The changes in the global environment witnessed over the past year have bolstered Biden administration policies, especially in the Indo-Pacific region.
On Thursday, the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, laid out the Biden administration’s China policy in a speech at the George Washington University in Washington D.C. The speech said that despite the Russian invasion of Ukraine, China remained the principal challenger to the United States (US). He said that “China is the only country with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do it.”
The bottom line of his remarks was that the US could not depend on China to change course and could not directly shape Beijing’s behaviour and, therefore, had to adopt a strategy that “would shape the strategic environment around Beijing.” In other words, out-compete China in the geostrategic and geoeconomic areas.
The Biden administration is yet to unveil its formal China policy. But, according to The New York Times, Blinken’s speech was “a shorter and public version of the administration’s classified strategy on China” which was completed last autumn.
The bottom line of his remarks was that the US could not depend on China to change course and could not directly shape Beijing’s behaviour and, therefore, had to adopt a strategy that “would shape the strategic environment around Beijing.”
Early last year, the administration issued the Interim National Security Strategic Guidance whose China policy had three pillars: First, the need for domestic economic and political renewal to take on China. Second is the importance of making common cause with America’s allies and partners. And third, an offer of a competing vision of the future based on a massive “Build Back Better” plan to transform the US through investments in social, infrastructural, and environmental programmes.
In Thursday’s speech, this strategy was summarised by Blinken as being guided by three principles: “Invest, Align, Compete”. The “invest” strategy had a domestic and foreign component. The US had pre-announced an economic initiative, the Build Back Better World (B3W) at the G7 meeting in June 2021 as a challenger to the Belt and Road Initiative.
The “align” part of the strategy would be to work this scheme in collaboration with partners and allies like Japan and Australia and the other G7 countries. But its salient element is the efforts being made by the US to rally Indo-Pacific allies.
As for the military component, Blinken said that the US was “to hold China as its pacing challenge” and ensure that “our military stays ahead”. The strategy of “integrated deterrence” would include allies and partners working across all domains.
In the space of a little over a year, the Biden administration has held four summits of the Quad, two virtual, and two in person, including the most recent one in Tokyo. Recall that in 2017, in the Trump years, when the Quad was revived, it was something of a talking shop. But in the next few years, China’s behavior toward Australia and India had helped to harden the attitudes of the two countries that had waffled at the time of its first iteration.
Biden’s participation in the recent Tokyo Quad summit was accompanied by outreach to two key allies, South Korea and Japan, both of which the Trump administration disdained. Indeed, by his insistent demands that they enhance what they pay for the US military presence, he undermined his own allies.
As part of this alignment strategy, the Biden administration has paid much greater attention to the ASEAN grouping. After participating in a virtual summit under the chairmanship of Brunei in October 2021, the US convened a special summit in Washington DC in early May 2022, the first in the history of the partnership.
With Biden unable to get Congress to approve his US$ 2 trillion domestic Build Back Better programme, there is a question mark over its external version, the B3W.
Equally importantly, it sought to finesse a major problem that had bedeviled the Trump approach—the lack of any significant economic engagement with the region. On the eve of the Quad summit, the US announced that Japan, India, and 10 other countries had agreed to join a new US initiative the US-led Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF).
Critics have generally been lukewarm to the IPEF, noting that it is, at best, “a vision, a signal, a statement of purpose,” of the US trying to address its self-created problem of walking out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an agreement that it had itself mooted.
Another plan that remains on the table is the Build Back Better World plan which incorporated the Blue Dot Network. With Biden unable to get Congress to approve his US$ 2 trillion domestic Build Back Better programme, there is a question mark over its external version, the B3W. As it is hard physical infrastructure was not included in the plan which would focus on “climate, health and health security, digital technology, and gender equity and equality”. The plan aimed to catalyse tens of billions of dollars worth of private capital through development finance.
To a considerable degree, the Biden administration’s policies build on the policy pursued by the previous Trump administration which featured competition and confrontation with China. Besides the trade war, it initiated the Blue Dot network with Australia and Japan to promote financial transparency and environmental sustainability with the view of mobilising financial capital to invest abroad.
