US-China Relations- How difficult is the relationship?

This week I, and just about everybody else holding some interest in sport, or at least in innovative commercials were distracted by the events leading up to, and including, the 58th Super Bowl. Notwithstanding the quickening approach of this Super Bowl Sunday, however, I was drawn to an examination by a number of experts for the Brookings Institution of the US-China relationship.

So in this somewhat shortened Post, thanks to the Event,  I thought I might pay a bit of attention to their useful views.

Graham Allison, one of the experts called on to respond to the question, pointed to the issue posed to the experts:

The invitation from Brookings’ debate organizers asked: “Is the U.S.-China relationship the most consequential bilateral relationship for the United States in the world?

He went on to lay out just why the bilateral relationship is so consequential:

My answer is: yes. If not China, who?

China is:

– one of only two nations that poses an existential threat to the United States.

– the only nation that poses a systemic threat to the U.S. position as the global leader, architect, and guardian of the post-World War II international order.

– the largest emitter of greenhouse gases—accounting for more emissions in 2022 than the United States and Europe combined.

– the second backbone of the world economy: the manufacturing workshop of the world, the No. 1 trading partner of most countries in the world (including the European Union and Japan), and the supplier of most critical items (including everything green and clean) in global supply chains.

– both a classic Thucydidean rival and America’s inseparable, conjoined Siamese twin.

The folks who commented included, as I noted above, Graham Allison, Douglas Dillon Professor – Harvard, and additionally, John Cartin, Adjunct Professor, Walsh School of Foreign Service – Georgetown, Elizabeth Economy, Senior Fellow – Hoover Institutions and Susan Thornton, Senior Fellow – Paul Tsai China Center, Yale Law School, and nonresident fellow, the Brookings Thornton China Center.

It is, for sure, a significant question. After all, the state of the US-China relationship, largely without question, drives the geopolitics of current international relations. And the answers did not fail to satisfy. The assessments by these experts are all very revealing and if you have a moment the answers are worth a read. I say this notwithstanding that not all even saw the relationship as most consequential. In fact Elizabeth Economy promoted a somewhat contrary notion. As she argued:

There are many ways to describe the U.S.-China bilateral relationship. For example, the relationship is the world’s most complex, most challenging, or most competitive. However, the relationship is not “the most consequential in the world for America. Far more consequential is the United States’ relationship with its network of allies and partners in Asia, Europe, and North America. Unlike China, the United States’ allies and close partners share the same values, norms, and strategic objectives. … However, over the almost half-century since the normalization of the U.S.-China relationship, the bilateral relationship has never realized the potential Washington imagined. The two countries’ values, norms, and interests have increasingly diverged, and the ties that have bound them together have increasingly frayed.

In his response, Allison is unwilling to let the Economy argument pass and sets it out his views starkly:

In arguing against the significance of the U.S.-China relationship, both Economy and Cartin duck the reality of China’s existential threat. The brute fact is that China is one of only two nations in the world with nuclear arsenals that constitute genuine “existential” threats—meaning threatening existence.

While not unanimous, then, still I think most would underscore that the US-China bilateral relation is highly consequential. Having said that though, I was most taken with Susan Thornton’s response. Now admittedly I know Susan most of all the experts as she is a key figure in our own China-West Dialogue (CWD). But she argued and targeted exactly what I would have also zoned in on. Susan accepted that the relationship was indeed the most consequential but then targeted what I would have as well: the key to the relationship and its likely impact on the global order is the state of domestic affairs in the US. As Susan argued:

And just to be clear, relations with or actions taken by any other single country will have little consequence for Americans in the world compared to our own decisions and actions. Our fate lies in our own hands. … In short, America cannot escape “China impact.” China is big, capable, changing rapidly, and operating in all priority zones. Still, obsessing over what China does or might do is a mistake that will carry large opportunity costs for America that it cannot afford. China may be the most consequential “other country,” but we need to take responsibility for our own future, a future that will involve “China impact,” but that we can shape.

Absolutely. Couldn’t agree more. In the face of the real possibility of a return of Donald Trump as American President, most anything, and likely everything else pales in comparison to that reality and the real chaos likely to be generated by his return both for domestic and US foreign policy.

