Xi Jinping is moving to take advantage of an America that appears newly weak and callously unreliable. China is weaponizing those perceptions as arrows in its foreign policy quiver.
China is the primary beneficiary of President Joe Biden’s Afghanistan calamity. It is presenting the chaos that has defined this withdrawal as a warning of the United States’s inability to withstand challenging circumstances.
Beijing has been particularly ferocious in its propaganda targeting Taiwan. And its efforts have already had some effect. Taiwan’s president openly says national self-reliance will be necessary against future Chinese aggression. Attempting to undercut Vice President Kamala Harris’s visit to Vietnam, Chinese state media warned that an unreliable America is no substitute for Vietnam’s trade relationship with Beijing. Other partners are also hedging. India, this week, made a new Russian arms export order.
These governments would prefer to deal with a strong, reliable America rather than an arrogant, bullying China.
Taiwan obviously values its freedom. Vietnam, whose relationship with China has been antagonistic for decades, does not want to see the South China Sea turned into China’s imperial paddling pool. India does not appreciate the seizure and occupation of its northern territory by the People’s Liberation Army. Yet, in the absence of a reliable U.S. partner that can consolidate against China’s bullying, tolerating China becomes the easiest choice. The alternative is to earn China’s increasing ire without adequate recourse to deter or restrain China’s economic and military coercion. Perception matters, and Biden has made himself a picture of unreliability.
China is also taking advantage in Europe.
A central plank of Biden’s foreign policy strategy, one for which national security adviser Jake Sullivan deserves credit, centers on aligning the United Kingdom and the European Union in support of U.S. efforts to restrain China’s challenge to the democratic international order. But considering the vast economic value of their dealings with Beijing, European governments have been reluctant to antagonize the Chinese Communist Party. Germany aside, and albeit too slowly, things have been shifting in America’s direction in Europe. But Biden has burnt a lot of bridges with his utter disregard for the concerns of European leaders.
France is now using Biden’s debacle to push its strategic vision of an EU defense policy outside of NATO. Putting a U.S.-British trade deal on the back burner, Biden had already let Britain know that he’s no close friend. But operating in a post-Brexit political environment, the already mercantilism-minded Prime Minister Boris Johnson may now decide that improved relations with China are an economic and political necessity. Expect China to exploit these European concerns with lucrative new investments in the coming months.
The top line: Biden has fundamentally frayed the cornerstone of the U.S.-led international order — trust. First embracing chaos, then hiding in the forests at Camp David, and now repeating broken talking points, Biden has abandoned his watch as leader of the free world. It’s no longer clear whether he can be trusted when the going gets tough. China, however, is clear where it stands: It offers economic investment in return for political subservience.
Unless America shows it can lead, nations will be tempted to take China’s poison pill.
