obama first visit to china

How America's relationship with China changed under Obama

Competition or cooperation? Chinese and U.S. flags are arranged at the State Department in Washington Image:  REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

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Barack Obama had six diplomatic priorities in his 8-year term.

The first was to control the costs of US hegemony. The US paid a high price for the two wars fought during George W. Bush’s term. After Obama assumed the presidency, he withdrew the majority of its military forces from Iraq and Afghanistan. After the breakout of the Arab Spring in 2011, however, the US failed to show self-restraint and again involved itself in the wars in Syria and Libya. Exiting one battleground to enter another was not a wise move.

The second was to revive the US economy. During Obama’s first term, when the US was mired in a financial crisis, he did a lot of work, including convening the G20 Summit, coordinating macroeconomic policies, pledging to double export growth and revitalize manufacturing. In retrospect, all these policy measures seem to have failed to achieve their expected targets—US export growth was only 60%, falling behind its original goal of doubled growth. Only to China has the US achieved a 150% growth in exports. Also, Obama failed to bring back manufacturing jobs. When Donald Trump campaigned for the presidency, he criticized the Obama administration for only bringing back three companies with 600 jobs despite its hype of manufacturing revival. While the actual results may not be as exaggerated as Trump claimed, they are far behind pledged goals.

The third was to continue to fight against terrorism. During his term, one significant accomplishment was the assassination of Osama bin Laden, but the rise of Islamic State has cast a shadow over his earlier efforts.

The fourth was to advance global issues, including promoting a nuclear-free world and tackling climate change. The progress in global cooperation on climate change should be largely attributed to China’s support. Nuclear security has been one of the tenets espoused by Obama, for which he was also awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Despite the progress on Iran’s nuclear program, the deadlocked nuclear issue on the Korean peninsular has weakened his performance.

The fifth was to restore the international reputation of the US, that had been injured by Bush and to strengthen its ties with allies. Obama was partially successful on this front. The resumption of diplomatic ties with Cuba earned applause for the US in Latin America, but economic sanctions against Cuba were not completely removed due to opposition by Republicans, who dominated Congress. It would be fair to say that their bilateral relationship has not been truly normalized.

The sixth and final priority was the strategy of “returning to the Asia Pacific,” shifting a focus which had been on Europe for 200 years, to Asia, or from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Obama proclaims himself "America's first Pacific president." Behind this title, China is a direct factor.

Originally called a “return to the Asia-Pacific”, the strategy was later rephrased as a “strategic pivot” and finally a “rebalancing”. Despite the rhetorical changes, its intent remains consistent —to contain the rise of China. The strategy was first introduced by then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the ASEAN Regional Forum held in Hanoi on July 23, 2010, which outraged China because there was no prior consultation with it. The then foreign minister of China, Yang Jiechi, demanded an adjournment, followed by a one-hour rebuke to Hillary.

Behind the US adjusting its global strategy to return to the Asia-Pacific is the rise of China: within a space of three years, China held three high-profile events—the Olympic Games in 2008, the military parade in 2009 and the World Expo in 2010. Moreover, in 2010 China surpassed Japan to become the world’s second largest economy, and overtook the US in manufacturing output and power generation. US pragmatic strategists are keenly aware that manufacturing is the foundation of industry. Strong manufacturing comes with strong military power, and with strong military power comes the ability to compete for global leadership.

In the 20th century, the US had three rivals—Germany, Japan and the Soviet Union. Even in their prime, their manufacturing output represented only two thirds of America's. China surpassing the US as the world’s largest manufacturer caused a widespread shock among US strategists. In China, this fact was not given enough due attention due to the lack of knowledge among elite and academic communities. It is in this context that US strategists and the Obama administration locked China in as its main rival and a thorn in its side, hence the shift of its global gravity to Asia, or precisely, to the surrounding regions of China.

