they, they themselves as a country choose to continue to have positive relations with Russia. Their view is, is aligned with China in certain ways in that regardless of what China was doing, they would continue to have positive relations with Russia. So that could be Saudi Arabia, that could be the United Arab Emirates.
That could be Egypt, right. South Africa, there's a number of countries that continue to have very positive relations with Russia. There's also, I think, an, an issue that China has been struggling with at a, a certain level in that. Although you had the joint statement between China and Russia, , before the invasion of Ukraine and that you've had a number of times that obviously including Xi Jinping's most recent visit to Russia [01:06:00] of continuing to demonstrate support for Russia in various ways.
But I do think that the fact that China has also been interacting with the global South and trying to attempt to serve as a mediator, although that may be looked at from a US perspective or from Western perspective in a very cynical way. I think the fact that China has been, , proposing Ideas for how Russia and Ukraine could come together and negotiate potentially.
Right. Or e even, , last year with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, when Putin said that he understood that China had some concerns, , regarding Russia's behavior. I, I think some of that behavior is really China trying to reassure the global south that it does still care about sovereignty and it does, does still care about peace and security.
But I think there's, there's so many, as I said earlier, contradictions in this, it's too early to tell what the kind of final outcome will be. Partially because I think Russian narratives regarding its stance on this may have some traction in parts of the global south so that you don't have as much blow back against Russia, which means you also don't have the blow back against China.
Mm-hmm. But again, I think it's too early to tell that you brought up, if you look at un general assembly of voting, , it, it often it is countries in the global south that, that are voting in the way that you described. And I often ask myself, how much of this is them voting because they're getting pressure from Russia or China or someone else?
And how much of it is how they always would've voted in relation to sanctions? In relation to Intervention in the internal affairs of a, a country. Right. And I have not looked at that data, but I do think when you look at, in a very broad way at it, there are countries in the global south that consistently have been against sanctions they've been against.
Right. [01:08:00] Right. And so this, when you see what appears to be supportive behavior to me, I'm, I'm not always sure, are they supportive of Russia or are they concerned regarding those same tools being used against them? Right. In the longer term. Yeah, definitely. And so, and, and I do think, , part of what complicates a lot of this also I think is this blurring of analogies.
, for example, with the, the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, right. I, as a scholar and as an American, I, I can very confidently say that that is a very different situation, , Russia's behavior versus, , US behavior. It's a very complicated discussion we have for many, many days. Right. But I think that a lot of the narrative in the global south, coming from Russia in particular, is trying to make those equivalent mm-hmm.
In, in a certain way. And trying to, , point out what Russia sees as us hypocrisy, , or Western hypocrisy regarding some of these issues. And, and I worry that that has quite a bit of traction in parts of the global South for a number of reasons. In many cases, just because many countries in these regions have a, a deep distrust due to a post-colonial environment that they find themselves in and their own experience with great powers
Anita Kellogg: in the past.
Yeah, I found that too when I've been reading on the issue that there is this reference to Iraq and the hypocrisy there, even though we know how different the situation is in the US not trying to annex territory. But it certainly is understandable, that perspective, or you can see why that argument has some traction because of the invasion itself.
But I wanna pick up on, on what you were saying there in that on one hand you have China saying I'm a developing country too, and so I can use [01:10:00] my influence to speak on behalf of developing countries. But at the same time, because of its economic power, it's also can be seen as, , another global power acting, , according to its own interests.
To what extent do you see that tension in the global south? And do they, do they see more China speaking for their interests as a developing country? Or do they see China more as another major power that offers, , certain opportunities that they can take advantage of, but is still , acting according to, to its own interests?
I,
Dawn Murphy: I think, I mean, I think the, the honest answer is both from the standpoint that, , for viewers that aren't as familiar with this, , going all the way back to the malware China has, , really portrayed itself as a leader of the third world, as a leader of the development world. , increasingly as a leader of the global south, having a real focus on south South cooperation and on shared interests.
And I think in many countries throughout the global south, actually Find that China is making a very genuine argument that although many of its cities have a per person income, that that are, is approaching western countries and is approaching more developed countries, that many parts of China still are quite poor and that China struggles with a lot of the same challenges that countries in the global South do.
And so I think on one hand, China is seen as genuine, especially when it is providing large amounts of foreign aid in, , the health sector in education providing lots of scholarships to countries in the global south.
Anita Kellogg: And really, I, I
Dawn Murphy: think you have to think about when, when China says it's part of the developing world, there is an economic piece, but I think there also is this post-colonial piece that China, regardless of its level of, of income or its, its economic [01:12:00] development, still sees itself as a country that was victimized by the west.
