Following Up: A New Warning on U.S. Allies’ Reliability

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alliances, allies, Asia, Asia-Pacific, Biden, China, deterrence, Following Up, Indo-Pacific, infotech, multilateralism, national security, Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, semiconductors, Sheena Greitens, Taiwan, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, tech, TSMC, Xi JInPing, Zack Cooper

Well isn’t this a kick in the pants for the Biden administration – and by extension for all Americans?. No sooner did the President give a major speech to U.S. allies on his plans to return them to the center of American foreign policy-making because they’ll be such crucial assets in vital efforts to achieve essential goals like coping with China’s rise, than a new study comes out reporting that these hopes could be in vain. 

Specifically, the United States’ allies in Asia could well stay on the sidelines in what’s arguably become the most important potential showdown with China of all: ensuring Taiwan’s independence.

As known by RealityChek regulars, keeping Taiwan free of Beijing’s control has become so pressing for two reasons. First, Chinese dictator Xi Jinping is sounding and acting more determined than ever to “reunify” what he and his predecessors have regarded as a breakaway province by whatever means necessary – including using force. And second, a Taiwanese firm, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (TSMC), has recently grabbed the global lead in actually producing (as opposed to designing) the world’s most advanced semiconductors. If China manages to control TSMC’s capabilities, it could use them to build the electronic devices and defense systems that would secure substantial technological and military superiority over the United States.

President Biden is of course correct in arguing that the more allies the United States can mobilize, the easier it will be to handle China’s increased aggression and economic predation. But that claim inevitably assumes that these allies will actually join with America to push back against China, and especially that Washington can count on their assistance if heaven forbid the missiles and bullets start flying.

And this assumption is exactly what’s questioned in a paper recently published by the Washington, D.C.-based Nonproliferation Policy Education Center. According to authors Zack Cooper and Sheena Greitens, there’s not a single country in the Asia-Pacific (or, as it’s now officially called by the U.S. government, the Indo-Pacific) region that’s sure to stand shoulder to shoulder with American forces as they seek to actually repel either a Chinese attack on Taiwan, or an effort by Beijing to turn the island into a satellite through coercive means short of full invasion, like limited military strikes, cyber-attacks, or an embargo.

In fact, write Cooper and Greitens, these allies not only would likely balk at sending their own ships, plans, and troops to buttress American forces. To varying degrees, they’d be reluctant to allow the United States the kind of access to their military bases needed to prevail over China in any of the above contingencies.

The authors believe that sufficient allied cooperation can be generated if the United States begins (ASAP!) “a series of detailed discussions with key allies about their roles in different contingency scenarios involving China and Taiwan (and for some, the South China Sea).” That advice sounds fine as far as it goes.

But the need in the first place for “detailed discussions” on such dangerous and perhaps rapidly growing threats – which would leave all countries in the region far less prosperous and prosperous if not deterred or beaten back – makes appallingly clear just how dysfunctional these alliance relationships have become. Moreover, you can be sure that the longer and more detailed these discussions become, the more allied doubts they’ll reflect, and the less likely they’ll be to produce the kind of certainty when push comes to shove that the United States or Taiwan will need.

I don’t view Cooper and Greitens analysis as gospel. But in my experience, the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center has done serious work on Asian security issues in the past, and the larger project of which this essay is a part has had support from sponsors across the political spectrum. So its warning is worth taking seriously, and if its arguments are on target, the problem they describe will resist easy solution – and not just because truly worthwhile agreements with the allies could take years to negotiate, but because the U.S.-based semiconductor production capacity needed to reduce Taiwan’s importance will take just as long to create.

Luckily, as indicated in the piece linked just above, both Congress and the new administration claim to recognize the need – at least rhetorically – to restore cutting-edge U.S. competitiveness in this and other information technology manufacturing. In the meantime, the Biden administration should of course try maintaining enough of a semblance of allied unity vis-a-vis China to give Beijing pause over Taiwan. Hopefully, Washington  can even inspire some genuine support for preserving the island’s independence.

But as I’ve written previously (in the afore-linked National Interest piece), the greater the emphasis placed on resolving the semiconductor challenge via the homegrown solution of reviving the domestic industry, instead of relying mainly on protecting Taiwan’s security militarily, the better the odds of maintaining American security and prosperity. And in any necessary negotiations with the allies, the sooner President Biden abandons his globalist faith in apologetics and gauzy preaching, and acknowledges the need for at least some of the hard-bargaining Trump-ian “transactionalism” he’s decried, the better.  

Making News: China Policy Blueprints Critique Re-Posted in The National Interest

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alliances, allies, Asia, Biden, CCP, China, China Strategy Group, Chinese Communist Party, decoupling, Donald Trump, Making News, multilateralism, NationalInterest.org, sanctions, semiconductors, Silicon Valley, supply chain, tariffs, Trade, trade war, XiJinping

I’m pleased to announce that The National Interest has republished as a single article my recent blog posts detailing the major flaws of two blueprints for China policy that have just been offered to the Biden administration from establishment thinkers. In case you missed them the first time around, or want to re-read, here’s the link.

