In foreign policy, like physics, every action generates an opposite reaction. The challenge is figuring out what triggered what, what is cause and what is effect.
That is the debate that we’re having over Ukraine and it is accelerating in this part of the world as well.
While U.S. President Joe Biden’s Northeast Asia tour was the focus of international attention last week, a Chinese security proposal was generating its own quiet groundswell. The “Global Security Initiative” (GSI) is another one of Beijing’s grand proposals that are often dismissed as a lot of words. That may prove to be its fate, but China appears bent on making the concept real and winning supporters. Beijing is playing a long game to counter efforts to shape the external environment to its disadvantage.