When Obama first proposed the policy of a “return to Asia”, it was protested by some officials who originally worked in the Bush administration. They questioned whether the wording indicated that Asia was “abandoned” by their administration and criticized Obama as a bad example for bringing bipartisan politics into diplomacy. So the policy was renamed as a “pivot to Asia”, meaning pivoting its focus from Europe to Asia. But America's European allies found this pronouncement disconcerting, asking whether the US would give up Europe and the Atlantic. Their reaction caused the policy to be finally framed as the “rebalance to Asia-Pacific”. This is a smart word, implying that there used to be a balance in Asia, but it had been broken by the rise of China and therefore needed to be “rebalanced” by the US. This rhetoric did not trigger a backlash within the US and among its allies, but pointed to China as the cause of issues in Asia. This is how the rhetoric has been used by the Obama administration up until today.

It has been six years since the US put forward the “rebalance to Asia-Pacific” strategy, which is supported by four pillars. The first is to deploy 60% of its navy and air force to the Asia-Pacific region , a plan announced by a senior US official. This is reminiscent of the US, during the Cold War, deploying 60% of its navy and air force in the North Atlantic while keeping 20% for home territory and the remaining 20% for strategic mobility; the second is to create the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade framework that excludes China; the third is the use of what Hillary Clinton calls “smart power” in diplomacy, which is actually to take advantage of China’s conflicts and disputes with its surrounding countries to drive wedges among them; the fourth pillar is to continue its contact with China.

This explains why Sino-US relations during Obama’s eight years followed a different trajectory. Before Obama, when a new US president took office, bilateral ties between the US and China would first experience some bumps before returning to normal. During Obama’s term, however, Sino-US relations had a good start but with a bumpy ride before being stabilized.

Obama visited China in November 2009, the first year of his presidency, which was a rarity. As a rule of thumb, a US president would not visit China unless he had won the second term. The reason behind Obama’s different approach to China is because the US cannot accommodate the rise of China, hence the “return to Asia” policy. From May 2015 to this past July, the two countries were once at loggerheads over the South China Sea issue and their relationship didn't ease until after this past July. Now, there are only two months left for Obama’s presidency. During the US presidential transition, the two countries are expected to maintain stability in their bilateral ties.

Looking back, the “rebalance to Asia-Pacific” strategy cannot be called a success. It not only failed to contain the rise of China, but also deepened China’s strategic mistrust of the US, which is against its interests. Among the four pillars underpinning this strategy, the third and fourth pillars are also conflicting to each other. Deploying 60% of its navy and air force against China can only put China on full alert and motivate it to accelerate its military modernization. The exclusion of China from the TPP has also encouraged China to advance its Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RECP), Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP) as well as its “One Belt, One Road” initiative, and prompted China to lead the creation of the BRICS Development Bank and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

With Donald Trump having won the US presidential election, we can safely say that the TPP is already clinically dead. Although the “smart power” diplomacy has created some headaches for China, it has not significantly worsened China’s surrounding environment. Moreover, the Philippines’ reversal in its foreign policy towards the US and Thailand and Malaysia choosing to take sides with China have proven that such “wedge-driving” manoeuvres can only produce short-term effects. It is now understood by China’s neighbours that they would finally suffer if they joined the US in pitting themselves against China; on the contrary, they would benefit if they maintained equal distances from both China and the US. When you look at the “return to Asia” policy now, it has become “a project that will never be finished” for the US trans-Pacific policy.

Obama’s two terms saw improved equality in the balance of power between the US and China. China smoothly completed its leadership transition at the 18th CPC National Congress. By purchasing power parity (PPP), China overtook the US as the largest economy in 2014, which, in terms of historical significance, can compare to the US surpassing Britain in real GDP in 1872. By mid-2016, China’s real GDP was already 12% higher than that of the US. At the end of 2015, China’s total manufacturing output represented 150% of the US, or was equivalent to the combined total of the US and Japan—an unprecedented record in Chinese history. At the current growth pace, China’s factory output would be as much as the sum of the US, Japan and Europe in 10 years.

China has also been advancing by leaps and bounds on the technological front. For the past five consecutive years, China was ranked first in terms of patent filings. In all the hot areas of defence, there are a dozen Chinese players competing head to head against a limited number of two or three companies from other countries. According to the Nature Index, an index drawn by British scientific journal Nature from 68 natural science journals, China’s total contribution to high-quality science has risen to become the second largest in the world, surpassed only by the US.

