Former White House national security adviser John Bolton writes to The Washington Post that Secretary of State Blinken and White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan should emphasize that this is no longer the era of former President Barack Obama when the United States meets with top Chinese officials on the 18th.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken and White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan will meet with Yang Jiechi, director of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Communist Party of China, and State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Alaska for the first Time since President Joe Biden took office.
In his book, John R. Bolton said that without a significant change in Beijing‘s behavior, which has been nothing but promises, China’s good times will not come again. The United States can no longer afford the parochial acquiescence of former President Barack Obama to the practices of the Chinese Communist Party.
Sullivan has said he and Balken will explain how the new administration “intends to approach it at a strategic level” to communicate U.S. interests and values, as well as concerns about many of the Communist Party’s moves.
Earlier this month, Biden said he was beginning to develop a “national security strategy” and also released “interim guidance on national security strategy. The Biden Administration‘s preparations for the high-level U.S.-China talks are thus unclear, but with no overall strategy in place, the “guide” is a start.
Biden has spoken with Chinese Communist Party President Xi Jinping once since taking office, and conversations read by Beijing authorities portray Xi mostly as saying what he expects from Washington.
Biden last week participated in the first summit of the Quadripartite Security Dialogue (Japan, India, Australia and the United States), a forum that aims to promote a “free and open Indo-Pacific region. And just before the talks in Anchorage, Alaska, Balken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin traveled to Japan and South Korea to meet with their foreign and defense chiefs.
Bolton said in the article that this was a basic strategic approach to reassure allies and to convey that Washington’s diplomatic process is back in “regular order. But the process is not substantive, and it is not a strategy to address the unacceptable behavior of the Chinese Communist Party.
Porter noted that the list of U.S. actions that urgently need to be addressed include Beijing’s overt and covert interference with U.S. public opinion, the creation of military bases in the disputed South China Sea, threats to Taiwan, Vietnam and India, growing strategic nuclear forces and alarming global cyber warfare.
There is also the empowerment of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, the concealment of the origins of the 2019 coronavirus disease (Chinese communist virus, COVID-19) outbreak, the plagiarism of intellectual property and forced technology transfer, and the genocide of the Uighurs and the repression of Hong Kong.
However, while it is not a strategic approach to list the issues of friction between the two sides, there are considerable risks ahead if the Biden administration’s biggest goal for the CCP is downplayed as “exploring cooperation in other areas,” as Balken said at the hearing. This is tantamount to saying, “Let me tell you, this is where our cover is.
Even if the statement that “exploring other areas of cooperation” is just diplomatic rhetoric, Buerken and Sullivan must emphasize to the Chinese Communist Party that the Biden administration’s policies will be fundamentally different from those of previous U.S. presidents.
As in many other mandated democracies, U.S. public opinion has been negatively perceived by Beijing because of the CCP’s handling of the COVID-19 outbreak. In addition, the above-mentioned vices of the Chinese Communist Party have also led to public resentment.
Bolton concluded by saying that, if possible, Balken and Sullivan must make it clear that, unlike Obama, for whom China is at least an adversary, if not an enemy, and that the U.S. will formulate policy accordingly, Biden will think and act strategically, unlike former President Donald Trump.
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