Why Biden’s China Reset Is a Bad Idea

Now is not the time for the United States to pursue détente with China, as the Biden administration has been trying to do for several weeks now. U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan held intensive talks with senior Chinese official Wang Yi in Vienna in mid-May, followed by a flurry of U.S. attempts at engagement in the military and commercial fields, as well as at the presidential level. Today, a secret visit by CIA Director William Burns to Beijing in May also became public.

The administration’s logic seems to be that if the United States pursues sustained, high-level outreach with Beijing, it will be able to find common ground on divisive issues in trade, climate, and security policy after a prolonged state of hostility between the two powers.

The general consensus in Washington seems to be that this is wise, not least because the United States needs Chinese goodwill to eventually bring Russia to the peace table in Ukraine. That’s what European allies have been telling the administration for many weeks. There also appears to be a political calculus: Going into an election year, U.S. President Joe Biden may reckon that he will need Chinese President Xi Jinping’s assistance with Russian President Vladimir Putin if, as some on his team appear to fear, Ukraine underperforms in its counteroffensive and American voters balk at the prospect of a protracted conflict. The prize for Biden could also be gains in trade or climate policy.

The problem is that Biden’s logic is all too transparent for Beijing. For more than two years this same U.S. administration has emphasized China as the top threat to U.S. national security. By suddenly shifting to diplomatic engagement a year from an election, the administration is signaling that it needs a diplomatic deal, even if it means chasing after China to get it.

If this all sounds familiar, it’s because we’ve seen it before. When Barack Obama entered office in 2009, his opening move was to try to reset relations with Russia in order to support the U.S. focus on Afghanistan. To pay the Kremlin for the courtesy, he canceled plans to install missile defense in Poland and the Czech Republic. When Russia responded by invading Crimea, Obama ramped up engagement with China instead. On the White House lawn, Xi pledged not to militarize the islands of the South China Sea—and then did precisely that.

Biden is following a similar path. After coming to office, he tried to broker a thaw with Putin in order to focus more attention on China. To create space for the maneuver, he waived sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, slow-rolled military aid to Ukraine, and delayed a visit by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to the White House. True to form, Putin responded by upping the ante, this time with an invasion on a much grander scale.

These examples suggest a consistent, if questionable, philosophy of détente: Approach an adversary from a position of palpable neediness, make upfront concessions to gain goodwill, and settle for an uncertain political deliverable that lies in the future.

Adversaries see the flaws in this approach and use them against the United States. Biden has been trying for weeks to get Xi to take a phone call, to no avail. The same dynamic has been playing out in senior military channels, where the Chinese just turned down a meeting request from U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Meanwhile, Xi courts U.S. allies in Western Europe who want to bring the Ukraine war to an end and return to business as usual. The net effect is to up the pressure on the United States to seek a thaw—and raise the floor price of any eventual deal in China’s favor.

Beijing’s behavior shows an understanding that all of this is ultimately about power. Effective détente is not a byproduct of sweet reasonableness but a hard-nosed pursuit of the national interest. It is backed up by the potential, in the absence of a political breakthrough, to inflict damage to the other side.

History underscores the point. U.S. President Richard Nixon’s famed thaw with China came at a moment when the United States had large numbers of combat troops in Southeast Asia, which gave China a reason to want to see diplomacy succeed. Similar efforts with the Soviet Union after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, coming at a moment when the military balance was less favorable to the United States, emboldened the Soviets to deploy intermediate-range missiles in Europe and invade Afghanistan. U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s successful opening to Russia, by contrast, was preceded by a systematic bolstering of America’s defense posture, placement of Pershing II missiles in Europe, and boosting U.S. military-technological advantages with the second offset strategy.

Viewed in that light, the current situation in Asia is not propitious to détente. U.S. military commanders in the Pacific have $3.5 billion in unfunded defense priorities. Large swaths of the Taiwanese military, including almost half of the island’s air force, are not ready for combat. And the Chinese state has embarked on the largest peacetime naval buildup in history, in addition to a nuclear buildup aimed at achieving parity with the United States.

An attempt at détente now will be all the more dangerous if it’s accompanied by unilateral concessions by Washington. It’s not hard to imagine the Biden administration lubricating its outreach to Beijing by softening the effects of Russia sanctions on China, toning down export controls, or even quietly scaling back aid to Taiwan. If, as some contend, Beijing also needs détente, not least to contend with slower-than-expected economic growth since the pandemic, then it shouldn’t cost the United States so much to get it. The worst of all worlds would be to make U.S. concessions in Asia with the implicit expectation that China will deliver on nebulous promises tomorrow—“Pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today,” as the character Wimpy says on Popeye.

The idea that China will bring Russia to heel in Ukraine falls into the Popeye category. If China is ever going to do that, it will be because the prospect of being hitched to a flailing Russia damages China’s own interests. But so far, Beijing’s behavior suggests that it believes it stands to gain from seeing the war go on. A misbegotten attempt at détente by the Biden administration that costs the United States more than China, discomfits Asian allies, and allows Western Europeans to justify not taking a tougher stance on Taiwan would be the icing on the cake.

None of this is to say that Washington should spurn dialogue, if it’s on offer. But it’s not the U.S. side that recently sent spy balloons over the other’s territory or tacitly (and possibly actively) supports the aggressor in the largest European land war since 1945. When China is ready to change its behavior, the United States should be willing to reengage at the highest levels. Until then, the Biden administration should keep the channels open but focus on helping the Ukrainians, bolstering U.S. defenses in the Pacific, and pushing European allies to stand firm on China. In any event, Biden should not be begging Xi to pick up the phone.