Chinese President Xi Jinping shakes hands with U.S. Vice President Joe Biden (L) inside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing December 4, 2013.
Lintao Zhang | Reuters
Who is going to organize the world? And what forces and whose interests will shape the global future?
Those were the underlying questions behind two events this past week, one in Washington and the other in Beijing, that set the stage for the geopolitical contest of our times.
The DC piece was President Joe Biden’s release of the “Interim National Security Strategic Guidance,” unprecedented at this stage in a new administration. Biden’s purpose was to provide early clarity about how he intends to set and execute priorities in a fast-changing world.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken laid out the thinking behind the guidance in his first major speech since entering office. It was a compelling one, underscoring the urgent need to shore up U.S. democracy and revitalize America’s alliances and partnerships.
“Whether we like it or not, the world doesn’t organize itself,” Blinken said. “When the U.S. pulls back, one of two things is likely to happen: either another country tries to take our place, but not in a way that advances our interests and values; or maybe just as bad, no one steps up, and then we get chaos and all the dangers it creates. Either way, that’s not good for America.”
Relations with China, which Blinken called “the biggest geopolitical test of the 21st century,” are the wrench in this organizational thinking.
Said Blinken: “China is the only country with the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to seriously challenge the stable and open international system – all the rules, values and relationships that make the world work the way we want it to, because it ultimately serves the interests and reflects the values of the American people.”
Biden’s biggest departure from the Trump approach to China is the emphasis on working with partners and allies. This week’s move by the U.S. and European Union to ease trade tensions, suspending a long list of tariffs and the Airbus-Boeing dispute of government subsidies, underscores President Biden’s seriousness of purpose.
Unsurprisingly, Beijing is offering up a different of view of the future around the second key event this past week, the National People’s Congress that convened Friday and will continue this coming week.
President Xi sees the momentum on Beijing’s side in a world where “the East is rising, and the West is declining.” His argument is that China offers order in contrast to the United States’ chaos, and effective governance in contrast to Washington’s ineffectiveness, demonstrated by how much better it has handled the pathogen it unleashed.
Xi’s most comprehensive swipe at how China would organize the world came in late January at this year’s virtually convened World Economic Forum. The speech’s title underscored its all-embracing ambition: “Let the Torch of Multilateralism Light up Humanity’s Way Forward.”
If the Biden vision is for the U.S. to create a band of reinvigorated democratic sisters and brothers, inspired by a revitalized United States, Xi’s vision is for a world where everyone’s political system, culture and society are its own business.
In this world, America’s value judgments are passé.
The subtext for Xi is simple. How countries organize themselves internally, along with whatever authoritarian strictures and human rights violations that includes —whether it be against the Uighur minority in Xinjiang province, democracy activists in Hong Kong, or perhaps even ultimately concerning Taiwan’s independence —just is not Washington’s business.
“Each country is unique with its own history, culture and social system, and none is superior to the other,” Xi told the virtual Davos crowd. “The best criteria are whether a country’s history, culture and social system fit its particular situation, enjoy people’s support, serve to deliver political stability …” Xi made clear this approach is meant to “avoid meddling in other countries’ internal affairs.”
By contrast, President Biden wrote, in a letter that accompanied the strategic guidance this week, “I firmly believe that democracy holds the key to freedom, prosperity, peace and dignity … We must provide that our model isn’t a relic of history; it’s the single best way to realize the promise of our future. And if we work together with our democratic partners, with strength and confidence, we will meet every challenge and outpace every challenger.”
The context for these competing visions was this week’s release of Freedom House’s annual survey that said, “less than 20 percent of the world’s population now lives in a Free country, the smallest proportion since 1995.”
In the study, called “Democracy Under Siege,” Sarah Repucci and Amy Slipowitz wrote, “as a lethal pandemic, economic and physical insecurity, and violent conflict ravaged the world in 2020, democracy’s defenders sustained heavy new losses in their struggle against authoritarian foes, shifting the international balance in favor of tyranny.”
It was the 15th successive year in which countries with declines in political rights and civil liberties outnumber those with gains. The report said that nearly 75% of the world’s population lived in a country that faced a deterioration of democratic freedoms last year.
It may seem this is absolutely the wrong time to expect the world’s democracies to rally to shape the global order. Yet just the opposite is true: at a time when democracy is being tested across the world, what better time to work together to address the challenges and ensure the global gains of freedom of the past 75 years don’t continue to erode.
Chastened by the global situation, the Biden administration knows its work must begin at home. Blinken also was modest in how the United States would go about advancing democracy.
“We will use the power of our example,” he said. “We will encourage others to make key reforms, overturn bad laws, fight corruption and stop unjust practices. We will incentivize democratic behavior.”
What the U.S. won’t do is promote democracy “through costly military interventions,” said Blinken, “or by attempting to overthrow authoritarian regimes by force. We have tried these tactics in the past. However well intentioned, they haven’t worked.”
In the end, the world is not going to be organized either by Chinese or American fiat, but rather by a concert of national interests, influenced by the trajectory of the world’s two leading powers.
Xi’s bet is that China’s momentum is unstoppable, that the world is sufficiently transactional, and that his economy has become indispensable to most U.S. allies. President Biden must not only shift that narrative but also work in common cause to reverse the reality of democratic weakening.
Frederick Kempe is a best-selling author, prize-winning journalist and president & CEO of the Atlantic Council, one of the United States’ most influential think tanks on global affairs. He worked at The Wall Street Journal for more than 25 years as a foreign correspondent, assistant managing editor and as the longest-serving editor of the paper’s European edition. His latest book – “Berlin 1961: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth” – was a New York Times best-seller and has been published in more than a dozen languages. Follow him on Twitter @FredKempe and subscribe here to Inflection Points, his look each Saturday at the past week’s top stories and trends.
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