Fifty years ago come July, US President Richard Nixon announced what would become his signature foreign policy achievement: the opening to China. The following February, in what the press called “the week that shook the world”, he flew to Beijing to meet Mao Zedong, the leader of communist China. So began a half-century of US engagement with Beijing.
At the time, China was the most important ally of the Soviet Union and the tip of the spear advancing communist revolutions worldwide. But within the decade, U.S. President Jimmy Carter had normalized the relationship, recognizing the regime in Beijing as China’s sole legitimate government and abrogating the U.S. defence treaty with Taiwan. The rest is history: China helped the United States win the Cold War, and the thaw in U.S.-Chinese relations allowed Asia to emerge as the most economically dynamic region in the world.
Prior to the Trump administration, engagement with China was applauded as a rare bipartisan success in U.S. foreign policy, with both Democrats and Republicans agreeing that Washington could work with Beijing to advance American interests and values. Today, as China’s government has become more repressive at home and aggressive abroad, leaders in both parties have declared engagement a failure. As U.S. President Joe Biden’s senior Asia adviser, Kurt Campbell, and the president’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, wrote in Foreign Affairs in 2019, “The era of engagement with China has come to an unceremonious close.”
Yet it is worth remembering what engaging China was all about. For most of the past half-century, efforts to improve ties with the country were not about transforming it. Starting with Nixon, the motives were decidedly unsentimental: to balance against the Soviet Union, to convince China to stop exporting revolution, and to help lift millions of people out of poverty. It was only after the Cold War that a desire to change China became a prominent objective of U.S. policy.
This is an excerpt of an article in Foreign Affairs Magazine written by Graham Allison and Fred Hu on 18 February 2021. Click here to read the full article.
Since its founding in 1922, Foreign Affairs has been the leading forum for serious discussion of American foreign policy and global affairs. Foreign Affairs is published by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a non-profit and nonpartisan membership organization dedicated to improving the understanding of U.S. foreign policy and international affairs through the free exchange of ideas.
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22 responses to “An unsentimental China policy: The case for putting vital interests first”
After a military conflict on the Line of Control in the Galwan River, initiated by India with 40 Indian soldiers killed, the Modi government launched an all out attack on PRC. They banned Chinese apps, supply chains were to be replaced, staged demonstrations and of course the Australians were there to assist. Well the numbers are in. India’s biggest trading partner since the clash is PRC. Overtaking the US. So much for the Five Eyes, the Quad or whatever joke alliance Washington wants to cook up. Indians voted with their wallets. 77 billion dollars of trade in the half year since the clash. Wonder how that phone call to Beijing is going with Danny Boy? Australians are the mugs of Asia. We are a joke.
Actually, the two communist giants never trusted each other very much anyway. This made the work of the Americans much easier. Events leading up to the Great Leap forward is a case in point.
“Today, as China’s government has become more repressive at home and aggressive abroad”
I do not accept that mono-focus.
I think the author needs to take into account that all Western anglophone countries in particular have become far more repressive at home since September 11, as well becoming far more aggressive towards China.
In the last 7 years in Australia we have seen far more control and scrutiny of the Australian population from Tony Ten Flags onward. Peter Dutton would just be in heaven if he could have facial recognition everywhere. The entire country already has security cams everywhere, our schools are monitored with the same, our internet and phone data is no longer ours, and an entire new department modelled after the US called “Home Affairs” has been created. Dutton holds the right to rebuke citizenship. Crackdowns on protests, particularly those concerning environmental issues and BLM have been curtailed by the introduction of huge fines and police serving the purposes of the government and business only.
Any number of antiterrorist raids have been carried out that align perfectly with when they have sought to introduce further draconian controls and push more new legislation. It is politics of fear, and permanent cultivation of new bogeymen countries. A seamless transfer from bogeyman Islam, to bogeyman China has been successful.
While Australians are increasingly monitored and more and legislation is introduced giving Australians less rights, the government sidesteps both transparency and accountability at increasing levels never seen before in Australia. We now live in a far more fearful society as we head further into a dystopic and repressive state.
Is it because Australia is now living in a bubble comparable to a fish in a bowl of water heating up, that we don’t notice?
Also. Where is China being aggressive abroad? Are you talking still about the South China Sea or the Taiwan Strait? If that is it then it is just a joke to repeat the meme over and over again ad nauseum. While China’s claims to the SCS are rebuked, no one says a word about the fact that the very same waters are claimed as the territory of Taiwan in its ROC Constitution. Yes they are.
