Slip-up or signal? What US official’s ‘clash of civilisations’ remarks suggest
- Comments by Kiron Skinner of the State Department, whether authorised or not, are consistent with Trump administration thinking, analysts say
- The comments, and the administration’s stance, stand in sharp contrast to China’s competing vision of civilisation, which it touts as being more inclusive
When senior Trump administration official Kiron Skinner settled into her chair before a largely sympathetic crowd on a Washington panel a few weeks ago, she had little idea how quickly her words would reverberate beyond the cosy think tank world, across the American plains and out over the Pacific.
Skinner, the US State Department’s policy planning director, was the last speaker in a long day at the annual Future Security Forum, a foreign policy seminar on global challenges sponsored by the New America think tank. After the usual pleasantries, she turned her attention to Washington’s growing competition with China.
Rivalry with Beijing is “a fight with a really different civilisation and a different ideology, and the United States hasn’t had that before”, she said, before adding that this would be “the first time that we will have a great power competitor that is not Caucasian”.
The racial and civilisational framing by a senior administration official – who is herself African-American – has fuelled distrust at a time when the trade war between the world’s two largest economies is ratcheting up, roiling markets and endangering global economic growth. And there’s little sign of a truce any time soon.
Earlier this month, US President Donald Trump announced ramped-up tariffs on US$200 billion worth of Chinese goods, prompting Beijing to respond with higher tariffs of its own on US$60 billion worth of US products.
Washington quickly followed with tough new restrictions on Chinese telecoms giant Huawei Technologies.
