President-elect Joe Biden’s foreign policy team will stand by the “bipartisan consensus” about the threats emanating from China, according to one of President Trump’s top advisers.
“We’ve got such a series of unfair and difficult conduct on behalf of the Chinese that there’s a bipartisan consensus in America that we have to stand up to China,” White House national security adviser Robert O’Brien said while traveling this week in the Philippines.
O’Brien, who highlighted a donation of “precision-guided missiles and munitions” to help the Philippine Armed Forces fight against the Islamic State’s East Asia offshoot, reiterated that Biden will enjoy a “professional” transfer of power “if the courts don’t rule in President Trump’s favor.” And he noted that some of that litigation is still pending.
“President Trump has not exhausted his legal remedies,” he stated.
With that said, he focused his rhetorical fire on China in an apparent bid to solidify U.S. relations with a sometimes-wayward ally that occupies a strategic position in the South China Sea.
“We are well beyond the days of imperialism where a country, because it is big or mighty, can simply take the patrimony of a smaller country because it has the might to do so,” O’Brien told local media.
That was a reference to China’s claim to sovereignty over most of the South China Sea, a major waterway for international shipping. Chinese officials have reinforced that claim by building artificial islands that house military outposts in defiance of the sovereignty claims and economic rights of the Philippines and other neighboring countries.
“We firmly oppose these remarks which are full of Cold War mentality and wantonly incite confrontation,” the Chinese embassy in Manila said Tuesday in response. “It shows that his visit to this region is not to promote regional peace and stability, but to create chaos in the region in order to seek selfish interests of the U.S.”
The embassy statement accused O’Brien of trying “to sow discord between China and the Philippines,” while implicitly suggesting to Manila that alignment with the United States could breed tension with a powerful, permanent neighbor.
“China respects and appreciates the Philippines’ independent foreign policy,” the statement read. “The Philippines’ future will not float in anywhere, but will be deeply rooted in its own national development, in a stable and amicable neighborhood, and in a peaceful and prosperous Asian region.”
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has sounded susceptible to such arguments in the past, at times striking a fatalistic note about China’s territorial claims while downplaying the value of the U.S. alliance. The leader also has rocked Washington with a decision to terminate a key defense agreement with the U.S., apparently over a visa dispute involving one of his top law enforcement advisers, but U.S. officials hope to capitalize on his subsequent suspension of that decision.
“We also hope to expand our cooperation on a whole range of security challenges — from disaster relief to maritime security,” O’Brien said Monday. “Know that the United States stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the Philippines.”
