Category Archives: US

US Tensions Over a Leading Role

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So, I was ruminating a bit on the question of US diplomacy coming off of the previous Substack Post and particularly the Jessica Matthews’s targeting of Biden foreign policy in the upcoming Foreign Affairs article “What Was the Biden Doctrine? Leadership Without Hegemony”. As a reminder, this is what she wrote and I quoted in last week’s Substack:

 

But he [Joe Biden] has carried out a crucial task: shifting the basis of American foreign policy from an unhealthy reliance on military intervention to the active pursuit of diplomacy backed by strength.

 

He has won back the trust of friends and allies, built and begun to institutionalize a deep American presence in Asia, restored the United States’ role in essential multilateral organizations and agreements, and ended the longest of the country’s “forever wars”—a step none of his three predecessors had the courage to take.

 

All of this happened in the face of grievous new threats from China and Russia, two great powers newly allied around the goal of ending American primacy. Biden’s response to the most pressing emergency of his term—Russia’s brutal full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022—has been both skillful and innovative, demonstrating a grasp of the traditional elements of statecraft along with a willingness to take a few unconventional steps. … But he has carried out a crucial task: shifting the basis of American foreign policy from an unhealthy reliance on military intervention to the active pursuit of diplomacy backed by strength.

Now I concluded that analysis with a Matthews’s quote with my concluding remark: “Now it seems to me there are questions over the effective use of diplomacy of this Administration but that is for another day.” Well this is another day and I want to focus a little on the current effectiveness of US diplomatic policy.

There appears to be a growing split over whether the US has had, or should I say, will choose to move forward with sharper diplomatic policies and initiatives rather than, if I can put it bluntly, ‘Reach for the Gun’. In fact, in the end, there are questions of whether the US will involve itself at all in serious but distant conflicts especially in the face of seriously weakened multilateral institutions. The foreign policy question is actually two questions then: will a Harris Administration respond to foreign policy crises with sharp diplomacy or resort to force and even more dramatically not only how the US may engage but whether it will engage at all.

Shortly after Harris and Waltz assumed the mantle of leadership of the Democratic Party that a strong positive view was identified. For instance Mark Hannah and Rachel Rizzo wrote the following in FP:

When applied to foreign policy, it could inform a pragmatic, forward-looking realism that’s all too rare in Washington. This sentiment aligns with a growing expert consensus.

 

A recent Carnegie Endowment for International Peace study concluded that the United States’ current approach to the world is “poorly adapted to the challenges of today and tomorrow.” It also noted a widespread demand among analysts for “a major strategic reorientation.” This reorientation could be from an everything-everywhere-all-at-once approach to a more judicious and strategic use of American might.

Let’s start with what appears to be the positive efforts of the current Biden policy efforts and conjure it  as a likely course of action for a new Harris Administration.  The immediate diplomatic approach is the recent Biden actions focused on its key geopolitical concern – that is its perceived strategic competitor and threat – its biggest rival – China. Notwithstanding the tough back and forth the two have undertaken recent discussions that appear to be designed to stabilize this most difficult bilateral relationship. The evidence for this is the recently concluded visit of National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan to China. This most recent meeting with Wang Yi who is the chief Chinese foreign affairs official for President Xi was not the first. For Sullivan and Wang this was one of a series of interactions as described by Demetri Sevastopulo in the FT:

It was the first of several secret rendezvous around the world, including Malta and Thailand, now called the “strategic channel”. Sullivan will arrive in Beijing on Tuesday [August 27th] for another round of talks with Wang in what will be his first visit to China as US national security adviser.

 

While the backchannel has not resolved the fundamental issues between the rival superpowers, says Rorry Daniels, a China expert at the Asia Society Policy Institute, it has aided each’s understanding of the other. “It’s been very successful in short-term stabilisation, communicating red lines and previewing actions that might be seen as damaging to the other side,” she says.

The two leading powers do not see ‘eye-to-eye’ on the role of diplomatic interactions.  China in particular does not accept the framework of stabilization in the context of competition – the US view. Still, there does appear to be a certain diplomatic stabilization as described by Sevastopulo leading up to this most recent series of meetings in Beijing:

Sullivan strived to get Wang to understand the new reality — that the nations were in a competition but one that should not preclude co-operation. “That was a really hard jump for the Chinese,” says the second US official. “They wanted to define the relationship neatly [as] we’re either partners or we’re competitors.”

 

The Chinese official said China did not accept the argument. “Wang Yi explained very clearly that you cannot have co-operation, dialogue and communication . . . and at the same time undercut China’s interests.

 

They discussed possible deals for a summit, including a compromise that would involve the US lifting sanctions on a Chinese government forensic science institute in return for China cracking down on the export of chemicals used to make fentanyl. They also talked about resurrecting the military-to-military communication channels China had shut after Pelosi visited Taiwan. And they discussed creating an artificial intelligence dialogue.

 

Rush Doshi, a former NSC official who attended the meetings with Wang, says it was important to explain to China what the US was doing — and not doing. “Diplomacy is how you clear up misperception and avoid escalation and manage competition. It’s actually not at odds with competition but part of any sustainable competitive strategy.

And in this most recent set of meetings in Beijing, Sullivan was able to meet not just President Xi, important in and of itself,  but critically a meeting with General Zhang Youxia:

Mr. Sullivan’s meeting with Gen. Zhang Youxia, vice chairman of China’s Central Military Commission, was the first in years between a senior American official and a vice chair of the commission, which oversees China’s armed forces and is chaired by Mr. Xi.

The Biden Administration regarded the Beijing meetings, therefore, as important diplomatic effort in stabilizing great power relations:

Sullivan tells the FT that he was under no illusions that the channel would convince China to change its policies, but he stressed that it had played an instrumental role in helping to shift the dynamic in US-China relations.

All you can do is take their policy, our policy, and then try to manage it so that we can take the actions we need to take and maintain stability in the relationship,” Sullivan says. “We have been able to accomplish both of those things.”

