How the Biden team thinks about a US-China 'competition' without end

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2024-03-31 22:30:04

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Competition, it is safe to say, is the dominant framework adopted by the Biden administration when discussing relations with China. Nowhere is this more clear than in National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan’s recent lead essay in Foreign Affairs, “ The Sources of American Power.” In reviewing the two governments’ most authoritative statements on bilateral ties before a number of upcoming US-China dialogues and scholarly discussions, I find myself asking what it is Washington thinkers and officials mean by competition. The answer is perhaps less obvious than one might expect.

Sullivan is probably the single most consequential thinker and actor in the Biden administration’s foreign policy. 1 A key aide to Biden as vice president, Obama as president, and Clinton as secretary of state and presidential candidate, Sullivan is a figure who ties it all together in foreign, and increasingly domestic, policy. His essay is by no means the only word on Biden’s China policy, with important speeches by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other cabinet members, significant statements by NSC Indo-Pacific Coordinator Kurt Campbell, and of course the president’s own words; but this is a carefully crafted recent text that specifically asserts a new era of competition. So what can we understand from it?