Meanwhile since Biden has been in control nuclear capable bombers have been returned to Guam, exceedingly dangerous and provocative behaviour involving several US aircraft carriers has taken place, and Pompeo in his final days pushed for regime change. The entire region is full of US bases and they carry our regular war games. Australia signed up to the Quad. No aggression noticed there. Neither the failure of the Morrison government to restore diplomatic relations while they smugly enjoy the boost to the iron ore price with China propping up the GDP once again and willing to pay twice the price for the ore compared to pre-Covid-19 times.
Denying the reality that China faces in the region is so typical of Western press that only presents one side of the picture. Only China is a bully while the US and puppet state Australia practice “robust diplomacy”.
America’s Pacific problem is America, no one else’s.
http://untoldpacific.com/americas-pacific-problem-is-america/
That’s a good recorded interview too! Quote: “The Australians… they really never learned to think for themselves… you don’t have to hide behind the Americans.” What an indictment! Basically we can’t think, and we are freaking cowards hiding behind the Americans. Sheesh! Maybe it’s time we call it a day and give up hope that we can be something more.
There are a lot of other interviews on the site too surrounding US and China relations (listed under ‘episodes’ in the drop down menu). It is surprising where James Bradley gets the interviewees from too, often from members of the military. He’s also the one that wrote “The China Mirage”a very good book covering Chiang Kai-shek’s rise. He’s recently been in Vietnam for about 7 years researching the war that was once there. Now in NZ it appears.
There is one also called ‘Americans are all political prisoners’. Well worth listening to. There he finds an ex-USAF lieutenant colonel who tells it like it is.
I have another reference for you, George, to use as a baseline to measure just how aggressive and expansionist the Chinamen are, and how much they flout the ‘International Rules Based Order’, in comparison to the Yanks and the Brits.
The more recent history of the Chagossians – https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/02/19/britains-double-standards-in-international-affairs/
Just the 2 ‘highlights’ from me;
“…the Chagos Archipelago was “depopulated” in the 1960s and 70s because Britain had agreed that there should be a US military airfield on the main island, Diego Garcia. As revealed in 2004, the bureaucrats of Britain’s Colonial Office had written that “The object of the exercise is to get some rocks which will remain ours; there will be no indigenous population except seagulls who have not yet got a committee. Unfortunately along with the Birds go some few Tarzans or Men Fridays whose origins are obscure, and who are being hopefully wished on to Mauritius etc.”….
As one evicted Islander, Lizette Tallatte, said in a 2004 documentary, “when their dogs were taken away in front of them, our children screamed and cried,” and then the remaining islanders “were loaded on to ships, allowed to take only one suitcase. They left behind their homes and furniture, and their lives.”
Thanks DJT I’ll check it out.
What a thoroughly nasty piece of writing.
Three cornered fight (US-Russia-China) in geopolitics is an interesting observation. In Cold War 1, US puts a wedge China against Russia and it worked for 50 years. I predict the US wil now wedge China against Russia in Cold War 2. It could work but then the proverb sets in ‘once bitten twice shy. China had observed what Russia had gone thru and will resist the wedge; in some ways, this has happened. Trump helped by pushing China into Russian arms. Currently, it is more likely that China teams up with Russia vs US.
With respect there is no Cold War 2. At the end of WWII the US was a totally dominant global hegemon. It accounted for 50% of the worlds GDP and held 80% of the world’s money. With 4% of the world’s population. It dictated Bretton Woods to a broken Europe and a crushed Asia. Its armed forces were overwhelmingly the most powerful on earth. The Soviet Union was a broken country with over 20 million of its people killed in a devastating war on its territory. In China 80% of the people were illiterate and life expectancy was 39 years of age. Today the State Owned Enterprises of the PRC alone constitute a bigger GDP than the combined economies of the UK, India and France. The US academy is desperate to hold on to something that can provide an ideological cover for the outstanding success of Chinese socialism and the absymal failure of neo-liberal capitalism. They hoped that a Chinese trans pacific elite would emerge and they could “manage” them into a permanent cultural and ideological subservience. Regime change in Beijing has no credibility even in Washington. Both strategies have failed. So we have the incoherent and absurd policy of “competition and co-operation.” They can sail their obsolete aircraft carriers but the show has grown old. West of Guam those hulking targets would last a morning in a conflict. Lets be generous. By an afternoon. The US is like a magician trying to impress with old tricks. But the audience knows its a con. The world has seen how the magic is created and failed in the COVID crisis. The next financial crash will deliver the final death blow to US pretensions of world leadership. At the rate that Biden is printing money it wont be long now. There is no Cold War. It is a pretense of a declining power living in the past.