If managing great power relations was the US diplomatic goal, that seems to be successfully achieved for the moment. But that positive framing is not replicated in wider global order relations and the US efforts or lack thereof. Thus, the assessment of wider US diplomatic efforts is not nearly as upbeat. This is the message of Alexander Clarkson,  a lecturer in European studies at King’s College London in his analysis of US foreign policy in his WPR article titled: “For Much of the World, the Post-American Order Is Already Here”:

This gradual waning of American influence outside of core areas of strategic focus rarely features in ferocious debates in Washington between those who believe that the U.S. should remain deeply involved in global affairs and the so-called Restrainers on the left and MAGA Republicans on the right who are skeptical of security commitments outside U.S. borders.

 

The limits of the United States’ ability to influence developments on the ground in destabilizing conflicts, or the responses of states engaged in them, have been particularly visible with civil wars in Myanmar and Sudan that barely feature in domestic American news cycles. In both cases, U.S. policymakers distracted by developments elsewhere failed to anticipate emerging escalation dynamics and then failed to develop the strategic leverage needed to rein in brutal armies and militias whose backing from other states rapidly widened devastating wars.

 

Washington’s flailing in the face of conflicts within Myanmar and Sudan that have now become wider geopolitical crises is a product of long-term shifts in the global balance of power. While Washington will continue to play a decisive role in managing conflicts that involve great power competition, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the tensions between Israel and Iran and China’s strategic assertiveness under Xi Jinping, in many other parts of the world the U.S. impact will be limited to diplomatic press releases expressing grave concern.

Clarkson sees US actions and inactions as a reshaping of the global balance of power. But I suspect it is an unwillingness to exercise direct diplomatic action to what is seen to be a distant conflict. It is also an evident result of the undermining, including by the United States, of effective diplomatic action by the UN. The weakening of the formal institutions – the WTO in trade policy and the UN in security and peace efforts – is now ‘coming home to roost’ at the US doorstep. US inaction is matched by the inability of these and other formal institutions to take on, stabilize and hopefully resolve difficult and potentially threatening conflicts.

The Harris Administration, if it wins, needs to address the manner of engagement but in too many instances the likely failure of foreign policy engagement at all. Much is currently wanting in US foreign policy. It is unclear if a Harris Administration is likely to tackle, and if so, how, these difficult foreign policy questions.

Image Credit: YouTube

This Post was originally posted at Alan’s Newsletter. Your comments are welcome as well as free subscriptions to Alan’s Newsletter

https://open.substack.com/pub/globalsummitryproject/p/us-tensions-over-a-leading-role?r=bj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Contemplating in these Early Days a Harris Foreign Policy

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With just over 70 days until the US election, and with the certainty now of a new 47th President – either Harris or former President Trump – it is not surprising that analysts are scrambling to assess the current US foreign policy course and eyeing its new possible directions.

Obviously, the impact of a return to Trump freezes one’s mind with its MAGA trumpeting, its distaste for allies, and its cozying up to autocrats whether in Russia or North Korea. I’m not going to go there for the moment: the consequences are too depressing to dwell on at this moment in the election cycle. While we may be driven to come back to this depending, of course, on the course of the next 70 days. But for the moment, and just coming out of the Chicago Convention, let’s focus on where we have recently been with a Biden Administration and what direction we might be pointed toward with a Harris win.

A number of folk, including some former Democratic officials, have put their ‘thinking caps on’ already and are analyzing the Biden foreign policy and extending it to a possible new Democratic Administration. It particularly has resonance as Harris has been involved in this Biden Administration.

We start with the current state of play of globalization. Many examining its immediate health focus in particular on US export controls on technology and the maintenance of tariffs against China by the Biden Administration. Analysts also focus on the dramatic increase in sanctions against Russia and those aiding Russia’s war against Ukraine. My colleague Dan Drezner from Drezner’s World focused in a recent Post on the immediate state of global economic integration:

There comes a point when one has to question the resiliency of globalization as we know it. The question is whether that point is right now. For example, the IMF recently noted that despite widespread perceptions, the current global economy is more globalized than a generation ago: “A global increase in the foreign value-added content of exports from about 19 percent in the mid-1990s to 28 percent in 2022 points to continued deepening of trade integration. Meanwhile, services are able to flow more easily across borders thanks to the rise of digital technology.

 

The hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World tends to be more sanguine about globalization persisting despite loud pronouncements that it has come to an end. Great power governments and violent non-state actors have done their darndest to push the world towards economic segmentation, and it just ain’t happening. Improvements in information and communication technologies have lowered the costs of cross-border flows. Even if states are erecting higher cross-border barriers, that has been counteracted by declining costs more generally. … I think analysts have to stop being surprised that global economic flows keep rising despite all the geopolitical shocks. Economic globalization continues to be the Economic Engine that Could.

So globalization is still in place. Now let’s turn to the Biden framing of foreign policy recognizing that the Vice President, and now the Democratic candidate for President has played a role in the foreign policy of this current Biden Administration. I was interested in the article by Ben Rhodes in Foreign Affairs, titled ““A Foreign Policy for the World as It Is: Biden and the Search for a New American Strategy”. Rhodes, by the way, served as U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications and Speechwriting in the Obama administration from 2009 to 2017. Ben underscored how difficult it has been to continue to lead, which it seems remained a Biden foreign policy goal:

It also suggested [the start of the Biden presidency] that the United States could reclaim its self-conception as a virtuous hegemon, that it could make the rules-based international order great again. Yet even though a return to competent normalcy was in order, the Biden administration’s mindset of restoration has occasionally struggled against the currents of our disordered times.

The shadow of Trump left this current Administration struggling to maintain a relatively benign leadership. But in addition, as Ben argues:

Second, the old rules-based international order doesn’t really exist anymore. Sure, the laws, structures, and summits remain in place.

 

But core institutions such as the UN Security Council and the World Trade Organization are tied in knots by disagreements among their members. Russia is committed to disrupting U.S.-fortified norms. China is committed to building its own alternative order. On trade and industrial policy, even Washington is moving away from core tenets of post–Cold War globalization.

