On Balance | China-Russia ties expose a Republican foreign policy blind spot
- The Republican Party has been tough on China but appears to be finding it harder to reconcile that with Beijing’s closeness to Moscow amid the Ukraine war
- Over time, Republicans seem poised to abandon traditional foreign policy positions aligned with a liberal world order
How does one proceed in portraying China as the most pressing threat facing the US, which has been a political imperative for both American political parties in recent years, when Russia continues to integrate its economy with China’s while trying to bombard its neighbour into submission?
To get into this, let’s be clear about the Republican Party’s new ideological foundation: the liberal international order that the party’s earlier incarnation forged over decades – where free markets and civil society initiatives have broadened political power bases throughout the West – is now seen by the party of today as more dangerous than anything that Moscow and Beijing might have done to undermine it.
In other words, better to strangle independent media and a judiciary that might question efforts to subvert elections as well as regularly employ Nazi rhetoric than to allow transgender people to use bathrooms that align with their gender identity.