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Macroscope | Why Biden’s plan to ‘gang up’ on China could backfire badly on the US
- If US-centred coalitions are the way forward, then China-centred coalitions are the obvious response, leaving nations caught in the middle and trade disrupted
- Beijing is likely to scale up its challenge to US domination rather than backing down
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The sigh of relief when Joe Biden became US president was palpable. Domestic and global divisions that had been fostered by Donald (the “destroyer”) Trump could, it seemed, be healed and the world could set course towards solving universal problems like pandemics and global warming.
It seems, alas, that this is not to be. No one expected Biden to heal social and political divisions in his own country overnight but there were high hopes that he could prevent the wider world from splitting into two economic and geopolitical halves – an “Amerisphere” and a “Sinosphere”.
Instead, the Biden administration has chosen to build coalitions against China – nominally among those who believe in political freedom and democracy against a repressive autocracy but, in reality, as a means to stem the economic and technological onslaught of the Chinese challenge.
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This “ganging up” (politely termed a coalition of like-minded nations) cannot but fail to hinder progress, not only on meeting massive global challenges (such as global warming and disease) but also on rationalising world trade and economic systems.
It is as though the new US president had decided to stave off a possible future resurgence of Trumpism by making his truculent predecessor a senior adviser in the Oval Office. It is also as though Biden had sacrificed a vision of peaceful coexistence with China for cold war political expediency.
This may work in terms of buying time for the US to begin emulating China’s progress in building global supply chains and hard infrastructure – areas where it has fallen badly behind in economic and geostrategic terms – but that can only be at the cost of finding a lasting East-West modus vivendi.
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