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1: If you are on the receiving end, then the operations that matter are addition and multiplication, not subtraction and division. High time for the US (and everyone else) to lean into this. But (1) play to strength; don't "be" China; and (2) China/BRI aren't going away, either. https://twitter.com/MilanV/status/1385412331304280065
2: I've been harping on this for 15 years, in and out of government and, frankly, before BRI even existed and when Xi Jinping was still sitting in the provinces. The US now dismisses that this is about "connectivity" - it's about geopolitics. Fine. But not for many recipients.
3: In recent years, the US tried to take its view out on the road but without much traction, especially in the Global South as opposed to, say, Europe. Why? Because subtraction and division bumped up against the receiving parties who still insist on addition and multiplication.
4: My experience, especially before BRI, was that the US got more traction when it stressed not just threats but what @RABoucher used to call "options and opportunities." In many places, *their* sweet spot was to get more connectivity but without dependence - on any one partner.
5: And to achieve connectivity without dependence, you want to multiply and add to your options, not subtract from them. So the US has gotten traction with prudent warnings and exhortations, including about you-know-who and modalities and terms but tilts at windmills a lot too.
6: I still feel like Chinese projects more often run into problems or get "pushback" because of overreach, overpromising/underdelivering, politics, terms, etc., than because the US (or others) convinced X or Y to abandon options. But it gets very dynamic when we get granular.
7: Been writing on some of these challenges for a long time. One framing example here: https://nationalinterest.org/feature/meeting-challenge-asia-174917
8: Another one here: https://carnegieendowment.org/2017/06/26/china-didn-t-invent-asian-connectivity-pub-72668
9: And a longer one in the last few sections in here: https://carnegieendowment.org/2018/04/27/reluctant-stakeholder-why-china-s-highly-strategic-brand-of-revisionism-is-more-challenging-than-washington-thinks-pub-76213
10: Anyway, seems like an awfully welcome development to me from Brussels and Delhi.
