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Biden, China, energy, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Paracells, Russia, South China Sea, Spratlys, The New York Times, U.S. Navy, Ukraine, Xi JInPing
Well, that didn’t take long. Just two weeks after President Biden’s face-to-face meeting with Chinese dictator Xi Jinping in Bali, Indonesia raised hopes of improved Sino-American relations, Beijing is acting like it’s determined to dash them.
Not that the expressed hopes were especially high. Mr. Biden himself said he aimed “to ensure that the competition between our countries does not veer into conflict, whether intended or unintended. Just simple, straightforward competition. It seems to me we need to establish some commonsense guardrails” to “manage the competition responsibly” (as the White House put it in post-meeting statement).
But this morning EST, the Chinese military announced that it had “Organised sea and air forces to follow, monitor, warn and drive away” a U.S. warship that had sailed into waters Beijing claims near a group of islands in the South China Sea.
China’s claim has been rejected by international legal authorities, and the United States Navy regularly sends ships into the area to reflect its “continued commitment to….every nation’s right to fly, sail, and operate wherever international law allow.” The Navy added that “At the conclusion of the operation,” the destroyer “exited [China’s] excessive claim area and continued operations in the South China Sea.”
The point here is that China’s reactions to what the United States calls “Freedom of Navigation Operations” represent exactly the kind of opportunity for a conflict-igniting accident or miscalculation that President Biden’s guard rails idea seeks to avoid – and that China isn’t especially interested.
Also today, China declared its readiness to “forge a closer partnership” on energy with Russia – surely a sign of Beijing’s continued defiance of U.S. and European efforts to deny Moscow resources for financing its invasion of Ukraine.
As also reported by the Associated Press, President Biden “has warned Xi of unspecified consequences if Beijing helps [Russia] evade sanctions,” but this announcement indicates that any “Spirit of Bali” doesn’t extend in Xi Jinping’s eyes to helping end this dangerous conflict. In fact, I suspect it reflects China’s ongoing happiness that Washington is tying up so many military resources to aid Ukraine’s resistance that it’s degrading America’s ability to counter China’s ambitions in Asia – and especially a possible invasion of Taiwan, the global leader in manufacturing the world’s most advanced semiconductors.
Early during the Cold War, then Chinese dictator Mao Zedong devised a strategy called “fight fight talk talk.” As explained by the New York Times,
“The idea was that even as you seek opportunities to make gains on the battlefield, to expand your territory and gain in strength, you keep on negotiating even though you have no interest in a compromise solution and intend to win complete victory. The talk-talk part of the strategy gives mediators the sense that they are doing something useful, while, by holding theoretically to the possibility of a negotiated solution, you deter great- power military intervention in support of your adversary.”
As Times reporter Richard Bernstein explained, when it came to U.S. efforts to negotiate a deal between China’s nationalist forces and the Communists, the strategy was “a brilliant success.” Here’s hoping that President Biden doesn’t ignore the new hints that China is following the same course today – and that Beijing isn’t interested in conducting a “responsible competition.” It’s interested in winning.