Torn in Two

US China hawks invent imaginary détente, US' global primacy is focused on the Eurasian super-continent, Ukraine and Taiwan are ending America’s global preeminence

Jun 13, 2023

UPDATE: The China policy debate in the United States is increasingly detached from reality. The China-hawks are distorting Biden’s position to score ideological points while also presenting the more aggressive approach as the answer. Confronted with a Biden administration policy that is quite hawkish and confrontational, some China hawks have decided to invent an imaginary détente policy to attack. Last week, A. Wess Mitchell of the Marathon Initiative laid out an extensive case against a Biden China détente policy that actually doesn’t exist.

Across three oceans, the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific, and two fronts, the First Island Chain centered on Taiwan, and the Baltic to Black Sea Cordon centered on Ukraine, the United States has been trying to regain its global military dominance and political pre-eminence since former US president George W. Bush launched the disastrous "War on Terror" in 2001 to supposedly fight global terrorism.

If Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shaken the foundations of the international order, a Chinese takeover of Taiwan would lead to a profound global geopolitical reordering — including ending America’s global preeminence. The longer the Ukraine war continues to distract the United States from the growing challenges in the Indo-Pacific region, the greater the risk of a Chinese attempt to throttle Taiwan through an informal blockade.

US-China Hawks Hallucinate

By Daniel Larison (edited)

The China policy debate in the United States is increasingly detached from reality. The China-hawks are distorting Biden’s position to score ideological points while also presenting the more aggressive approach as the answer. Confronted with a Biden administration policy that is quite hawkish and confrontational, some China hawks have decided to invent an imaginary détente policy to attack. Last week, A. Wess Mitchell of the Marathon Initiative laid out an extensive case against a Biden China détente policy that actually doesn’t exist.

“Now is not the time for the United States to pursue détente with China, as the Biden administration has been trying to do for several weeks now,” Mitchell, a former Trump State Department official, warned.

Mitchell isn’t alone in hallucinating a détente policy. Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute fretted that Biden was intent on a “reset” with China. Before that, Craig Singleton of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies criticized the administration because it was “wedded to a policy of détente.”

The hostility of hardliners to the idea of reducing tensions and accommodating other states is a given, but these attacks all miss the mark. Biden’s willingness to accommodate China has been wildly exaggerated.

While the Biden administration makes only the most half-hearted gestures in the direction of a minimal thaw (and won’t even follow through on that), China hawks rush to oppose an accommodation that isn’t happening. Biden has presided over the consolidation of a containment policy and a sharp deterioration in U.S.-China relations in just the last two years.

He ought to be pursuing détente, but he is doing no such thing. So what explains this growing drumbeat of opposition to something that isn’t happening?

It is common in foreign policy debates for supporters of more aggressive policies to misrepresent an administration’s position for rhetorical purposes. The distortion of the administration’s position allows critics to score partisan and ideological points while also presenting their more aggressive approach as the answer. This also enables hawks to police the boundaries of the debate to make sure that the only policy options under consideration are ones that they find acceptable.

We saw similar hawkish attacks during the Obama years. Obama ran a generally hawkish and interventionist foreign policy, so his hawkish opponents had to come up with a fantasy version of appeasement and “abandoning allies” to give them something to criticize. In both cases, the government’s real policies were often practically indistinguishable from the ones that the hawks wanted, but for their own reasons they had to conjure up a more useful target. One of those reasons was to provide an alibi for themselves when the meddlesome policies failed.

When U.S. and allied meddling in Syria made conditions there worse, interventionists pretended that U.S. policy had failed there because it wasn’t interventionist enough or that the U.S. had never intervened at all. This is what China hawks are doing now: redefining a hawkish policy as détente so that they can demand even more provocative and dangerous moves. If they can get away with painting Biden’s policy as détente, then they can try to claim that the breakdown in relations is the result of Biden’s supposed naïve outreach. That makes it easier for them to propose combative actions as the “solution.”

Mitchell also engages in some misleading revisionism about some past efforts at sustained diplomatic engagement, but that’s just part of the larger effort to discredit any diplomacy with rival states. The “reset” with Russia achieved some useful things in the form of New START and Russian cooperation on Afghanistan, and it even led to a brief thaw in relations between Russia and its neighbors. The U.S. intervention in Libya and the Magnitsky Act eventually killed it, but not before it had delivered some real gains for the U.S.

