foreign policy
coronavirus
The Pandemic Will Make U.S.-China Relations Much Worse
Editor-in-Chief, SupChina.com
Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute
0
0
Genesis
Response
Penultimate
Finale
July 3rd, 2020
To answer the original question, how will coronavirus reshape relations, I need to touch upon Jeremy’s comment about a lack of strategy.
In December 2017, our National Security Strategy laid out the exact way we should answer all the questions. The problem from the beginning has been the inability of the DC Establishment to understand the NSS.
The important parts in the NSS have been completely missed. Not by the federal bureaucracy since they are tasked to implement it, but by most of DC and the media. Consequently, the rest of the world has failed to appreciate the NSS’s call to action.
The NSS is based on “American principles, a clear-eyed assessment of U.S. interests.” This meant we had to ensure that we were promoting freedom of speech and religion, rule of law and free trade. It was also a recognition that we had stopped promoting these principles abroad, and instead had left the educating and advocating to 21st century authoritarians, like the CCP.
The NSS recognizes competition is not just about bombs and bullets, but rather 1s and 0s, dollars and cents. Authoritarian states were “determined to make economies less free and less fair, to grow their militaries, and to control information and data to repress their societies and expand their influence.” Thus, economics and data are the key new domains of competition defined in the strategy.
This meant that the US had to take a different approach to competition, because “policies based on the assumption that engagement with rivals and their inclusion in international institutions and global commerce would turn them into benign actors and trustworthy partners” – our strategy toward the CCP since 1989 – was naïve at best.
To do so, the US “must work with like-minded allies and partners to ensure our principles prevail and the rules are enforced so that our economies prosper.” That is why after the NSS was released, the NSC and State Department began approaching allies and partners bilaterally to advocate for a new approach to authoritarian regimes like CCP-led China. And Allies are responding. More and more of America’s allies are choosing to address the challenges posed by the CCP by saying no to Huawei and examining Chinese investments. And in our post-coronavirus world, the US and her Allies, are witnessing in real time what the control of information and lack of transparency on the part of an authoritarian regime leads to—chaos.
Americans are hurting not because of a lack of strategy but because of reliance on a hostile dictatorship for key industries like manufacturing, pharmacy, and telecommunications. The NSS was written to counter this, and while there is more to do, after three years the policies are working.
Recognition of the challenge is growing. Mothballed authorities like the Defense Production Act are being dusted off and put to use. Others like CFIUS have been revamped. The NSS “promotes policies and incentives that return key national security industries to American shores.” It seeks to grow local talent by supporting “STEM efforts, at the Federal and state levels.” It goes on to say “the United States will prioritize emerging technologies critical to economic growth and security, such as data science, encryption, autonomous technologies, gene editing, new materials, nanotechnology, advanced computing technologies, and artificial intelligence.”
Therefore yes, Jeremy, there is a strategy, and it is working. Americans have been hurt because of the CCP’s incessant predatory economic aggression, resulting in millions of jobs lost. Communities flooded with drugs that have killed tens of thousands are the result of the CCP’s willingness to allow its pharmaceutical factories to produce fentanyl and ship it to the US. And of course, the global coronavirus pandemic, killing more tens of thousands, creating record unemployment and staggering hardship for millions.
It is important to decouple because Americans have been and continue to be hurt. There is a thoughtful strategy that seeks to offer the CCP a new path forward. They have to this point decided not to accept. They may never decide to accept, and that will be ok, because for once we have a path that restores America to what she was intended – a harbor for democracy and shelter against the authoritarian storm.
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