The December 2017 National Security Strategy had shifted gears of American policy from engagement to confrontation with China. In May 2020, the Trump administration’s approach was summarised in a document titled United States Strategic Approach to the People’s Republic of China. The document based itself on the earlier NSS and said that the distinct and diverging interests of China and the US had set the course on a relationship “of long-term strategic competition between our two systems.”
At this time, US policy towards China was operating at three levels—one, imposing punitive tariffs on Chinese goods to obtain balanced trade, and the second, to wall off American high tech from China through export control regimes targeting Chinese companies, investors, and producers. The third leg of US strategy was to push American companies to maintain their competitiveness in high-tech sectors like Artificial Intelligence.
The US also launched a Blue Dot Network along with Japan and Australia to provide for assessment and certification of infrastructure development projects to meet standards of financial transparency and environmental sustainability.
The US also began the process of re-shoring and near-shoring supply chains to break their links with China. In November 2019, the US also launched a Blue Dot Network along with Japan and Australia to provide for assessment and certification of infrastructure development projects to meet standards of financial transparency and environmental sustainability. Its goal was to mobilise US$ 60 billion of finances for infrastructure needed by developing countries to support goals relating to climate, health, digital technology, and gender equity and equality.
In 2020 as the acrimony with China grew, the administration mooted an Economic Prosperity Network of companies, and civil society groups with a common perspective on digital business, energy and industry standard, and education. India figured prominently amongst the countries targeted for the network whose aim, in part, was to persuade US firms to leave China and partner with members of the network.
Yet there was an element of ambivalence in the Trump approach. In January 2020, China and US agreed on a Phase I deal to address the tariff and technology issue wherein Beijing would sharply raise its imports from the US. In other words, become even more deeply integrated into the US. The COVID-19 pandemic derailed the possible trajectory that may have evolved from this.
There have been significant changes in the global environment in the past year. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has heightened fears that it could encourage China to do the same in Taiwan. Importantly in his Washington speech Blinken also clarified that notwithstanding the President’s alleged gaffes in saying that the US was committed to defending Taiwan against any Chinese attacks, US policy had not changed. In other words, the US would continue its old policy of “strategic ambiguity” of not openly saying whether or not it would be involved directly in any defence of Taiwan.
Both China and Russia have underscored the shift by stepping up joint military activities. During the Quad summit, they conducted aerial exercises near Japan. In recent years, there has been a distinct uptick in China–Russia military cooperation in the Northeast Asian region.
Importantly in his Washington speech Blinken also clarified that notwithstanding the President’s alleged gaffes in saying that the US was committed to defending Taiwan against any Chinese attacks, US policy had not changed.
However, the US has also gained through the hardening of the western alliance whose key countries the UK, Germany, and France have indicated that they will increase their military expenditures and also play a larger role in the Indo-Pacific.
The “no limits” China–Russia alliance has persuaded Japan to publicly declare that it would view the invasion of Taiwan as a threat to its own security. Further, it has led to Tokyo’s decision to double its defence budget, which is a major shift that would make Japan the third-largest spender on defence after the US and China.
In sum, the US alignment strategy is working fine and has been revitalised by the Ukraine events. The economic strategy remains a question mark, and, at best, it can be said to be a work in progress. As far as the issue of competition, the US has been helped along by Xi Jinping’s inexplicable economic policy which has damaged the Chinese economy, but at present, the US itself is facing choppy financial seas.
In his remarks, Blinken had made it clear that the goal of the American policy was not to “sever China’s economy from ours”. The US would continue to trade and invest in China as long as it did not affect US security. If Beijing seriously addressed American concerns, the US “would respond positively”.
The views expressed above belong to the author(s). ORF research and analyses now available on Telegram! Click here to access our curated content — blogs, longforms and interviews.
Manoj Joshi is a Distinguished Fellow at the ORF. He has been a journalist specialising on national and international politics and is a commentator and ...
Read More +
PREV