The “reset” was at least a genuine effort to improve the relationship with Russia and bury the hatchet after the animosity of the Bush years, and for a short time it worked as intended. It didn’t fix all the problems in the relationship, but it showed that the relationship could be a constructive one. The deteriorating situation with Russia over the last decade was partly the result of abandoning that diplomatic effort.

Regardless, there is no evidence of anything like the “reset” under Biden with Russia or China. Biden was famously the only incoming president since the end of the Cold War to make no concerted effort to improve relations with Russia at the beginning of his presidency. Only the most deranged Russia hawks thought he was being “soft” on Russia in his first year. No one could honestly mistake Biden’s China policy for one of accommodation and relaxation of tensions.

Mitchell’s attempt to lump all these things together under the heading of détente just shows how baseless these claims are.

China hawks need to pretend that the failures of Biden’s China policy are the result of détente, because he has largely governed according to the hawks’ preferences and the results have been middling to poor at best. Mitchell talks about a “misbegotten attempt at détente” to distract from the fact that the U.S. is headed for a crash because it has been following the hawks’ roadmap.

Détente requires accommodation with another state with the goal of scaling back tensions and finding a modus vivendi. Unfortunately, that isn’t what the Biden administration has done, and it isn’t what it has been trying to do. The Biden administration has shown that it would prefer to pursue a policy of containment and rivalry across the board. Even when it seems to be offering olive branches, they come with enough conditions that the Chinese government is more likely to perceive them as veiled threats.

As Adam Tooze pointed out a few weeks ago, the administration’s attempts at reassurance were not so reassuring after all: “It is telling that what seems to be intended as a reasonable and accommodating statement is, in fact, so jarring. China must accept America’s demarcation of the status quo. If it does not respect boundaries drawn for it by Washington between harmless prosperity and historically consequential technological development, then it should expect to face massive sanctions.”

The administration should pursue détente with China, but it seems extremely unlikely that the current political environment would allow that. U.S.-China détente has been one of the principal supports of peace in East Asia for the last forty years, as Van Jackson has shown in Pacific Power Paradox, but that part of the old status quo has crumbled and collapsed. It is in the best interests of both countries and the entire region for the U.S. and China to try to rebuild it for the sake of regional peace, but the political costs of doing so are likely to be high.

When hawks attack even the most modest efforts at reopening channels of communication, we know that the resistance to more substantive engagement will be intense. Then again, if the Biden administration is going to be accused of having a détente policy anyway, it might as well make the diplomatic effort and merit the attacks that will be coming no matter what it does.

NATO part of US ocean-front strategy

By Digby Wren

Washington's strategy to thwart any power that has the potential to become a regional leader and threaten the US' global primacy is focused on the Eurasian super-continent in Eastern Europe to counter Russia and the Western Pacific to counter China.

Vacillating India in 'Indo-Pacific' strategy

Back in 1972, by acknowledging that "all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China" in the Shanghai Communique, Washington fulfilled its need to establish a détente with China so it could disengage from Southeast Asia (the Vietnam War) in order to concentrate its efforts on thwarting the Soviet Union.

However, the US' 2016"Indo-Pacific" strategy shows that it is desperate to curb China's rise but cannot do so without the help of Japan and India (or other major allies). The Quadrilateral Dialogue (or Quad which comprises the US, Australia, India and Japan) and AUKUS alliance (Australia, the United Kingdom and the US) are testament to the fact that, unlike Australia and the UK, Japan and India are not mere US auxiliaries in the implementation of the "Indo-Pacific" strategy.

Despite US inducements and coercion, India has been promoting multipolarity and de-dollarization. And apart from maintaining, rather than strengthening, its energy and arms trade with Russia despite the Russia-Ukraine conflict, India has also become more influential globally thanks to its participation in the Quad, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and BRICS(Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa).

While India's participation is limited in the US-led Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, it has not joined regional multilateral trade arrangements such as the ASEAN-led Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership or the Japan-led Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Japan faces deep structural challenges

Japan has much to gain from promoting trade and investment with India, and sees mutual security benefits in promoting the Sea Lines of Communication across the Indian Ocean. Yet Japan faces deep structural challenges including a depreciating currency, rising import costs for food, energy and industrial inputs, declining exports, increasing current account deficits and massive public debt. For example, Japan's vehicle export industry lags years behind China's BYD and the US' Tesla in electric vehicle manufacturing and exports. Also, Japan's internal combustion engine vehicle exports have dropped, and Toyota has become the world's most indebted auto company.

