Follow us on social

Joe Biden Xi Jinping China United States

Biden-Xi phone call doesn’t go far enough

Same conversation, but US and Chinese officials offer two different official readouts

Analysis | QiOSK

U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping had a phone conversation on Tuesday, the first time the two leaders have spoken since their in-person meeting in November.

As has happened following previous conversations, there is a considerable difference between the Chinese and U.S. readouts of the conversation. While both sides stressed the importance of maintaining open lines of communication, the official White House readout as usual placed a high stress on cautioning China against a variety of actions while saying virtually nothing about the clear need to undertake constructive actions to address common problems, such as those regarding climate change and pandemics.

Equally important, as in past such readouts on conversations held between U.S. and Chinese officials, Beijing listed a set of assurances that Biden has supposedly made several times to Xi regarding Taiwan, U.S. alliances, and other critical security issues. And yet the U.S. side, as in the past, again failed to mention such assurances in its official readout of the conversation.

Why is it that Washington will not confirm, clearly and unambiguously, that Biden either has or has not made all such assurances to the Chinese side? Various lower-level officials have at times made some of these assurances. But to my knowledge no U.S. official has made all of them. And Biden has not personally confirmed that he has made all such assurances.

The failure to clear up this apparent disparity in messaging on these crucial issues could eventually produce Chinese expectations and perhaps even pressure on the U.S. that Washington pushes back against, thus creating a crisis in relations. Washington needs to do more to build constructive relations with Beijing on both sides' vital interests, and clarify its stance regarding Biden’s supposed assurances. This is particularly necessary with regard to the administration’s policies regarding Taiwan. See my recent brief on what the White House needs to say and what Beijing needs to do on that critical issue.


FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Joe Biden meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the G20 leaders' summit in Bali, Indonesia, November 14, 2022. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Joe Biden meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the G20 leaders' summit in Bali, Indonesia, November 14, 2022. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo
Analysis | QiOSK
Thomas Barrack
Top image credit: U.S. Ambassador to Turkey and U.S. special envoy for Syria Thomas Barrack speaks after meeting with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun (not pictured) at the presidential palace in Baabda, Lebanon August 26, 2025. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir

Tom Barrack has an offer that Lebanon simply can't refuse

Middle East

A tale of two envoys recently unfolded in Beirut, encapsulating the crossroads at which Lebanon now stands. Tanned and sporting a pink tie, the U.S. Envoy Tom Barrack arrived with Deputy Special Presidential Envoy to the Middle East, Morgan Ortagus in mid-August. Their meetings with top Lebanese officials underscored Washington’s insistence that lasting stability in Lebanon depends on consolidating state authority, and disarming Hezbollah.

Days earlier, Ali Larijani, the head of Iran’s National Security Council, had departed, leaving a message equally blunt but diametrically opposed: Hezbollah’s arms are a red line and are necessary tools for its “resistance” to Israel. These visits represent the opposing magnetic poles pulling at the country.

Lebanon is reeling from a confluence of catastrophes. A devastating scuffle with Israel last year decapitated Hezbollah’s leadership and ravaged its strongholds. Compounding this military blow was a strategic amputation: the swift collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, which severed the critical land bridge that for decades funneled Iranian arms and support to Iran’s most prized regional proxy. Into this vortex has stepped Barrack, a 40-year friend of Donald Trump and a businessman by trade, embodying a U.S. strategy that is quintessentially Trumpian in its DNA.

keep readingShow less
Afghanistan withdrawal
Lloyd Austin, Kenneth McKenzie, and Mark Milley in 2021. (MSNBC screengrab)

Turns out leaving Afghanistan did not unleash terror on US or region

Military Industrial Complex

It will be four years since the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan on Aug. 30, 2021, ending a nearly 20-year occupation that could serve as a poster child for mission creep.

What began in October 2001 as a narrow intervention to destroy al-Qaeda, the terrorist group that perpetrated the 9/11 attacks, and topple the Taliban government for refusing to hand over al-Qaeda’s leader, Osama bin Laden, morphed into an open-ended nation-building operation that killed 2,334 U.S. military personnel and wounded over 20,000 more.

keep readingShow less
Francois Bayrou Emmanuel Macron
Top image credit: France's Prime Minister Francois Bayrou arrives to hear France's President Emmanuel Macron deliver a speech to army leaders at l'Hotel de Brienne in Paris on July 13, 2025, on the eve of the annual Bastille Day Parade in the French capital. LUDOVIC MARIN/Pool via REUTERS

Europe facing revolts, promising more guns with no money

Europe

If you wanted to create a classic recipe for political crisis, you could well choose a mixture of a stagnant economy, a huge and growing public debt, a perceived need radically to increase military spending, an immigration crisis, a deeply unpopular president, a government without a majority in parliament, and growing radical parties on the right and left.

In other words, France today. And France’s crisis is only one part of the growing crisis of Western Europe as a whole, with serious implications for the future of transatlantic relations.

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.