And although it wasn't formally colonized in the way as, as, as many countries in sub-Saharan Africa were, its experiences with western countries, with Japan, et cetera. I think that that narrative actually is quite effective with large portions of the global south. And China's focus on sovereignty. But the flip side of that is you are starting to have tensions increasingly because, although that may be China's identity at a certain level because of its economic health and its power.
It's seen more as a great power and one that is different from them. And so whether that be in arguments over fisheries or, , or illegal fishing or on various issues in the World Trade organization or around environmental concerns, , China often will find itself advocating for the global south, but then also having interests that can be detrimental to countries in the global south at the same time.
So I think, I think both as at this point, both can be true. And, and both of those phenomenon exist at the same time.
Anita Kellogg: Yeah, I think that's really important. And so I just wanted to pick up on that a little bit and talking about. This definitely this kind of post-colonial China coming in is a very different kind of power because it doesn't have that history.
, it can speak more as a sort of a victim of that for sure. But it also now is the holder of a lot of debt and some of these countries have been having a difficult time and paying down that debt. And there's been pressure from the international community to forgive a lot of this debt in the poorest countries, most recently to prevent a financial crisis in Ghana.
How do you think this affects relations now that they are [01:14:00] having more trouble paying this off? Do they, are they going to, do they start to look at China more like the other creditors that they have, like Western accreditors are like the I M F or is that view not really changing or not very important.
Dawn Murphy: I think this is another issue for, in some ways it's still too early to tell.
And, and the way I think about this is in a broader historical perspective. So going back before Covid, going back, , back before Belton Road, that China does have a very long history of delaying payments or canceling and, and forgiving loans altogether for the, the least developed countries.
Right? Not all the time, but I mean, it, it definitely had a pattern that for the most part it was receptive to changing loan terms. It was, it was canceling debt and you even, , at the height of Covid, you had a lot of pressure from sub-Saharan African countries for China to forgive and, and cancel some loans.
And China did that. But, but, so it's got a, a, a pattern of doing that over time. I think what's different now is the magnitude of lending that China has engaged in, right together with inflation. And this kind of ballooning and becoming a real crisis quickly for these countries. And so to me, in a lot of ways, it's too early to tell what China's longer term behavior is gonna be.
And part of, I say this is a lot of the posturing by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and by the Chinese government is emphasizing that China's. Debt to many, , in relation to many of these countries is only a small percentage, right? It varies by country. It might be that they hold 7% of the debt, or 18% or 28%, but China's trying to make this point that there's these other creditors out there that also need to take a haircut, which is, , changing the terms of those loans.
And so, I don't know at this point how much it is that China's using this as a negotiation, negotiating point so that it doesn't have to bear the [01:16:00] burden of, , changing its loan terms while these other organizations are, or is it gonna play hardball and, and really stick with this. And I, I do think, , as you said, there increasingly is a concern among.
Many countries, , that are holding this debt, that China may be becoming much stricter, stricter about it. But I think for the most part, countries are also waiting and seeing, and they are negotiating with China behind the scenes. And so again, I'm not, I'm not sure how much of it's posturing.
Posturing versus how, how much of it is a real change in course. And whether it's a philosophical change in course, or one of the arguments that's being made is that China, because of the, the level of. Lending now, and I don't know the exact percentage, but I've seen something recently that said about 5% of China's g d P is, , locked up in, in these various loans that ultimately it could start to cause threats to China's own economic system and own financial system, right?
Mm-hmm. And that could result in some of this hesitancy. But it is, I do, I I do think that in some ways China is involved in this game of chicken with the, the, the western countries and with other lenders and, and the, the larger multilateral organizations on an issue that is deeply disturbing to many countries that, that are sitting there worrying about what these, these defaults and, and what these economic impacts could mean for their countries in the longer term.
Anita Kellogg: Yeah, and I think that's an important point. As, as these debts are, are held by many different, both China and the I M F and other western countries and the coordination and sometimes some, to some extent, how hard that coordination is with relations with China these days. , you had talked about green energy too, and that's definitely the same thing that the west wants to promote in, in the global south as well, but in an area that many people have pointed out would be a good point for cooperation [01:18:00] between the US and China.
And just the tensions have prevented it from doing that. I wanna end with, , you've talked about in, in, in your book in many places about China building and alternative world order, and you hear this all the time in the West about, , we must preserve the cor current world order. I'm wondering how you see what China's alternative world order is.
Dawn Murphy: So I think there's an a number of elements, but one of the largest ones that, that I deal with in the book is, for example, constructing cooperation forums. So the first thing I should say, and again, in the the book, it gets into a lot of detail. , you gotta look at each specific foreign policy tool and is it in alignment with the liberal order or is it not?
