Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, is undoubtedly on a mission. He has always been outspoken, but over the past months, he has grown into the preeminent mouthpiece of the Trump administration, especially when it comes to pivoting American power across the world. China has probably preoccupied him the most recently, with at least a material provocation launched against the Beijing leadership every single day.
Be it the coronavirus, South China Sea, Hong Kong, press corps, the Uighur, Huawei, Hong Kong, student visa, Belt and Road, debt traps, and Hong Kong again… Pompeo’s latest foray took him to the Nixon Library in Southern California yesterday, to hold a landmark speech and invoke a new term, “distrust and verify”, as a mantra when dealing with Beijing. Richard Nixon might have turned in his grave. 50 years of what he started as a visionary are in the process of being flushed down the toilet.
Earlier this week, Pompeo was in London where he made sure the British government is playing ball and to the Washington tunes. And so, it wasn’t surprising to hear that Huawei’s 5G equipment will now be spurned in the Kingdom and that the extradition treaty with Hong Kong has been withdrawn. I guess the cherry on the cake of provocative behaviour was that Pompeo had official meetings with former Hong Kong governor Chris Patton, an outspoken Beijing critic, and self-exiled dissident Nathan Law.
According to the press, Law accused Beijing of being busy meddling in the territory’s September Legislative Council elections and delivered ammunition on a silver platter for Washington to further assail the Chinese leadership. It must have been one aspect why Pompeo called for a global alliance against China, in London of all places, and talked about empowering dissidents at the Nixon Library yesterday.
There is no reason to believe that his and other cabinet members’ rhetoric will improve before the US elections in November. Quite the contrary. It is based on a convergence of stances between hawkish policymakers and Trump political advisors that demonising China is a useful message for the campaign. And if it wasn’t enough to win Trump’s re-election, then the deterioration of relations could no longer be reversed by a Biden administration and form the baseline for Pompeo’s own ambitions in 2024.
This strategy of aggression doesn’t stop with China, however. From London, Pompeo assiduously travelled on to Europe, but not to Paris or Berlin, let alone Brussels. No, he graced Denmark with his presence mid-week before heading to California. Denmark, you might wonder? Is it time for that Greenland bid again? Well, we as the general public have since been assured that it wasn’t even on the agenda. So, why is Denmark so interesting for the Trump administration?
Two reasons: The autonomous territories Greenland and the Faroe Islands are, in fact, of massive geopolitical importance to America. The Arctics are increasingly becoming a playground and potential theatre for conflict among the superpowers, China has invested heavily in Greenland, and the Faroes, in particular, are crucial to controlling the seaways between the Barents Sea and the North Atlantic. And, of course, the diplomatic spat over Trump wanting to simply buy Greenland last year needed to be ironed out.
Despite the platitudes expressed at the foreign ministers’ press conference about shared values, alliances etc, it could escape no one that Copenhagen is in Washington’s crosshair. The friendly visit by Pompeo was nothing but a friendly reminder that there is no equal partnership and that Denmark will have to fall in line. America will not have its geopolitical playbook around the North Pole disrupted by a little Kingdom that merely nominally controls one of the most strategic plots of land on earth.
The second reason for Pompeo’s visit was without a doubt Nordstream2. As we are fully aware, Washington has demanded the works to be stopped and threatened every company under the sun and associated with it to be sanctioned. Some have been sufficiently intimidated and withdrawn their engagement, and Russia had to bring in its own particular vessel resources to lay the final 160 kilometres of pipe that are left to complete the project.
As the final stretch of the gas pipeline runs through Danish waters, the consortium had to acquire Copenhagen’s approval, which it recently received. Pompeo would have point-blank asked the Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, to withdraw the permit, or else. So, it is not just the German government that has been bullied on Nordstream2, not just the consortium and everyone working on it that have been threatened with sanctions, it is also a country whose economic waters the pipeline runs through that is in trouble.
What will Pompeo come up with next? It’s an interesting situation nations find themselves in. There is America on one end whose current government decries every form of despotism in the world and in its name is on a crusade against everyone and everything suspicious of collaborating with China and Russia. And there is the rest of the world in need of bracing itself as it is being subjugated by exactly such form of despotism. One certainly doesn’t want to be on the list of countries Pompeo is scheduled to visit.
