In last night’s address to a joint session of Congress — the first of his presidency — Joe Biden made the case for massive investments in the American economy, infrastructure, and society. To do so, he summoned fears of a rising China, declaring that the United States is “in competition with China and others to win the 21st century.”
It is commendable that President Biden did not employ the extreme ideological rhetoric of the Trump administration in characterizing China and the bilateral relationship. Such language crowds out any rational discussion of what China’s rise means for the U.S. and the West and simply provokes a similar hardline response from many ordinary Chinese, making the effort to craft an effective policy toward Beijing even more difficult.
But it is unfortunate that Biden nonetheless felt the need to justify his domestic proposals — positive and necessary steps towards ensuring prosperity for all Americans, and for reviving our flagging democracy — by placing them in the context of a global struggle against autocracy, and specifically with China.
The U.S. (along with other democratic nations) certainly has differences with China over various political norms and human rights values, and China’s rise presents a challenge to America in a number of arenas. But China is hardly an existential threat, nor the preeminent threat facing the United States today. Rather, the greater threats — many of which the president highlighted in his speech — are internal and global.
Domestic extremism, racism, and violence, political deadlock, and transnational perils like climate change and pandemics all present dire threats to the stability of the United States and the well-being of Americans. To present our challenges as the usual struggle between great powers is a distortion of reality; we will not be able to solve our problems through an all-consuming struggle with any other nation.
Biden stressed that he welcomes competition with China, but does not want conflict. The United States, he says, will “correct abuses” by China, and maintain its military strength in Asia and the Indo-Pacific.
On this, the devil is in the details: how the administration defines the goals of U.S. policy in Asia, and the tone and means with which it pursues them. The U.S. can no longer treat Asia as if it remains the sole provider of hard security, or the primary economic partner, for that region and others.
It should no longer police the world and try to assert its military primacy at all costs. Instead, the United States must try to effectively work with all major nations to reduce conflict and pursue cooperative solutions to global problems. This will require deterrence towards rival powers like China — but it also requires credible reassurance on key interests. We will not stabilize Asia by pursuing the kind of bipartisan, hostile, zero-sum strategy exemplified by some of the Biden administration’s rhetoric or the China-focused legislation now making its way through Congress.
President Biden said many good things last night, but his remarks regarding China continued to reflect the absence of an overall strategy reflecting the complex reality of our relationship with China, and with other nations.
![Following a largely preordained election, Vladimir Putin was sworn in last week for another six-year term as president of Russia. Putin’s victory has, of course, been met with accusations of fraud and political interference, factors that help explain his 87.3% vote share. If this continuation of Putin’s 24-year-long hold on power makes one thing clear, it’s that he and his regime will not be going anywhere for the foreseeable future. But, as his war in Ukraine continues with no clear end in sight, what is less clear is how Washington plans to deal with this reality. Experts say Washington needs to start projecting a long-term strategy toward Russia and its war in Ukraine, wielding its political leverage to apply pressure on Putin and push for more diplomacy aimed at ending the conflict. Only by looking beyond short-term solutions can Washington realistically move the needle in Ukraine. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion, the U.S. has focused on getting aid to Ukraine to help it win back all of its pre-2014 territory, a goal complicated by Kyiv’s systemic shortages of munitions and manpower. But that response neglects a more strategic approach to the war, according to Andrew Weiss of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who spoke in a recent panel hosted by Carnegie. “There is a vortex of emergency planning that people have been, unfortunately, sucked into for the better part of two years since the intelligence first arrived in the fall of 2021,” Weiss said. “And so the urgent crowds out the strategic.” Historian Stephen Kotkin, for his part, says preserving Ukraine’s sovereignty is critical. However, the apparent focus on regaining territory, pushed by the U.S., is misguided. “Wars are never about regaining territory. It's about the capacity to fight and the will to fight. And if Russia has the capacity to fight and Ukraine takes back territory, Russia won't stop fighting,” Kotkin said in a podcast on the Wall Street Journal. And it appears Russia does have the capacity. The number of troops and weapons at Russia’s disposal far exceeds Ukraine’s, and Russian leaders spend twice as much on defense as their Ukrainian counterparts. Ukraine will need a continuous supply of aid from the West to continue to match up to Russia. And while aid to Ukraine is important, Kotkin says, so is a clear plan for determining the preferred outcome of the war. The U.S. may be better served by using the significant political leverage it has over Russia to shape a long-term outcome in its favor. George Beebe of the Quincy Institute, which publishes Responsible Statecraft, says that Russia’s primary concerns and interests do not end with Ukraine. Moscow is fundamentally concerned about the NATO alliance and the threat it may pose to Russian internal stability. Negotiations and dialogue about the bounds and limits of NATO and Russia’s powers, therefore, are critical to the broader conflict. This is a process that is not possible without the U.S. and Europe. “That means by definition, we have some leverage,” Beebe says. To this point, Kotkin says the strength of the U.S. and its allies lies in their political influence — where they are much more powerful than Russia — rather than on the battlefield. Leveraging this influence will be a necessary tool in reaching an agreement that is favorable to the West’s interests, “one that protects the United States, protects its allies in Europe, that preserves an independent Ukraine, but also respects Russia's core security interests there.” In Kotkin’s view, this would mean pushing for an armistice that ends the fighting on the ground and preserves Ukrainian sovereignty, meaning not legally acknowledging Russia’s possession of the territory they have taken during the war. Then, negotiations can proceed. Beebe adds that a treaty on how conventional forces can be used in Europe will be important, one that establishes limits on where and how militaries can be deployed. “[Russia] need[s] some understanding with the West about what we're all going to agree to rule out in terms of interference in the other's domestic affairs,” Beebe said. Critical to these objectives is dialogue with Putin, which Beebe says Washington has not done enough to facilitate. U.S. officials have stated publicly that they do not plan to meet with Putin. The U.S. rejected Putin’s most statements of his willingness to negotiate, which he expressed in an interview with Tucker Carlson in February, citing skepticism that Putin has any genuine intentions of ending the war. “Despite Mr. Putin’s words, we have seen no actions to indicate he is interested in ending this war. If he was, he would pull back his forces and stop his ceaseless attacks on Ukraine,” a spokesperson for the White House’s National Security Council said in response. But neither side has been open to serious communication. Biden and Putin haven’t met to engage in meaningful talks about the war since it began, their last meeting taking place before the war began in the summer of 2021 in Geneva. Weiss says the U.S. should make it clear that those lines of communication are open. “Any strategy that involves diplomatic outreach also has to be sort of undergirded by serious resolve and a sense that we're not we're not going anywhere,” Weiss said. An end to the war will be critical to long-term global stability. Russia will remain a significant player on the world stage, Beebe explains, considering it is the world’s largest nuclear power and a leading energy producer. It is therefore ultimately in the U.S. and Europe’s interests to reach a relationship “that combines competitive and cooperative elements, and where we find a way to manage our differences and make sure that they don't spiral into very dangerous military confrontation,” he says. As two major global superpowers, the U.S. and Russia need to find a way to share the world. Only genuine, long-term planning can ensure that Washington will be able to shape that future in its best interests.](https://responsiblestatecraft.org/media-library/following-a-largely-preordained-election-vladimir-putin-was-sworn-in-last-week-for-another-six-year-term-as-president-of-russia.jpg?id=34283894&width=600&height=600&quality=90&coordinates=483%2C0%2C483%2C0)
