While US President Joe Biden’s administration is right to question the basic assumptions that underlay America’s strategy of engagement with China, those who devised that strategy over two decades ago were also right in their own way. Then as now, even distant scenarios must be left open.
CAMBRIDGE – In its new national security strategy, US President Joe Biden’s administration recognizes that Russia and China each present a different kind of challenge. Whereas Russia “poses an immediate threat to the free and open international system … [with] its brutal war of aggression,” China is the only competitor to the US “with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to advance that objective.” The Pentagon thus refers to China as its “pacing challenge.”
CAMBRIDGE – In its new national security strategy, US President Joe Biden’s administration recognizes that Russia and China each present a different kind of challenge. Whereas Russia “poses an immediate threat to the free and open international system … [with] its brutal war of aggression,” China is the only competitor to the US “with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to advance that objective.” The Pentagon thus refers to China as its “pacing challenge.”