The US, by contrast, has seen no substantial reform since the 2008 financial crisis, which projects a feeling that the US has been “muddling along”. The crisis robbed five million US families of their homes and left seven million families dependent on legal acts for the continued use of their homes even if they could not pay their mortgages. The Federal Reserve instituted several rounds of quantitative easing, but did little to reform Wall Street. The US also failed to deliver its gun control, immigration reform and middle class support plans. Obama’s healthcare plan was advanced with a lot of fanfare, but the middle class was disgruntled because it turned out to increase the financial burden on many of them. Despite its moderate economic recovery and improved job figures, its real economy remains weak, fraught with a further divided society. The several rounds of quantitative easing didn't help a lot beyond buoying the stock markets on Wall Street.

Despite the limited role of policy, the relationships between big powers like the US and China are mainly driven by their comprehensive national power. Coincidentally, China’s national strength increased over the past eight years. In this context, the US needs a new policy to deal with China, and the Obama administration did devise one — the unsuccessful “rebalance to the Asia-Pacific” policy.

On the contrary, China has not only narrowed its gap with the US, but also demonstrated more strategic initiative, as exemplified by the concept of “a new type of major power relations”, which was proposed by President Xi Jinping during his meeting with Obama at the Annenberg Retreat in California in June 2013. The defining elements of this type of relations are “no conflict or confrontation, mutual respect and win-win cooperation”. The US is able to completely accept “no conflict or confrontation,” but not “mutual respect”. The US can also partially accept “win-win cooperation”. For example, the two countries are, more or less, willing to cooperate on issues such as anti-terrorism, nuclear security and climate change. In other words, Obama has neither rejected nor accepted the construction of this new type of bilateral relations. Whether the US can accept this concept or not, the failed rebalance strategy of the US has allowed China to gain the strategic initiative with a slight upper hand.

At the same time, China continues to boost its presence and increase its say in US-dominated frameworks. For example, China has managed to include the RMB into the SDR basket, continued to appoint senior officials at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, increased its UN membership dues and mapped out its own global strategy after the 18th CPC National Congress, as evidenced by the “One Belt, One Road” initiative and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. That’s to say, China has broadened its vision beyond Sino-US relations to a global scale. This has helped it gain more strategic initiative. By contrast, the US has regressed significantly in terms of strategic thinking when compared with the Cold War period. When it comes to the disintegration of the Soviet Union, there is a false belief among US elites that the dissolution was a result of the US triumph over the Soviet Union rather than the result of its internal problems. This has encouraged the US to be arrogant and belligerent and make lots of enemies. The “rebalance to the Asia-Pacific” policy designed to contain China is also devoid of creativity as a continuation of its old-fashioned geopolitical mentality.

The fact that Donald Trump won the presidential election is also a reflection of public discontent with the Obama administration. Faced with a rising China, the US needs to break away from “Americentrism”. The US still has a great sense of superiority, viewing the world from a US-focused perspective without appreciating the most important fact in this world—China has already become the strongest industrialized nation in human history. It also neglects another historical fact - the US had always benefited from its cooperation with China in the Asia-Pacific throughout the 20th century. Sino-US cooperation led to the triumph over militarist Japan during World War II and the skew of Asia-Pacific geopolitics in favour of the US during its Cold War against the Soviet Union. However, when it gathered some small nations against China, the consequences were the Korean War and the Vietnam War. China is a natural big power, which can never be beaten even if the US has the support of some small nations.

The US remains focused on itself and its allies, unable to treat China as an equal. If it reverses its approach and considers China as an equal partner, both its Asia-Pacific and global strategies will gain a new life. If the two countries can become friendly partners, the cause of war in the Asia-Pacific region will be rooted out. The significance of Sino-US cooperation is much greater than a US-dominated alliance and the US will strategically reap much higher benefits from such cooperation. However, it remains to be observed whether US decision makers will develop such horizons in the future. When it comes to internal affairs, the US is now advised to learn from China by instituting comprehensive opening and reform measures.