And keep checking in with RealityChek for news of upcoming media appearances and other developments.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Why Scalpels Won’t Cut it Against China

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Biden, China, China Strategy Group, decoupling, Donald Trump, Eric Schmidt, EU, European Union, FDI, foreign direct investment, Germany, Google, health security, Made in America, manufacturing, multilateralism, national security, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, semiconductors, Silicon Valley, supply chain, Taiwan, technology

Yesterday’s RealityChek post argued made clear that one of the two recent blueprints for China policy offered to President Biden from the foreign policy and technology establishments suffered from crippling internal contradictions.

The second effort, from the Silicon Valley-dominated “China Strategy Group,” can be read more profitably by the President, because popping up here and there are some insights that are genuinely valuable especially since they come from analysts once strongly supportive of what they themselves call the pre-Trump strategy of “near-unbounded integration.”

Principally, the group, which notably is co-chaired by Google co-founder Eric Schmidt, calls for recognizing that “some degree of [U.S.-China] disentangling is both inevitable and preferable. In fact, trends in both countries—and many of the tools at our disposal—inherently and necessarily push toward some degree of bifurcation.” In other words, it’s endorsed a limited version of what’s now commonly called economic and technological decoupling.

In addition, it argues that both this decoupling, along with tariffs that it acknowledges may be needed to push back against certain Chinese offenses and provocations, should be pursued even though they will entail costs – a refreshing and crucially important departure from the long-time pre- and post-Trump consensus in the mainstream American political, business and policy communities that any increased consumer or producer price, or loss of even a smidgeon of market share in China resulting from retaliation from Beijing, proves conclusively the folly of placin any significant curbs on doing business with the People’s Republic.

Finally, the group points out that efforts to rebuild domestic supply chains to reduce reliance on China for critical goods must involve “more than a focus on the end products. Safeguarding key technologies requires the United States to define and secure the entire ecosystem of production, from fabrication to supply to talent to cutting-edge innovation.” In other words, Washington can’t simply seek to become self-sufficient, or largely so, in face masks or ventilators or semiconductors. It needs to become self-sufficient or largely so in all the materials, parts, and components required to make these products.

Yet many of these important insights (and useful recommendations for restructuring the U.S. government to foster the competition with China more effectively) are kneecapped by equivocation and a resulting failure to understand that sometimes policy scalpels cut too finely, and some policy needles are too small to be threaded – especially considering the “all of society” drive China’s totalitarian system is making to gain global technology leadership, and the dangers to America’s “security, prosperity, and way of life” Chinese success would create.

For example, the group emphasizes that decoupling policy mustn’t invite “escalatory cycles of confrontation, retaliation, or unintended conflict” or overlook those areas “where cooperation, collaboration, and exchange with China is in our interest, as severing ties and closing off the United States to the ideas, people, technologies, and supply chains necessary to compete effectively will undermine U.S. innovation.” At the same time, the authors acknowledge that China will respond to any further U.S. decoupling moves “more aggressively” precisely because “China’s leaders understand U.S. dependency as an important source of leverage.”

So although in principle, this omelet can be made without breaking many eggs, Beijing won’t be cooperating in fact. And the circle can’t be squared with clever phrase-making like “navigating the asymmetric competition” that look satisfactorily reassuring on paper and in speeches to conferences but that need to survive the body blows that will inevitably be delivered by reality.

The group’s approach to Chinese investment in the United States (whether in the form of creating new businesses or taking over or contributing capital to existing firms) illustrates the other big drawback of granular approaches when it comes to China: They ignore how any Chinese entity big enough to play in any foreign market, and especially America’s, is under Beijing’s thumb in every important respect.

As a result, there’s no point in taking the time and expending the resources to follow the group’s recommendations to figure out which Chinese tech platforms (whose importance it emphasizes) are and are not violating American privacy standards or conducting misinformation campaigns dangerous to democracy, or censoring content Chinese authorities don’t like, or helping suppress human rights in China or anywherer else, or stealing valuable data, or helping terrorists and criminals launder money; or whether these activities matter enough to merit official U.S. attention, or whether troublesome practices can be negotiated away through talks with Beijing on technical and other fixes.

In this instance, Washington should stay out of the black holes of setting priorities and especially monitoring and enforcing agreements, and assume that by simply banning these platforms from operating in the United States and in fact prohibiting all Chinese entities from owning U.S. hard assets. The latter step would add the benefit of shielding participants in America’s economy from competition with subsidized, market-distorting outfits from China. At the very least, Chinese entities should be required to prove that they’re not controlled or subsidized in any way by Beijing, or engaged in the above malign activities, before gaining entry.