Possibly most damaging  to the order – and US leadership – is US commitment to the maintenance of the international rule of law. Most pointedly in this regard is the failure of the Biden Administration to more forcefully insist with the current Israeli government that it cease and desist from Israel’s destructive actions against the civilian populations in Gaza in its quest to dismantle Hamas. Such a failure undermines claims to a benign leadership of the global order, if such is in fact possible.

Yet a number of notable analysts remain convinced that the Biden Administration has successfully navigated toward a more stable global order with strong US leadership. Take the example of Jessica Matthews who is currently Distinguished Fellow of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and is the former President of CEIP. In her recent article for Foreign Affairs for its forthcoming September/October issue, titled, “What Was the Biden Doctrine?: Leadership Without Hegemony” Matthew praises US foreign policy action even in the face of major power opposition. And Matthews writes:

But he has carried out a crucial task: shifting the basis of American foreign policy from an unhealthy reliance on military intervention to the active pursuit of diplomacy backed by strength.

 

He has won back the trust of friends and allies, built and begun to institutionalize a deep American presence in Asia, restored the United States’ role in essential multilateral organizations and agreements, and ended the longest of the country’s “forever wars”—a step none of his three predecessors had the courage to take.

 

All of this happened in the face of grievous new threats from China and Russia, two great powers newly allied around the goal of ending American primacy. Biden’s response to the most pressing emergency of his term—Russia’s brutal full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022—has been both skillful and innovative, demonstrating a grasp of the traditional elements of statecraft along with a willingness to take a few unconventional steps.

 

Biden’s approach to Beijing has occasionally reflected a disappointing degree of continuity with that of Trump and has fostered uncertainty over Taiwan, the most sensitive issue in U.S.-Chinese relations. But unlike the former president, Biden has embedded his China policy in a vigorous matrix of new and restored alliances across Asia. He has arguably pulled off the long-sought U.S. “pivot” to the region, without using that term.

 

Yet his legacy to date suggests the lineaments of a new approach well suited to today’s world. Most important among them is a resolve to eschew wars to remake other countries and to restore diplomacy as the central tool of foreign policy.

Matthews is strongly upbeat and concludes with this paean to Biden foreign policy:

No matter the answers, and despite the symptoms of debilitating political polarization at home, Biden has made profound changes in foreign policy—not to accommodate American decline but to reflect the country’s inherent strength.

Now it seems to me there are questions over the effective use of diplomacy of this Administration but that is for another day. In the current moment this upbeat assessment is carried forward by: the early days following the Harris nomination and in light of her initial positioning set out in her acceptance speech at coming out of Chicago. It appears that the general reaction to her speech was positive including her statements on foreign policy that seemed to position her as forceful on human rights but also on defense and the US security alliances.  From folks at Brookings, specifically Elaine Kamarck, a Senior Fellow of Governance Studies and William A. Galston, a Senior Fellow of Governance Studies, came the following analysis:

Surprising some observers, Harris laid out a tough agenda on defense and foreign policy, promising to maintain the strongest and most lethal fighting force in the world, retain our leading position in NATO, defend Ukraine against Russian aggression, stand up against Iran and North Korea, and take democracy’s side in the struggle with tyranny. She articulated a firm pro-Israel stance while mentioning the suffering of Gaza’s inhabitants and endorsing Palestinians’ right to dignity and self-determination.

 

Taken as a whole, Harris’s acceptance speech positioned her as a center-left Democrat in the mold of Joe Biden rather than Bernie Sanders. It embraced what she termed the pride and privilege of being an American. And, as if to show that Republicans have not cornered the market on patriotism and American exceptionalism, she told her audience that together, they had the opportunity to write the next chapter of the most extraordinary story ever told. She ended her speech in the most traditional way imaginable, by asking God to bless the United States of America.

And, finally, there is this slightly surprising insight from Michael Hirsh from FP where he describes a view that Harris brought great understanding of new technologies and the threats that such technologies bring to foreign policy:

There is not much time to know a great deal more about her approach to foreign policy. But it’s also clear that Harris has created her own path on foreign policy—and that she represents the next generation of national security experts steeped in newer, high-tech threats that the Cold War generation represented by Biden is less familiar with. These encompass an array of ​​cyber threats, including election hacking and surveillance from abroad, allegedly including from state-run companies such as China’s Huawei; threats from space, such as reported Russian or Chinese plots to disable GPS systems; and over-the-horizon risks from artificial intelligence and quantum computing.

In her speech at the Democratic National Convention accepting the nomination Thursday night, Harris briefly mentioned the high-tech threat while affirming that she would prove a tough commander in chief who would “ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.”

I will make sure that we lead the world into the future on space and artificial intelligence; that America, not China, wins the competition for the 21st century, and that we strengthen, not abdicate, our global leadership,” she said.

We may need to wait till she becomes President –  if that occurs – with November 5th. But we will continue to monitor what she says about a Harris foreign policy.

Image Credit: Vox

This Post originally appeared at my Substack, Alan’s Newsletter.

https://globalsummitryproject.substack.com/p/contemplating-in-these-early-days

China, seemingly, stays the course

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It is hard to resist not commenting on Donald Trump’s views, so I will if just briefly. In this instance the comment is over Kamala Harris’s racial makeup. It is ‘weird’ as the Democrats have started saying. In fact that barely describes his comments on her. Mind you, I doubt that it is the last time we will hear such ‘jaw dropping insights’ from Trump when it comes to his likely opponent Kamala Harris.

