Can U.S. Domestic Politics Cope With a Falling China?

Or will the 2024 election scuttle a needed strategy of strategic patience?

By Daniel Drezner, Professor of International Politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy

Two days ago the hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World made the case for the recognition that perhaps China had peaked. You can read that argument here. 

Yesterday the hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World argued that if China’s rise has plateaued and seems to be reversing, the best thing the United States can do is pursue a policy of strategic patience. Counter China in areas where the stakes are high, like leading-edge technological innovation. Do not, however, needlessly roil China’s increasingly anxious leadership cadre. You can read that argument here. 

I thought I was done with this analysis, but over at BlueSky Richard Maass asks a pertinent question: “{it is] hard to be optimistic about [U.S. foreign policy’s] chances of optimism heading into a presidential election year.” Maass suggested, “this series needs part three on [U.S. foreign policy] + domestic politics.”

You know what? That’s a fair question! So let’s do part three.

To be clear: for the purposes of this post I am taking it as given that Chinese power has peaked and that the optimal U.S. response would be one of strategic patience. If, dear reader, you want to dispute those givens, go click on those posts and note your objections in the comments. 

Could the 2024 election throw a monkey wrench into all of this? It is easy to see how. One could argue that Trump’s 2016 election kicked off a six-year outbidding cycle in which Democrats and Republicans fell all over each other trying to state that their party was going to be tougher on China. This has cemented the hawk bias pretty deep inside the Beltway. The balloon hysteria from earlier this year crystallized this kind of thinking. 

The Biden administration has contributed its fair share of China hawkery during that time. To its credit, however, they seem to be course-correcting, recognizing the need to erect a solid floor to Sino-American relations. The open Sino-American relationship of the 1990s is long past, but ensuring that tensions do not escalate beyond a certain point makes sense. For the next year, Biden can campaign on getting tough on China while still arguing that the relationship need not deteriorate any further. Indeed, he can even go so far as to cite the recent data and point out that Americans do not need to fear China.

The problem is on the GOP side of the ledger. For all the loose talk from gulliblewishcasters about how Republicans under Trump have shifted towards a more dovish foreign policy position, the truth is that the #MAGA crowd is now more hawkish than John Bolton. As Reason’s Matt Welch noted back in May, most of the top GOP candidates have promised to invade Mexico. The first GOP debate merely cemented that impression. Heck, Florida governor Ron DeSantis promised to use military forceagainst Mexico on day one of his presidency. 

If this is their rhetoric towards Mexico, one can only imagine the campaign rhetoric about China. Actually, you don’t need to imagine. Here are snippets from some of them:

• NIKKI HALEY: “These green subsidies that Biden has put in, all he’s done is help China because he doesn’t understand all these electric vehicles that he’s done, half of the batteries for electric vehicles are made in China. And so that’s not helping the environment. You’re putting money in China’s pocket and Biden did that.”
• TIM SCOTT: “If we want the environment to be better and we all do, the best thing to do is to bring our jobs home from China.”
• RON DESANTIS: “I think our support [for Ukraine] should be contingent on [Europe] doing it and I would have support in China to be able to take China and do what we need to do with China.” NOTE: I have no idea what DeSantis meant by this but it’s noteworthy that this bit of nonsense has gone unremarked.
• VIVEK RAMASWAMY: “The real threat we face today is communist China and we are driving Russia further into China’s arms. The Russia-China military alliance is the single greatest threat we face. Nobody in either political party’s talking about it.”
• CHRIS CHRISTIE: “With China, we can’t take our eye off of that ball. Yes, it’s important that we secure the border. Very important, as I just said. But China is sending these chemicals to these drug cartels for them to create the fentanyl that is killing hundreds of thousands of our citizens. The Chinese are engaging in an act of war against us killing our citizens.”

This all sounds real bad, and I haven’t even quoted Donald Trump yet. His policy ideas are just as bellicose as the rest of the field. 

So this all sounds pretty bad! But it’s also the beginning stages of a primary, and eventually the cacophony of different voices will be reduced to one. The question is whether the GOP nominee can force Biden to sound even more hawkish on China. Based on the latest Reuters/Ipsos polling, that is certainly possible:

Some 66% of respondents said they were more likely to back a candidate in the 2024 presidential election who “supports additional tariffs on Chinese imports.”

Another 66% of respondents – including 58% of Democrats and 81% of Republicans – agreed with a statement that the United States “needs to do more to prepare for military threats from China.”

Still, just 38% of Americans supported the possible deployment of U.S. troops to defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese attack, showing the political constraints facing any president seeking U.S. military involvement in a conflict involving China.

That matches elite thinking as well. 

Biden’s advantage will be couching his China policy in a multilateral context. Under his administration there has been a plethora of initiatives — the Quad, the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, AUKUS, the US-Japan-ROK partnership — that probably poll pretty well with Americans. According to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, “A majority of Americans prefer a supporting role in coordinating international responses to China’s rise (53%)… as opposed to a leading one.” With the possible exception of Nikki Haley, none of the GOP candidates have any street cred when it comes to multilateralism. 

I still think Biden’s 2024 chances are being underestimated among the cognoscenti, and so I’m a bit more sanguine that America’s China policy will stay the course. But I cannot deny that if Biden loses in 2024, so will strategic patience.

(This post is republished from Drezner’s World.)