Image Credit: MIssouri State University

This Post originally appeared at my Substack, Alan’s Newsletter. https://open.substack.com/pub/globalsummitryproject/p/us-china-relations-how-consequential?r=bj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

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The Troubling Aggressiveness of the House Select Committee on China

This is an effort to unpack the US-China relationship and its impact on the current global order following the Xi-Biden Summit at the margins of the APEC Summit last month in San Francisco. It is difficult to assess the consequences of the very real US-China competition and the potential for not just competition but confrontation and conflict. As Fareed Zakaria describes it in an opinion piece in the Washington Post:

China is the largest of the challenges and the one that, in the long run, will shape the international order — determining whether the open international system collapses into a second Cold War with arms races in nuclear weapons, space and artificial intelligence.

But that nuanced assessment is not found everywhere. We’ve made passing reference in the past in this Substack posts to the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition  Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party (Select Committee).  With the most recent Select Committee Report the grim clarity of the Select Committee’s view is on full display.

This Committee, it seems to me, is the cutting edge of the reaction against decades-long ‘engagement’ strategy in US-China foreign policy. The ‘death of engagement’ came with the Trump years but has continued with some in the Biden Administration. From a position that argued that economic interdependence between the United States and China would encourage  peace and stability between the two and in the more extreme view that such engagement would even be a force for political  liberalization in China, that view is ‘dead and buried’. While the latter view of political liberalization was clearly ‘over the top’, the notion of economic interdependence promoting economic growth and prosperity and encouraging continuing focus on societal wellbeing was not then and is not now. But not for the Select Committee.

The Select Committee was created on January 10, 2023 at the beginning of the 118th Congress to, according to the recent Select Committee Report, to: “investigate and submit policy recommendations on the status of the Chinese Communist Party’s economic, technological, and security progress and its competition with the United States.” At that time, it was then Speaker Kevin McCarthy – yes the same guy who was fired from Speaker and has now left Congress –  who appointed Mike Gallagher its Chair.  Gallagher was first elected to the US House of Represenattives in 2016 and is a Marine veteran who was deployed twice to Iraq as a commander of intelligence teams, and was on now-retired Army Gen. David Petraeus’s Central Command Assessment Team.

Gallagher has been vocal about what he sees as the Biden Administration’s failure to understand the threat posed by China. In an early set of remarks as Chair Gallagher made clear what he believed to be the necessary course correction in US policy toward China. In an interview in the spring Gallagher laid out his vision:

I think there should be three pillars to our grand strategy vis-a-vis China. One is traditional military competition, hard power, and there we need multiyear appropriations for critical munition systems that need to be prepositioned in the Indo-Pacific. … The second line of effort involves ideological competition. Human rights go in this bucket. One of the things we can do in this area is make sure that the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act is fully implemented and that companies aren’t exploiting any loopholes. … The third line of effort is the most complex. It’s what I call economic statecraft, or what others refer to as “selective economic decoupling.

From early on, indeed from his opening remarks at the Select Committee’s first hearing in February, Gallagher has been explicit that he views the competition and rivalry with China as an “existential struggle”:

We may call this a “strategic competition,” but this is not a polite tennis match. This is an existential struggle over what life will look like in the 21st century — and the most fundamental freedoms are at stake.

The Select Committee is made up of the following members:

Chair: Mike Gallagher WI-08

Republican Members

Robert J. Wittman VA-01

Blaine Luetkemeyer MO-03

Andy Barr KY-06

Dan Newhouse WA-04

John R. Moolenaar MI-02

Darin LaHood IL-16

Neal P. Dunn FL-02

Jim Banks IN-03

Dusty Johnson SD-

Michelle Steel CA-45

Ashley Hinson IA-02

Carlos A. Gimenez FL-28

Ranking Member: Raja Krishnamoorthi IL-08

Democratic Members

Kathy Castor FL-14

André Carson IN-07

Seth Moulton MA-06

Ro Khanna CA-17

Andy Kim NJ-03

Mikie Sherrill NJ-11

Haley M. Stevens MI-11

Jake Auchincloss MA-04

Ritchie Torres NY-15

Shontel M. Brown OH-11

It is notable that all members of the Committee, Republican and Democrat, with the  exception of Representative Auchincloss, a Democrat, signed this most recent recent Report by the Select Committee. It underscores the growing negative  shift in Congress over the relationship with China. As pointed out recently in the NYTimes:

… that ties to China could be weaponized in the event of a conflict. It could be catastrophic for the U.S. economy or the military, for example, if the Chinese government cut off its shipments to the United States of pharmaceuticals, minerals or components for weapons systems.