And, and et cetera. But at a high level, a lot of this order that China's building is happening through cooperation forums. So, just as an example, in the Middle East, they have the China Arab States Cooperation Forum, which includes all Middle Eastern countries. It's the primary multilateral mechanism that they use to interact with the League of Arab states.
It covers all these functional areas that we've been talking about earlier in the discussion. Basically, any type of interaction you could have behind two states. The norms underlying that are the five principles of peaceful coexistence, which is a very strict interpretation of westphalian sovereignty, focused on non-intervention and non interference.
And on the economic side, there is a heavier level of state involvement in economic interactions. Right. And, and there's a lot of more complexity to that. But if, if you look at that, they've set up a cooperation forum with the Arab states. In 2004, they established one with Africa, the entire continent.
In 2000, they have won for Central Asia, Russia. Now that includes India, Pakistan, Iran, as [01:20:00] well as a number of other countries in the Europe Gulf as observers, which is the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. That's exact existence since 2001. You have these same cooperation forums with the Latin American, Caribbean countries with Eastern Europe, right, et cetera.
So when you look globally, they've established these organizations that in some ways have norms underlying them that, that are very similar to the liberal order, but that if the liberal order as defined by the current institutions of a post World War II system, , whether that be the United Nations, the World Trade Organization in the, the World Bank, I mean et cetera, like these, if those institutions either go away or if China's excluded from them, they've already built these institutions.
And as I said, cooperation forms is one example. They're also pursuing. Free trade agreements and strategic partnerships and, , many other foreign policy tools. So the way I look at this alternate order is China built most of this to really be a compliment to the current order as it exists, but it does have this
kind of plan B quality that it could take the place, not of the broader global order, but it could take the place of that order in China's relations with these particular regions if the, the broader liberal order, , contracts and, and it potentially doesn't include China.
And so that's really what I, I get at in the book. But as I said earlier, China increasingly is articulating its vision for its role in the world. So the book, , predated the Global Security Initiative, the Global Development Initiative, some of these other Activities that China's engaged in. And, and at this point, I would say those initiatives as well as the special envoys China's using, et cetera, it's still very much in alignment with what I argued in the book.
I don't think you [01:22:00] see a Chinese attempt to overthrow or displace the current order in any fundamental way. But things are very fluid between the US and China right now and between China and the West. And I do think we increasingly are getting to a point where you could have a, a full rupturing of relations between the US and China, or between China and Western countries more broadly.
So these alternate organizations are becoming much more important. Yeah.
Anita Kellogg: That's really interesting. And, and your comment about, if I understand you correctly, that China's not aggressively at this moment trying to supplant the current order, but it is billing institutions that could be an alternative, were the current order to, to weaken, right?
Yeah. And I think the, ,
Dawn Murphy: if you think about the, the current order, the current liberal order, the ways in which China really threatens that, I think there's two primary ways. One is that as its power is growing, as its economy is growing, It's trying to change the rules from within to better represent China's own interests.
So that's one piece of it. But also because they have such a deep discomfort with the political elements of the order that you've got the situation where in many ways the economic parts of the order, they have very strong buy-in and they're trying to shape from the inside, but they, they benefit greatly from the economic piece.
Mm-hmm. But on the political side, they've got a lot less comfort on promotion of democracy, human rights, , those, the political liberal aspects. And so I do wonder going forward, as you have this power that that's rising, how long can the liberal order really survive if it's more of an emphasis on the economic side and not the political side?
And, and so I think that, Can be threatening to the order if it, it ends up that a lot of the political aspects are, are not going to be as enforced a as [01:24:00] strongly as they had in the past. And I should say on the security side, we talked about this a bit earlier, but for the most part in the regions that I look at, China is very supportive of the liberal order, , peacekeeping operations done multilaterally having conflict, , and dispute resolution done through the United Nations, having multilateral anti piracy initiatives.
I think in many ways they see the liberal order as what they want to leverage in resolving disputes everywhere outside of their own territorial periphery. Yeah, I
Anita Kellogg: think that's a great nuanced response that we often don't get in in the discussion where it's sort of just one or the other. But to see the ways where it does find the world, current world order in its interest and then in other ways does not.
Well, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your insight with us. It's been a wonderful conversation and I've learned so much from you. Well,
Dawn Murphy: thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate the invitation.
Anita Kellogg: I hope you enjoyed the interview. And that brings us to the end of the episode of Kelloggs Global Politics.
You can visit our website at kello. I'm gonna, I hope you enjoy listening to the interview that brings us.
I hope you enjoyed listening to the interview. That brings us to the end of this episode of Kellogg's Global Politics. You can visit our website at www kelloggs global politics.com and follow us on Twitter at Global Kellogg or me ar Kellogg.
Ryan Kellogg: You can also reach us by email anita kellogg global politics.com and myself, ryan@kelloggglobalpolitics.com.
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