U.S. President Joe Biden’s much-touted National Security Strategy (NSS) – or "the Biden doctrine" as some analysts love to call it – does not contain anything that should be categorized as a “surprise.” Especially given the last two years of Biden’s handling of global affairs, particularly Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the stressful duel with Beijing over the Taiwan issue after U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to the self-ruled island.
Technically speaking, the NSS is an abridged collection of selective points borrowed from different doctrines of Biden's predecessors. The 48-page document, a glamorous combination of ideology and pragmatism, encompasses two basic elements of national security: The gravest challenges and threats – internal and external – being faced by the United States and proposed action plans to tackle those challenges. The most striking part of the Biden doctrine is the categorization of “threats” to American interests into two subsets: Specific geopolitical threats from China and Russia, and a broader set of non-specific global threats such as terrorism, arms control and nonproliferation, pandemics and biodefense, climate and energy security, food security and so on.
Interestingly, China, which is referred to as the People's Republic of China (PRC) in most places in this document, is allotted the largest space in the NSS – in terms of word count – as the biggest threat and competitor to America’s global vision. No other topic in the document has been given as much attention as China being the key challenger to the United States. Even a cursory glance at the text of the NSS would reveal that a fierce China phobia has enveloped American policymakers and they have gradually “upgraded” China to the position of their top adversary in the global political arena.
The timing of the release of the NSS, which was issued just four days ahead of the inaugural session of the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, was a blatant attempt by the White House to deliberately irritate the Chinese leadership. In addition to Pelosi’s highly controversial trip to Taipei, which added new bitterness in Sino-U.S. relations, this was the second most provocative action by the Biden administration in the last few months that instigated Beijing. It was an attempt by the hawkish elements in the Biden administration to keep the Sino-U.S. tension at a high voltage at a time when Democrats were finding it hard to bolster their dwindling chances in the midterm elections for Congress.
More interestingly, President Biden issued an interim NSS in March 2021, and until now, this ad hoc document was very much in place, so there was no apparent rush to release the NSS at this time when the entire Chinese leadership was about to inaugurate the crucial session of the National Congress. A purposeful provocation on the part of the Biden team, for sure. “Our strategy toward the PRC is threefold: first, to invest in the foundations of our strength at home – our competitiveness, our innovation, our resilience, our democracy; secondly, to align our efforts with our network of allies and partners, acting with a common purpose and in common cause, and third, compete responsibly with the PRC to defend our interests and build our vision for the future,” is how the NSS describes the tripod of the Biden administration’s strategy to counter Beijing’s ambitions to “become the world’s leading power.”
The three elements of Biden’s strategy towards Beijing – invest, align and compete – are not new words for the Chinese, President Biden has been chanting this mantra for quite some time.
In fact, while addressing a session organized by the Asia Society at George Washington University on May 26, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken for the first time comprehensively exposed the basic contours of the current thinking in the White House on China. In his speech, Blinkin also used the same phrase “invest, align and compete” to describe the main planks of the government’s new China policy.
The NSS, it appears, has further validated this strategy that revolves around a domestic technological revival – an indirect indication that the Biden administration has a similar approach to former U.S. President Donald Trump to counter the ever-increasing Chinese technological leadership by strengthening the American domestic technological infrastructure.
The NSS further corroborates the fact that American policymakers have now accepted two undeniable realities about China: First, China is the only power that has the financial and military muscle to challenge Washington’s influence in the global power structure; and second, Washington does not have enough leverage to change China and its system in the near future. That is why we see a rather “reluctant” adherence to the “one-China” policy in the NSS, despite wholehearted support for Taiwan’s claim to self-defense.
The document also used very explicit words in describing the nature and scope of competition with China: “In the competition with the PRC, as in other arenas, it is clear that the next ten years will be the decisive decade. We stand now at the inflection point, where the choices we make and the priorities we pursue today will set us on a course that determines our competitive position long into the future.”
While toeing the same line as previous administrations, the draft of the NSS has relegated Russia to second position on the list of opponents in the global power structure. This is also in conjunction with the approval of NATO's Strategic Concept at the Madrid summit in July, a key policy document of NATO’s defense and security vision that is revised every 10 years to keep it on par with changing global security needs. The new Strategic Concept embodies a paradigm shift in NATO’s deterrence and defense with a special focus on the evolving new threats and challenges, particularly terrorism, cyberattacks and hybrid warfare.
However, there is a totally new element in this Strategic Concept and that is related to China, which is being mentioned in official NATO documents as a “challenge” to the alliance’s interest, security and values for the first time.
The mention of the “China threat” in NATO’s strategy document as well as the NSS heralds a new kind of Cold War between the West and Beijing in the coming days. However, a Cold War-like campaign against Beijing would not likely work as it did with the Soviet Union in the past. There is one fundamental difference between today’s China and the Soviet Union – or present-day Russia for that matter.
With the exception of the few outposts like Cuba and Vietnam, the influence of the Soviet Union – Russia – was confined to a well-demarcated geography and it was much easier for the U.S. – and NATO – to monitor and control it. Furthermore, most importantly, the Soviet Union and its satellites were not part of the global trading and commercial community and they had little or negligible impact on global trade and the economy at that time. On the other hand, today’s China is an entirely different entity. China’s trading and commercial influence is not confined to any geographical boundary.
China’s financial influence is palpable in every corner of this the globe, even in the remotest islands of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. As far as modern and hybrid warfare and military capability are concerned, China is fast competing with the U.S. and its allies in the domain of military hardware. For four years, in his self-proclaimed trade war against China, Trump tried everything from smashing high tariffs to imposing restrictions on Chinese goods. But nothing worked for him. The Chinese counteroffensive, it appears, is multilayered and multipronged.
China has modified and improved its economic defense shield as per the changing global political and economic situation. The preexisting self-reliance strategy is now being “coupled” with the fast internationalization of the yuan as the key thrust of the Chinese model to compete with the dollar-dependent global economic framework. China is well prepared to counter the so-called containment strategy of the U.S.: Introducing the yuan-base trading system, replacing “gas yuan” with petrodollars, switching from SWIFT to CIPS and strengthening its maritime power by acquiring controlling rights in major ports across the globe. Indubitably, China is in a position to manage and control – and even disrupt – the global supply chain as per its whims.
The NSS has candidly acknowledged the fact the PRC is now central to the global economy – accepting that China is not the Soviet Union. Washington cannot afford a new protracted Cold War with Beijing at this stage. Though the document also mentions some broader global subjects, including the climate, pandemics and nonproliferation, where the United States is willing to work together with China, on the whole, the tone of the NSS is thickly laced with the China threat – indicating more acrimonious Sino-U.S. ties in the future.