True, "Abenomics" failed to revive Japan's economy. But former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe's quest to remove Article 9 from Japan's pacifist Constitution and embark on full rearmament has been progressing rather well with the tacit support of the US.

Also, Japan's refusal to sign a peace treaty with the Soviet Union in the past, and its support to the US-led sanctions regime, point to its long-held hope in gaining an upper hand in Japan-Russia dispute over the islands known as the Southern Kurils in Russia and the Northern Territories in Japan, all of which have important security advantages and significant economic resources.

Continuation of NATO's enlargement policy

The US retreat from Afghanistan and the collapse of its Central Asia campaign prompted NATO to shift its line of operations to Russia's western periphery along a line of NATO states from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea involving Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece and Turkiye.

Despite the reticence of Hungary and Turkiye, NATO's proxy war in Ukraine — portrayed by NATO as an act of "self-defense" and by Russia as a continuation of NATO's enlargement policy — is being sustained by Ukrainian blood, and the supply of money, materials, arms, intelligence, mercenaries and training by the US and other NATO members and allies. Incidentally, the supply of money and materials is aided by the most stringent sanctions campaign and the US' theft of Russia's foreign reserves.

Yet the Russia-Ukraine conflict can also be seen as NATO's rear-guard action to counter the growing closeness and influence of the eight member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization: China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, India and Pakistan. Of special concern to the US and NATO is the EU's continued import of energy from Russia and increasing supply of manufactured goods and advanced telecommunications equipment from China.

Also causing concern to Washington is the expanding infrastructure connectivity thanks to the development of the Belt and Road Initiative, which links the SCO member states with their EU counterparts and sustains increasing volumes of East-West trade and investment.

Moreover, the growing desire of EU states, under the leadership of former German chancellor Angela Merkel and, later, French President Emmanuel Macron to gain "strategic autonomy" after Bush launched the "War on Terror" was seen in Washington as a serious threat to NATO's cohesion and the US' ability to counter the growing influence of Russia and China.

As a result, the US expanded the reach of its political campaigns in the EU to re-impose its centrality in NATO, strengthen NATO's military alliance and promote the sale of US energy. As for Brexit, which Washington openly supported, it accelerated the UK's economic decline, though it ensured the UK retained its United Nations Security Council seat.

But the sacrifice of the wider national interests of the 27 EU member states for the benefit of the US was inconsistent with the EU's inclusive and mutually beneficial policy. In fact, Brexit helped expand the US' influence in the EU and NATO by undermining the EU and increasing the UK's dependency on the US. On its part, the US has supported the EU's expansion always on condition that the European bloc supports NATO's expansion.

US propaganda about Germany's over-dependence on Russian energy and the importance of NATO was launched before the resignation of Merkel as German chancellor, which saw the Christian Democratic Union replaced by a weak "traffic light" coalition of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, Free Democratic Party and the Green Party — the first three-party coalition government in Germany since the end of World War II.

The new coalition government in Germany acquiesced to US demands and reversed its decision on both Nord Stream 2 and NATO's involvement in Ukraine.

Nord Stream 2 stretches for 1,200 kilometres from Vyborg in Russia through the Baltic Sea to Lubmin in Germany, bypassing Ukraine and Poland. It was expected to expand the Nord Stream I line and double the annual supply of Russian gas to 110 billion cubic meters.

Germany, France vital for EU's autonomy

However, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz resisted the US' coercion for some time, and the US demands for ever more German weapons and money for Ukraine, but has increased Germany's defense spending, especially on F-35 fighters, undermining the EU's defense/aero-space sector and creating long-term dependency on the US defense industry and the Pentagon. Germany's economy remains durable, though, in spite of the rising energy costs and tougher global competition.

However, like Japan, Germany's auto-manufacturing sector lags years behind BYD and Tesla. As a matter of fact, the auto-sector in the EU could experience a wave of bankruptcies and restructuring, not to mention that Volkswagen has become the world's second-most indebted corporation — after Toyota.

Many of Germany's largest automakers have struck deals with China to make and supply cars, car parts and car systems. Scholz visited China before the G20 Summit in Bali in 2022 with the aim of strengthening Sino-German commercial ties. And more recently, with support from the French, Scholz complained bitterly about the huge amount of subsidy the US administration pays to automakers and the inflated US energy prices, saying they undermine EU restructuring efforts and post-pandemic recovery.

