Chinese General Secretary Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a joint statement of more than 5,000 words earlier this month, outlining their shared vision for a world order not led by the United States.
President Joe Biden is reportedly responding with a new “Indo-Pacific Economic Framework” that will address digital trade, supply chains, and “green technology” with friendly nations. It is not enough.
Neither is the COMPETES Act, which came out of the Democratic-controlled House this month. Larded up with domestic payoffs to Big Labor and slush funds for unaccountable foreign entities such as the United Nations, the House legislation shows a Democratic Party far more obsessed with diversity, equity, and inclusion in the nation’s laboratories than with making sure those labs are keeping the U.S. technologically ahead of China.
China has a clear sense of what it wants to accomplish over the next generation. Its joint statement with Russia backs Putin’s vision for a new European order in which NATO is allowed only to shrink. Russia backs China’s opposition to the U.S. security agreement with Australia and the United Kingdom and demands that the West turn a blind eye to aggressive Chinese claims over Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the South China Sea.
These shared diplomatic interests are matched by growing economic ties. Russia is now China’s second-largest supplier of crude oil and its third-largest supplier of natural gas. Last year, trade between Russia and China reached $147 billion, making China Russia’s largest trading partner. This relationship will grow, as the countries agreed not only to work together on developing the Arctic but also to harmonize China’s Belt and Road Initiative with Putin’s Eurasian Economic Union.
Biden will apparently respond with “a collection of individual agreements” that will exclude “legally binding market-opening steps that require congressional approval.” This is not impressive. It is a shame Biden feels so weak that he is unable to make the case for his preferred policy to Congress.
This is not the time for limiting strategic moves because they require congressional approval. Then again, judging from what House Democrats added to the COMPETES Act, his hesitancy is understandable.
Almost eight months ago, a bipartisan majority of the Senate passed legislation that would have invested $190 billion in research and development and $50 billion in building semiconductor manufacturing capacity in the U.S. That bill sat dormant in the House all last year without any leadership from Biden. Finally, after Biden’s Build Back Better agenda died, the House took up the Senate bill this year and promptly filled it with irrelevant provisions. They added a long-sought and irrelevant card check provision for Big Labor, created an $8 billion climate slush fund for the U.N., and added divisive and useless “diversity, equity, and inclusion” bureaucrats to the National Science Foundation. All of these wasteful irrelevancies must be stripped out by the Senate if this legislation is ever to become law.
But even if it does, it still leaves the U.S. far from where it needs to be to meet the strategic challenge presented by China. The U.S. needs a better answer to China’s hypersonic weapons than “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” It also needs an answer to China’s militarization of space, an answer to China’s growing cyberattack capabilities, and an answer to China’s growing naval capabilities.
The battle lines are being drawn for a new cold war. Pieces are being put into place. Biden needs to stop thinking small with country-by-country agreements and embrace a coherent vision for how the U.S. will confront and contain China. So far, Biden is failing at this task.
