• The likely outbreak of hostilities between a rising China and a sliding United States (US) as seen in increased trade-wars.
• BRI is seen as China’s ultimate love towards globalisation which changed its destiny and a fight against protectionism (America first policy). The initiative if successfully executed, for sure leads the way to Chinese leadership on a global scale.
• USA threatened by the prospect of the re-emergence of Eurasian transportation links and their impact on the maritime order, have launched a relentless campaign against Chinese investments in South Asia, Africa, and Central Asia along the BRI route.
• The Chinese investment policies are shown as debt trap, predatory, imperial, comprador.

USA post cold-war:

• The US had the goodwill as well as the power to build a more inclusive and democratic global governance architecture.
• However, led by the military–industrial complex (MIC), it created utter chaos in West Asia and South Asia through illegal wars and unnecessary interventions. It promoted unabashed unilateralism, undermining international rules at will.
• Wars and walls continue to consume the US’s annual military budget of roughly $650 billion.
  • According to a Brown University study, the US has spent $5.9 trillion on the war on terror between 2001 and 2019.
  • The Trump administration is planning to draw $13.9 billion from the unused portion of the Army Corps of Engineers budget to construct a more than 200-mile-long wall along the US–Mexico border.
• Washington’s position as a pre-eminent global power is precariously balanced. It is finding it exceedingly difficult to maintain the primacy of the dollar in international financial markets as well as that of its navy in the maritime domain.

China’s BRI and its approach:

• BRI consisting of the land-based belt, ‘Silk Road Economic Belt’, and ‘Maritime Silk Road’, aims to connect the East Asian economic region with the European economic circle and runs across the continents of Asia, Europe and Africa.
• BRI is China’s ambitious project announced in 2013. It covers about 65% of the world population, 60% of the world GDP and over 70 countries in six economic corridors.
• China is spending almost $1 trillion to revive and renew the overland and maritime trade links between China, Europe, West Asia, and East Africa through construction of modern ports linked to high-speed road and rail corridors.

The Chinese approach differs from that of USA:

• Adhering to the principles of sea power, Washington continued to feed its 800-odd military bases across the globe to assert its maritime dominance.
• China spotted the gaping hole in the US’s approach, and is attempting to strike a fine balance between its maritime and continental ambitions by launching the BRI, which has the potential to boost international trade, instead of strife.
• The American obsession with the sea lines of communication (SLOCs) prevented the US from imagining that the land lines of communication (LLOCs) could also be built to augment global supply chains. The latter is being encashed by China under its BRI.
• Ancient silk routes opened windows of friendly engagement among nations and embodied the spirit of peace and cooperation, openness and inclusiveness, mutual learning and mutual benefit. BRI aims to revitalize the ancient silk routes.
• BRI projects are using debt diplomacy by granting huge loans to recipient countries

India’s concerns with BRI:

• India argues that the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor project violates its sovereignty because it passes through the part of the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir that belongs to India.
• Debt trap:
  • BRI projects are pushing recipient countries into indebtedness, do not transfer skills or technology and are environmentally unsustainable.
  • For instance story of Sri Lanka being saddled with great amounts of debt to China was well known.
• China is planning to extend the CPEC to Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Maldives, Nepal, Myanmar and Sri Lanka are eagerly pursuing potential BRI projects.
• Through OBOR, China is countering the strategies of India in North East region and is promoting its greater presence in North East India, part of which China claims as its own territory. This may have a security impact on India.
• Tense bilateral relations with China, deep mistrusts and India’s growing concerns over Chinese hegemonic intentions in South Asia and Indo-Pacific region make it practically unlikely that India will ever consider joining this project.
• Military deployment:
  • The fact that the Chinese have begun to deploy 30,000 security personnel to protect the projects along the CPEC route makes it an active player in the politics of the Indian sub-continent. Clearly, this is a case of double standards.

Way forward:

• The American strategic culture needs an overhaul in times of the fourth industrial revolution.
• USA cannot continue to play the great game to keep land powers divided and involved in border conflicts.
• The march towards development of trans-continental commercial corridors is not likely to halt because the emerging transportation technologies—autonomous electric trucks and bullet trains—are favouring land transportation networks over shipping.
• Online markets demand faster logistics that fast trains running across continents will fulfil more efficiently than container ships.
• Strategists need to work harder on restoring the land–sea equilibrium, instead of allowing maritime powers to stall the construction of railway lines as was done during World War I with the Berlin–Baghdad rail line.