Macron's strong support for the EU's strategic autonomy and opposition to the US' policy on NATO and Russia were targeted by a US campaign to weaken his chances of being re-elected French president in 2022. The US also engineered the cancellation of two multi-billion-euro defense contracts: Australia cancelled the AUD90 billion ($63.48 billion) submarine deal with France and formed AUKUS with the UK and the US under which the latter two will assist Australia to acquire nuclear-powered submarines by the mid 2030s and replaced the Airbus MRH90 Taipans currently used by Australia's military by the US-built Blackhawk helicopters.

The US also tried to coerce and cajole Greece into cancelling a €3 billion ($3.25 billion) deal to buy French frigates and instead buy US-made combat frigates, which the Greeks eventually declined.

All this forced Macron to go to the polls despite the loss of revenues worth tens of billions and thousands of jobs, and the violent demonstrators by the Yellow Vest protesters against the increase in petrol tax. While Macron won the presidential election in the second round, his party couldn't gain a majority in the parliamentary elections, with no party winning absolute or simple majority for the first time since 1988, which has constrained his political program during his second term in office but expanded US influence.

US hard to drive wedges between China, ASEAN

In the Association of Southeastern Asian Nations, too, the US has been trying to occupy center stage by inducing, coercing and/or cajoling six ASEAN member states (Singapore, Brunei, Vietnam, the Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia) to sway the bloc toward isolating Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos. The US' efforts to drive a wedge between ASEAN and other economies as well as divide ASEAN have prompted some ASEAN member states to delay or refuse to sign the China-sponsored South China Sea code of conduct and develop closer diplomatic and commercial ties with China's Taiwan.

Indonesia, which will be ASEAN chair in 2023, is firmly opposed to the AUKUS and nuclear proliferation. In fact, the US' plan to provide nuclear capability for Australia has unleashed pro-nuclear forces in Indonesia, Vietnam, Japan and the Republic of Korea.

While China and ASEAN are each other's largest trade partners, the US claims to be the largest investor (re-investor) in the region. To counter China and consolidate its presence across the region, the US has been building a network of political programs that targets ASEAN youth, spreads negative stories about China, Russia and Myanmar via mass media and social media campaigns, openly supports opposition parties and candidates and selectively uses human rights to justify restrictions and sanctions to coerce uniformity.

No wonder political elites across the region are worried that the US narrative on democracy wrapped in a human rights and rules-based order cover will threaten political stability in the region. They also say that these are an attempt by the US to gain centrality in ASEAN and to check China's dynamic economic development.

The simplistic US narrative of a Hobbesian struggle between democratic and authoritarian states obscures the US grand strategy of divide and rule, which it has used with some degree of success, to embroil itself and Europe in a proxy war with Russia over Ukraine. The US-NATO proxy war is designed to weaken and/or subjugate Russia, so the US can concentrate its still formidable resources toward curbing China's rise and eventually subjugating it.

However, the tide of history does not support the thesis that the US, despite all its power, can overcome all opposition in its quest to consolidate its hegemony. The political, economic and social decline of the US must contend with the shrinking wealth and power of its allies and the rapidly expanding political and economic forces coalescing in the Global South.

The US will remain a key pole in the global order, but it could be shorn of its exorbitant privilege of controlling the global reserve currency. In the final analysis, the US' "three oceans and two fronts "grand strategy is like the last but feeble roar of a paper tiger as its century of global dominance, comes to an end and the world transitions toward multipolarism and equitable distribution of global resources.

US At Both Ends of Eurasia

By Brahma Chellaney (edited)

It is clear that the single greatest threat to American security is posed not by a declining Russia but by an ascendant China that is seeking to supplant the U.S. as the world’s preeminent power. Still, President Biden rightly emphasizes the importance of talks with Beijing, with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin calling dialogue “not a reward” but “a necessity” after his Chinese counterpart declined to hold a meeting with him on the sidelines of the Asia Security Summit in Singapore.

Oddly, however, the Biden administration shuns dialogue and diplomacy with Russia, thus prolonging a war in Ukraine that, far from advancing America’s long-term interests, is a drain on U.S. resources. The war is revealing Western military shortcomings, with America’s critical munitions being depleted and capacity to restock proving insufficient.

