The Biden administration has set high expectations for itself as the United Nations climate change summit in Glasgow, Scotland, known as COP26, begins. During his presidential run, Joe Biden’s campaign website declared that there was “no greater challenge facing our country and our world” than climate change. The US president’s climate envoy, John Kerry, recently called the summit the world’s “last best hope” to avoid disaster. Activists are calling for dramatic action: the young climate campaigner Greta Thunberg said that it is time to “uproot the system,” fundamentally overhauling the domestic and foreign policies of countries everywhere.
Yet the Biden administration needs to tread carefully, lest it stumble into a trap. At COP26 and after, the administration will face pressure — from within and without — to make diplomatic concessions to China as the price of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s cooperation on climate. If Biden does so, he risks exposing the United States to a danger as significant as that posed by a changing climate: losing an intensifying conflict with Beijing. America is already confronting a new cold war that could well become a hot war, and winning that contest must be its guiding priority.
It should also recognise a simple reality: The United States won’t be able to lead on any global issue, climate included, if it doesn’t defend the international system it has led since World War II against the challenge posed by China.
Strategy involves setting priorities. In Silicon Valley, strategy flows from what executives refer to as “first principles” — the foundational principles that guide all other decisions. America’s first principles are spelled out in the Declaration of Independence — “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” US foreign policy should prioritise above all else defending these principles against an aggressive autocracy seeking to impose its will on the world.
As I write in my new book, The Wires of War, China has been fighting the United States in the “gray zone” — the murky area between war and peace — for years. Chinese policies have hollowed out America’s industrial base and plundered US intellectual property in an epic case of economic aggression. China is using advanced technologies and control of the internet’s physical infrastructure to spread its geopolitical influence and create an authoritarian techno-bloc that will erode democratic freedoms around the world.
Xi is also trying to overturn the balance of power in Asia through the militarisation of the South China Sea, threats against a democratic Taiwan, violent coercion along the border with India, and other initiatives. He has called China’s relations with the US a “new Long March” — a reference to the Chinese Communist Party’s deadly struggle against its enemies in the 1930s.
This doesn’t just amount to a new cold war; the danger of a real war is also rising. China’s recent test of a hypersonic missile — unsubtly named after the Long March — is part of a decades-long military buildup that has given Beijing the biggest navy and ballistic missile force in the world. US Department of Defense officials have publicly warned that the Chinese military could invade Taiwan in the next half-decade. Taiwan’s defence minister believes China could attempt a “full-scale” invasion by 2025. Not since the height of the US-Soviet rivalry have the risks of great-power military conflict been so high, and yet the United States has only slowly responded to the threat.
The last two administrations have committed to pursuing more competitive policies against China. The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, the new Australia-UK-US defence pact, and other groupings have emerged as multilateral responses to Chinese belligerence. The United States has imposed sanctions on Chinese firms and officials that are implicated in Beijing’s expansion and repression; the Department of Defense is working to develop better options for defending Taiwan.
But as former deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger argues, the United States waited so long to get serious about competition that it now has no time to lose. The fate of Taiwan and the credibility of US power are hanging in suspense as Chinese leaders irrevocably commit to reunification, Chinese ships and planes engage in ever-more-provocative drills, and Chinese troops simulate landings on hostile beaches.
This makes climate a fraught issue. Administration officials initially pledged that Biden would not pull his punches in order to gain China’s cooperation on the environment. Yet China is playing hard to get: Xi isn’t even attending COP26, sending a lower-level official instead.
Moreover, even as Chinese diplomats have dangled green deals in front of their American counterparts, they have insisted that Biden first take “positive actions” such as reducing US support for Taiwan, easing sanctions related to Beijing’s repression in Hong Kong and Xinjiang, and otherwise softening American policies. In other words, China is making diplomatic appeasement the price of collective climate action.
