Published on
Tuesday, June 01, 2021
byCommon Dreams
Biden Dangerously Accelerating the New Cold War with China
Despite our differences with China-some of them profound-we would do well to
prioritize pursuing mutually beneficial diplomacy and building
collaborations to address the existential threats to survival over preparing
for catastrophic war with the Middle Kingdom.
byJoseph Gerson
With the seas rising and a new fire season upon us, cooperation-not war-with
China is essential if the climate emergency is to be contained. (Photo:
CodePink)
With the seas rising and a new fire season upon us, cooperation-not war-with
China is essential if the climate emergency is to be contained. (Photo:
CodePink)
The bloom is off the rose. While there is much in Joe Biden's and the
Democratic Party's domestic policy agenda to be admired and supported,
rooting it in Trump initiated anti-China hysteria undercuts our national
security. Even if it turns out that Covid 19 escaped from a Chinese
laboratory studying viruses in bats, the lesson to be taken should be that
more, not less, cooperation is needed to increase the safety of their labs
and our own security. Instead of increasing the Pentagon's budget and
military confrontations over Taiwan and the South China Sea that risk
triggering catastrophic war by accident or miscalculation, Biden and company
. should be pursuing Common Security with China. As we learned at the
dangerous height of the last Cold War, real security can only be achieved
through mutuality with a nation's rival, not via spiraling arms races but
through mutually beneficial diplomacy like that which led to the INF Treaty
with the Soviets.
Instead of increasing military spending to reinforce U.S. dominance over
distant seas or to retain corrupt authoritarian clients in countries like
the Philippines and India, that money should be spent to export billions of
vaccine shots to countries in need before new variants renew the pandemic
here in the United States. With our housing shortage, real security lies in
funding massive home construction. And, with the seas rising and a new fire
season upon us, cooperation-not war-with China is essential if the climate
emergency is to be contained.
Beginning with Bill Clinton, we have witnessed a pattern of Democratic
presidents being excessively confrontational in their policies and actions
toward China, followed by being sobered by the dangers and failures of those
policies.
Yet, with its stated goals of being "tough" with China and "shap[ing] the
contours of China's rise", the Biden Administration's provocative military
operations and rhetoric undermine our own security. Supporting the Pandemic
Olympics this summer in Tokyo, while requiring a boycott of the 2022 winter
Olympics in China, as Senator Schumer's US Innovation and Strategic
Competition legislation opportunistically does, poisons the well that we
share with China and the world. Yes, challenge China on its human rights
violations, but do so in tandem with opposing police violence and the
prison-industrial complex in the U.S. Alienating a formerly humiliated
nation now on the rise, with whom we share real security needs, is foolhardy
risk taking.
Even as we support Biden's domestic agenda, ignoring his aggressive
Indo-Pacific initiatives and actions is self-defeating. Since assuming
power, the Biden Administration has:
Accelerated the pace of provocative naval and Air Force "freedom of
navigation" operations near Chinese islet military bases in contested South
China Sea waters.
Dispatched warships to transit the Taiwan Strait and broadcast its "rock
solid" commitment to Taiwan and its military commitment to ensuring Japanese
control over the uninhabited Senkaku/Islands also claimed by China.
Poisoned the rhetorical well in the run up to the quasi-summit meeting in
Anchorage, including the claim of Chinese genocide in Xinjiang province,
while embracing Israel and other grotesque human rights violators.
Reinforced its regional alliances to surround and contain China with
Secretaries of State and Defense Blinken and Austin making their first trips
abroad to Japan and South Korea and hosting the first meeting of the QUAD,
the incipient U.S., Japan, Australia, and India NATO-like alliance.
Welcomed Japanese Prime Minister Suga and President Moon of South Korea as
the first heads of state invited to Washington, D.C.to reinforce its
Indo-Pacific China containment alliance structure.
Invited Taiwan's functional ambassador to the inauguration, testing the
limits of the One China policy, the foundation for U.S.-China relations
since 1979.
Celebrated NATO's increasing Indo-Pacific commitments.
Released its proposed Pentagon budget which calls for another massive
increase in military spending, much of it designated to reinforce U.S.
Indo-Pacific hegemony.
Although a number of Biden's foreign and military policies initiatives are
to be commended,, his China/Indo-Pacific policies and provocations are
extensions of the Obama era pivot and the Trump Administration's 2018
National Security Guidance. Recall that the public courtship of India as an
anti-China U.S. ally began in 2009 when Obama welcomed India's India's Prime
Minister as the first head of state to be honored with aa state visit.
