We are, for all intents and purposes, already at war with China, although the Biden administration apparently did not get the memo. The war may not be a kinetic one — not yet, at least — but all the other attributes of conflict are in place: cyberattacks, intellectual property theft, the probing of our homeland by a variety of means, the spread of disinformation, the interruption of freedom-of-navigation operations and other belligerent acts, such as operating a spying station in Cuba just 90 miles off the U.S. coast.
This means that China, in effect, has engaged the U.S. in everything but a kinetic war. The current set of offensive actions should be viewed as just as dangerous as a physical conflict, with such engagement shedding light on the moral center of the problem: What the U.S. wants long term and what China wants have no equivalence.
Americans want what they already have: a peaceful, rules-based world where every sovereign country can make their own laws and live the way they want to live. China wants global hegemony and a state-run planet. The country’s recent actions have shown that there is no circumstance in which the United States and nearly all of its allies can ever square that circle.
These two types of global communities cannot coexist. It’s one or the other. And those of us living in democracies know that China can easily have our version and thrive, but we can never have theirs.
With this as our North Star, what must America’s next steps be?
We must treat China as if we already are in conflict with it — but that rapprochement is always possible and is the ultimate goal. We must act like the global power that we are. We should not set foot in the country unless we are treated like royalty. Begging for meetings with their leaders is not a good look for the U.S. because it implies a shift in power that we can never allow to happen.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he went to China to “strengthen high-level challenges of communication, to make clear our positions and intentions in areas of disagreement, and to explore areas where we might work together when our interests align on shared transnational challenges.” He claims those goals were met. I disagree. What happened instead is that we gave the world the impression that we’ve ceded the upper hand to Beijing, with Blinken playing the role of a modern Neville Chamberlain returning from Munich with a meaningless agreement in 1938.
Am I a warmonger or advocating a kinetic war? Of course not. But, unfortunately, our president’s mindset is that of the frog in warm water. We get comfortable and don’t notice that the temperature is rising — quickly.
On his trip to China, Secretary Blinken failed to revive military-to-military talks with China and reopen a communication channel. He should not have tried. We should be aggressively advancing our interests everywhere and waiting until China asks us for a resumption.
Now is the time for the United States to ask a question of our closest allies, particularly the European Union member countries: Are you in or out? Side deals with China, the desire for the next trade accommodation, do nothing to advance our interests or theirs. Western democracies need to embrace the idea that they also are in conflict with China and act in concert with us, showing little to no daylight between us with respect to our policies and our strategy. The less maneuvering room given to China, the more China’s behavior will begin to align itself with the collective free world’s views and not its own. When it doesn’t have a choice economically, the rest will follow.
What the Chinese are doing — and doing well — is playing the long game; we, in contrast, are playing Whac-A-Mole. And part of that is because we operate as a democracy, where things change every two to four years, and that’s justifiably the price we pay for freedom. Our policies are not indefinite or continuous, while China can lay down the law and everyone there falls into line.
China is constitutionally set up to play the long game. But we need to play the long game strategically and allow each administration to use the tactics of their choosing, as long as the strategy remains the same. We need to agree that we are at war with China and we always need to push back. The “how” can change, but the basic strategy cannot.
At the same time, we need to subtly signal to our allies — through our largesse, our trade rules, our tariff policies, and other financial intercourse — that our China fixation must be our allies’ fixation as well, that our support is contingent upon it. When I served as the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, it became immediately apparent how powerful the U.S. and the EU were perceived to be when we acted with unanimity on any given issue. We need to do the same now, regarding China.
Globally, we have fixated on the climate agenda. The goal of reducing our carbon footprint has pervaded every part of our lives in the U.S., as it has in most other countries. We must adopt that same attitude with China, in which everything we do is pushback on that country’s hegemonic goals, to stop its physical expansion for malign purposes, and to strengthen our offensive and defensive capabilities globally. If Biden saw China as a bigger enemy today than CO2, we would be on the right track.
Fear of escalation and retaliation cannot be our North Star in any of these conflicts. We have right on our side. And we, with a little reprioritizing of our budget and our thinking, will regain the power to enforce just, global norms and thwart China’s ambitions.
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