Where are the Adults in the Room Now?
Even Trump's Policies on China Made More Sense
After four years of nationalist rhetoric coming out of the White House and the absence of a coherent foreign policy, America’s allies have welcomed the election of President Joe Biden
Former President Donald Trump and many of his aides had no diplomatic experience or understanding of the complexity of the current global complexities. Or as pundits used to put it when discussing what was going at the White House, “Where are the adults in the room?”
Well, the adults are back in the room. President Biden entered office after more than four decades of engagement in foreign policy, including as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and as a Vice President who had spent many hours meeting with world leaders, including China’s Xi Jinping.
And he brought with him some of the best and brightest minds who have dealt with foreign policy, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, and Asia experts Kurt Campbell and Eli Ratner.
It is therefore a bit disappointing that when it comes to the issue that tops U.S. foreign policy, which is its relationship with China, much of the rhetoric that emanates from the new administration sounds at times as though it is coming from the old one, or even worst.
President Biden has continued to pursue the aggressive China policies of its predecessor, including by failing to revisit the unresolved trade and tariff disputes it inherited from the former administration, and by embracing a militarized, protectionist and clash-of-civilization frame, as former Ambassador Chas Freeman had put it, to deal with Beijing.
Indeed, Biden Administration officials seem to have adopted the notion that enjoys support in Washington and suggests that China on a mission to replace the U.S. as a global hegemonic power and that American policy should operate based on that assumption.
“Addressing the China challenge will require a comprehensive strategy and more systemic approach than the piecemeal approach of the recent past,” stated a report issued that Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR). That may not sound like a declaration of a cold war against Beijing but comes close to doing that.
China does pose some challenges to U.S. economic and strategic interests, but there is no reason why President Biden and his aides should conclude that every move by Beijing to promote its interests is meant to displace the U.S. as a great power.
Hence China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) should not be seen as part of an anti-American global strategy but as an economic policy aimed at creating a huge interconnected area in which trade and investment would flow smoothly and in which China would play a major role. The U.S. should regard this initiative as an existential threat and is welcomed to respond to it by promoting its own economic strategy.
More disappointing is the attempt by the Biden Administration to double down on the claim that China was mounting a “genocide” against the Uighur people in the Xinxiang region, without providing any credible proof that the Chinese are committing an international crime akin to the Nazi Germany’s genocide of Europe’s Jews.
And then…oops.. the same U.S. administration is turning around and approaching the Chinese government that is supposedly committing a genocide and asks it to work together with Washington in coordinating a response to the challenges of climate change. That gives strategic incoherence a bad name.
In contrast, President Trump’s China policies made more sense. They were transactional in nature and assumed that American could reach economic and diplomatic deals with Beijing. And contrary to some of his aides refrained from turning the relationship into part of an ideological crusades.
Perhaps now that the Biden Administration is ready to name a new envoy to Beijing, it should try to come up with a more coherent and realistic policy towards China that would demonstrate that indeed, the adults are now in the room.