Moderator Susan Page asked a critical question during the vice presidential debate on Wednesday.
“How would you describe our fundamental relationship with China?”
It’s a question that speaks to a great power competition that will set the course of the 21st century, not just in terms of the coronavirus and trade, but in every area of international affairs, from security to climate change to intellectual property to the survival of the post-World War II liberal democratic order. Unfortunately, neither Vice President Mike Pence nor Sen. Kamala Harris, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, answered Page’s question effectively.
Pence spent the first minute of his two-minute allotment talking about NAFTA and climate change. This distraction belies the seriousness that the question deserves. In the second minute of his answer, Pence talked about how China was to blame for the coronavirus pandemic. This is true, of course, but fixating on the coronavirus fails to cover the depth of this key concern. America’s interests with China include all of those aforementioned concerns in relation to the future of the international order. Why didn’t he mention Tuesday’s meeting of the so-called “Quad,” for example?
Pence was better on the topic of NATO, and he correctly pointed out that the Trump administration has pushed allies to do more in terms of burden-sharing. However, it should be said that President Trump’s handling of this issue hasn’t been ideal. Pence was stronger on the topic of the Islamic State and counterterrorism. But even as the vice president rightly pointed out the Trump administration’s timely use of force, he oversimplified the issue. Trump deserves credit for destroying much of ISIS’s caliphate, but the idea that ISIS has been totally destroyed is a delusion.
Harris began her China answer by defending the Obama administration’s record on China. This is kind of like a plane captain saying that the best way to ensure a smooth flight is to stay on the ground. After all, former President Barack Obama’s legacy on China sits with two utterly defective agreements. First, there was China’s pledge, which the shameless Xi Jinping is now trying to regurgitate, to cap carbon emissions by 2030. This pledge might have more credibility had China not constructed hundreds of new, high-carbon emission power plants since then. Second, there was China’s pledge to stop stealing intellectual property. This pledge might have more credibility were China not still stealing hundreds of billions of dollars in global intellectual property each year. Harris then suggested that a Biden administration would somehow use this failed record to get a better economic relationship with China. But like Pence, she failed to mention the much broader international context in which United States-China relations now take place.
That said, Harris’s worst moment came when she referenced Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal as an example of how Trump has betrayed U.S. allies. Yes, it is true that the European Union and the United Kingdom support the Iran nuclear deal. But none of the U.S.’s Middle Eastern allies do, and they never did. Surely their opinion matters most in this context? Israel, for example, viewed the 2015 nuclear accord as a catastrophic endangerment of its very existence. Sorry, senator, this one doesn’t fly.
Then again, Pence didn’t exactly soar either. Time for both candidates to spend greater attention in their intelligence briefings.