In addition, despite the group’s understanding that entire manufacturing eco-systems, not just final products, need to be rebuilt and nurtured to ensure supply chain security, it appears to underestimate just how widely these relationships extend. After all, most of the numerous inputs to goods like mechanical ventilators (like its controls, power sources, monitors, and alarm systems) depend on big and complex supply chain and manufacturing eco-systems themselves.

Further, just as before the pandemic, few expected face masks and surgical gloves to become products vitally important to the nation’s well-being, the list of critical goods is likely to change and grow over time as new threats emerge. Therefore, the group is correct in warning that “any product or service could be termed essential to national security in an extreme hypothetical.” But what’s the basis for confidence that many products or services can safely be ruled out, and that such hypotheticals will always remain extreme?

At least as important, like the Biden administration, the group’s determination not to ruffle too many international feathers has also clearly led it to back the notion that the definition of “Made in America” for supply chain purposes should actually mean, “Also Made in Lots of Other Countries” that it considers trusted suppliers. Unfortunately, many of the countries so classified imposed export controls on critical medical goods during the pandemic’s first wave last spring. That is, when cooperation was most needed, they built walls – meaning that their trustworthiness isn’t exactly ironclad.

And as then President-elect Biden learned when the European Union rebuffed his entreaty to consult with Washington before signing an investment agreement with China, the allies remain determined to fence sit in the U.S.-China technology competition. The group acknowledges that the list of anti-China partners “may include all of the [European Union], though in some cases EU position/member states’ positions are too ambiguous today with respect to China for inclusion in all instances, and members may need to be considered on an individual basis.” But simply stating this position and its EU-splitting ambitions is enough to make clear its absurdity – especially since the EU country most reluctant to cooperate against China is economic kingpin Germany.

None of this is to say that all trade with (as opposed to investment in hard assets from) China should be cut off completely, or that international cooperation can be of no use to the United States in its struggle versus the People’s Republic. In particular, (and due largely to recklessly indiscriminate free trade policies), America urgently needs products and knowhow now dominated by foreign producers (notably Taiwan’s semiconductor manufacturing industry, and Japanese and Dutch suppliers of key microchip production equipment and materials). And if other countries are willing to cooperate with Washington on various China containing initiatives at acceptable prices, more help is indeed better than less. But the United States will never safeguard its interests adequately without realizing that multilateralism can’t be an end in and of itself, and that against monumental threats, axes are usually more effective than scalpels.

Glad I Didn’t Say That! International Cooperation Doubletalk from Germany

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Angela Merkel, CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, Davos, European Union, export controls, Financial Times, Germany, Glad I Didn't Say That!, globalism, multilateralism, nationalism, vaccines, Wuhan virus

“Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, said the coronavirus

pandemic has been the ‘hour of multilateralism’, as she used her

speech to plead for more international collaboration to defeat the

virus.”

– Financial Times, January 26, 2020

“Germany is pressing the European Commission to give member

states the power to block the export of coronavirus vaccines

produced in the EU as tensions mounted over shortfalls in supply.”

– Financial Times, January 26, 2020

 

(Sources: “Davos highlights: European leaders urge Biden to extend efforts to reignite international co-operation,” by Guy Chazan et al, Financial Times, January 26, 2020, https://www.ft.com/content/02465195-1957-490d-a3c8-4c54d45469a9 and “Germany presses Brussels for powers to block vaccine exports,” by Guy Chazan et al, Financial Times, January 26, 2020, https://www.ft.com/content/ed0059c9-1ea5-4ba9-a1ff-88004b59e71d)

 

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Why China Really is Like Nazi Germany

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Albert O. Hirschman, allies, Biden, China, dumping, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, intellectual property theft, Japan, multilateralism, NATO, Nazi Germany, nuclear umbrella, Robert D. Atkinson, sanctions, South Korea, tariffs, tech industry, technology extortion, Trade, tripwire, Trump, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Because Nazi references can be so irresponsibly inflammatory, and therefore have been so often abused, I haven’t yet compared the threat posed by China to the rest of the world to that posed by Nazi Germany. (In my view, these comparisons have been used even more recklessly lately in U.S. domestic politics, chiefly to describe former President Trump and his views and policies.) So even though the People’s Republic, its ambitions, and its burgeoning capabilities do scare the living daylights out of me (and should scare you), I was nonetheless pretty surprised to see precisely this comparison just made by Robert D. Atkinson.

Atkinson is the head of a technology-focused Washington, D.C. think tank who I’ve known since the early 1990s. I’ve admired some of its work and haven’t been so crazy about other examples of its output, but I’ve never, ever considered him a boat-rocker, much less a rhetorical bomb thrower. In fact, my criticisms of the numerous studies and articles issued by his Information Technology and Innovation Foundation stem from my view that they’re way too cautious when it comes to countering China’s wide range of predatory economic practices (which include predatory technology policy practices like the theft and extortion of intellectual property).

