Alberto Fernández’s agenda with Xi Jinping could complicate bilateral relations with the White House

On February 10, around 1 p.m. in Buenos Aires, Joseph Biden announced to the Pentagon that he was creating a intervention force design a strategy to contain the “growing challenge from China” to US interests in the world. Beijing takes advantage of its economic weight to occupy geopolitical spaces, and Argentina is not on the sidelines of this power strategy this is already being verified in the reserves of the Central Bank, the final price of the Sinopharm vaccine and the mysterious “space activities” of the military base that China has deployed in Neuquén.

Ely Ratner, Special Assistant to United States Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin, will be in charge of the group of 15 experts who will design the future China containment strategy to be applied by the White House around the world . The commission headed by Ratner – with many years at Biden’s side – has a four-month term and will consult with Capitol Hill and leading experts on China who work in Washington think tanks.

“China is a rising power and it challenges the United States and its allies in many parts of the world. From the Horn of Africa to South America via the Indo-Pacific. China affirms its growing influence so as to regularly deteriorate the stability of the international order which maintains peace since the end of the Second World War ”, indicated the statement of the Pentagon which justified the creation of the commission of experts directed by Ratner.

In this geopolitical context, it is no coincidence that the United States chartered the patrol vessel USCGC Stone in the region and it was released the presence in the South Atlantic of a nuclear submarine sent by the US Navy on Commander Submarine Force Atlantic (COMSUBLANT) social networks.

These two successive movements were executed to announce that Washington will place particular emphasis on the illegal fishing of Chinese vessels which ravage all the seas on the planet. Biden sees illegal fishing as one of Beijing’s methods of undermining the stability of the international system created after the Allied victory over the Third Reich.

Casa Rosada already knows that the patrol boat USCGC Stone and the nuclear submarine Greeneville were movements ordered by the Pentagon to demonstrate to Xi Jinping that a new stage has opened in the relations of the United States with China. And that there was no intention to complicate bilateral relations between Biden and Alberto Fernández.

“We cannot allow a nuclear submarine in the South Atlantic because it violates UN resolutions, let alone work with the British in the Falkland Islands. But I also know it was a sign of illegal fishing by the Chinese. It was not for us: if this illegal fishing is also harming the economy and the environment ”, the president explained when asked to Olivos about the Greeneville nuclear submarine and the official demonstration led by the Foreign Ministry.

However, from another point of view, Alberto Fernández should take into account the context of the USCGC Stone patrol vessel and the nuclear submarine Greeneville. While Biden has authorized the deployment of a patrol boat and submarine due to illegal fishing, some deterrent actions by the White House should not be ruled out in the face of the levels of bilateral ties China wishes to establish with Argentina.

Xi Jinping wants Chinese companies to participate in 5G bidding, lithium battery production, nuclear power plant construction, geometric scale food production, energy-related investments and the supply of military equipment to the Ministry of Defense.

This bilateral agenda promoted from Beijing clashes head-on with China’s containment strategy already being prepared by the 15 Pentagon experts under the orders of Special Advisor Ratner. Alberto Fernández needs the United States to close negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Paris Club, and in turn obtain soft credits from multilateral organizations that still meet the geopolitical agenda of the White House .

Biden wishes to articulate a political and personal relationship with Alberto Fernández, but he will be adamant with Xi Jinping and his global strategy supposed to displace the United States as the world’s leading power. The Argentine president will visit Xi from May 5, and there is no tentative date for a single meeting with Biden. In Washington, they prefer to wait for Alberto Fernández to return from China and act accordingly.

I continued to read:

Point by point, all the tentacles of the deepening of relations between Argentina and China

The government has closed the purchase agreement for the Sinopharm vaccine and is awaiting authorization from ANMAT to provide one million doses