Standing Up to Beijing

THE FIRST ROUND of the Trump-Biden presidential debate was uninspiring by all counts. At a time of great flux in the international order, the poor performance of the gerontocratic contenders has got diplomatic allies increasingly worried about US executive leadership. For some in the Western intelligentsia, the debate sends worrisome signals about American democracy and strengthens the hands of Moscow and Beijing.

Biden and Trump touched only fleetingly the most pressing foreign policy issue: the China challenge. Trump accused Biden of being a “Manchurian candidate” who gets paid by China. In the Biden administration’s continuation of Trump’s tariff on China, the former president saw a vindication of his trade policy. He even went to the extent of accusing Biden of being on Chinese payroll without evidence. Biden, in turn, was critical of Trump’s policy proposal of levying a 10 per cent tariff on all incoming imports to the US.

The presidential debate might give the impression of sharp political polarisation, ineffectual leadership, and a superpower in terminal decline. However, beyond the foreign policy executive leadership contenders, the DC establishment is vigorously debating the nature and extent of the Chinese threat to American national interests and appropriate policy response. Ensuing from a recent article in Foreign Affairs by Matt Pottinger and Mike Gallagher, members of the Republican establishment, the current iteration of the debate demonstrates competing US visions in response to China’s rise. In America’s China policy debate, three distinct camps are discernible. The hawkish camp, mostly belonging to the Republican Party, wants the US to engage more proactively in the contest for primacy, with an insistence primarily on the deployment of coercive means for the goal of regime change in China.

The managed competition camp that has shaped the Biden administration’s approach seeks to deter China and maintain American advantage in key strategic technology sectors, while preventing an inadvertent escalation of rivalry to a kinetic conflict.

Finally, the mostly leftist accommodationist camp sees the great power competition framing as an avoidable warmongering exercise and instead advocates for a grand bargain with China in the interest of peace, stability, and cooperation on urgent transnational problems.

As a frontline state with an active border with China, Delhi has cultivated a strategic partnership with the US. Thus, it needs to pay close attention to the ongoing debate in Washington that would potentially shape the US approach with a bearing on the policy space available to India.

The hawks find peaceful coexistence with an authoritarian great power incommensurate with the principles of a liberal democracy. In their worldview, the fundamental incompatibility between the two regimes is manifest in Xi Jinping’s authoritarian challenge to liberal democracies which can only be tackled by competitive measures that transform China. For Pottinger and Gallagher, the US needs to deter China’s military overtures in Asia, counter its discourse power and misinformation campaign globally, and rewrite the rules of economic engagement to prevent China’s weaponisation of supply chains and its dominance of critical emerging technologies.

The hawkish competitors treat with disdain the notion of détente with China and prefer to borrow from the Reaganite playbook of peace through strength. While indulging in deterrence speak, the hawks actually envisage a return to US military primacy in the Pacific. When it comes to deterrence, though, the imperative to invest in cheaper asymmetric capabilities in terms of anti-ship missiles, unmanned strike aircraft, advanced mines, guided missile submarines, etc find bipartisan advocacy. More specifically, so far, the hawks have either implemented or advocated for the ban on Huawei, a ban or divestment option for Chinese-owned TikTok, import tariffs, export control on semiconductor chips, outbound investment screening, minilateral initiatives in the Indo-Pacific region, strategic decoupling, and an annual $20 billion deterrence fund.

As underscored explicitly in former Biden administration official Rush Doshi’s response to the Pottinger-Gallagher critique, the Biden administration’s decision to continue many aspects of Trump’s China policy underscores the degree of consensus between the hawks and the managed competitors. For both camps, China’s rise as a formidable peer competitor requires a ramped-up defence posture on America’s part in Asia along with enlisting the help of allies for effective power projection. China’s bid to take the lead in critical emerging technologies also needs to be countered with stringent export control, investment screening, tariffs, and outright bans. Further, the democracy versus autocracy framing refuses to disappear in the rhetorical posturing of both these camps.

Driven by their differing perceptions of the relative power gap between the US and China, though, the managed competitors and hawks diverge on the end goal of the competition with China. Drawing on America’s success in the Cold War, hawkish policy wonks tend to overestimate the US lead over China. The managed competitors, however, anxiously paint China as a more formidable peer competitor, pointing to the Chinese economy’s relatively larger size and enmeshment in the global economy.

The managed competitors seek a balance between deterring China from a position of strength and sending reassuring signals by way of diplomatic overtures to prevent inadvertent escalation into a hot war. In contrast to the hawks, the relatively moderate competitors in the Biden establishment are content with peaceful coexistence with the Chinese regime if it suffices to safeguard core US national interests. In their policy prescriptions, they differ from the hawks in laying stress on regular diplomatic exchanges, military-to-military talks, codes of conduct, arms control agreements, cooperation on climate change, and scope for diplomatic concessions.

The progressive advocates, alarmingly, caution against the supposed bipartisan bellicosity in the Beltway policy landscape that is leading to the rising tension in the US-China relationship. In this worldview, while China under Xi has grown authoritarian at home and coercive abroad, the US reaction in terms of tariffs, sanctions, and restrictions on scientific and cultural exchange exacerbates Chinese perceptions of the US attempt at strangulating its rise. In the global contest for influence against China, US policymaking has set in a reactive mode without a positive vision and a realistic assessment of its own limitations. For some progressives, the US is to blame for stoking the rivalry as China merely pursues global initiatives to maximise its power, influence and wealth, without any interest in hastening the disintegration of the West or establishing an anti-democratic order. The progressive accommodationists do recognise increased bellicosity on part of Beijing. However, in their worldview, a relatively mild threat perception from a limited revisionist actor challenging a relatively more secure US warrants a strategy of engagement and an internationalist agenda devoid of militarised activism. They want the US to commit to fostering international cooperation to combat global warming, pandemics, economic inequality, global tax evasion, and creeping authoritarianism.

The fundamental sinews of US power remain intact despite domestic political polarisation. Crucial as a president may be in an executive-dominated foreign policy apparatus, Trump’s demagoguery and Biden’s tiredness might not botch a concerted US action on China, as the Washington establishment sharpens its wares for the age of great power competition. Against this backdrop, what are the likely implications of their contrasting policy approaches for India-US ties?

Given their shared threat perception against China, New Delhi may find it easy to strike defence deals with the hawks and managed competitors. The managed competitor approach towards propping up partners in the strategic technology sector has the potential to pay rich dividends for India. India also stands poised to benefit from the economic de-risking and friend-shoring dimensions to the competitive US strategy. Delhi thus needs to observe closely what Washington thinks and does vis-à-vis its China policy.

Donald TrumpgeopoliticsIndo-US relationshipJoe BidenNarendra Modi