And I’ve attributed much of this caution to the Foundation’s donor base – which is dominated by the U.S. and in some cases foreign tech and manufacturing companies that have worked so hard to send so much production and employment, and (voluntarily) so much technology to China for decades. It’s true that many of these firms are now crying foul as Beijing in recent years has aimed to strengthen its own entities’ positions at the foreigners’ expense. Yet their stubborn opposition to the unilateral Trump tariffs and some key sanctions on the Chinese tech outfits that have been major customers made clear their vain hope that they could somehow have their China cake and eat it, too.

Yet here comes Atkinson in the Fall issue of The International Economy (a publication that’s as – proudly – establishment oriented as they come) with a piece titled “A Remarkable Resemblance” likening China’s international economic policies to those of “Germany for the first forty-five years of the twentieth century” – which of course include the twelve Nazi years (1933-1945).

As the author argues, Germany during these decades was:

“a ‘power trader’ that used trade as a key tool to gain commercial and military advantage over its adversaries. Likewise, China’s trade policy is guided neither by free trade nor protectionism, but by power trade, with remarkably similar strategy and tactics to those of 1940s Germany. Understanding how Germany manipulated the global trading system to degrade its adversaries’ capabilities, entrap nations as reluctant allies, and build up its own industries for commercial and military advantage, just as China is doing, can shed light and point the way for solutions to the China challenge.”

Atkinson reports that this description of German policies came from a 1945 book by the important economist Albert O. Hirschman, which concluded that “[I]t’s is possible to turn foreign trade into an instrument of power, of pressure, and even of conquest. The Nazis have done nothing but exploit the fullest possibilities inherent in foreign trade within the traditional framework of international economic relations.”

The author rightly observes that

“Hirschman’s key insight was that some countries— in this case Germany under three very different government regimes from 1900 to 1945—focus not on maximizing free trade or even on protecting their industries, but on changing the relative power of nations through trade to achieve global power. Germany’s policies and programs were designed not only to advance its own economic and military power, but to also degrade its adversaries’ economies, even if that imposed costs on their own economy relative to a free trade regime.”

Germany also consistently sought, as the author points out “to make it more difficult for its trading partners to dispense entirely with trade with Germany, thus creating dependency.” And if that’s not enough to convince you about the comparison with China today, Atkinson himself notes that the German policy recipe also included massive industrial espionage, and Hirschman identified a major element as the equally massive dumping (selling at prices way below production costs) of goods into foreign markets to destroy overseas competition.

Atkinson’s diagnosis of the problem is so spot-on that it makes his recommended solution especially disappointing. Kind of like President Biden, he believes that the best internationally oriented option by far (on top of more effective support for U.S. industry, which I strongly support) is forming a “NATO for trade” that would be

“governed by a council of participating [free trading] countries…if any member is threatened or attacked unjustly with trade measures that inflict economic harm, DATO [the “Democratically Allied Trade Organization] would quickly convene and consider whether to take joint action to defend the member nation.”

I’ve already pointed out that the consensus on standing against China economically among America’s allies is way too weak to enable such multilateral approaches to succeed. But as long as we’re talking in terms of NATO – the military alliance between the United States and much of first Western and now Eastern Europe – and the Cold War, let’s not forget two other big problems. First, NATO (and this also goes for America’s security ties with South Korea and Japan) was never so much an alliance as a protector-protectorate relationship. The vast bulk of the heavy lifting was always done by the United States.

This allied security dependence in turn has produced the second major obstacle to a DATO’s effectiveness. Because the United States coddled allied defense free-ridingcand opened its markets one-sidedly for so long, the allies’ protectorate status was substantially cost-free economically, and even came with trade rewards no other country could remotely offer. (In addition, as I’ve also written, the creation of an American nuclear umbrella combined with the stationining of U.S. “tripwire” forces on the NATO frontlines in Germany also greatly minimized the military risks of siding with Washington.)

Today, however, economic power between the United States and the allies is more evenly distributed, and the allies’ profitable trade with and investment in China has, as noted in my aforementioned writings, greatly increased the economic price they would pay for lining up against China.

Still, by comparing the China threat to the Nazi threat, Atkinson’s article significantly bolsters the case for the United States escalating its response to the “all of society” level – or at least intensifying it qualitatively. Let’s just hope, as the author writes, that this time around the United States fully awakens a lot faster.

Im-Politic: Advice Biden Should Reject, but Probably Won’t

Tags

Alibaba, Andrew Ross Sorking, Biden, Biden administration, China, foreign policy, globalism, globalists, health security, Henry Kissinger, Im-Politic, Jamie Dimon, Joseph C. Tsai, JPMorgan Chase, multilateralism, nationalism, The New York Times, Tony Blair

All Americans of good will should hope for the Biden administration’s success. In fact, on a trouble-shadowed Inauguration Day, it seems especially appropriate to create and nurture the brightest feel-good glow possible.