All right, let’s turn to today’s focus – the state of US-China relations following China’s Third Plenum – really focusing on the Third Plenum. This gathering is the Third Plenum of the 20th Party Congress, which brought together the Party’s top leadership, including all the members of the Central Committee and the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party.  Third Plenums in particular have especially been closely followed. Why? Well, it really began with the Third Plenum of the 11th Party Congress in December 1978. That Third Plenum ushered in a series of policy changes championed at the time by Deng Xiaoping. This Plenum was in retrospect the start of the ‘Reform and Opening Era’ which was followed by the Third Plenum of the 14th Party Congress when the leadership identified the goal of creating a ‘socialist market economy’. And, at the 18th Party Congress in November 2013, the CCP emphasized in that Third Plenum,  “the decisive role of the market in allocating resources,”. So, it is not unreasonable for experts, officials, etc. to look at each 5-year Third Plenum to identify signals for domestic economic reform which many then anticipate impacts on the global economy with China’s increasingly central role on the international economy.

It’s not a surprise, then, that there was a degree of anticipation for this Third Plenum which had been postponed for months, especially given the flagging Chinese economy. Our colleagues at CSIS including Jude Blanchette and Scott Kennedy described the tortured passage of policy creation:

According to a CCP website, the document went through 38 drafts. Right after the conclave ended, the CCP issued a communique (English, Chinese) summarizing the results of the meeting. On Sunday, July 21, the text of the full, far more detailed Decision (English, Chinese) was issued, which provides a stronger foundation for evaluating the meeting’s significance.

So where are we and what consequences are likely to follow the policy pronouncements?

There was a lot of anticipation. As pointed out by Bert Hofman in his Substack Post: 

This year’s third plenum was highly anticipated due to several factors.  The multitude of structural challenges that China’s economy is facing—debt, demographics, demand, deflation, and decoupling—require the robust economic reforms that third plenums tend to deliver. Second, China’s propaganda machine had built up the plenum’s importance, comparing it with breakthrough plenums of the pasts.

But for most analysts the outcomes have been rather disappointing. As pointed out, again by Bert Hofman, the hoped for policy tilt and more toward markets and/or greater domestic consumption is not evident in the Declaration:

This year’s plenum has dropped the decisive role of the market.  Instead, it  proposes that the party should “better leverage the role of the market.” This is hardly an encouragement of the private sector, whose confidence is still recovering from regulatory crackdowns and COVID lockdowns.  At the same time, in a press conference after the conclusion of the plenum Han Wenxiu, deputy director of the Central Financial and Economic Affairs Commission’s general office, and a main drafter of the plenum decision document, said that it was “necessary to create a favourable environment and provide more opportunities for the development of the private sector” in China.

Nevertheless, the omission of the market’s decisive role is in line with the more statist view on development that has been gaining grounds under Xi Jinping, and that the private sector will be increasingly guided by the party and restricted by regulation.

 

But the nature of reforms has changed—whereas in previous plenums reforms were predominantly aimed at facilitating marketization and liberalization of China’s economy, they are now meant to strengthen the policies and institutions that underpin Xi Jinping’s view of the world.

The party-state dominance seems to be fully in charge. And China can be expected to stay the current course for domestic economic growth and prosperity. As Scott Kennedy argues:

The Communique and Decision give the distinct impression that despite the economy’s various structural problems and cyclical downturn, the CCP is not going to change course, but instead will intensify its efforts to steer the economy on to a sustainable long-term path. The central focus for generating “high-quality development” will be on expanding focus on advanced technologies, what are now ideologically described as “new productive forces” (新质生产力).

 

That said, the Plenum’s analysis and policy proposals on the economy are likely to draw a more skeptical reaction from a variety of corners, domestic and international, because of its deeply statist focus: 1) A strong emphasis on the central role of China’s party-state in directing the economy; 2) The prioritization on investment and production as the drivers of growth and far less attention to consumption and households; 3) Continued support for the “public sector” and state-owned enterprises (SOEs) even while pledging to create a level playing field for private firms; 4) A discussion of the global economy that proposed incremental expanded market access to China while stressing the need for China to leverage its large market for its own benefit; and 5) The expansive discussion of national security and the need to align economic policy with national security, which as Jude Blanchette notes, is centered around the security of the CCP.

Scott’s colleague at CSIS, Claire Reade, underlines that trade partners are unlikely to be fooled by this Plenum Declaration and trade tensions as a result are unlikely to abate and that’s without taking into account the likely economic earthquake of a second Trump Administration:

The latest Third Plenum Decision declares that “overall, we have accomplished the reform tasks” set out in 2013. Since this is patently not the case, it is particularly discouraging. The decision ironically then highlights the gap between its triumphant conclusion and reality by going on to pledge that by 2029, the market will determine the allocation of resources, and private domestic and foreign enterprises will obtain equal treatment with state-owned enterprises.

On balance, trading partners need to continue to be savvy and proactive in taking steps to protect their economies against this massive, state-heavy economy, and companies need to look carefully at their own risk management.

It is not surprising that various Chinese experts are suggesting that a more incremental approach was always a more likely approach of the President and the Party. Here is Huang Yiping, who is the Dean of the National School of Development at Beida, or Peking University, assessing on the Pekinology Substack Post the policy approach coming out of the Third Plenum:

The first point you probably all saw is that the Asian market dropped after the Third Plenum, especially after the full document was out. So some people felt a little bit pessimistic. My own sense, my take, is that the market was probably too optimistic about what they should expect.

So some people felt a little bit pessimistic. My own sense, my take, is that the market was probably too optimistic about what they should expect.

 

In fact, if you were paying attention to what the President himself was saying and the message government officials were trying to convey to the public. It was pretty clear this would not be a grand-scale liberalization program. This will be about reform, about modernization. But the key approach, the President outlined himself very clearly. He called it running towards the problems and trying to correct them. So it’s more like a down-to-earth and very practical approach—when you try to see the problems, you try to overcome them.

 

So when you say, well, the market is disappointed. That’s probably true, but either because the expectation was just overly too high or No. 2, I think the reason why investors are not very upbeat at the moment is because the macroeconomy is not doing particularly well.