Climate activists, progressive politicians, and even some administration officials might favour making the concessions Beijing wants in order to reach a new global climate agreement. “Nothing less than the future of our planet depends on ending the new Cold War between the United States and China,” one letter signed by 40 progressive organisations declares. “We won’t be able to solve the challenges of the 21st century like the climate crisis and global health unless we have relationships that harness partnerships across the globe, including China,” Democratic Rep. Jamaal Bowman said in agreement. But China should engage in climate negotiations because its people inhabit the same planet — not because the United States bribes Chinese officials with geopolitical concessions.
Nor is there any record of China being moved to action because of US concessions. At the height of so-called US-Chinese engagement in the 2000s, Chinese climate diplomacy remained stubbornly obstructionist. When Chinese climate policy has shifted, it has been because of domestic politics, not foreign influence. The purge of state-owned energy giants’ leadership in 2012 did far more to move climate policy in China than any interventions by the West. Believing that Beijing is waiting for Washington to play nice to get more serious on emissions is not just fatally naive — it seriously underestimates China’s own agency.
In fact, a climate bargain with Beijing wouldn’t be worth much: China has an abysmal record of upholding international agreements — on issues from chemical and biological weapons to the political status of Hong Kong — that the Chinese Communist Party comes to find inconvenient. If the party were authentically serious about making major efforts on climate, it would not have so brutally repressed and intimidated many of the country’s own climate activists.
Most important, a climate deal purchased through appeasement would be a geopolitical debacle. It would harm America’s credibility as a superpower and reinforce perceptions in Asia and around the world that Washington isn’t serious about counterbalancing Beijing’s power. It would be a signal, to America’s allies and the US government, that strategic competition can be deprioritised.
The United States can’t afford to send that message now. As Pentagon war games show, America must rapidly improve its military capabilities in the Western Pacific, or it will be in grave danger of losing a war in the Taiwan Strait, with devastating consequences throughout the region. The United States has only a short period of time in which to prevent China from dominating the world’s communications infrastructure and key technologies. Right now, Washington is vacillating its way to losing a geopolitical competition — and perhaps a military showdown — with Beijing, and thereby sustaining an irreparable blow to the US-led global order.
Climate is undoubtedly an important issue. It requires concerted investments in green energy and other technological innovations. The United States should work with other democratic countries to set aggressive emissions reduction targets — and to collectively pressure China, which falsely portrays itself as a defender of the environment while leading the world in climate pollution, driven mostly through its state-owned energy giants.
In the end, US-China competition is more than a struggle between two countries. It is a struggle between the universal democratic values the United States has long championed and the brutal authoritarianism China is bringing into the digital age. Winning that struggle will require a laser focus on the challenge at hand — and rejecting the allure of declaring peace for our time around a global green deal that emboldens warmongers in Beijing. A green deal for the environment cannot cost the free world a green light for China.
This article originally appeared in Foreign Policy.
Puh-leez Jacob! Universal democratic values upheld by the US? Tell that to the citizens of Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Greece, Haiti…… the list of murderous fascist regimes installed and upheld by the US is endless and includes, for most of its history since 1949, Taiwan. Tell it like it is, not the way the propaganda would like it to be seen.
Exactly. The USA has very little tolerance for any foreign democracy that is not adequately subservient and aligned to the interests of the USA. Whitlam’s government can be added to your list. And many more. Typically the USA much prefers to deal with a friendly dictatorship than a government that might start pying attention to its own people. It’s absolute commitment to Saudi Arabia is sufficient on its own to tell us all we need to know about universal democratic values upheld by the USA.
1.9 tonnes of CO2 per Chinese citizen, 15.5 tonnes per Australian. This is about lifestyles. Why would China tell its citizens they have to lower their lifestyles to reduce carbon, when countries like Australia continue to wallow in carbon?
Not to mention Qatar at 37.29 Tonnes per capita but opps, there is oil involved.
