Listen to what US officials are saying and the divisive politics is clear

From Blinken’s implicit on-the-menu threat and Burns’ China-bashing, to Raimondo’s iPhone-on-wheels concerns, US politics, whether foreign or domestic, is looking divisive, racist, arbitrary and counterproductive

Xu Xiaobing

Published: 8:30pm, 22 Mar 2024

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Recent remarks by top US officials have attracted extensive attention. Last month, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said at the Munich Security Conference that the Biden administration has “made an investment, a reinvestment, in our alliances, in our partnerships, and in the multilateral system”.

He added: “We’ve seen our comparative advantage as having a strong network of voluntary alliances, voluntary partnerships. If you’re not at the table in the international system, you’re going to be on the menu”.

There was immediate debate on what he meant by “the multilateral system” and “the table in the international system”. Some argued that they refer to the multilateralism based on the Paris climate agreement and the United Nations family.

It is true that President Joe Biden on his first day in office ordered the United States to rejoin the Paris Agreement, and his climate envoy John Kerry wasted no time urging China to toughen up its emissions targets. And last July, nearly six years after withdrawing from Unesco, the US officially returned to compete with China’s influence there.

But with most states already in these multilateral systems, a warning to be at the table or risk being on the menu seems pointless. Therefore, the “table in the international system” must refer to the old path of bloc confrontation, replete with “voluntary alliances and partnerships” such as Nato in Europe, the US-Israel alliance in the Middle East, or the Aukus pact and Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) in the Asia-Pacific.

Indeed, the US relied heavily on these in supporting Ukraine’s resistance against Russia, siding with Israel to suppress the Palestinians, and competing fiercely against China. So for the US, the threat of being on the menu makes sense.

But is this old tactic a panacea for the global chaos today? Or is it time to reflect on why Nato, the strongest military alliance on earth, can’t seem to put an end to the war in Ukraine after all this time despite a much-weakened Russia? Or why the US-Israel alliance, with its overwhelming military power, has not stopped Hamas from fighting fearlessly for a better Palestinian future?

Similarly, is it worth risking one’s neck in the hope that the Aukus and Quad alliances can deter a rising China from defending its sovereignty and territorial integrity in Taiwan and elsewhere?

If Blinken’s seeming threat is divisive, then US ambassador to China Nicholas Burns’ statement last month that “we don’t want to live in a world where the Chinese are the dominant country” sounds racist. During his CBS interview, Burns insisted China wanted to overtake the US as the dominant country, and “we don’t want that to happen”.

Having lived in Beijing since March 2022, Burns did not appear to be complaining that his life and duty in the Chinese capital brought little joy and comfort. Rather, he was expressing mainstream US public opinion towards China.

Burns’ situation reminds me of John Leighton Stuart, who became the US ambassador to China on July 11, 1946, and left China three years later on August 2, 1949. Like Stuart during his time as ambassador in Beijing, Burns has been able to do very little at a time of stormy relations between the US and China. Stuart became famous in China after Mao Zedong wrote an op-ed for Xinhua headlined “Farewell, Leighton Stuart”.

Burns must know China was among the world’s top economies for centuries during ancient times. But his lifelong experience is of US domination. He and hundreds of millions of fellow Americans believe US power can make a difference.

Such a belief has largely justified America’s behaviour towards China in recent years. This includes the trade war it launched, the sanctions against Huawei Technologies and the continuing TikTok saga. Last month, the Biden administration announced an unprecedented investigation into Chinese-made “smart cars”, citing potential national security risks.

China’s rise as world’s green factory has put West on the back foot

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo wasted no time in underlining the dangers, saying in a TV interview that, given how the modern car is “like an iPhone on wheels”, Chinese cars could collect data on Americans and send them back to Beijing. If there were millions of Chinese cars on US roads, she said, one could “imagine a world where with a flip of a switch all of those cars could be disabled”.

One imagines that Raimondo’s logic – that iPhone-like smart cars are a threat because they can potentially gather data and use this, and that they are a risk because they can be disabled just like that – must make the likes of Apple and Tesla uncomfortable as well.

From Blinken’s implicit on-the-menu threat and Burns’ China-bashing, to Raimondo’s iPhone-on-wheels concerns, American politics, whether foreign or domestic, is looking divisive, racist, arbitrary and counterproductive.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks at the Third Summit for Democracy in Seoul on March 18. Blinken’s remarks at the Munich Security Conference last month, that one is either at the table or on the menu, could be perceived as a veiled threat. Photo: Pool via AFP

As a final example, take the US State Department briefing on February 26. When it was put to spokesman Matthew Miller that the US had “so much leverage” over Israel that it could exert pressure to push through humanitarian aid plans and even the two-state solution, Miller responded diplomatically: “The United States does not dictate to Israel what it must do, just as we don’t dictate to any country what it must do...”

Before he could finish, however, one reporter interrupted with “unless you invade them”, prompting laughter in the room. Miller smiled, shaking his head, and said “good one” – before dismissing it all as “stand-up hour” in the briefing room.

Xu Xiaobing is director of the Centre of International Law Practice at Shanghai Jiao Tong University Law School