Nonetheless, it’s also vital to keep something else in mind: Powerful forces are acting more determined than ever to convince the public that the new President should double down on the same major policy blunders that ensured the elites’ own power and wealth, but that dangerously weakened U.S. security and prosperity. For good measure, of course, these decisions brought hardship, despair, and (as demonstrated by the country’s deep polarization), bitterness to tens of millions of Americans. And there’s every reason to believe they have a willing audience.

And before you dismiss those thoughts as the sour grapes of a Trump policy supporter, I hope you’ll read this column from Monday by The New York Times‘ Andrew Ross Sorkin, who the paper seems to be enabling to settle into a role of out-and-out establishment mouthpiece.

According to Sorkin, “a provocative memo [is] being circulated among policymakers on both sides of the aisle and the Biden transition team ahead of his inauguration.”

Continues Sorkin, “It is even more notable for who wrote it….an under-the-radar group of global boldfaced names that act as a private advisory committee to JPMorgan Chase. Among others, they include Tony Blair, the former British prime minister; Condoleezza Rice and Henry Kissinger, two former secretaries of state; Robert Gates, the former secretary of defense; Alex Gorsky, chief executive of Johnson & Johnson; Bernard Arnault, chairman of LVMH; and Joseph C. Tsai, executive vice chairman of Alibaba.”

These globalist A-listers “typically [meet] once a year in a far-flung location with JPMorgan’s chief, Jamie Dimon.” Their discussions “are usually kept private. But given the precarious state of the world during a pandemic and change in leadership in Washington, the group put its views on paper in hopes of persuading policymakers to address what it sees as the most pressing priorities.”

Sorkin at least has the…honesty?…to describe their musings as “ a manifesto of sorts calling for a reset, a return to the pre-Trump days. It seeks to turn back the clock to a time when being called a globalist wasn’t an epithet….”

And although he adds that it “acknowledges the failures of globalism and seeks to correct them,” the group’s intentions (which readers need to take on face value, since the full document itself isn’t reproduced), justify deep skepticism for several reasons, starting with its make-up.

After all, it’s one thing to include a former foreign leader (the United Kingdom’s Tony Blair) and the head of a foreign multinational company (French-owned luxury goods maker LVMH). There’s no reason to believe that they have any special concern for America’s security and well-being, but at least they come from allied democracies.

But Joseph C. Tsai, a bigwig at Alibaba? JP Morgan’s Dimon is of course free to seek his advice on various matters, too, but maybe a senior executive from a Chinese entity that by definition is ultimately controlled by China’s hostile thug dictatorship could have been included out of the group’s effort to provide advice to an American President?

So not that other members of the group (like Kissinger for much of his post-government career) don’t have long records as China apologists and lobbyists for companies hungry to do business with and therefore curry favor with Beijing.

But Tsai’s involvement casts in an especially suspicious – and suspiciously defeatist – light the recommendation that “The best outcome for U.S.-China relations is likely managed competition — an accommodation that avoids military conflict while allowing for limited cooperation. It is impractical to think that supply chains and manufacturing can be moved simply, affordably or comprehensively out of China.”

If anything’s impractical, and indeed a spectacularly proven failure, it’s their stated belief that (in Sorkin’s words), U.S. interests can adequately be served by “a return to engaging with China, especially on climate issues and global health, while acknowledging the ‘significant challenge’ the country poses.” This soothing formula is exactly what’s led to the U.S. economic and technology policies that led directly to the rise of the Chinese threat.

The group’s perspectives on the CCP Virus and what it’s taught us about global supply chains and public health security and the like is no more impressive: “The near-total absence of American leadership, coupled with the nationalist approach of too many countries, have come at the expense of a strategically coherent, international response to the pandemic.”

Of course, it’s precisely because so many countries responded nationalistically to the virus – ostensibly when a globalist perspective was needed most – in particular blocking the export of crucial healthcare goods to ensure that their own supplies would be sufficient, that the United States can’t afford to be an exception, and needs to achieve self-sufficiency.

As for the group’s notion (as explained in the words of member Robert Gates, a former U.S. defense secretary) that “international cooperation and engagement on the international front and the relationships with our allies, …serves America’s self-interest,” it simply doesn’t suffice in bromide form any more. Now’s the time to explain exactly why this stance amounts to something more than what it turned into under the last few pre-Trump Presidents – a formula for needlessly risking nuclear war by coddling wealthy but militarily free-riding allies, and winning international friends and influencing people by giving away huge chunks of the U.S. economy’s productive heart.

Perhaps most revealing of all – both of the group’s cynicism and possibly Sorkin’s – was Dimon’s statement to the latter that “The first thing businesses should do is separate their company’s interests from what’s in the interest of the country.” This from a finance sector that has worked tirelessly for decades to push the offshoring of American manufacturing, with all the national security dangers and economic ruin it’s produced – as Sorkin conspicuously failed to point out.