Beijing’s subsidization of Chinese firms and incidents of intellectual property theft have also become an increasing source of friction. In some cases, China has allowed foreign firms to operate in the country only if they form partnerships that transfer valuable technology to local companies.

The report said that the United States had never before faced a geopolitical adversary with which it was so economically interconnected, and that the full extent of the risk of relying on a strategic competitor remained unknown. The country lacks a contingency plan in the case of further conflict, it said.

And, it reflects what is today described as ‘bipartisanship’ in US-China relations.

The current Report, titled ‘Reset, Prevent, Build: A strategy to win America’s economic competition with the Chinese Communist Party’ was intended to address, what the Report describes as an “equally critical concern: America’s economic and technological competition with the People’s Republic of China (PRC)” – one of three pillars identified by the Select Committee. The central narrative of US-China relations, according to the Select Committee was, and is:

For a generation, the United States made a bipartisan bet that robust engagement with the PRC would lead the PRC to open its economy and financial markets, which would in turn lead to reforms in the political system, greater freedom for the Chinese people, and peace and stability in the region. That bet has failed. The PRC, led by the CCP, has abandoned the path of economic and political reform, doubled down on repressive activities at home, and engaged in destabilizing activities in the region. In the decades since its accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), the PRC has consistently broken its promises, which ranged from commitments to allow wholly foreign-owned internal combustion engine vehicle manufacturing licenses in the PRC to pledges to reduce market-distorting agricultural subsidies. It committed to these reforms dozens of times and reneged each time.

At the same time, the CCP has pursued a multidecade campaign of economic aggression, fulfilling General Secretary Xi Jinping’s directive to be the “gravediggers of capitalism.” It has employed extensive mercantilist and coercive policies to hollow out the American economy and displace American workers and has wielded extensive subsidies at unprecedented levels and market access restrictions to strengthen indigenous industries and decrease the PRC’s reliance on foreign partners. At the same time, it has sought access to U.S. technology, expertise, and capital. It has often done so illegally, stealing as much as $600 billion per year of intellectual property (IP) and technology—in what the former director of the National Security Agency called “the greatest transfer of wealth” in history.

This Select Committee Report presents findings from the Committee hearings and it outlines recommendations for a strategy for the economic and technological dimensions of the competition with China. Once again there are three pillars to the described strategy with the intent to “…reset the terms of economic and technological competition and shape a strategic environment that favors the national and economic security of the United States and its allies while upholding our values.” The pillars include:

  • First, the United States must reset the terms of our economic relationship with the PRC and recognize the serious risks of economically relying on a strategic competitor;
  • Second, the United States must immediately stem the flow of U.S. technology and capital that is fueling the PRC’s military modernization and human rights abuses.
  • Third, the United States must invest in technological leadership and build collective economic resilience in concert with its allies.”

Identifying just these three pillars fails to do justice to the rather ‘breathtaking’ list of recommendations – some 150 recommendations – that covers a multitude of issues from AI to rare earth production and manufacturing. As described in the Washington Post:

The report, released Tuesday by the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, contains a broad legislative blueprint that — if followed — could ratchet up duties on Chinese goods, significantly curtail certain U.S. investments in China and further restrict or ban U.S. market access for companies including TikTok, as well as drone makers, chip manufacturers and telecommunications groups.”

Though the Select Committee Report describes something less than full throttled decoupling it is hard not to see the rising barriers to US-China trade and investment and the rising protectionism and the costs for the United States and its allies and partners from such a severe strategy as outlined in the Report.

Reading the Select Committee Report one could be forgiven if one presumed that the US-China competition was just a ‘hair’s breadth’ from a dramatic confrontation.

It leaves one unnerved and more than slightly depressed.

