![\"belt_road.jpg\"](\"\/blog\/wp-content\/media\/images\/belt_road.jpg\" "\\"belt_road.jpg\\"")
<\/p>\nAuthored by Pepe Escobar via The Saker blog,<\/p>\n
The US-Australia-Japan alternative to Belt and Road helps explain why the US sent a junior delegation to Thailand and why India opted out of RCEP…<\/p>\n
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Chinese President Xi Jinping six years ago launched New Silk Roads, now better known as the Belt and Road Initiative, the largest, most ambitious, pan-Eurasian infrastructure project of the 21st\u00a0century.<\/p>\n
Under the Trump administration, Belt and Road has been utterly demonized 24\/7: a toxic cocktail of fear and doubt, with Beijing blamed for everything from plunging poor nations into a \u201cdebt trap\u201d to evil designs of world domination.<\/p>\n
Now finally comes what might be described as the institutional American response to Belt and Road: the Blue Dot Network.<\/p>\n
Blue Dot is\u00a0described, officially, as promoting global, multi-stakeholder \u201csustainable infrastructure development in the Indo-Pacific region and around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is a joint project of the US Overseas Private Investment Corporation, in partnership with Australia\u2019s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Japan Bank for International Cooperation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe development of critical infrastructure\u2014when it is led by the private sector and supported on terms that are transparent, sustainable, and socially and environmentally responsible\u2014is foundational to widespread economic empowerment,\u201d said\u00a0Bohigian. \u201cThrough Blue Dot Network, the United States is proud to join key partners to fully unlock the power of quality infrastructure to foster unprecedented opportunity, progress, and stability.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis endorsement of Blue Dot Network not only creates a solid foundation for infrastructure global trust standards but reinforces the need for the establishment of umbrella global trust standards in other sectors, including digital,\u00a0mining,\u00a0financial services,\u00a0and research,\u201d said\u00a0Krach. \u201cSuch global trust standards, which are based on respect for transparency and accountability, sovereignty of property and resources, local labor and human rights, rule of law, the environment, and sound governance practices in procurement and financing, have been driven not just by private sector companies and civil society but also by governments around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAustralia is committed to promoting high-quality infrastructure, inclusive approaches, and facilitating private sector investment in the Indo-Pacific region,\u201d said\u00a0Maude. \u201cI\u2019m pleased that this commitment is shared by East Asia Summit Leaders, and we look forward to working closely with our regional partners to develop Blue Dot Network to take action on this commitment.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBlue Dot Network is an initiative that leads to the promotion of quality infrastructure investment committed by G20 countries,\u201d said\u00a0Maeda. \u201cAs JBIC has a long history of infrastructure finance all over the world, JBIC is pleased to share such experience and contribute to further development of Blue Dot Network.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now compare it with what just happened this same week at the inauguration of the China International Import Expo in Shanghai.<\/p>\n
As Xi stressed:<\/p>\n
\u201cTo date, China has signed 197 documents on Belt and Road cooperation with 137 countries and 30 international organizations.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is what Blue Dot is up against \u2013 especially across the Global South. Well, not really. Global South diplomats, informally contacted, are not exactly impressed. They might see Blue Dot as an aspiring competitor to BRI, but one that\u2019s moved by private finance \u2013 mostly, in theory, American.<\/p>\n
They scoff at the prospect that Blue Dot will include some sort of ratings mechanism that will be positioned to vet and downgrade Belt and Road projects. Washington will spin it as a \u201ccertification\u201d process setting \u201cinternational standards\u201d \u2013 implying Belt and Road is sub-standard. Whether Global South nations will pay attention to these new ratings\u00a0is an open question.<\/p>\n
Blue Dot should also be understood in direct comparison with what just\u00a0happened\u00a0at the summit-fest in Thailand centered on the meetings of East Asia, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).<\/p>\n
The advent of Blue Dot explains why the US sent only a junior delegation to Thailand, and also, to a great extent, why India missed the RCEP train as it left the pan-Asian station.<\/p>\n
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is still between a rock \u2013 Washington\u2019s Indo-Pacific strategy \u2013 and a hard place \u2013 Eurasia integration. They are mutually incompatible.<\/p>\n
Blue Dot is a de facto business extension of Indo-Pacific, which congregates the US, Japan, Australia \u2013 and India: the Quad members. It\u2019s a mirror image of the \u2013 defunct \u2013 Obama administration Trans-Pacific Partnership in relation to the \u2013 also defunct \u2013 \u201cpivot to Asia.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s unclear whether New Delhi will join Blue Dot. It has rejected Belt and Road, but not, finally and irrevocably, RCEP. ASEAN has tried to put on a brave face and insist differences will be smoothed out and all 16 RCEP members will sign a deal in Vietnam in 2020.<\/p>\n
Yet the bottom line remains: Washington will continue to manipulate India by all means deemed necessary to torpedo \u2013 at least in the South Asian theater \u2013 the potential of Belt and Road as well as larger Eurasia integration.<\/p>\n
And still, after all these years of non-stop demonization, the best thing Washington could come up with was to steal Belt and Road\u2019s idea and dress it up in private bank financing.<\/p>\n
Now compare it, for instance, with the work of the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia. They privilege the ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific, an original Indonesian idea, instead of the American version. The institute\u2019s president, Hidetoshi Nishimura, describes it as \u201ca guideline for dialogue partners\u201d and stresses that \u201cJapan\u2019s own vision of the Indo-Pacific fits very well with that of ASEAN.\u201d<\/p>\n
As much as Nishimura notes how \u201cit is well known that Japan has been the key donor and a real partner in the economic development of Southeast Asia throughout the past five decades,\u201d he also extols RCEP as \u201cthe symbol of free trade.\u201d Both China and Japan are firmly behind RCEP. And Beijing is also firmly stressing the direct connection between RCEP and Belt and Road projects.<\/p>\n
In the end, Blue Dot may be no more than a PR exercise, too little, too late. It won\u2019t stop Belt and Road expansion. It won\u2019t prevent China-Japan investment partnerships. It won\u2019t stop awareness all across the Global South about the weaponization of the US dollar for geopolitical purposes.<\/p>\n
And it won\u2019t bury prevailing skepticism about the development project skills of a hyperpower engaged on a mission to steal other nation\u2019s oil reserves as part of an illegal Syrian occupation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Saker blog, The US-Australia-Japan alternative to Belt and Road helps explain why the US sent a junior delegation to Thailand and why India opted out of RCEP… Chinese President Xi Jinping six years ago launched New Silk Roads, now better known as the Belt and Road Initiative, the largest, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=533"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":535,"href":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533\/revisions\/535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}