Sorkin’s contention that “the message the group is advancing is common sense” makes clear that he’ll be an eager collaborator. And that probably goes for much of the rest of the establishment-idolizing and Never Trumper Mainstream Media. Fortunately for these elites, but worrisomely for the American people, everything known about Mr. Biden’s career is telling us that he will be, too.

Note: Eagle-eye readers may notice that I just called the new President “Mr. Biden” rather than “Biden.” That’s because he’s the new President, and therefore, at least in my view, deserves to be identified in a manner as distinctive as the authority of his office when the name is being used as a noun. By the same token, Donald Trump will be called “Trump” – a designation I’ve used for all other individuals I’ve written about in RealityChek, except when referring to them for the first time in a particular article.

But I’ll still restrict myself to using the family name when it functions as an adjective (e.g., “Biden administration,” “Biden policy”).

Truth to tell, I’ve had some ongoing trouble figuring out how to treat former Presidents. The tentative solution I’ve come up with is using that last-name-only form when they’re recent (e.g., “Obama”) and tending (not entirely consistently, I’m sure) to use their full names more frequently the further back in time we travel. (E.g., “former President Richard Nixon” or “former President Ulysses S Grant.”)

Even in such instances, though, I’ve struggled to be consistent without being overly pedantic with the exceptionally well known Presidents (like Washington and Lincoln). And when it comes to “Bush” and “Johnson” and “Roosevelt” and “Adams” I’ve needed to make clear whether I’m talking about George H.W. or George W.; Lyndon Baines or Andrew; Franklin D. or Theodore; and John or John Quincy, respectively.

And another complication: Sometimes, the temptations of stylistic diversity have led me to refer to former Presidents by their first and last names (e.g., “Barack Obama,” “Bill Clinton”). I’m sure these temptations will continue, but I just wanted to let you know that I’m trying to be as consistent as possible. Kapische?

Making News: Podcast Now On-Line of U.S. China Strategy National Radio Interview

Tags

alliances, allies, America First, China, globalism, Joe Biden, Making News, Market Wrap with Moe Ansari, multilateralism, national security, Trade, trade war, Trump

I’m pleased to announce that the podcast is now available of my interview yesterday with Moe Ansari on his nationally syndicated “Market Wrap” radio program. This was a real corker of a segment, turning into an awfully intense (but always civil!) debate about the best way for the United States to deal with the Chinese economic and national security threat – by relying on its own devices (a la, more or less, President Trump) or by building international coalitions (the preferred approach of President-elect Biden). Click here to listen and go to the “Current Market Wrap: link. My segment begins at about the 27-minute mark.

And keep checking in with RealityChek for news of upcoming media appearances and other developments.

Making News: Biden China Setback Post Re-Published in The National Interest

Tags

alliances, allies, China, EU, European Union, globalism, investment, Joe Biden, Making News, multilateralism, The National Interest

I’m pleased to announce that my recent RealityChek post on the European Union’s decision to sign an investment agreement with China, and how it’s trashed apparent President-elect Joe Biden’s globalist dreams of a multilateralist, allies-centric China policy, was re-published yesterday as a blog item by The National Interest. Click here to read – or re-read – with a snazzier layout!

And all throughout the year, keep checking in with RealityChek for news of upcoming media appearances and other developments.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Biden Choices Signal a “What, Me Worry?” China Policy

Tags

alliances, allies, Antony Blinken, BlackRock, Brian Deese, China, decoupling, Jake Sullivan, Janet Yellen, Joe Biden, Katherine Tai, Lloyd Austin, multilateralism, national security, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Robert Lighthizer, sanctions, tariffs, tech war, Trade, trade war, transition, Trump, U.S. Trade Representative, USTR, Wall Street

Apparent President-elect Biden so far is sending a message about his China policy that’s unmistakably bad news for any American believing that the People’s Republic is a major threat to the nation’s security and prosperity – which should be every American. The message: “I’d rather not think about it much.”

In some limited senses, and for the very near future, the impact could be positive. Principally, although he blasted President Trump’s steep, sweeping tariffs on imports from China as disastrously counter-productive for the entire U.S. economy – consumers and producers alike – he’s stated that he won’t lift them right away. Presumably, he’ll also hesitate to remove the various Trump sanctions that have so gravely damaged the tech entities whose activities bolster China’s military strength and foreign espionage capabilities, along with new Trump administration restrictions on these Chinese entities’ ability to list on U.S. stock exchanges.

Looking further down the road, however, if personnel, as widely believed, is indeed policy, Biden’s choices for Cabinet officials and other senior aides to date strongly indicate that his views on the subject haven’t changed much from this past May, when he ridiculed the idea that China not only is going to “eat our lunch,” but represented any kind of serious competitor at all. In fact, in two ways, his choices suggest that his take on China remains the same as that which produced a long record of China coddling.

