US tensions with China
A90-minute phone conversation between the presidents of the United States and China surely makes world news, but Joe Biden's call to his Xi Jinping on Friday draws special attention on its timing, backdrop and substance.
It comes "post-Afghanistan," on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and amid high expectations of a "Biden Doctrine" struggling to be born in US foreign policy. All three are defining moments amid the backdrop of sure signs of a slow, steady decline of the United States accelerating of late.
An excellent essay in Foreign Affairs magazine defines the Biden Doctrine as follows: A "coherent version of pragmatic realism - a mode of thought that prizes the advancement of tangible US interests, expects other states to follow their own interests, and changes course to get what the United States needs in a competitive world … [marking] a welcome change from decades of over-assertive US foreign policy that has squandered lives and resources in pursuit of unachievable goals."
Of course, the above definition is only partly correct. Wasn't Biden an ardent advocate of NATO expansion, the turning point in the post-Cold War era big-power politics? George Kennan forewarned at that time with great prescience:
"Why, with all the hopeful possibilities engendered by the end of the Cold War, should East-West relations become centered on the question of who would be allied with whom and, by implication, against whom in some fanciful, totally unforeseeable and most improbable future military conflict?
"Bluntly stated … expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era. Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, antiWestern and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to
East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking.… "
Biden no doubt represented the American establishment and was full of the "unipolar moment" like the US strategic community and political elite. He supported the USled military intervention in Yugoslavia and voted to authorize the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In the initial heady phase of the invasion of Iraq, he even saw the US putting that country "on the path to a pluralistic and democratic society."
Yet to be fair, once it became clear that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were going horribly wrong, Biden opposed any "surge" strategy and urged quick exit. Call it a pragmatic realistic streak or the premonition of a consummate politician, herein lies the best hope for the Biden Doctrine, which he enunciated on August 31 in a landmark speech on the end of the war in Afghanistan.
It is a bit early to conclude that the Afghanistan withdrawal presages a recast of the US military footprint globally - although domestic reform is the compelling reality today for Biden, which demands rollback of the imperial overreach.
Certainly, the touchstone will be the United States' excessively militarized and zero-sum approach in Asia. Biden's call for extreme competition with China ratchets up tensions. If this extended to an explicit guarantee to defend Taiwan, Washington's already extensive regional commitments would cross the red line.
Biden's approach has been to intensify geopolitical rivalry with China while also welcoming cooperation on common challenges, preserving room for diplomacy. However, Beijing has lately taken a tough line ruling out selective engagement - that is, unless the US jettisons its hostile attitude toward China to suppress it willfully, cooperation is not possible.
It is from such a perspective that Biden's call to Xi on Friday needs to be understood. The threefold salience of the White House readout is, first, that a "broad, strategic discussion" has taken place resulting in a mutual agreement to engage "openly and straightforwardly" on areas where their interests converge as well as where "our interests, values and perspectives diverge."