There is a prevailing consensus among US elites that despite many issues, the US system remains the best in the world. What the US needs to do is fine-tune its policies rather than reform its system. This is a wrong belief. First, the US economy is too reliant on finance, printing too many dollars, which is a reserve currency, instead of boosting its real economy and manufacturing to strengthen its competitiveness. This is not a sustainable model. Second, politically, the US must reconstruct its mainstream society. One physical precondition for a well functioning multi-party democracy is a strong mainstream society. Different parties are mere representatives of different segments of the mainstream society, which is the foundation of cooperation. However, this physical precondition is dangerously disappearing in the US and some other European countries. Instead of focusing its attention on these two fundamental issues, the US is obsessed with rivalry against China. In fact, there is no way to beat China; even if it does, the US will still turn out to be a loser.

Trump’s presidential campaign was full of blockades installed by both Democratic and Republican elites as well as by pro-establishment groups. The entire election was a dirty process. Three divides in US society may explain Trump’s victory—the class divide, the Right-Left divide and the racial divide. Trump smartly built loyal bases among lower middle classes, rightists and the white majority. It is their frustration and anger with the Democratic Party and the Obama administration that helped Trump surmount obstacles created by pro-establishment groups to win the election.

However, behind Trump’s triumph there are also three major risks that need to be addressed—anti-elitism, white racism and rightist anti-globalization; otherwise US society will become further divided, with a shrinking mainstream society. Trump has three identities—businessman, candidate and president-elect. Now he needs to transition from his previous two roles into the third one; or it would be detrimental to his presidency. Now we have seen him making some adjustments, like appealing to his supporters not to be racist and claiming to inherit part of Obama’s healthcare reforms.

Recently, he also made some innovative moves, like opening 4,000 political appointment positions in his administration to the general public. Conventionally, these positions would be allocated to Republicans. His departure looks like a warning to the pro-establishment camp within his party. After he assumes the presidency, whether this will cause a grudge among Republican senators and representatives and therefore executive-legislative discord remains an unknown.

After Trump takes power, there will definitely be an impact on pro-establishment groups in the US political system. Moreover, the policy directions indicated in his speeches will, too, cause some impact on current US-dominated alliances, in which the US will no longer assume so much responsibility and its allies will have to share more of it. US efforts to advance globalization, such as TPP and NAFTA, will also meet some setbacks.

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clock This article was published more than  14 years ago

Obama reaches out to China in first visit

President cites 'dramatic ties' Government chose audience for town hall

SHANGHAI -- President Obama met a carefully screened audience of Chinese students in a town hall-style meeting on Monday, telling them that relations between the United States and China have often faced "tumultuous winds," but that the two countries have developed "deep and even dramatic ties."

"Surely we have known setbacks and challenges over the last 30 years," Obama said during his first public appearance in China during his eight-day trip to Asia. But, he added, "the notion that we must be adversaries is not predestined."

The event was billed as an opportunity for Obama to reach beyond Chinese officialdom. But virtually every aspect of the meeting was scripted.

Obama's audience, selected and coached by Chinese officials, was bused to the venue from eight universities. Questioned briefly as they were hustled into the hall, the students said they were mostly members of the ruling Communist Party.

The meeting, attended by nearly 500 students, was held at the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum, a hyper-modern complex located in Pudong, a new development zone far from the city center. Police sealed off the museum and blocked off nearby streets. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush also met students during their own trips to China but did so on university campuses.

Obama, in opening remarks, described the United States as a nation that had endured painful chapters in its history because of its core ideals, including a belief that government should reflect the will of the people. He said the United States did not seek to impose "any system of government on any other nation," but said "America will always speak out for its core principles around the world."

"We made progress because of our belief in those core principles that have served as our compass in the darkest of storms," Obama said.

He did not begin taking questions before this edition went to press.

Before the meeting, Liu Yupang, a 21-year-old mechanical engineering student from Shanghai's Jiaotong University, said he and fellow students had been given an afternoon of "training." He said they could ask Obama what they wanted but had been ordered to take a "friendly attitude." Liu is a party member.

Chinese officials held newspaper reporters traveling with the White House in a separate "viewing room" from which Obama and the students could barely be seen.

A sign outside the Museum informed visitors that the premises were closed from Nov. 14 to 16 for "maintenance needs." U.S. and Chinese officials haggled for weeks over the format of the Shanghai meeting, with the United States asking that the meeting be as freewheeling as possible, and the Chinese demanding the opposite.