First, none of his top economic or foreign policy picks boasts any significant China-related experience – or even much interest in China. Like Biden himself, Secretary of State-designate Antony Blinken is an indiscriminate worshipper of U.S. security alliances who views China’s rise overwhelmingly as a development that has tragically and even dangerously given Mr. Trump and other America Firsters an excuse to weaken these arrangements by making allies’ China positions an acid test of their value. In addition, he’s pushed the red herring that the Trump policies amount to a foolhardy, unrealistic attempt at complete decoupling of the U.S. and Chinese economies.

As for the apparently incoming White House national security adviser, Jake J. Sullivan – who served as Biden’s chief foreign policy adviser during his Vice Presidential years – he shares the same alliances-uber-alles perspective on China as Biden and Blinken, and is on record as late as 2017 as criticizing the Trump administration for “failing to strike a middle course” on China – “one that encourages China’s rise in a manner consistent with an open, fair, rules-based, regional order.” I’m still waiting for someone to ask Sullivan why he believes that mission evidently remained unacccomplished after the Obama administration had eight years to try carrying it out.

On the defense policy front, Biden has chosen to head the Pentagon former General Lloyd Austin whose main top-level experience was in fighting Jihadist terrorists in the Middle East, not dealing with a near-superpower like China. That’s no doubt why Biden failed even to mention China when introducing Austin and listing the issues on which he’d need to focus – an omission worrisomely noted by the U.S. Asia allies the apparent President-elect is counting on to help America cope more effectively with whatever problems he thinks China does pose.

As for the Biden economic picks, Treasury Secretary and former Fed Chair Janet Yellen has expressed little interest in China or trade policy more broadly during her long career in public service. (See here for a description of some of her relatively few remarks on the subject.) His choice to head the National Economic Council, Brian Deese, has been working for the Wall Street investment giant, BlackRock, Inc. – which like most of its peers has long hoped to win Beijing’s permission to compete for a slice of the potentially huge China financial services market. But his focus seems to have been environmentally sustainable investments, and his own Obama administration experience centered on climate change.

One theoretical exception is Katherine Tai, evidently slated to become Biden’s U.S. Trade Representative (USTR). Both as a former lawyer at the trade agency  and in her current position as a senior staff member at the House Ways and Means Committee, she boasts vast China experience.

But history teaches clearly that the big American trade policy decisions, like handling China, are almost never made at the USTR level. Mr. Trump’s trade envoy, Robert Lighthizer, was a major exception, and his prominence stemmed from the President’s unfamiliarity as an outsider with the specific policy levers that have needed to be pulled to engineer the big China trade and broader economic policy turnaround sought by Mr. Trump. So expect Tai to be a foot soldier, nothing more.

The cumulative effect of this China vacuum at the top of the likely incoming administration creates the second way in which Biden’s seems to reflect a lack of urgency on the subject: It signals that there will be no China point person in his administration. It’s true that reports have appeared that the apparent President-elect will appoint an Asia policy czar. But more than a week after they’ve been posted, nothing further has been heard.

All of which suggests that, by default, China policy will be made by the alliance festishers Blinken and Sullivan. And if their stated multilateralist impulses do indeed dominate, the result will be basically a U.S. China policy outsourced to Brussels (headquarters of the European Union), and the capitals of Asia. As I’ve written previously, many of these allies have profited greatly from the pre-Trump U.S. and global China trade policy status quo, and their leaders are hoping for a return to this type of world as soon as possible. And it’s no coincidence that’s the kind of world Joe Biden was happy to help preside over during his last White House job.  

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Biden Multilateralism Looks Ever More Muddled

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alliances, Antony Blinken, Biden transition, China, decoupling, globalism, international institutions, Jake Sullivan, Joe Biden, multilateralism, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, technology

Attention to anyone in touch with the Biden foreign policy transition folks – I’m offering a deal.

I’ll stop charging that its top members (and especially Cabinet and similar nominees) keep spouting patently and dangerously vapid globalist foreign policy ideas if they provide some evidence that something other than patently and dangerously vapid globalist foreign policy ideas are going to shape their upcoming stewardship of American strategy and diplomacy.

So far, however, the evidence keeps showing that they have a long way to go, starting with Secretary of State nominee Antony Blinken. In his remarks accepting the position (subject to Senate confirmation of course), this quintessential Clinton and Obama administration retread spoke movingly about his family’s Holocaust roots, but committed one of the cardinal sins of not only diplomacy but any policymaking or politicking: He advertised weakness.

On top of failing either to mention or – more likely – recognize that the international cooperation and multilateralism that’s he’s elevated from a foreign policy tactic to a goal in and of itself will inevitably have content, and that therefore America will often need to play hardball in order to ensure favorable outcomes, Blinken emphasized that “as the President-elect said, we can’t solve all the world’s problems alone. We need to be working with other countries. We need their cooperation. We need their partnership.”