This was posted earlier at my Substack Post, Alan’s Newsletter – https://substack.com/@globalsummitryproject

Image Credit: Asia Freedom Institute

Competing and Collaborating – Dealing with Today’s Geopolitics and Global Governance

It is an eventful several weeks. Most dramatically the 20th Party Congress of the Chinese Communist Party has launched – indeed it is approaching its conclusion. There is little doubt that Xi Jinping will claim a third term ending the effort by earlier leaders to limit leadership to two terms. His statements will likely be our best guide to Chinese foreign policy for the immediate future. But more on that in a future blog post.

And then there’s the Biden Administration’s release of the National Security Strategy (NSS). The NSS explains the security priorities of the administration to both Congress and the American public and is a legislatively mandated document.This strategic document was about to be released in February of this year but was delayed as the Russia-Ukraine war loomed. With its release just a few days ago, we get some big picture framing for Biden Administration security and foreign policy. Indeed, the advance press call held by Jake Sullivan, the United States National Security Advisor to President Joe Biden, on the day of the document’s release provides an interesting summary and insight of current US policy. Jake sets it out:

The fundamental premise of the strategy is that we have entered a decisive decade with respect to two fundamental strategic challenges. The first is the competition between the major powers to shape the future of the international order. And the second is that while this competition is underway, we need to deal with a set of transnational challenges that are affecting people everywhere, including here in the United States — from climate change to food insecurity, to communicable diseases, to terrorism, to the energy transition, to inflation.

 

And this strategy makes clear that these shared challenges are not marginal issues, they are not secondary to geopolitics, but they operate on a plane alongside the competition — the geopolitical competition with major powers.

 

Now, of course, there are tensions between trying to rally cooperation to solve these shared challenges and trying to position ourselves effectively to prevail in strategic competition. But there are also ways in which these are reinforcing. And we believe fundamentally that the core elements of what the United States must do in the years ahead is — are the same for both sets of challenges.

 

Specifically, we need to invest in the underlying sources and tools of American power and influence, especially our strength here at home, both for the purpose of effective competition and for the purpose of being set up to rally the world to solve shared challenges.

 

Second, we need to build the strongest possible coalition of nations to enhance our collective influence, both to shape the global strategic environment and to address these transnational threats that require cooperation to succeed. And finally, we need to set the rules of the road for the 21st century in critical areas — from emerging technologies in cyberspace, to trade, economics, investment, and more — both so that the international order continues to reflect our values and our interests and so that the international order is better designed to be able to take on the challenges ahead.

 

So this decisive decade is critical both for defining the terms of competition, particularly with the PRC, and for getting ahead of massive challenges that if we lose the time in this decade, we will not be able to keep pace with most notably the climate crisis, but other challenges as well.

 

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The Current Narrative of the Chinese Communist Party’s Foreign Policy: “A Community of Shared Future for Mankind”?

When it comes to China’s current foreign policy, phrases such as “Wolf-Warrior Diplomacy” (WWD) and “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI) frequently appear. The name WWD originates from a Chinese film series, “Wolf Warrior”, which depicts a patriotic solider battling foreign powers and mercenaries. Nowadays, many refer to China’s increasingly strong statements and assertive diplomatic declarations as WWD.

On the other hand, BRI refers to global infrastructure development projects led by China to promote international cooperation, multilateralism, and trade. It may appear that these two sets of foreign policy approaches rather conflict. However, the phrase “A Community of Shared Future for Mankind” (人类命运共同体), a part of the official narrative of China’s foreign policy may have led to both of these contrasting approaches. What is “A Community of Shared Future for Mankind”? How does this phrase explain trends in China’s recent foreign policies including WWD and also BRI?

What is “A Community of Shared Future for Mankind”?

