My Take | Washington blames Beijing for everything, even the ‘debt ceiling’

In Washington these days, “China” is a curse word that is cited as an excuse for everything. So, however implausibly, two leading Democrat figures have warned of the dire consequences of the US Congress failing to lift the debt ceiling, by calling out China. Seriously! I am sure Beijing will be blamed for Joe Biden’s creeping senility soon – perhaps by casting an ancient Chinese spell.

Before the Senate Armed Services Committee last week, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines warned that China and Russia would exploit the situation if the US government defaulted on its debt.

She said it was “almost a certainty” that the two countries would exploit such an event for propaganda purposes through “information operations” and cite it as evidence that the US political system was dysfunctional.

Nevertheless, she admitted it was mostly her own guess because the US intelligence community, of which she is ultimately in charge, had not come up with an independent assessment. Even so, she believed such a default would create “global uncertainty” about the value of the dollar, US leadership and American institutions.

I agree with Haines. Moscow and Beijing would certainly cite such a historic debt default, which would indeed roil the global capital markets, as evidence of US political dysfunction, if not self-destructiveness. The thing is that every other country would arrive at the same conclusion because it’s not disinformation or propaganda – it would simply be true.

But Haines is not alone. A few weeks ago, in an op-ed titled “Republicans Are Playing into the Hands of Putin and Xi” – yes, seriously – former US secretary of state and failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton made the same warning.