Live video of the event was streamed on the official White House Web site to reach as many members of the Chinese public as possible by circumventing the Chinese government's strict control of information.

The Shanghai event was seen by aides as one way for Obama to try to push China toward greater openness. But the Chinese government appeared to exert intense pressure on the town hall organizers, denying access to some potential guests and forcing others to go through pre-event training. A Beijing blogger, Rao Jin, said that "the Chinese government refused the U.S. Embassy's request" to allow him to attend.

Xu Lyiang, a student at Tongji University, said he had wanted to go but had been told that the quota of students had been fulfilled. But he heard from a teacher who was helping select attendees that they were required to attend a "lecture and a meeting" ahead of time.

Also Friday, Beijing police arrested Zhao Lianhai, an activist who had become a spokesman for parents protesting over contaminated baby formula, his wife said. It was an example of the sort of human rights restrictions that advocates say occur all too often.

Zhao's wife, Li Xuemei, said police from Beijing's public security bureau arrived at the house about 11 p.m. Friday and arrested her husband, also confiscating two computers, a digital camera, T-shirts and some fliers. She said she was later told that he had been "officially detained." Bloggers and Internet "netizens" began petitioning online for Zhao's release.

Zhao's 3-year-old son was one of tens of thousands of infants who developed kidney stones last year as a result of drinking formula contaminated with melamine, in one of a series of food safety scandals in China. As many as 300,000 children were infected by the formula. Officially, at least half a dozen infants died, but activists say they think there were possibly more.

Beijing has always been wary of American presidents' desire to reach out beyond the standard rituals of government-to-government meetings. The Chinese government has been particularly reluctant to give them unfiltered access to television since 1998, when, during a joint news conference that was broadcast live, Clinton sharply criticized the bloody 1989 crackdown in Tiananmen Square. White House officials said they were not certain how much, if any, of Obama's appearance would be broadcast on television, and had State Department aides monitoring to find out.

Obama, traveling through China for the first time, finds himself under the microscope on whether he intends to take up the issue of human rights with Beijing more directly than he has so far.

Human rights activists have been alarmed by his delicate approach to date. Last month, he became the first president in nearly two decades not to meet with the Dalai Lama during a visit to Washington by the exiled Tibetan leader. Eight months earlier, Hillary Rodham Clinton soft-pedaled on human rights during her first trip to Beijing as secretary of state, saying that the issue could not be allowed to "interfere" with cooperation on the economy and climate change -- a dramatic shift from her landmark speech there in 1995, as first lady, in which she declared that "women's rights are human rights."

When Obama meets with Chinese President and Communist Party boss Hu Jintao in Beijing on Monday night and Tuesday morning, he will address "issues of freedom of expression, access to information, freedom of religion, rule of law and certainly Tibet," said Jeffrey Bader, Obama's National Security Council director for East Asian affairs.

But he was relatively mute on those subjects ahead of the visit. In Japan on Saturday, in the most significant address of his Asia trip, Obama did not mention Tibet or Xinjiang, two minority regions of China that have been racked by particularly serious protests and severe crackdowns over the past two years.

Still, Obama did call for the release of Burmese dissident leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has spent most of the past 20 years in jail or under house arrest. He repeated the demand Sunday in front of the Burmese prime minister at an economic summit in Singapore. He made the appeal just hours before leaving Singapore for China, which has long had close diplomatic, business and military ties with the Burmese junta.

Obama has said he will meet with the Dalai Lama after his trip to China. He had hoped that delaying the meeting would generate goodwill, allow the two countries to focus on economic issues and perhaps encourage Beijing to move ahead with its long-stalled negotiations with the exiled spiritual leader's representatives.

That approach, however, appears to have emboldened China, encouraging it to ask other countries to refuse to meet the Tibetan leader, said Michael Green, a Bush administration Asia adviser who is at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Correspondent Keith B. Richburg and researchers Zhang Jie and Wang Juan in Beijing contributed to this report.