By literal translation, the above phrase means “A Community of Shared Fate for Mankind” (SF) rather than, as it is often expressed in English, “A Community of Shared Future for Mankind”. SF suggests a global order described by China’s President Xi Jinping encompassing the shared rights and responsibility of each nation in terms of “politics, security, economy, culture, and environment” in a globalized world. In President Xi’s words SF is: “to build A Community of Shared Future for Mankind [to] construct a beautiful and clean world with long lasting peace, general security, mutual prosperity, openness, and inclusivity”. At a United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) meeting in July, 2020, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi argued that China will push to build SF by promoting multilateralism in accordance with international laws and “… denounce global hegemony and protectionism”. These and other  remarks by China’s leaders demonstrate, it would seem, the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) ambition to achieve greater global influence, and that China is prepared to work with all nations to build a SF. Indeed, not all nations may be agreeable with the ideology of SF. It is inevitable that the CCP will face some frictions when it tries to expand the influence of SF in the world. Therefore, the CCP may have to use a tailored approach in its foreign policies to push its SF agenda.

SF as an Umbrella term for China’s Foreign Policy

President Xi has publicly made statements such as “[the CCP] will reference history and create the future. It must continuously push and construct A Community of Shared Future for Mankind”. Under this guidance, top Chinese officials have made clear that China’s foreign policy will revolve around SF. China’s approach to global order, then,  promotes politically correct topics such as climate change, global disparity, and it also opposes terrorism and hegemony. Although it encourages cross-cultural exchange, it makes no explicit mention of protecting the rights of marginalized communities. The vague language in the SF permits CCP officials greater flexibility in deciding what kind of matters are consistent with the SF and therefore align with President Xi’s agenda.

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Declaring Engagement Dead!

Opinion and analysis writing often seems to come forward in ‘waves’. It is almost never just one piece but a veritable series of similar narrations that seeks to identify the trends.  This wave-like writing certainly is evident when it comes to US foreign policy making and in particular the rising tensions between the two leading powers – the United States and China. There was a first wave of  ‘New Cold War’ articles, that as I suggested along with some of my V20 colleagues seemingly impacted partisans of both Parties in the United States. Then, there was the wave US-China trade war tensions. And now we see the current wave in the ‘Rising US-China’ tensions and the return to a view that this may indeed be a new sorta ‘Cold War’ and dire predictions of decoupling between the two leading economies and the ‘deer in the headlights’ of US allies trying to avoid choices between the two.

This newest wave of US-China tensions has been orchestrated in part by the Trump Administration with speeches from senior officials William Barr, the Attorney General,  Robert C. O’Brien, National Security Advisor,  Christopher Wray, the Director of the FBI, Mark Esper Secretary of Defense and, finally with the icing on the cake the speech by  Michael Pompeo the  current Secretary of State at a highly significant location – the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum at Yorba Lind, California.

It is interesting that these declarative words all began with the Donald Trump’s actions – the chaos, the denigration of multilateralism, the strong-arming of allies and the threats to end key alliance relations of the liberal order – NATO, US- Japan and US-Korea security treaties. While these initiatives and threats heralded Trump’s America First policy they have been superseded most recently with the targeting of China. It reflects, one suspects, the ‘Hail Mary’ approach that Trump seems to have chosen with falling numbers on his reelection. It is China ‘all the time’, by these officials, attacks on the Communist Party of China and even the targeting of regime change by these US officials.  Additionally, and I don’t think prematurely US foreign policy analysts are at the same time attempting to anticipate a foreign policy under a Biden Administration. But we’ll save that examination for another moment.

Meanwhile the language is barely restrained . As my CSIS colleagues Scott Kennedy and Matthew Goodman conclude in a recent post:

Through a series of speeches and tough actions, the Trump administration has clearly signaled that it views a Xi Jinping-led China as an existential threat to the West, and hence, is trying to mobilize its friends and allies to form a united front against Beijing.

Here is William Barr, the Attorney General of the United States describing China and its current ambitions in a speech he delivered on July 16th:

… that is, the United States’ response to the global ambitions of the Chinese Communist Party.  The CCP rules with an iron fist over one of the great ancient civilizations of the world.  It seeks to leverage the immense power, productivity, and ingenuity of the Chinese people to overthrow the rules-based international system and to make the world safe for dictatorship.

The objective is according to Barr, clear:

The People’s Republic of China is now engaged in an economic blitzkrieg—an aggressive, orchestrated, whole-of-government (indeed, whole-of-society) campaign to seize the commanding heights of the global economy and to surpass the United States as the world’s preeminent superpower.