It was nothing less than an open invitation for U.S. friends, foes, and neutrals alike to assume that such problem solving efforts matter more to the United States to them, and that they can therefore repeatedly roll Washington by playing hard to get, and often simply stonewalling until the United States caves in to their stances.

And if you think that America’s wealthy, powerful, and influential allies, whose agreement will be rucial to the success of any international cooperative efforts, would never sink to these tactics, you need to learn some Cold War history. Even when the free world faced a Soviet threat that all of its members viewed as existential, countries like (then) West Germany and South Korea, which literally lived on the front lines, successfully free-rode for decades on Washington’s defense guarantees because U.S. leaders continually spoke and acted as if they’d maintain these military (including nuclear) umbrellas at all costs because they were vital to America itself.

To make matters even weirder, shortly before the election, Blinken – the fetishizer of international cooperation and multilateralism — justified these globalist priorities with an argument drawn straight from the very foundation of America First-ism, at least as I’ve defined it.

I’ve written that America First is the foreign policy approach most suited to the United States is one understanding that, although the United States is not strong, rich, and or smart enough to create a benign global environment or meet truly global challenges all by itself, it is plenty strong, rich, and smart enough to remain safe and prosperous in a world sure to stay anything but benign.

So imagine how surprised I was to see this Blinken statement at a foreign policy conference in October, when he was firmly established as a leading Biden spokesman: A new administration’s approach to world affairs would include “humility, because most of the world’s problems are not about us, even though they affect us.”

Now there’s nothing inherently wrong with addressing overseas situations that “affect us,” as opposed to representing mortal threats. If opportunities arise for the United State to better its lot, it’s of course reasonable to pursue them. But they shouldn’t be pursued until U.S. leaders ask themselves whether the best way to achieve such goals is by joining international cooperative efforts, or relying on any foreign policy approaches at all, rather than trying to build up its own capabilities and reducing its own vulnerabilities. As I’ve also written, in many instances, the latter, America First-y approach will be the superior or more promising, if only because the nation will always be able to influence its own affairs much more effectively than the affairs of others.

Finally, even when Biden aides do display some awareness that U.S. foreign policy needs to be something more than a content-free quest for cooperation, regardless of the stakes for Americans, they haven’t made much progress on figuring out what this content should be – or sharing the results with the public.

More than a year ago, the apparent President-elect’s choice for White House national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, wrote in the leading journal Foreign Affairs, that the central task of U.S. China policy must be to find a way to establish a modus vivendi with Beijing recognizing that the People’s Republic is here to stay as a great power. He stated that “Such coexistence would involve elements of competition and cooperation,” which sounds like yet another glib formula for emphasizing means over end. But Sullivan did specify that America’s policies must identify and seek outcomes favorable to U.S. interests and values.”

On broader matters, Sullivan even contended that “Going forward, Washington should avoid becoming an eager suitor on transnational challenges. Eagerness can actually limit the scope for cooperation by making it a bargaining chip.” Hopefully, he’ll communicate this “Don’t advertise weakness” to Blinken and the rest of a Biden administration.

So that’s progress. But in the year that’s passed since this piece came out, we’ve heard little from Sullivan or anyone else connected with Biden on what will be acceptable to a new adminstration and what won’t be, and less in the way of plausible tactics for achieving these goals or creating these conditions.

For example, Sullivan’s description in his article of ways to deter a Chinese attack on Taiwan – or other targets in Asia – demonstrates no awareness that Beijing’s ability to hit the U.S. homeland with large numbers of nuclear weapons looks formidable enough to inhibit conventional American military responses strong enough to threaten Chinese gambits with defeat.

Sullivan allows that Washington will need to use “some enhanced restrictions on the flow of technology investment and trade in both directions,” in order to “safeguard its technological advantages in the face of China’s intellectual property theft, targeted industrial policies, and commingling of its economic and security sectors.”

But because Sullivan’s overarching goal appears to be avoiding the “Balkanization” of “the global technology ecosystem by impeding flows of knowledge and talent,” he’d place limitations on these curbs that would result in a piecemeal response to a systemic threat. And even individual restrictions that are approved would surely be watered down to the point of ineffectiveness thanks to Sullivan’s insistence that they be “undertaken in consultation with industry and other governments” – two groups that have displayed not the slightest inclination significantly to disrupt business with China that they’ve each found tremendously lucrative.

And in fact, Sullivan ends up ignoring his own sage advice about the limits of international cooperation and multilateralism for their own sakes by declaring a faith in their capabilities that looks stubbornly blind. Why else would he end his article with these declarations?

“Establishing clear-eyed coexistence with China will be challenging under any conditions, but it will be virtually impossible without help. If the United States is to strengthen deterrence, establish a fairer and more reciprocal trading system, defend universal values, and solve global challenges, it simply cannot go it alone. It is remarkable that it must be said, but so it must: to be effective, any strategy of the United States must start with its allies.”

Which sounds like we’re back to Blinken-ism. With my offer still firmly on the table.