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Fruitful Visit by Obama Ends With a Lecture From Xi

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By Mark Landler

• Nov. 12, 2014

BEIJING — The White House pushed very hard for President Xi Jinping to take questions during his news conference with President Obama at the end of their two days of meetings Wednesday. It did not want a repeat of the stilted, scripted encounter Mr. Obama had with Mr. Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao, in 2009 on his first trip to China as president.

What the White House got was Xi Jinping, Unplugged, and that may have been more than it bargained for.

Discarding his standard bromides about the importance of new “major-country” relations between the United States and China, the Chinese leader delivered an old-fashioned lecture. He warned foreign governments not to meddle in the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong and foreign journalists to obey the law in China.

Mr. Xi’s thinly concealed anger turned a news conference that should have been a victory lap for two leaders who had just had a productive meeting into a riveting example of why the relationship between the United States and China remains one of the most complicated in the world. The determination to work together belies deep-rooted historical grievances; the happy talk of win-win solutions masks a ferocious rivalry.

The cooperation that Mr. Obama and Mr. Xi announced this week is real. Their joint plan to confront climate change could transform negotiations for a new global climate treaty. Their pledge to warn each other’s militaries about exercises could avert a calamitous clash in the treacherous waters of the South and East China Seas.

And yet Mr. Obama and Mr. Xi found themselves standing before the news media in the Great Hall of the People, wrestling with the same issues that could have divided Nixon and Mao, or Bill Clinton and Jiang Zemin, who jousted with each other in a 1998 news conference, which Mr. Jiang had broadcast live across the country.

Wednesday’s session lacked the personal warmth of that exchange. For all their walks and private dinners, here and at the Sunnylands estate in California last year, Mr. Obama and Mr. Xi have fashioned a relationship that is based, above all, on pragmatism.

Who Is Xi Jinping?

When xi jinping became the president of china in 2013, new york times reporters discussed his background..

Mr. Obama said his meetings with Mr. Xi had given him the chance to debunk the notion that “our pivot to Asia is about containing China.” Mr. Xi said: “It’s natural that we don’t see eye to eye on every issue. But there have always been more common interests between China and the United States than the differences between us.”

There is plenty of evidence that Mr. Xi is right, from concerns about Iran and North Korea to climate change and counterterrorism. But there are countervailing tensions when a rising power flexes its muscles against an established one, and as a Communist empire bristles at the judgments of a powerful democracy. All of this was on vivid display Wednesday.

The tensions surfaced after the two leaders finished their opening statements and Mr. Xi seemed to ignore two questions from a reporter for The New York Times — about whether China feared that the Obama administration’s pivot to Asia represented a threat to China, and whether China would ease its refusal to issue visas to foreign correspondents in light of a broader visa agreement with the United States.

White House officials said Mr. Obama had called on The Times reporter to make a point. Several of the newspaper’s China correspondents had their visas applications denied by the government, an issue Mr. Obama raised with Mr. Xi in one of their meetings.

After first taking an unrelated, clearly scripted, question from a state-owned Chinese paper — which drew a quizzical facial expression from Mr. Obama — Mr. Xi circled back, declaring that the visa problems of the news organizations, including The Times, were of their own making.

Mr. Xi insisted that China protected the rights of news media organizations but that they needed to abide by the rules of the country. “When a certain issue is raised as a problem, there must a reason,” he said, evincing no patience for the news media’s concerns about being penalized for unfavorable news coverage of Chinese leaders and their families.

The Chinese leader reached for an unexpected metaphor to describe the predicament of The Times and other foreign news organizations, saying they were suffering the equivalent of car trouble. “When a car breaks down on the road,” he said through an interpreter, “perhaps we need to get off the car and see where the problem lies.”

“The Chinese say, ‘let he who tied the bell on the tiger take it off,’ ” Mr. Xi added, in a somewhat enigmatic phrase that was not immediately translated into English. It is normally interpreted as “the party which has created the problem should be the one to help resolve it.”

Climate Goals Pledged by China and the U.S.

Last year’s historic agreement includes a new goal for U.S. carbon emissions and a commitment by China to curb its emissions and rely more heavily on renewable and nuclear sources of energy.