The last thing Chinese President Xi Jinping wants is an end to the Ukraine war, because that would leave the U.S. free to focus on the Indo-Pacific.

Biden’s strategy is to continue bleeding Russia in Ukraine. In fact, Biden’s joint communiqué with the other Group of Seven leaders in Hiroshima, Japan, May 20 committed to “increasing the costs to Russia” while pledging “unwavering support for Ukraine for as long as it takes.”

In a separate statement on Ukraine issued a day earlier, the G7 leaders announced steps to “further restrict Russia’s access to our economies” and tighten the unprecedented sanctions against Moscow.

More ominously, Biden and the other six leaders put forth maximalist demands for an end to the war in Ukraine, including that Russia “completely and unconditionally withdraw its troops and military equipment from the entire internationally recognized territory of Ukraine.” But, with the conflict settling into a war of attrition that inhibits either side from making significant battlefield advances, a complete and unconditional Russian withdrawal is unlikely to ever happen. In fact, after formally annexing the vast swaths of Ukrainian territory it has seized, Russia has been fortifying its defenses to hold on to its war gains.

In their joint statement, Biden and the other G7 leaders have also committed to efforts to ensure “Russia pays for the long-term reconstruction of Ukraine.”

Their statement states that the G7 states “will continue to take measures available within our domestic frameworks to find, restrain, freeze, seize, and, where appropriate, confiscate or forfeit the assets of those individuals and entities that have been sanctioned in connection with Russia’s aggression.” It continues, “We reaffirm that, consistent with our respective legal systems, Russia’s sovereign assets in our jurisdictions will remain immobilized until Russia pays for the damage it has caused to Ukraine.”

Not only is the unilateral impoundment of Russian assets contrary to a rules-based international order, but the maximalist demands set out by the G7 leaders are a recipe for an unending conflict, which can only benefit China economically and strategically while weakening Russia and sapping Western strength.

With the age of Western dominance already in retreat, a long war in Ukraine would accelerate the shift in global power from the West to the East.

Meanwhile, CIA Director Bill Burns’s recent clandestine visit to Beijing exemplifies Biden’s efforts to placate China as he ramps up sanctions and military pressure on Russia. While seeking economic collapse and regime change in Russia, Biden has tried to reassure Xi with what Beijing says are “Five Nos”: No to changing China’s communist system; no to seeking U.S. economic decoupling from China; no to a policy of “one China, one Taiwan”; no to containing China; and no to a new Cold War with China.

The White House may not have directly corroborated such commitments, but similar formulations can be found in the Biden administration’s public declarations, including an assurance in the administration’s Indo-Pacific strategy that the U.S. “objective is not to change the PRC [People’s Republic of China],” the world’s most populous, strongest and longest-surviving autocracy.

Biden is mistaken if he thinks he can bring around China or dissuade it from ganging up with Russia against America. Xi is determined to make China a world power second to none. Indeed, China and Russia, with important allies like Iran, are in the process of forming a “Eurasian Axis” to challenge the American-led global order, including the status of the dollar as the world’s primary reserve currency.

Against this backdrop, it would be in America’s interest to encourage quiet diplomacy to explore ways to bring about a ceasefire in a war that is having a negative worldwide impact by triggering energy and food crises, which in turn contribute to high inflation and slowing global growth. Ukraine’s impending launch of its long-planned counteroffensive, meanwhile, promises to heighten the risk of a direct Russia–NATO conflict.

Even as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warns that “a large number of soldiers will die” in his country’s counteroffensive because Russia retains the upper hand in air power, Kyiv, with U.S. backing, continues to reject proposals of peace talks that do not center on Russia first vacating the areas it has occupied.

After more than 15 months of war, it is clear that neither Russia nor Ukraine and its Western allies is in a position to achieve its primary strategic objectives. A ceasefire is the only way out of the current military deadlock.

In the Korean War, it took two years of military stalemate to achieve an armistice agreement. A similarly long delay in reaching an armistice agreement in the current war would mean greater bloodshed and devastation without either side making any significant strategic gains.

An extended Ukraine war will help formalize a Sino-Russian strategic axis while increasing the likelihood of Chinese aggression against Taiwan. By contrast, a frozen Ukraine conflict arising from a ceasefire will keep Moscow preoccupied while letting America focus less on Russia, the world’s most-sanctioned country, and more on a globally expansionist China.

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