“The United States won’t be able to lead on any global issue, climate included, if it doesn’t defend the international system it has led since World War II against the challenge posed by China.”
Why does the author take it for granted that going to war to “defend” Taiwan is the only credible option for the USA if China uses force to achieve reunification? It is telling that the author, as well using terms like “invasion”, does recognise that China’s aim is reunification. This is not about conquering foreign territory or overthrowing a foreign government. It would not be, for example, like the US-led military assault on Iraq twenty years ago.
The governments of both Taiping and Beijing agree that China includes Taiwan. The essence of their dispute since 1949 is which of those governments should be recognised as the true government of all China. Why the USA or anyone else should get involved is not obvious. How this issue is relevant to the the international system the USA has led since World War II is also obscure.
This is disingenuous. The government of Taiwan (which is in Taipei – Taiping is in China) is stuck with the Jiang Kai-Shek era formulation of one China to rule them all, but all indications are that Taiwan just wants to be left alone.
“Just wants to be left alone”….like Repub states in the US would like to secede from the US…..sheer madness based on unthinking ideology.
Not at all similar. Taiwan virtually is independent, and democratic.
Unfortunately, they’ve been calling themselves the Republic of China Taiwan for too long. A bit late now to start claiming they’re not part of China.
Civil War hasn’t been completed – yet.
A better analogy would be Scotland, which has been part of the Uk for about the same lenght of time that Taiwan has been claimed by China, (though much more consistently). How do you feel about Scottish separatism?
Not a good comparison actually. The UK was formed by war centuries ago. Taiwan was taken over by the Kuomintang after they lost the mainland. Taiwan is part of China. Hopefully, Taiwan will come to its senses and negotiate a “One Country, Two Systems Solution” (And before you bring up Hong Kong, Macao operates quite happily under “One Country, Two Systems” – a fact the WMM conveniently forget) with China. The only difference between Taiwan and the PRC is its political system in reality.
Lexus, once again I must give you a basic lesson in geography and history. Taiwan is an island that has been separated from China for about 10,000 yrs since the early neolithic age. The original inhabitants were not Han and are widely regarded as being the source of the Austronesian peoples throughout south-east Asia from the Philippines to the Malay archipelago, even extending to New Zealand.
From the beginning they have been subject to invasion and colonisation by the Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese and Japanese all of which they have bravely resisted. The most recent invasion/colonisation was made by the Chinese dictator Chiang Kai-shek and his son, Chiang Ching-kuo, the latter opening the door to democracy which the Taiwanese people have taken full advantage of.by rejecting both Chiang Kai-shek’s KMT and supporting the DPP which has courageously rejected China’s threats at invasion and re-colonisation.
Please take the time to familiarise yourself with historical facts instead of mindlessly parroting CCP bs so I don’t have to waste more time educating you.
That’s a ludicrous analogy. The UK was formed by the parliaments of Scotland and of England agreeing to merge their sovereignty in 1707 to form the United Kingdom. The clue is in the name. The UK has never ‘claimed’ Scotland. The UK did not exist before the merger. China is quite different.
Yes, my mistake, I meant Taipei.
Taiwan is indeed stuck with formulation that emerged from the civil war. That’s the point. Just wishing the world would be different than it is will not help.
I’m not saying independence is likely, just morally justifiable.
As I spruik in my new book…
“Chinese policies have hollowed out America’s industrial base…” – did the Yellow Peril infiltrate under cover of night and carry it away?
If so they would have had to fight off the US mercantile class’ decades long determination to export every job they could to a low wage economy.
The rest of this piece, replete with rhetorical scare quotes and far too many adjectives & purple passages, was just standard Beltway tripe.
Just another advertorial, like Fray’s wine club selection – when will the astrology & agony aunt column follow?
Nice summary.
A nice example of the slanted crap Foreign Policy can deliver up at times. They can also print decent analysis as well, but this was not it. I think the key take away is that the author of the article has a book coming out that he is trying to plug.