President Joe Biden has strengthened his foreign policy team with several experts on Asia – a move analysts said signals renewed efforts to raise the US’s standing in a region where China’s influence is growing.
The Biden government has identified an emerging and more confident China as one of its greatest foreign policy challenges, highlighting the importance of allies in responding to strategic competition in Beijing.
China Policy in 2021 I think it will actually be about ally policy.
Scott Kennedy
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Some analysts pointed out that Kurt Campbell was named Indo-Pacific Coordinator for National Security Council affairs to reaffirm Biden’s intention to focus more on the region and strengthen ties with its allies there.
The Indo-Pacific generally refers to the region between the Indian and Pacific Oceans bounded by Japan, India, and Australia.
Campbell is known to many governments in Asia for having served as Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs under former President Barack Obama. He has been widely credited with being the lynchpin of the Obama administration in Asia – a strategy that stalled during Donald Trump’s tenure.
Campbell, along with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, is expected to play an important role in shaping the Biden government’s policy towards Asia, and China in particular.
The flags of the USA and China.
Holger Gogolin | iStock | Getty Images
“I think China policy in 2021 is actually about allies,” said Scott Kennedy, Senior Advisor and Trustee Chair for Chinese Economics at the Think Tank Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“I think we’ll see Secretary of State Antony Blinken … National Security Advisor Sullivan and Kurt Campbell spend much of their time not engaging China directly but engaging allies in Asia and Europe for China,” he said in CSIS. Asia forecast webinar last week.
This would be in contrast to Trump’s preferred approach of confronting Beijing largely unilaterally – which produced little results, Kennedy added.
Possible US strategy in the Indo-Pacific
While the Biden administration has not provided a foreign policy blueprint for Asia, Campbell provided some insight into an article he co-wrote for Foreign Affairs Magazine last month.
The article was published on Jan. 12, a day before Campbell’s appointment was published and about a week before Biden was sworn in. The Indo-Pacific region faces two “specific” challenges: the rise of China’s economy and military, and a retreating US
“This combination of Chinese assertiveness and US ambivalence got the region moving,” wrote Campbell in the Jan. 12 article with Rush Doshi, who also served as China director on the National Security Council in the Biden administration.
“If the next US government is to maintain the regional operating system that has created peace and unprecedented prosperity, it must first address each of these trends in turn,” the authors say.
The article outlined three strategies the US could pursue in the coming years.
Militarily, Washington should deviate from its “unique focus on priority” and “expensive and vulnerable platforms” like aircraft carriers, it said.
Instead, the authors said the US should invest in the “relatively inexpensive and asymmetrical capabilities” Beijing has long used, such as cruise and ballistic missiles and submarines – which “would make Chinese calculations difficult and force Beijing to reassess whether risky provocations would be successful “.
This combination of Chinese assertiveness and US ambivalence got the region moving.
Kurt Campbell and Rush Doshi
Articles on foreign affairs
Second, the US should be serious about re-conquering the Indo-Pacific region, wrote Campbell and Doshi. That means showing up at regional summits and stepping up cooperation with regional countries while convincing Beijing of the benefits of following the rules, they added.
Finally, Washington should be flexible as it builds relationships in the region, the article says. That means opting for tailor-made or ad hoc bodies that focus on specific topics – rather than forming a “grand coalition” for everything, it said.
Relations between the US and China under Biden
Biden and his team have started connecting with allies in the Asia Pacific region.
The president spoke to Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga last week and had phone calls this week with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, according to the White House.
Meanwhile, Blinken has spoken to its counterparts in Japan, South Korea, Australia, the Philippines and Thailand since its confirmation last week, according to analysts at consulting firm Eurasia Group.
“The top priority of Biden’s team is to contact US allies and key countries in Asia to strengthen US security and diplomatic commitments in the region,” the analysts wrote in a report last week.
“This is the first step in an approach to China that will focus on strengthening these relationships and building coalitions,” they added.
For its part, China has signaled its willingness to work with the new US administration to put the two countries’ relationship back on the “right track”.
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