Joe Biden’s Great American Strategic Clarification Vis-à-Vis China.
The great strategic showdown of the 21st century has well and truly begun between America and China.
International relations are always unpredictable. Why is that? Because they are not always based on rational decisions. In August 2021, when the Americans, without having bothered to consult their allies, left Kabul in a panic reminiscent of their evacuation from Saigon in April 1975, few people did not conclude that the United States was making a strategic withdrawal.
Didn't Jake Sullivan, the new National Security Advisor, announce, shortly before Joe Biden's inauguration in the White House, that his foreign policy would aim above all to “satisfy the aspirations of the American middle class”?
French President Emmanuel Macron presented his response to such an American strategic withdrawal in the fall of 2021: "European strategic autonomy”.
This was the program the French president wanted to sell to his counterparts in the European Union, which France was preparing to preside over as of January 1, 2022. But then a totally irrational - and therefore unpredictable - decision was taken by a major nuclear power, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, which turned everything upside down.
By deciding to invade Ukraine on February 24, 2022, President Vladimir Putin not only violated the UN Charter and traumatized a people he called “brothers”. He has also deeply compromised the short, medium, and long-term interests of Russia. Finally, he has awakened the American strategists as never before.
On May 23, 2022, in Tokyo, during a joint press conference with the Japanese Prime Minister, American President Joe Biden made a spectacular strategic clarification. When asked by a reporter if America would intervene militarily on behalf of Taiwan if the island were attacked by Communist Chinese forces, Joe Biden calmly replied with one word: “Yes!”.
Here ended a “strategic ambiguity” that had lasted for almost half a century.
What a change! In December 2021, the president had seen fit to specify that the United States would not go to war against Russia in case the latter attacked Ukraine. This was probably to “satisfy the American middle class” because the basis of the strategy is to conceal one's intentions from one's opponent.
But when the Ukrainians showed their will and ability to resist, Joe Biden adapted very quickly and provided exceptional military aid to the attacked country. Which was able to ridicule the Russian army on several occasions. If Ukraine does not belong to NATO, its territory has never been so militarily NATOized!
Vladimir Putin has managed to resurrect Nato, which Emmanuel Macron had diagnosed as “brain dead” in December 2019.
Now, in Asia, things are also clear. While the Americans recognize since 1978 that there is only one China, they are nevertheless ready to militarily prevent the Communist dictatorship in Beijing from taking back Taiwan by force. Distant 170 km from the Chinese coast, the island, as big as half of Ireland, but five times more populated, has a real democratic life. It is also the world's largest and best producer of electronic chips.
Caught up in their Middle Eastern affairs, Presidents Bush and Obama had not been able to show themselves firm enough towards the Chinese communists, not only in the face of their plundering of American technology but also in the face of their naval expansionism in the South China Sea. Taking advantage of American indifference, the soldiers of the People's Liberation Army took possession of uninhabited reefs far off the coast of Vietnam and the Philippines. They then reclaimed them to build airfields, place missiles, and land strategic bombers with the red star and yellow ideogram.
Donald Trump was the first American president to publicly bang his fist against Beijing's failure to respect intellectual property rights. He then prevented the Chinese telecom giant Huawei from taking over the 5G markets in the United States and its European allies. But history will credit Joe Biden with being the first president to issue a clear, unambiguous policy to stop Chinese strategic expansion. Beijing's semi-alignment with Moscow in the Ukrainian crisis has considerably hardened the American position.
To block Chinese expansion, the Americans have been able to rally their allies in the Quad (the democratic powers of Asia-Pacific). Japan, Australia, and India have undertaken unprecedented rearmament efforts. South Korea will join them.
The great strategic showdown of the 21st century has well and truly begun between America and China.
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