Follow us on social

Signal-2022-10-12-160321_001

‘The stakes could not be higher’: Top Biden aide says world is at an ‘inflection point’

But critics say the White House’s new policy document is just a retread of failed liberal internationalism.

Reporting | North America

In a Wednesday speech at Georgetown University, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan argued that the world is at an “inflection point” in history following the end of the post-Cold War era.

“This is a decisive decade for shaping the terms of competition, especially with [China],” Sullivan said.

“The stakes could not be higher,” he continued. “The actions now will shape whether this decisive decade is an age of conflict and discord or the beginning of a more prosperous and stable future.”

Sullivan’s comments came shortly after the White House released its National Security Strategy, which has been delayed for months by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The document paints a scary picture of the challenges facing the United States, with a particular focus on the threat posed by authoritarian powers like Russia and China. It also highlights transnational challenges, like climate change and pandemic disease, and notes that Washington will have to work with its adversaries in order to address these threats. 

This points to the core tension in the wide-ranging document: it calls for vigorous competition with China and Russia while also arguing that global powers must work together to face global threats. George Beebe, the director of grand strategy at the Quincy Institute, argued that this is a fundamental flaw in the administration’s strategy.

“At no point does the Biden administration seem to reckon with the fundamental incoherence of its strategy,” Beebe said, adding that the document notes the “increasingly divided and zero-sum nature of the global order” without offering practical paths to reduce division.

Sarang Shidore, also of the Quincy Institute, agrees. “While it calls for engaging "constructively" with China on climate—which is a good sentiment that’s likely essential to save the planet—the strategy provides no incentives or realistic pathway for China to come back to the table,” Shidore said. “The administration faces a contradiction between its actions on China-containment and the imperative of climate action.”

In a preemptive response to such critiques, Sullivan argued that the United States, China, and Russia simply have no choice but to work together on issues like climate change.

“We will engage constructively with the PRC wherever we can, not as a favor, not in exchange for our principles, but [because] working together to solve common problems is what the world expects from responsible powers,” Sullivan argued. He later added that competition can help fight climate change by pushing great powers to invest in the green technology that is expected to dominate the world economy in coming years.

The document offers a new framing of the “democracies vs autocracies” framework that Joe Biden has highlighted in the first two years of his presidency. The strategy says the Biden team will work with “any nation that is willing to protect the rules-based order and uphold international law in every region of the world,” meaning that Washington will continue to ally with authoritarian states as long as they share America’s view of the world.

“During the Cold War, we turned a lot of different regions in the world into proxy battlegrounds between the United States and the Soviet Union,” Sullivan said. “A successful approach to dealing with competition with the PRC is [...] not dividing the world into rigid blocs and not making our relations dependent on some kind of primacy fight.” 

Notably, the strategy takes a veiled shot at Saudi Arabia and the UAE, a pair of authoritarian U.S. allies that have found themselves in Washington’s crosshairs since the Saudi-led OPEC+ decided to drastically cut oil production last week. While the document places the primary blame for the global energy crisis on Russia’s “weaponization of the oil and gas supplies it controls,” it also says these problems have been “exacerbated by OPEC’s management of its own supply.”

When it comes to the broader Middle East, the document argues for a more limited military presence, lamenting that American governments have “too often defaulted to military-centric policies underpinned by an unrealistic faith in force and regime change to deliver sustainable outcomes.” Unlike its recent predecessors, the report only dedicates one page of the lengthy document to fighting terrorism.


National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan (via Reuters)
Reporting | North America
Nuclear missile
Top image credit: Zack Frank

Put this nuclear missile on the back of a truck — but we still don't need it

Military Industrial Complex

Last week, analysts from three think tanks penned a joint op-ed for Breaking Defense to make the case for mobilizing the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) program, a pivot from one exceedingly costly approach to nuclear modernization to another.

After Sentinel faced a 37 percent cost overrun in early 2024, the Pentagon was forced to inform Congress of the cost spike, assess the root causes, and either cancel the program or certify it to move forward under a restructured approach. The Pentagon chose to certify it, but not before noting that the restructured program would actually come in 81 percent over budget.

keep readingShow less
Maduro, Trump
Top photo credit: Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro (Shutterstock/stringerAL) ; President Donald Trump (Shutterstock/a katz)

Why we need to take Trump's Drug War very seriously

Latin America

Donald Trump has long been a fan of using the U.S. military to wage a more vigorous war against drug cartels in Latin America. He also shows signs of using that justification as a pretext to oust regimes considered hostile to other U.S. interests.

The most recent incident in the administration’s escalating antidrug campaign took place on October 3 when “Secretary of War” Mike Hegseth announced that U.S. naval forces had sunk yet another small boat off of the coast of Venezuela. It was one of four destroyed vessels and a total of 21 people killed since late September. The administration claims they were all trying to ship illegal drugs to the United States.

keep readingShow less
Israel Gaza deal
Top photo credit: United States and Israel flags are projected on the walls of the Old city of Jerusalem in celebration after Israel and Hamas agreed to the first phase of U.S. President Donald Trump's plan to end the war in Gaza, October 9, 2025. REUTERS/Sinan Abu Mayzer

Will this deal work? Netanyahu has gamed everything his way so far.

Middle East

Two years into the Gaza conflict and perhaps on the cusp of a successful phased ceasefire, what can we say?

On the basis of media reporting about Yahya Sinwar’s strategic rationale for attacking Israel on October 7, 2023, it seems that he believed Israel was on the brink of civil war and that the impact of a large-scale assault would severely erode its political stability. He believed that Hamas’s erstwhile allies, especially Hizballah and Iran, would open offensives against Israel, which, in combination with Hamas’s invasion, would stretch the nation’s military capabilities to the breaking point.

keep readingShow less

LATEST

QIOSK

Newsletter

Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.