Huang Yiping is aware, however, of the consumption problem:

Weak consumption causes two problems. No. 1 is you obviously would easily end up with a domestic overcapacity problem, right? You produce a lot, you invest a lot, and then the final consumption demand is very weak. That means there will be a certain portion of the capacity you cannot find domestic buyers for, and you call it overcapacity. That’s why during the last 45, 46 years of Chinese reform, we almost always had the overcapacity problem.

I think the macroeconomic problem is there is a macro imbalance. Consumption and demand and supply are not very balanced. So that’s one big issue.

So where does that leave us? I anticipate there will be continuing if not growing trade tensions with the US and with Europe as well as China continues its ferocious pace of manufacturing exports and fails to encourage greater domestic consumption. At least to constrain these tensions and protective trade actions in the absence of the WTO, it might be useful to try and negotiate VERs – ‘voluntary export restraints’ with China. It is not optimal – far from it – but it could avoid a trade ‘bloodbath’.

An important opportunity has been missed for the moment and may in fact be even more dramatically lost if Donald Trump wins the next election in  November. Let’s hope the US electorate is smarter than that.

Image Credit: CNN

The Intensity of the US Presidency – and the Race

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So many eventful happenings again this past week. As a consequence this Post will be a quick ‘dip and serve’ of several consequential matters. First from my international law colleague, Ooa Hathaway from Yale Law School and the Department of Political Science at Yale. She is one of the best. She and her colleague, Scott Shapiro wrote a terrific book in 2017, The Internationalists: How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World. And it was interesting to see this past week that her piece on the Presidential Immunity case, Trump v the United States, appeared in Foreign Affairs, the journal not particularly notable for publishing international law issues. Nevertheless, the piece is quite interesting by pointing out that this examination of Presidential Immunity domestically has long been examined internationally – and the consequences have not been good. As Oona writes: 

What most analysts have failed to note, however, is that this lack of legal accountability for decisions by the U.S. president, including decisions to direct the military to use lethal force, is nothing new. It has long been the reality for most of the world outside the United States.

As Oona points out there has been a long effort to reign in such ‘extra-legal’ Presidential behavior:

What most analysts have failed to note, however, is that this lack of legal accountability for decisions by the U.S. president, including decisions to direct the military to use lethal force, is nothing new. It has long been the reality for most of the world outside the United States.

 

For years, attempts have been made to hold the United States accountable for its unsanctioned violence. Lawyers in the United States and overseas have filed case after case challenging U.S. military and CIA operations abroad, but few have made it past procedural and jurisdictional hurdles. As a result, the U.S. president has long been a “king above the law” when it comes to actions outside the United States.

As Oona, perhaps, vainly concludes: 

The problem of presidential immunity—and the capacity of the president to act outside the law—was not created by the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. United States. It was simply exposed and expanded by it. Outside the United States, American presidents have long been able to violate the law with impunity, inflicting death and property destruction on civilians in the process. Now that this is also true in the United States, perhaps there will be the will to do something about it.

The acknowledgement of some immunity for ‘official acts’ – still to be determined of course, is just one aspect of presidential intensity that I recognized in the past week. The obvious other matter is the gathering US presidential race. It has been a whirlwind of change for the Democrats of course, but it seems for the Republicans and the Trump campaign as well. 

First was the incredibly speedy replacement of President Biden with his Vice-President, Kamala Harris. The ultra speedy consolidation of her position as the presumptive nominee for the Democrats was startling and indeed head spinning.  As Shane Goldmacher described in his recent NYT piece, titled, “How Kamala Harris Took Command of the De​​mocratic Party in 48 Hours”:

Time was of the essence. A sprawling call list of the most important Democrats to reach had been prepared in advance, according to two people with knowledge of the situation. The vice president, in sneakers and a sweatshirt, began methodically dialing Democratic power brokers.

 

I wasn’t going to let this day go by without you hearing from me,” Ms. Harris had said over and over, as day turned to night, according to five people who received her calls or were briefed on them.

 

The blitz demonstrated exactly the kind of vigor and energy that Mr. Biden had lacked in recent weeks. Mr. Biden had reportedly made 20 calls to congressional Democrats in the first 10 or so days after the debate, while his candidacy hung in the balance. Ms. Harris made 100 calls in 10 hours.

 

Within 48 hours, Ms. Harris had functionally cleared the Democratic field of every serious rival, clinched the support of more delegates than needed to secure the party nomination, raised more than $100 million and delivered a crisper message against former President Donald J. Trump than Mr. Biden had mustered in months.

The speed and impact on the Democratic Party of Harris assuming leadership, and the invidious comparison with Biden and his now ended campaign appears quite stark. As described by Goldmacher:

Even some at the White House and the newly transformed Harris campaign in Wilmington, Del., privately confided that the vice president’s energetic early appearances were a refreshing change from those of the 81-year-old president, whose verbal stumbles were constant fodder on the right.

The heaviness and distress of the prior campaign was only underlined by the President’s ‘stepping aside’ Oval Office appearance and statement this last Wednesday. It was quite the downer and it certainly lacked insight and explanation. Susan B. Glasser of TheNewYorker did a good job of describing the very short Biden speech: 

The short, awkward speech—a mere eleven minutes, though it felt longer than that, listening to Biden’s painful communion with the ghosts of Presidents past as he justified his decision to step aside a few months before the election—served as yet another reminder of why Democratic officials had felt such an urgency to act. … Lyndon B. Johnson was the only other modern President to choose not to run again for a second term, and, in the address he gave to the nation making his surprise announcement, in March of 1968, the trauma of Vietnam that prompted his decision did not seem at all comparable to Biden’s quieter tragedy of an octogenarian in decline and denial.

 

Years from now, I suspect it will not be Biden’s speech that I’ll remember so much as the few heady days of pure political joy among Democrats that preceded it: the race against Trump, practically given up for lost, suddenly looked winnable again.

