The USA and China are now locked in shadow boxing to impress their respective domestic audience and also allies. This is the inescapable conclusion one can draw from the US President Joe Biden’s newly released National Security Strategy (NSS) and China’s President Xi Jinping’s inaugural address at the ongoing Chinese Communist Party’s 20th party congress. The NSS identifies China as the country’s main foe. On the other side, Xi refers to machinations of the US and its allies to “destabilize” world order through their interference in other countries’ affairs.
The release of the NSS was delayed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and as such it includes Russia as a threat to European security. But, it reveals the Biden administration’s long term goal is how to deal with a rising China. The US believes, as the NSS makes it clear, the autocracies in China and Russia are “working overtime to undermine democracy and export a model of governance marked by repression at home and coercion abroad”.
China and Russia, in turn, view America’s “rules-based international system” as an embodiment of US imperialism. As such they regard US strategic containment, military buildup, alliance formation and expansion with alarm and hostility that, in their opinion, will certainly undermine the cooperation and coordination needed to meet global challenges.
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The US strategy blueprint considers Russia as a disruptive threat which has the potential to plunge Europe into a grave crisis. This could be a reference to Putin’s nuclear posturing over Ukraine. It warns that the threat could grow in direct proportion to the defeats inflicted on Russian forces on the battlefield in Ukraine. “Russia’s conventional military will have been weakened, which will likely increase Moscow’s reliance on nuclear weapons in its military planning,” the strategy document warns.
Putin has threatened to use ‘all means’ to defend Russian territory, in which he included Crimea, annexed in 2014, and four Ukrainian regions he claims to have annexed during the invasion now, though Ukraine is fighting to regain the territories. The reference in the NSS to this development has been necessitated by the US’ anxiety to allay Ukraine’s fears. In a reassuring message to Ukraine the document asserts that the USA will not allow Russia, or any power, to achieve its objectives through using, or threatening to use, nuclear weapons.
Interestingly, the foreword Biden has written to the NSS document makes a clear distinction between the types of threats posed by Moscow and Beijing. Russia, in his assessment, poses an immediate threat to the “free and open international system” by flouting the basic international laws as is amply demonstrated in its ‘brutal war of aggression’ against Ukraine.
But, the USA’s real duel, though verbal at this stage, is with China. Biden states China is the only country with the twin objectives to redraw the international order and increasingly the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to advance its agenda of global domination. Hence, the policy document brands Beijing as “America’s most consequential geopolitical challenge”.
China has an estimated 350 nuclear warheads compared with 5,977 in Russia’s stockpile, against the US inventory of 5,428. The Pentagon’s calculation is that the Chinese force will grow to more than 1,000 warheads by 2030, making it a third major nuclear power.
US watchers are worried about the reference to nuclear warheads since it can be construed as a broad hint that the USA may have a rethink about the size of its nuclear arsenal. This appears to be a precursor to a fresh arms race. It contradicts the NSS’s objective of building a “free, open, prosperous, and secure international order” where people can “enjoy their basic, universal rights and freedoms”.
There is grave doubt about achieving such a noble goal when the US already spends more on its military than the next nine biggest spenders, seven of which, minus China and Russia, are its allies.
The USA and China seem to be more interested at this stage in a war of words instead of translating their words into action.
