US-China diplomacy off to a bit of a lurching start under Biden?

Fred Kaplan seems to have been more disturbed than impressed by Secretary of State Tony Blinken's confrontation with Chinese diplomats in Alaska last week. (A Cold Welcome in Alaska Slate 03/19/2021.

Noting that Blinken had "all but said in advance" that the meeting would go badly" - i.e., it was a pre-planned moment of verbal confrontation - Kaplan still writes, "It is surprising, though, that the meeting went so badly, and even more surprising that Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, who led the U.S. delegation, seemed surprised that it did."

He also notes that:

... after the reporters and cameras left the room. A “senior official” said Thursday night, that, after the stormy public ripostes, the two sides “got down to business” and held “substantive, serious, and direct” discussions that went “well beyond the two hours we had allotted.” This language—“substantive, serious, and direct”—is reminiscent of the term “frank and businesslike” invoked by public-affairs officials in the Cold War era to describe particularly tense meetings between U.S. and Soviet diplomats.

Kaplan also explains some of the leading considerations in balancing relations with other countries in the US-China relationship:

In this respect, the Biden team’s Asian voyage has been a mixed bag so far. Leaders of Japan, South Korea, and India have seemed pleased to be treated to the new administration’s first foreign trip, but it has highlighted conflicting interests as well as common ones. The joint statement released after Blinken’s meeting in Seoul, for instance, said nothing about “denuclearization of North Korea”—Biden’s security objective in the region—or about China. South Korean President Moon Jae-in avidly wants a peace deal with the North and, to that end, wants to avoid—much less join an alliance built on—confrontation with Beijing.

When Blinken goes to Europe next week for the annual meeting of NATO ministers, he will find that several allies there—notably Germany and France—want no part of what they see as a “cold war” with China, either. They rely on China for trade, don’t view the distant Pacific as a theater for national-security concerns, and so don’t view China as any sort of threat. [my emphasis]

As I say here periodically, I have a love-hate relationship with the "realist" view of international relations. It focuses on nations as actors in a state system which pursue a variety of interests that are often persistent no matter how domestic political ideologies may change in the national government. Some of the most perceptive critics of the Iraq War were noted advocates of the "realist" perspective like Stephen Walt who pointed out the unrealistic assumptions of the neoconservative warhawks and their fantasies of local populations jubilantly welcoming American troops conducting "wars of liberation". On the other hand, "realists" like Henry Kissinger have been known to conduct foreign policy with a level of cynicism that are difficult to justify in terms of real American interests, e.g., the 1973 coup in Chile. And even a common definition of what a country's most important interests are doesn't in itself produce agreement on how to conduct foreign policy.

But one central realist concept has been understandably prominent in discussions of China. Realists understand that when a major power like the US is declining in its relative influence that other powers will assert their own perceived interests more affirmatively. And in the case of China, which is becoming the largest economy in the world, the US and other countries, notably including Russia and the European Union, have to adjust their approaches and recognize the opportunities and dangers that can arise from that process.

So the dynamics of the US, Russia, and the EU in adjusting to the rising power and status of China will be a consistent theme is international politics for quite a while. Kaplan himself also argues that the US should avoid a "New Cold War" framework in our approach to China. (The U.S. Can Compete With China Without Fighting a “New Cold War” Slate 03/18/2021)

And because of those larger sets of relationships, individual issues like the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project, the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) neoliberal deregulation "trade" treaty, or China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI; New Silk Road project) will be influenced in significant ways by the larger patterns of adjustments.

One notable development that doesn't seem to be registering very strongly with mainstream political analysts is that Russia and China have relatively good relations at the moment. Charles writes about this dynamic in Ziegler "A Sino-Russo Entente?" (The National Interest Mar/Apr 2021), online title A Russian-Chinese Partnership Against America? 03/06/2021, where he writes:

Each regime is acting as a pragmatic, nationalist great power, and each sees its interests as far more compatible with the other power than with the United States.

Russian and Chinese adherence to global rules is selective and cynical, though international law and institutions can be manipulated to frustrate American foreign policy goals. The two often vote together in the United Nations, for example, using their veto to counter U.S. and European Security Council resolutions on Syria. In 2018, Russian and Chinese diplomats discussed coordinating on the Middle East and agreed to maintain a dialogue on a range of issues in the region. The Middle East presents opportunities and security concerns for Russia and China as the United States disengages. Both opposed Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and have taken advantage of the situation by negotiating closer military and economic cooperation with Tehran. More broadly in the Middle East, China became the region’s largest investor in 2016, and in the following year established its first overseas base in Djibouti. Russia is engaged diplomatically across the region; is selling weapons to Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Libya, the UAE, and Turkey; and recently concluded a twenty-five-year agreement for a naval base in Sudan to complement its base at Tartus, in Syria.

In other regions, the two countries may not be cooperating openly, but their implied support for each other’s aggression narrows Washington’s policy options. [my emphasis]

Wolfgang Münchau's Eurointelligence reports in Are Nord Stream 2 sanctions too late? 03/22/2021 that the chances that Germany will insist on the completion of the project seem high, but it's not a done deal yet:

Two Russian pipe-laying vessels are working on expedited schedule to complete the missing parts of the pipeline in the Baltic Sea. The question in Germany is no longer if the pipeline is completed but when. Handelsblatt says the current estimate is September.

The paper says the bigger issue is not so much whether US sanctions would stop the pipeline, but to which extent they would damage the transatlantic relationship. One of the potential threats we haven't considered so far is for the US to target Gerhard Schröder personally. As the chair of Nord Stream 2's supervisory board, the former German chancellor could become subject to US sanctions directly - through a freeze of assets and a travel restrictions to the US.

We have to take this report with a pinch of salt. The German media - generally fanboys of the grand coalition [Merkel's governing coalition] - have been supportive of the project, and did not see the international counter-reaction coming. We believe, in contrast to Handelsblatt, that the Biden administration and Congress have the ability to stop this project if they want to. The question is whether they are ready to do what it takes. [my emphasis]