Policy veterans urging a new course on China — will Biden listen?

When some of America’s most experienced former Cabinet officials and politicians warn that the United States and China are on a dangerous path that will be destructive to both sides, it should set pulses racing in the corridors of power.

President Biden and Congress seem confident and unperturbed. Yet, in critiques ranging from stark to subtle, from Henry Kissinger, Hank Paulson, William Cohen, Charlene Barshefsky and Jerry Brown, former secretaries of State, Treasury and Defense, a U.S. Trade Representative, and three-time governor of the richest state in America, respectively, are urging a course correction. Are these past architects of U.S. policy hopelessly out of touch, or are today’s decisionmakers disastrously short on self-doubt?

The answer is complicated.

Few would dispute that China is catching up to the United States in terms of power and that relations have become inherently adversarial as a result and will probably stay that way, as Kissinger assesses. For the former secretary of State, the challenge is to contain this now-structural feature of the relationship without going to war, cold or hot, and enable self-interested engagement and cooperation — essentially the position Paulson, Cohen, Barshefsky and Brown take.

Significantly, none of them talk about conflict between democracy and dictatorship defining the 21^st century, the concept that drives the bipartisan consensus on China in Washington. In fact, Barshefsky rejects the notion that the United States should give up trying to reduce China’s incompatibility with Western economies because Beijing is “always going to be Leninist,” as if China has never embraced market reforms and the potential benefits for global prosperity and poverty alleviation are less worthwhile.

They prefer the practical over the ideological, perhaps because this rivalry between economically co-dependent powers is without precedent in modern history. On a strategic journey without maps, throwing caution, and pragmatism, to the wind seems unwise — dangerous even.

Consequently, Brown is seized with the hostility building among the largest nuclear powers, America, Russia and China — something the world has not seen in a few generations — while Cohen cites China’s rapid arms build-up. They all worry a Cold War could blow hot fast over Taiwan, as Washington struggles to engage Beijing on arms control — something that unsettles Kissinger in an era where unconstrained nuclear technology and artificial intelligence capabilities guarantee a catastrophic clash. Above all, they criticize the absence of sustained high-level dialogue. Paulson considers it the essential predicate to China’s decision in 2008 to help avert another Great Depression in the United States, after the financial system went into meltdown.

For Biden and Congress, by contrast, China is “a near-peer rival whose interests and values diverge sharply from those of the United States.” If not countered today, an autocratic China could one day overpower America and overwhelm the democratic global order.

Repurposing the global norm against changing borders through violence to fit this new policy frame, Biden has convinced the advanced democracies in Europe and Asia that their security environments are intertwined: if autocrats prevail in Ukraine today and Taiwan tomorrow, the global balance of power will shift in their favor. Therefore, democracies in both theaters must stand with the United States to show Beijing the limits of its power and the consequences of overreach through such actions as joint military exercises, shifting into other markets, and denying China access to advanced technologies, among others.

Of course, everyone grasps the requirement to narrow Beijing’s strategic horizons. That’s Foreign Policy 101. Under President Xi Jinping, China is more repressive internally and more aggressive externally. One country, two systems in Hong Kong is over, Xinjiang is an open-air prison, and China is re-defining maritime boundaries in the South China Sea (the reason the Philippines welcomes a larger U.S. military presence). Xi espouses healthy competition while the party-state advantages Chinese firms and frightens foreign firms with interrogations and detentions. Meanwhile, the China-Russia coziness is intensifying. There is much to deter.

The thing is, if the United States only constrains and deters and does it across the board, without distinguishing between what is critical and what is nice to have, as Paulson argues, Washington and Beijing will end up in a security spiral, each side upping the ante until war becomes inevitable. Everyone glimpsed what that looks like last summer when then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taipei. Pelosi may have showed China’s leaders they do not decide who can visit the island, but they roared back with the largest-ever deployment of People’s Liberation Army forces around Taiwan and an unprecedented rehearsal of invasion and blockade. Neither side bested the other — things simply moved to a new and more intractable status quo.

Biden is betting Beijing will blink first. The economic weight of the United States and its European and Asian allies is 80 percent greater than that of China and Russia. China needs overseas markets and its heavily indebted local governments crave foreign investment to satisfy growth and employment targets. Now is the time to be bold and change the game decisively for democracies.

Except, two-thirds of the world trades more with China than with the United States, including America’s best pals, Paulson reminds, and its $18 trillion economy is just $5 trillion shy of number one. Washington can tell Wall Street to get out of the pool but would Europe follow suit on the same scale? Asia?

Furthermore, beware of unintended consequences. Turns out friendshoring — that is, relocating supply chains to places where national security concerns are low — is a game of musical chairs, shifting direct interdependence with China from stronger states to weaker ones, while indirect ties stay intact. So much for supply chain security and a “free and open Indo-Pacific.” The national security adviser has toned down the rhetoric, but the proof, as they say, is in the pudding.

Facing another existential presidential race in 2024, changing direction will be hard. Forcefulness abroad plays well at home, and both parties are boxed in with their ideological framing. However, the president is running for re-election, and second terms are about legacy. Even in this political climate, “losing” China, or worse, would be judged harshly. Blaming Beijing for not returning calls may be technically accurate, but it takes two to tango.

On the issues that define our age and shape our future, it is crucial to keep options open. Washington’s present course with China leaves less and less room to fight another day at the conference table and closer to a contest on the battlefield. Fundamentally, that is why America’s policy veterans are right.

Ferial Ara Saeed is CEO of Telegraph Strategies LLC, a consultancy providing strategic guidance on political and economic trends. She is a former senior American diplomat who served on the National Security Council staff of the White House and on the negotiating teams for the U.S.-China Market Access Agreement and China’s accession to the World Trade Organization. Previously Saeed was a visiting fellow at the National Defense University and a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. Follow her on Twitter @TelStratLLC.