And, the dire views of Barr are only amplified, indeed ‘accelerated’ a now favored term in this ‘Age of the pandemic’ by Mike Pompeo:

But I have faith we can do it. I have faith because we’ve done it before. We know how this goes. I have faith because the CCP is repeating some of the same mistakes that the Soviet Union made – alienating potential allies, breaking trust at home and abroad, rejecting property rights and predictable rule of law.

And as pointed up above the location of the Pompeo speech was no accident. It is the Nixon library – the archive of the President that set in motion along with his National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, the dramatic alteration of US policy toward Mao’s China – one of the seminal diplomatic events of any President in the post WWII period. And why deliver the speech there? Well, to pronounce that policy a dramatic mistake:

As time went on, American policymakers increasingly presumed that as China became more prosperous, it would open up, it would become freer at home, and indeed present less of a threat abroad, it’d be friendlier. It all seemed, I am sure, so inevitable.  But that age of inevitability is over. The kind of engagement we have been pursuing has not brought the kind of change inside of China that President Nixon had hoped to induce.

This puts the end of the decades long engagement. ‘Engagement is dead’.

But is it?

Image Credit: Erin Schaff/The New York Times

The Consistent ‘Dismantling’ Strategy of President Trump

The above has become the iconic image of Trump with other allied leaders. For some time, now, the ‘Experts’ have been trying fully to capture the core, and the operating mechanics of Trump foreign policy.

This started before Trump’s surprise election. It has continued on since that time.  Understanding Trump’s foreign policy and his various initiatives have become rather more critical as time goes on. We see Trump and his close colleagues trying to advance Trump policy at the regular summits, most evidently the G7 (the picture above); at summits of his own making most notably the Singapore Summit with North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un, and a soon to be convened NATO Summit to followed by Trump’s meeting with Vladimir Putin of Russia in Helsinki.   

So where are we? And where is Trump leading? Describing Trump foreign policy means an effort to capture what Trump means by his ‘America First’ strategy.  It seemed early on that America First was built on a foundation of some form of U.S. unilateralism and strong skepticism over the multilateral institutions in trade and political alliances that served as the heart of the liberal international order. Most of us saw the irony of this: after all the United States had been the chief promoter and ‘construction boss’ for building the liberal international order. As our colleague John Ikenberry declared in FA in his article, “The Plot Against American Foreign Policy”, there is yet another irony: 

A hostile revisionist power has indeed arrived on the scene, but it sits in the Oval Office, the beating heart of the free world. Across ancient and modern eras, orders built by great powers have come and gone—but they have usually ended in murder, not suicide.

There was some degree contention by analysts to assess what degree of aggressiveness – how forward or uninvolved – Trump foreign policy would be. This assessment was not so much against America’s rivals but with America’s allies.  As time has passed though, it seems there is a growing sense that Trump is mounting a serious, even concerted effort to dismember the liberal order.  Continue reading

‘America First’: American Foreign Policy in the ‘Age of Trump’

 

Trump’s ‘America First’ foreign policy  is only very slowly being revealed.  But this week will see an important addition.  On Thursday and Friday President Trump will be meeting China’s President Xi Jinping.  This meeting represents a crucial first meeting of the leaders though we have seen Secretary of State Tillerson in Beijing recently.  But Tillerson remains an enigma and it is not at all clear that he has the ‘ear ‘ of President Trump. This week we will see Donald Trump at the center of American foreign policy making with arguably the most relationship in the global order.

We have been working hard at the Global Summitry Project to chronicle and evaluate the impact of Trump on the Liberal Order.  Much of our effort can be seen at the Oxford’s journal, Global Summitry: Politics, Economics and Law in International Governance. The Journal is a partnership of the Munk School and the Rotman Management School.  I am one of the Senior Editors there. We have just launched a new podcast series – ‘Shaking the Global Order:  American Foreign Policy in the Age of Trump. Our first podcast episode, this an interview with Rory MacFarquhar a former Obama official, has just appeared. In celebration of the series, we have added the podcasts to iTunes and Soundcloud. Also, take a look at our analysis of Trump foreign policy: “Trump’s ‘America First’ foreign policy that its impact on the Liberal Order” that just recently appeared at the OUPBlog

Where will Trump take the United States? And where will he take the Liberal Order?  It remains an open question. Former Prime UK Minister, Tony Blair writing recently in the NYT about the politics of the centre and the challenges and pressures being experienced to both centre right and centre left parties raised the key issue:

The question is, will this be a temporary phase, perhaps linked to the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and Sept. 11, and will politics soon revert to normal, or has a new political age begun?