That sudden energy and excitement that appeared to surge through the Democratic Party seemed very evident if not palatable. Now, let’s be clear, it is far too early to tell if the Harris ascension has in fact altered the trajectory of the race. And it will take some time to get some electoral evidence impact. Any numbers at the current moment can only be received with restraint if not outright skepticism. Still, here is just an early dip into the electoral waters at this very early stage by folks at the NYT under the heading: “Harris Narrows Gap Against Trump, Times/Siena Poll Finds” : 

Overall, Mr. Trump leads Ms. Harris 48 percent to 47 percent among likely voters in a head-to-head match. That is a marked improvement for Democrats when compared to the Times/Siena poll in early July that showed Mr. Biden behind by six percentage points, in the aftermath of the poor debate performance that eventually drove him from the race.” … Because the survey was of voters nationwide, the impact of Ms. Harris’s candidacy in particular battleground states was not immediately clear.

And my colleague Dan Drezner from Drezner’s World,  a noted Substack provider not to mention a Distinguished Professor of International Politics at the Fletcher School  of Tufts University set out ‘Ten Things I Think I Think About the 2024 Presidential Race After Joe Biden’s Exit’. Here just one point:

Until then, [the Convention] I have ten thoughts — some of which are pretty banal but nonetheless worthy of mention:

 

2. Despite all the shocks, the race remains mostly unchanged. In the past ten days there has been an assassination attempt, multiple court rulings favorable to Trump, his choice of J.D. Vance to be his vice president candidate, and the pageantry of the Republican National Convention. Despite all that, Trump has not received much of a bump. To be sure, he’s in the lead, which is something. Still, despite a month’s worth of good news, it’s still a pretty tight race. That is mostly because Trump is a historically unpopular politician. Never forget that although Trump has a high floor of support, he also has an incredibly low ceiling.

 It is clearly, at this moment, a real contest again. Phew! And, enjoy the Olympics!

Image Credit: CNBC 

Violence and Political Disorder in the United States

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It’s rather foolish to believe that even a ‘bullet wound’ would alter Donald Trump. His speech accepting the nomination for the Republican Party on Thursday night – over 90 minutes – proved that.  What you see is what you get. But let me reflect for a moment on the consequences for Trump, and the political system, of this attempt on his life.  Its impact it seems on American politics, and more particularly on the Trump third presidential run – well, at least for the moment, appears rather negligible. As Susan B. Glasser of The NewYorker wrote:

Trump’s supposed pivot to the center was silly spin, and yet all week long I marvelled at the collective susceptibility to this narrative, so seductive, so absurd. … Soon enough on Thursday night, the audience was back to its comfort zone, booing as Trump criticized “crazy Nancy Pelosi” and warned that the hated Democrats were “destroying our country,” cheering him on as he demanded the firing of union leaders and rambled about the “China virus” and the “plunder” of our nation by rapacious foreigners. The second coming of George Herbert Walker Bush this was not.

He may have had a brush with death but he has not been reborn. He is the same Trump, only four years older, angrier, and far, far more incoherent than anyone who has any business being President of the United States. If Biden can’t beat him, then surely someone else can—and must.

Okay, so it was, I suspect, a rather a vain hope. But it is worth reflecting here on the incident and what it says about American political violence. It certainly appears that many view the shooting – public and commentators alike – as being strongly linked to political violence in the United States. Numerous commentators reprised repeated views and analysis that first reflected on heightened political polarization in the US body politic and then suggesting the tie to instances of political violence. Foreign Affairs reflected on this causal chain with an interview with Robert Lieberman, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins,  who with his colleague from Cornell, Suzanne Mettler in 2020 had written an FA piece titled, “The Fragile Republic: American Democracy Has Never Faced So Many Threats All at Once”. In that piece the two argued:

Polarization is not a static state but a process that feeds on itself and creates a cascade of worsening outcomes. Over time, those who exploit it may find it difficult to control, as members of the party base become less and less trustful of elites and believe that none is sufficiently devoted to their core values.

The culmination of polarization can endanger democracy itself. If members of one political group come to view their opponents as an existential threat to their core values, they may seek to defeat them at all costs, even if it undermines normal democratic procedures. They may cease to view the opposition as legitimate and seek permanent ways to prevent it from gaining power, such as by stacking the deck in their own favor. They may become convinced that it is justifiable to circumvent the rule of law and defy checks and balances or to scale back voting rights, civil liberties, or civil rights for the sake of preserving or protecting the country as they see fit.

And then as Lieberman reflects in his very recent interview on the current political landscape that we face in the aftermath of the shooting:

There are four features that help cause democratic crises. The first is political polarization, the second is conflict over who belongs in the political community, the third is high and growing economic inequality, and the fourth is excessive executive power. At least one of these forces has been present at every moment of democratic turmoil in U.S. history.

What makes the last four years different is that all of them are present. They helped fuel Trump’s rise and were part of why the country was vulnerable to an incident like the storming of the Capitol on January 6. And unfortunately, every such event only further weakens the country’s democracy. It makes the Trump shooting even more dangerous and provocative than it otherwise would be.

So I really worry that if Trump and his people start talking about this in an inflammatory way, you could see not just sporadic attacks—which is what this shooting seems to have been—but more collective and organized forms of violence.

What is interesting is that  a number of current commentators draw the link between the current instability and then tie it back to the origins of the political community. Here is Nick Bryant, the former reporter for the BBC in New York reflecting in FP:

Now, though, I would amend my advice. I would urge young reporters to reach back even further into history. The roots of modern-day polarization, and even the origins of former President Donald Trump, can be located in the country’s troubled birth. Division has always been the default setting.

So many contemporary problems can be traced back to those founding days. U.S. democracy has become so diseased because for most of the country’s history, it has not been that healthy. “We the People,” the rousing words that opened the preamble to the Constitution, was not conceived of as an inclusive statement or catchall for mass democracy. Rather, this ill-defined term referred to what in modern terminology might be called the body politic.