Mr. Xi was also dismissive of concerns about a surge of anti-American sentiment in the Chinese news media. One state-owned publication described Mr. Obama’s leadership style as insipid. “I don’t think it’s worth fussing over these different views,” Mr. Xi said.

He bluntly warned the United States and other foreign countries not to get involved in the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong, responding to an earlier question to Mr. Obama about recurring rumors in the Chinese press that the United States was stirring up the unrest there. The Occupy Central movement, he said, is illegal.

“Hong Kong affairs are exclusively China’s internal affairs, and foreign countries should not interfere in those affairs in any form or fashion,” Mr. Xi said, reading from notes he had scribbled.

Taken together, the statements offered an unvarnished glimpse at China’s president, two years into his term and after his extraordinary consolidation of power. He is neither a garrulous operator like Mr. Jiang nor a colorless party bureaucrat like Mr. Hu.

“Xi is in the early years of his term, is a very confident and strong leader, and has a quite focused policy agenda,” said David Shambaugh, the director of the China policy program at George Washington University.

Orville Schell, a longtime China observer at the Asia Society in New York, said Mr. Xi’s statements on the foreign news media, the first time he had publicly addressed the issue, were a “dash of cold water.”

“We had thought that China might be slowly evolving away from this retrograde notion of the media,” Mr. Schell added. But he noted that in a speech last month, Mr. Xi had echoed Mao’s view that the news media should function as a “necessary handmaiden of the party.”

Mr. Obama seemed content to play the straight man to Mr. Xi. He insisted that the United States had nothing to do with the Hong Kong protests, though he voiced support for free expression. And his references to human rights were carefully calibrated — reaffirming, for example, that the United States does not recognize a separate Taiwan or Tibet.

As Mr. Obama enters the twilight of his presidency, he appears determined not to let passions get in the way of cooperation with China. Asked about the negative portrayal of him in the Chinese press, he said it came with being a public official, in China or the United States. “I’m a big believer in actions and not words,” he said.

Jane Perlez contributed reporting from Beijing, and Keith Bradsher from Hong Kong.

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Panda Diplomacy: Michelle Obama Concludes Visit To China

Anthony Kuhn

The trip represented a sort of diplomatic change of pace from the usual issues of cyber espionage, trade spats and geopolitical competition that grab U.S.-China-related headlines.

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Michelle Obama’s Visit to China: Education in the Forefront

Subscribe to the center for universal education bulletin, emily gustafsson-wright and emily gustafsson-wright senior fellow - global economy and development , center for universal education @egwbrookings carola mcgiffert cm carola mcgiffert president of the 100,000 strong foundation; former senior advisor in the east asia bureau at the us department of state.

March 28, 2014

Earlier this week, Sasha and Malia toured China with their mother, First Lady Michelle Obama, and their grandmother. This wasn’t a bad way to spend their spring break from Sidwell Friends School, which has one of the oldest and strongest Mandarin programs in the Washington, DC area.

Education and educational exchange were a central theme of Mrs. Obama’s China visit. Both the United States and China share the common goal of building education systems that can prepare future generations of workers with the skills necessary to lead these countries forward in the 21st century. As the First Lady said in her speech at Peking University, “Studying abroad isn’t just a fun way to spend a semester; it is quickly becoming the key to success in our global economy…It’s also about shaping the future of [both] countries and of the world we all share.  Because when it comes to the defining challenges of our time—whether it’s climate change or economic opportunity or the spread of nuclear weapons—these are shared challenges.” Without a doubt, one of these shared challenges is also to ensure that all individuals have equal opportunity.

All young people, whether American or Chinese, should have access to the kind of quality education needed to compete and succeed in the global economy. Sadly, our education systems are failing too many children. In China, despite its rapid economic growth, disparities in income have widened in recent years. Extreme poverty plagues 36 million Chinese, many of them living in rural areas and 18 percent of them below the age of 12 (according to the World Bank). In spite of having universal access to primary education (millennium development goal, or MDG, two), the reality for many poor Chinese children is not so bright. In some areas of the country, in particular rural areas, access to high-quality schooling is very limited. Such inequality of opportunity is the result of the country’s highly decentralized fiscal system, lack of accountability and inefficiencies in the service delivery system. In the United States, such inequality is also prevalent. In 2011, one in five public schools was considered high-poverty, meaning that 75 percent of children enrolled in that school qualified for free or reduced-price lunch. In the United States’ own capital city, one in three children is living below the federal poverty line and over a third of high school student fail to graduate . Even for those children who do manage to complete schooling, there are huge disparities in the level of learning experience between the advantaged and disadvantaged.