More than just likely, Anthony, it’s approaching a lay down misere.
Russia has been dealing with NATO ‘approaching’ its borders for more than 2 decades, and now the imbecile ‘in charge’ (yeah, roit) of NATO, that Norveeeegian dope, Stoltenberg, fancies NATO shuffling off to the Indo Pacific, specifically to begin with the Sth China Sea.
They 2 key ‘personal relationships’ to watch, now (and, have been for a number of years) are Putin – Xi, and Lavrov and Wang Yi. Both pairs have a very high level of trust and respect, 2 of the very rarest commodities observable in the West.
Some of the Russia – China hi-tech transfers are positively frightening, particularly when the West is run by fools, and think geopolitics is about having dinner with Murduck and his ilk.
Putin is a PhD in International Law, and Xi is a highly qualified Engineer.
Biden? Johnson? Morrison? Trudeau? Micron? The rest of the Euro trash?
Personally, I find myself most frightened the more idiots there are around.
As you would know Xi is not only a qualified (chemical) engineer, but has spent most of his life working through the various levels of the CCP from on a farm, to where he is now, in order to learn how to manage the whole lot. Imagine what it is like to manage 1.4 billion people successfully. And the ‘mandate of heaven’ still shines down upon him. Morrison by comparison only looks after 1/57th of such a population, is paid more than twelve times as much, and slid with a lot of helpful grooming up to the top where he doesn’t even have a plan for Australia’s future except impending disaster.
If only Australian politicians had to do the same training so when they get into government they would realise they are there for the people they represent and not just to feather their own nests and abuse taxpayers money.
“More repressive at home and aggressive abroad?” Really. The US academy and legislature is in a state of near hysteria. And a senile war criminal is going to lead the empire back to world domination? Its over. Nixon is a distant memory. PRC was a relatively weak country then. The US elites are thrashing, punching the air. History has moved on. The worst nightmare of the anglo liberal ruling class is unfolding. An Asian communist led country is becoming a world hegemon. The next financial crash which is developing in the US will completely finish the US off as a world hegemon. Their air craft carriers are huge obsolete sinkable targets. Their only option is a nuclear war. The historical parallel is MacArthur reclining in his pink kimono with under age mistresses in Tokyo wanting to unleash 20 nuclear bombs on the PRC as his army, in retreat from the PLA, suffered the longest withdrawal in its history from the Yalu River. Truman sacked him. What will Biden do when the next meglomanic general wants to obliterate the eastern cities of the PRC?
Caught up with the latest on the ‘Flying Heap of Crap’, the F-35, Skilts? If not, try FORBES!!
Is this what you are referring to DJT?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2021/02/23/the-us-air-force-just-admitted-the-f-35-stealth-fighter-has-failed/?sh=202611af1b16
Yep.
Thanks mate. Just read it. They saw the clowns from Canberra coming.
Thanks for that mate. Very informative.
“More repressive at home and aggressive abroad?”
You know and I know that it’s the passphrase to get anything published in MSM these days like FP. “China Bad” today is a bit like the Nazi solute in Nazi Germany, it’s just a formality. Deep down thought, everyone in the political class knows its total utter BS.
Just like the first “genocide” in history where the alleged victims of genocide have increased their population. The disconnect between reality and US empire fantasy grows wider every day.
The Chinese giant slumbered and woke up at that point in its history, hungry for change. The US provided the opportunity and she lapped it up, growing from strength to strength. The Americans were too comfortable in their own skin. They went to sleep instead on a bed of cheap goods from China. She only showed a sign of stirring when Hillary Clinton asked Kevin Rudd, “How do you deal toughly with your banker?” Then Trump came along and consoled the Americans by reminding them of a glorious past which he promised to revive, “I’ll make America great again!” He did that by taking a couple of steps backwards to an isolationist and an American first and only policy. Now with Joe Biden, the US is taking a tentative step forward. What will happen only time can tell.
In a walking frame.