Editor's note: Abu Naser Al Farabi is a Dhaka-based columnist and analyst focusing on international politics, especially Asian affairs. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily those of CGTN.

Benjamin Loh, chief executive of Dutch-listed ASM International, one of the world's top five semiconductor equipment makers, has warned that the U.S. is turning up the heat on its allies to ensure key global chip companies fall into line behind Washington's tough export controls on China, the Financial Times reported. Loh further accused the U.S. of exerting unilateral and undue pressure on its allies, saying that the U.S. was "putting a lot of pressure… to make sure that the Dutch government and the Japanese government follow as well," at a colossal cost of the companies themselves.   

After the U.S. had issued export controls to strangulate China's access to semiconductor technology in early October, ASM International warned that the U.S. export controls will have a significant negative impact on around 40 percent of its sales to China, which has risen to represent 16 percent of the company's total revenue.

This was followed by a warning from another topmost European chip equipment supplier, ASML Holding. Its CEO Peter Wennink warned last October that newly adopted export control measures by the United States government on exports of semiconductor technology could affect up to five percent of ASML's order backlog as the company's sales in China account for about 16-18 percent. Later, the CEO of ASML reportedly suggested that the company was considering making all of its supply lines completely resistant to American imports.

Just as the grudging resistance on the part of U.S. allies is becoming evident and pronounced against the U.S. unilateral tech export controls, so is the U.S.'s pressure on its allies, particularly on Japan and the Netherlands, to toe its policy line. In an interview with Dutch newspaper NRC last month, Dutch Foreign Trade Minister Liesje Schreinemacher said "the U.S. shouldn't expect the Netherlands to unquestionably adopt its approach to China export restrictions," insisting that "the Netherlands will not copy the American measures one-to-one."

On November 25, Nikkei Asia chief editor Shigesaburo Okumara reported from the Trilateral Commission meeting in Tokyo that Japan's establishment is "sick and tired of the decoupling with China imposed by the U.S. under the name of 'Democracy vs. Autocracy' dualism." He further added that some of the participants "worried about the arbitrary and unpredictable nature of trade sanctions and their implementation by the U.S."

But Washington, against the very dispositions of its allies and their growing tendency to pursue independent policy lines in the face of U.S. forceful assertions, has continued to exert undue pressure on them to goad into its coercive, unilateral, and potentially destructive export control measures against China.

As the Financial Times reported, Tarun Chhabra, U.S. National Security Council senior director for Technology and National Security, who drove the process to impose unilateral controls on October 7, and Alan Estevez, top U.S. Department of Commerce official for export controls, and held talks with Dutch officials in the Netherlands in November. The aim was to pressure the Dutch to block tech sales to China and coerce the country, along with Japan, into securing a trilateral agreement that aims at curbing China's tech access.

Yet, so-called U.S. allies are under tremendous pressure to embrace monumental costs only to withstand hegemony-driven U.S. self-interests. But before falling prey to such potentially suicidal tech warfare, the U.S. allies must discern Washington's underlying intents of its growing strategic assaults against China on multiple fronts, notably on the field of cutting-edge technology.

For over four years, the U.S. economic warfare against China has transitioned from the Donald Trump administration's low-grade trade and tariff war to a zero-sum competition encompassing almost all aspects of bilateral relations between the two superpowers. The United States has continued to justify its current techno-nationalist policy – from export controls to tariffs to blacklists – under "national security" grounds.

But, ironically, it has wisely avoided testing its arguments – so-called security threat from China – and hasn't substantiated those with evidence other than some chilling rhetoric and threat-invoking cliches about China and its tech ambitions Washington's extraterritorial policy assertions have vastly shown disregard, as is always, for the economic interests of its so-called allies and apathy to accommodate their differing priorities. Accordingly, Washington has made it clear that it wouldn't budge from its broad-based, catastrophic decoupling policy in relation to China, even at whatever the consequence to whomever – allies or enemies.

Technology is one of the many frontiers Washington has waged against Beijing to stifle its accedence. The United States, though, has long asserted that the core aims of its techno-nationalist policy against China and its unicorns are to safeguard its national security and forestall China's access to cutting-edge technologies.

But the broader aim, as has become increasingly evident in its over four-year-long economic warfare, is economic – prevailing in its zero-sum competition for self-advantage in the end. In a September address that foreshadowed Joe Biden's export controls, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan declared that America's "comparative advantage" in the global economy "must be restored, rejuvenated, and stewarded." He further argued that the United States could not settle for a "relative" advantage over its competitors.

The U.S. allies, under persistent pressure and in their pursuit of treading independent policy, need to realize this truth. It's more about maintaining U.S. economic hegemony and eventually reestablishing its global primacy. Don't be stupid.

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