 

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‘Shaking the Temple’ – Trump and the Liberal Order

With the change in US Administrations we face possibly the most dramatic change in US foreign policy since the end of World War II.  The global leader has seemingly become the rogue seeking dramatic change in the Liberal Order the US has as much or more responsibility for over the last seventy years plus.

As has quickly become clear, however, we do not know if President’s Trump rhetoric of the campaign will be followed by actions matching the rhetoric.  There is some reason to think that his and his administration’s actions will not match some of the more highly nationalist expressions of his ‘America First’ rhetoric.  One need only look at Trump’s early statements and actions on China – phoning the Taiwan President, then questioning the ‘One China Policy’ only to reaffirm the policy in a call with China President Xi Jinping – to raise questions even doubts over the election rhetoric. But even without dramatic foreign policy actions it is not hard to see Trump and his Administration as possibly the greatest challenge to the Liberal Order that any of us have witnessed.

I will be periodically examining US foreign policy, and the policy toward the Liberal Order it and by key actors -supporters and detractors alike – hoping to assess the impact of the policies and actions on the Liberal Order. The first entry is the piece I was invited to post at the US-China Focus website.  There will be others. In addition, as Senior Editor of Oxford’s Global Summitry: Politics, Economics, and Law in International Governance, I intend to post a series of podcast interviews with experts and former officials on: ‘Shaking the Global Order: American Foreign Policy in the Age of Trump’.   I will back to you on additional posts and the podcast series.

 

 

Image Credit: abcnews.go.com

Enhancing Global Order: Is It Not Possible With the Great Powers?

International_Court_of_Justice

The Law of the Sea claim the Philippines commenced against China in 2013 came to an end last week with the award from the UNCLOS (UN Convention on the Law of the Sea) tribunal. The award was a setback to the expansive claims by China in the South China Sea (though the Tribunal made clear it had no jurisdiction to determine the sovereignty claims asserted by China or any other country).

A number of conclusions were reached by this UNCLOS panel.   First, with respect to the historical rights China claimed through the 9-dash line (China has never made clear the actual claims arising from the 9-dash line), the Tribunal acknowledged the historical claims of China but as Taylor Fravel suggested, “the tribunal reasoned that whatever historic rights or high-seas freedoms China enjoyed were “extinguished” when it acceded to the convention.”

Second, the Tribunal set out a 4-part test to determine whether a ‘feature’ – rock, or protruding reef, or islet, is an island thus providing for expanded maritime rights.  The Tribunal utilizing this newly enunciated test rejected that any features in the Spratly Island chain brought with it a 200 mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ), as opposed to a 12 mile maritime territorial limit.  This ruling is likely to have a significant impact on a variety of maritime claims asserted by other states. It also would suggest that Mischief Reef, part of the Spratly Islands and where China has carried out reclamation work, is located within the EEZ claimed by the Philippines.

Finally, the Tribunal acknowldeged that the Philippines held EEZ rights in the Scarborough Island’s Second Thomas Shoal, where China has denied access to Philippine fishing boats.

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A ‘Quaint’ but Made-up US Grand Strategy

Chess pieces iStock_000016616109Small

 

 

My colleagues John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt have returned to offer a new and improved version of US foreign policy.  In their recent piece “The Case for Offshore Balancing: A Superior US Grand Strategy” they offer both a critique of current foreign policy, which they see as some variant of liberal hegemony and provide, according them a clear and superior alternative – ‘offshore balancing’:

There is a better way. By pursuing a strategy of “offshore balancing,” Washington would forgo ambitious efforts to remake other societies and concentrate on what really matters: preserving U.S. dominance in the Western Hemisphere and countering potential hegemons in Europe, Northeast Asia, and the Persian Gulf. Instead of policing the world, the United States would encourage other countries to take the lead in checking rising powers, intervening itself only when necessary.

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