The Biden administration has chosen to organize its entire foreign policy around countering China. And it is a choice, one that leaves countries forced to decide which side they are on, in what could become a dangerous replay of the last Cold War.
Except President Joe Biden and his team vehemently deny that that’s the case.
“Now, let me be clear: None of these partnerships are about containing any country,” Biden said at the United Nations General Assembly last week, talking about the many foreign policy initiatives of his administration that overtly and implicitly are about countering China. “We seek to responsibly manage the competition between our countries so it does not tip into conflict.”
The administration, however, has yet to fully articulate what constructive competition might look like in practice. And so it seemed that every world leader visiting New York for the United Nations’ annual meeting was asked to pick a side. In a week of interviews, panels, and private events on the sidelines of the UN, I heard variations of that question, over and over. “Hopefully things can subside. The tension is now creating anxiety in the region,” Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “We believe that both relationships can coexist and flourish simultaneously,” Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar of Pakistan said.
But do Washington and Beijing believe that?
“Both sides see themselves in a zero-sum competition and an existential ideological struggle,” writes Paul Heer, a former US intelligence official, in The National Interest. “What can break the cycle of miscommunication, mutual miscomprehension, and mutual recrimination between the United States and China?”
Which side are you on?
The fear is taking shape among foreign policy experts in the United States and across the world that a new Cold War with China could be locked in for decades. In Washington, Republicans and Democrats agree on little today, with the exception of the…
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