Two years later, Secretary of State Hillary announced and provided the
rationale for the pivot, because the region is host to "many of the key
engines of the global economy" and emerging powers, has half the world's
population, the site of the seminally important Pacific and Indian Ocean
shipping lanes, home to "key" U.S. allies, as well as the leading emitters
of climate change gasses.
The Pentagon then committed to deploy 60% of U.S. naval and air power to the
region. Obama reinforced the United States "hub and spokes" Asia-Pacific
alliance systems and deepened engagements with regional institutions like
ASEAN and APEC. It also led negotiation for the Transpacific Partnership
(TPP) trade agreement to dictate the 21st century's economic rules of the
road for the 21st century in order to more deeply integrate non-Chinese
Asia-Pacific societies with the U.S.
Although Donald Trump weakened the U.S. Asia-Pacific alliance structure with
his "American First" disregard for allies and ignored regional multilateral
institutions, containing, marginalizing, and scapegoating China constituted
his administration's foreign policy priority. The 2018 National Defense
Strategy defined China as the United States' "peer competitor",
necessitating reduction of U.S. foreign military and foreign policy
commitments from Europe and the War on Terror to prepare for great power
war. With his nationally self-defeating trade war, Trump imposed massive
tariffs on Chinese goods and deflected attention from his staggering
Covid-19 pandemic failures with racist rhetoric that China was responsible
for the "Kungflu."
After beginning his reign with the first U.S. presidential phone call to a
Taiwanese president since 1979 and sending a high-level diplomat to Taipei
for the first time in 40 years, Trump closed it with more than $3 billion
in arms sales and sending high level officials to Taipei. All were designed
to chip away at the one China policy and to tie the U.S more deeply to the
island nation that Beijing perceives as a renegade province that must be
reunified with China.
Biden foreign and military policy headlines have been dominated by Blinken,
Sullivan and Austin. But the real driver of Biden China policy is Kurt
Campbell, the Obama era Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and
Pacific Affairs who conceived the pivot, who is now the senior National
Security Council Indo-Pacific policymaker
In 2016, Campbell wrote The Pivot: The Future of American Statecraft in
Asia. There he outlined a U.S. Strategy for Asia. It provides the template
for the Biden-Blinken-Austin Indo-Pacific agenda. Its elements include:
Clarifying the need for and components of the pivot, and "mobiliz[ing]"
the U.S. public behind it "through clear and authoritative declaration s o f
U.S. Asia Strategy". Hence the drumbeat of Biden's and his mandarins'
warnings about the China "threat."
"[S]trengthening ties to our Asian allies, including Japan, South Korea,
Australia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Singapore (a quasi ally)."
Increase ties with India, Taiwan, New Zealand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia,
and Pacific island states.
"[S]hape the contours of China's rise" by "embedding China policy within a
larger Asia policy framework.[adopting} a strategy that focuses inordinately
on communiques and grand bargains and regards China ." Recognizing that
relations with China will be a "mixture of competition by sustaining the US.
dominated Asian 'operating systems' while seeking "common ground on
crosscutting global issues.
"[U]pdate and modernize" U.S. military capabilities in the region, including
"increasing access and basing in Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean."
Integrate the Asia-Pacific through expansion of free trade agreements and
economic interaction. (Further into the Biden era, look for efforts to
rejoin the TPP, now being led by Japan.)
Engage more deeply in the regions "integrative international institutions"
that have "the power to shape and shore up the [U.S. led] rules and norms in
the region."
Support democracy in the region.
"[T]he United States need not Pivot to Asia alone.European allies..have the
potential to support and expand shared interests." This explains NATO's new
2030 Doctrine which include containing China and Britain's and France's
recent naval deployments to the South China Sea.
Beginning with Bill Clinton, we have witnessed a pattern of Democratic
presidents being excessively confrontational in their policies and actions
toward China, followed by being sobered by the dangers and failures of those
policies. Despite our differences with China-some of them profound-we would
do well to prioritize pursuing mutually beneficial diplomacy and building
collaborations to address the existential threats to survival over preparing
for catastrophic war with the Middle Kingdom.
Or, as Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein advised at the height of the
Cold War, we should be remembering our humanity, and forgetting the rest.
Joseph Gerson
Joseph Gerson is President of the Campaign for Peace, Disarmaent and Common
Security, Co-founder of the Committee for a SANE U.S. China Policy and Vice
President of the International Peace Bureau. His books include Empire and
the Bomb, and With Hiroshima Eyes.