So there are multiple explanations for this instance of political violence, some anchored to the founding of the nation, but most tethered to deep political polarization and dire concerns of immediate political consequences. But there is a particular difficulty, in my mind, in understanding the current circumstances and its political consequences. And to me this understanding the motivation for the shooting by Thomas Crooks. Though much scrutiny has occurred, and I am sure there is likely more to come, there does not appear to be a political motivation involved. In the most recent inquiry by a number of NYT reporters concluding 60 interviews with classmates, teachers, neighbors and officials in Bethel Park, Pa., and reviewed law enforcement bulletins and extensive school records for the article, there is no evidence to date of a political motive:

Experts who study the histories of gunmen said the emerging picture of Mr. Crooks looked more like a 21st-century school shooter than a John Wilkes Booth.

“When somebody attacks a president, our gut instinct is to say, ‘That must be politically motivated,’” said James Densley, a founder of the Violence Project, which has compiled a comprehensive database of mass shootings. “What we might be seeing here is: This was somebody intent on perpetrating mass violence, and they happened to pick a political rally.”

From the near outside – which is where I am situated, it is perplexing that so few commentators reflect on the obvious – the dramatic presence in the United States of too many guns in the country. Not ignoring this, however – and what appears to me to be the obvious as well, is the reflection by Opinion Writer for NYT, David Wallace-Wells. And he writes:

But many others were not so obviously motivated by ideology or a sense of political crusade, including the country’s deadliest attack, in Las Vegas. In Connecticut, Adam Lanza left no manifesto before marching into Sandy Hook Elementary School, and though Virginia Tech’s Seung-Hui Cho left an epic paper trail, it primarily documented deep social resentment and incel-style sexual frustration like that which pushed Elliot Rodger toward violence in the 2014 Isla Vista killings. Other rampages — including in Uvalde, Lewiston and Aurora — have been rendered in national memory not just as horrifying acts of spectacular violence but enigmatic ones, too, with inscrutable motivations.

In the aftermath of the shooting at Trump’s rally, it seems everyone had a story to tell or an argument to make about it. But conspicuously absent was the subject that often takes center stage in the wake of a shooting: guns.

Everyone knows this country is an unusually violent place, but few appreciate just how unusually so. Our gun homicide rate is 22 times as high as it is in the European Union; this means that, on a per-capita basis, for every European who is killed by a gun every year, 22 Americans are. One conservative estimate put the number of guns in America at almost 378 million, increasingly concentrated in a smaller number of households. Perhaps 44 million are AR-15-style rifles.

And while American murder rates are in long-term decline, mass shootings, though only a tiny fraction of the total, are becoming only more common. About a decade ago, it was sometimes pointed out that, contrary to the public narrative, mass shootings hadn’t meaningfully increased in America; instead, they had simply become more salient in an age of, first, cable news and, then, social media. But if you define “mass shooting” as an attack with four or more victims, killed or injured, the number more than doubled between 2014 and 2023.

Experts, analysts and opinion writers need to face these very striking figures. And, if necessary, ignore the politics.

Image Credit: The New York Times

The Troubling Aggressiveness of the House Select Committee on China

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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

Not Simply the Pace of Summitry: In then end, it is all about the 4Cs

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I posted recently here at Alan’s Newsletter on the upcoming BRICS Summit – Puzzling over a BRICS Enlargement. And BRICS, as I described in the Post, is a ‘big deal’ in the pantheon of Leaders’ Summits. I also noted the possible ‘reignition’ of the Trilateral Summit – China, Japan and the Republic of Korea (Korea). But this is not the current extent of summit activity. There is, in fact, another Trilateral Summit that is about to gather – what I am referring to as a ‘Second Trilateral Summit’. This is the gathering at Camp David of the leaders of Japan, Korea and the United States. And since that gathering is tomorrow, Friday, I thought I’d get this Post out in anticipation of the Camp David Trilateral Summit of the three leaders.

‘Global summitry’ – the extent, importance and consequence of these leaders’ gatherings and the global governance progress achieved at these gatherings is, not surprisingly, at the heart of the Global Summitry Project (GSP). It is here in the e-journal Global Summitry, in our work with colleagues in the China-West Dialogue (CWD), and the strengthening of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and our work with students and researchers through the GSP including the articles, podcasts and videos.

Well let’s turn back, for just a moment to the upcoming  Summit. What, you say, a second trilateral summit? Well, yes, actually. The JapanTimes sets out possible goals for such a Trilateral Leaders’ gathering – the Second Trilateral Summit :

In a major step toward making trilateral cooperation a more permanent fixture, U.S.President Joe Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean leader Yoon Suk-yeol will agree to hold three-way summits at least once a year, while also conducting more frequent joint military drills around the Korean Peninsula and bolstering intelligence-sharing, including real-time warning data on North Korean missile launches.

The three leaders are also expected to signal deeper cooperation in areas such as cybersecurity, supply chain resilience and fighting economic coercion.

The one-day meeting — the three leaders’ first stand alone summit not held on the sidelines of a separate event — will take place against the backdrop of North Korea’s ever-improving nuclear and missile programs as well as China’s growing military assertiveness. Both issues will be high on the agenda.

But first and foremost, the summit is expected to focus on laying the foundation for a more durable trilateral relationship that can withstand political change, namely the growing partnership between two of the most powerful democracies in Asia.

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Focusing on the China-West Dialogue Project (CWD); Advancing Global Governance; and Improving US-China Relations

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Now, turning back to the Global Summitry Project (GSP) and the Vision20 – collective efforts of Yves Tiberghien, Professor of Political Science and Konwakai Chair in Japanese Research at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Colin Bradford, nonresident Senior Fellow from Brookings  and myself, the Director of the Global Summitry Project. We have initiated various research initiatives.

A critical major effort over some three years has been the China-West Dialogue Process (CWD). The CWD has been Co-Chaired with Colin Bradford, the lead Co-Chair of the CWD and myself. This initiative has held some twenty plus virtual gatherings and many participants are set to gather in person for the first time in years at the Global Solutions Summit in Berlin May 15-16th <https://www.global-solutions-initiative.org/programs/china-west-dialogue/?utm_source=MASTER_Verteiler&utm_campaign=33fe63ffef-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_11_11_10_44_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_4f4e08bb85-33fe63ffef-447373003> to focus on US-China relations and assess how the G20 can advance critical, and dramatically needed global governance issues – global debt management, climate change policy, global food security and health security.

What is required, however, and is currently missing, is that the two leading powers turn their minds to such critical global governance policy efforts – both bilateral and multilateral.  From the beginning the CWD has targeted first Trump policy and now Biden foreign policy. Trump Administration officials made it clear that ‘engagement with China’ born in the Nixon Administration was at an end. Both Administrations called for competition though not for conflict. The outcome so far, especially for bilateral relations has been dismal.

As my Co-Chair Colin Bradford wrote on March 7th: “The strategic competition between the US and China is real and must be accepted and managed. But the confrontational narratives of this binary relationship are dominating and weakening global leadership and governance and present a threat to the global order.”   As the Editorial of the NYTimes, today, March 12th, urges: “Americans’ interests are best served by emphasizing competition with China while minimizing confrontation. Glib invocations of the Cold War are misguided. It doesn’t take more than a glance to appreciate that this relationship is very different. Rather than try to trip the competition, America should focus on figuring out how to run faster, …” <https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/11/opinion/china-us-relationship.html?referringSource=articleShare>. Competition is not the problem for the Biden Administration; but collaborative policy making certainly appears to be. And current policy has made it more difficult. All one needs to do is to examine the interaction of the Biden Administration and the Chinese Government and Party on “balloon gate”. As Paul Herr of the Chicago Council identifies in his post at EAF: <https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2023/03/12/ballooning-mistrust-in-the-us-china-relationship/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter2023-03-12> “Washington and Beijing’s response to the appearance of a Chinese surveillance balloon over the United States in February 2023 illustrates several aspects of the current US–China relationship that will make it very difficult to reverse the downward spiral in bilateral ties. The episode displayed mutual distrust, latent hostility, a failure to communicate and the adverse impact of internal politics on how the two sides deal with each other.”

As the CWD has identified at the GSI CWD Website – <https://www.global-solutions-initiative.org/programs/china-west-dialogue/> “The CWD’s fundamental goal is to help reshape the narratives and behaviours of US-China relations from friction to function by engaging other middle and major powers and emerging powers in a reframed China-West relations in G20 processes and other public forums. The aim of the Project is to identify new political dynamics that yield more productive relations in the international system.” At the CWD has identified, and noted by Colin Bradford on March 7th: “The CWD has concluded that the G20 is the most important platform for profiling and actualizing these alternative political dynamics in the year-long official G20 processes, which could enable convergence on systemic threats and ease geopolitical tensions.”

It is a challenging  goal in the face of current difficult US-China relations – but crucial for settling global order relations that have become ‘so rocky’ and unsettled in the last several years.

March 12, 2023

 

A Veteran Chinese Diplomat – Cui Tiankai – speaks to the Media

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Cui Tiankai, China’s former ambassador to the U.S. made a public appearance on December 20, 2021, in Beijing. It was his first public comments since leaving his U.S. ambassadorial post and returning to China. Additionally, this image shows Ambassador Cui more recently sitting down with Ian Goodrum for a moderated interview on January 10, 2022 with the ChinaDaily.

During Cui Tiankai’s earlier December speech* he stressed that:

Since the purpose of the struggle [between the U.S. and China] is to protect the interests of the people and the overall strategy, then during the struggle, [we] should reduce the cost and influence to our interests and grand strategy as much as possible. In principle, [we] don’t fight unprepared wars; don’t fight wars that we are not confident with; don’t fight wars due to anger; don’t fight wars of attrition. The people worked very hard for their prosperity; we absolutely cannot have anyone take that away. Also, we absolutely cannot lose it due to our own carelessness, slack, and incompetence. 

Moreover, Cui Tiankai claimed that:

The status-quo of U.S.-China relations will continue, the U.S. would not accept the rise of another major power of a different political system, ideology, culture, and even race.

 

In terms of America’s China policy, there is a strong factor of racism. Some people mention it, but some people don’t. The U.S. will inevitably do whatever it takes and everything it can to suppress, contain, separate, and surround to overwhelm China even without a bottom line. To this effect, we need to have a clear mind and full preparedness to confront a future unstable, difficult, and even roller-coaster-like future of U.S.-China relations.

These views are sobering to say the least.

Cui Tiankai remains a close ally to Xi Jinping, and his experience in the U.S. makes him perhaps the most competent person among China’s senior officials in understanding the U.S. from China’s perspective. Katsuji Nakazawa in an article for the Nikkei Asia explains that Cui Tiankai’s speech aimed to modestly warn Xi Jinping not to engage in unnecessary conflicts with the U.S. and divert China’s current ‘Wolf Warrior Diplomacy” (WWD) and hardline foreign policy towards the U.S. However, Ambassador Cui’s remark could also have served  as a wake-up call for top leaders to accept that China may not be in an optimal position to engage in further conflicts.

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Can the G20 Maintain Progress at Osaka in Global Governance – Part One

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Gathering for the G20 Osaka Summit

With this post RisingBRICSAM ‘returns to the air’. First up are the Vision 20 reflections on the impending G20 Osaka Summit. The Vision 20 principals include: Colin Bradford, Brookings, Yves Tiberghien, University of British Columbia and Alan Alexandroff, Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, University of Toronto.

As we have expressed in the past, “Our ‘Visioning the Future Project’ focuses on defining the future by building a new blueprint of values and organizing principles for the global system.” The V20 is committed to a well-defined goal: a new and better articulation of the relationships between global, national, and local levels. We also emphasize new avenues for dialogue across cultural, regional, and North-South divides to avoid
a downward cycle of mutual misperceptions. The V20 has urged, principally through the Blue Reports, that G20 Leaders reach out with far greater efforts and with accessible messages that can better speak to their own publics and work to assist their publics to understand the collaborative efforts these Leaders and their officials strive to achieve through the G20.

And now to our examination of the Osaka G20 Summit.

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