Evidence shows that for both the United States and China investing in early childhood education is the most effective way to prevent inequality before disparities widen. Not too long ago, Brookings hosted an event together with the China Development Research Foundation (CDRF) that explored the possibilities for collaboration between the US and China on early childhood development (ECD), a topic that is high on the policy agenda for both countries.  Madame Liu Yandong, vice premier of the People’s Republic of China, and Hillary Rodham Clinton, former U.S. secretary of state, gave compelling speeches on the importance of ECD programs and their potential for achieving long-term global impact. Both countries should continue their efforts to ensure that its youngest citizens receive a quality early childhood experience.

The United States and China should continue to collaborate on these efforts as well as on other innovative ways of ensuring quality schooling. Teach For America (TFA) is an American non-profit program founded in 1989 whose mission is to “eliminate educational inequity by enlisting high-achieving recent college graduates and professionals to teach” for at least two years in low-income communities throughout the United States.  In 2007, the CEO of Teach for America jointly with Teach First, a U.K. based non-profit, founded Teach for All. This effort, which aims to bring to other countries the mission of deploying young talent to teach in underserved communities, currently has 32 partner organizations around the world including Teach For China (TFC). This program recruits outstanding college graduates from China and the United States and trains them to serve as full-time teachers for two years in under-resourced Chinese schools. The recent graduates, called fellows, attend an intensive TFC summer program and receive teacher training based on the “Teaching As Leadership” framework first pioneered by TFA. American participants receive additional Chinese language training.  After having completed the program, TFC works with local government partners to place fellows in selected, under-resourced schools that demonstrate student need in Yunnan and Guangdong provinces.

Here at home, the 100,000 Strong Foundation serves as a catalyst to expand and diversify U.S. programs that promote studying abroad in China, including by helping to raise private funds for partner programs such as Americans Promoting Study Abroad (APSA), OneWorldNow!, the China Institute and the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation—all of which are sending underserved high school students to China to study Mandarin and learn more about the country, which is the second largest economy in the world and America’s fastest growing trade partner. The private sector is also stepping up its efforts to ensure increased educational opportunities. Companies such as Caterpillar, Coca Cola and Wanxiang America have supported this effort.  Steven Schwarzman, CEO of the Blackstone Group, is creating a year-long Rhodes-like scholarship program at Tsinghua University.

The United States and China cooperate on whole host of issues.  Education is one of them. We applaud Mrs. Obama’s focus on education during her trip. As the two governments work to deepen ties between our nations, let’s move to make sure we are reaching our youngest students in communities that are most at risk.

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‘And speaking of China…’ Obama’s hope for Asia

Director of Studies, Asia Pacific College of Diplomacy, Australian National University

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US President Barack Obama took to the stage at the University of Queensland in Brisbane on a day which had the soles of your shoes melting.

We had been through a complicated but reasonable security process. Most of the 2500 odd people in the room were young and starstruck. Many of the mingling Australian VIPs were similarly starstruck.

It was a clever mix of audience, demonstrating the strength and depth of the US Embassy in understanding Australia’s influencer networks. The crowd included students and scientists, academics, politicians, and business leaders at every level. The focus was on the future - innovation, youth and knowledge. Bruce Springsteen sang The Rising and the people were ready to be inspired.

Obama’s opening location gags were of a standard that would leave Adam Hills green with envy. But then he got to the serious issues, using the perfect frame of a David Malouf quote from his beautiful Boyer Lectures.

In that shrinking of distance that is characteristic of our contemporary world, even the Pacific, largest of oceans, has become a lake.

Malouf was talking about American identity and values at key historical moments of transition. Obama hit all the signature tenets of US public diplomacy and foreign policy - freedom of speech and internet freedom, democratic values, gender equality, minority rights, rights for LGBTI persons.

This was a crucial moment for global governance and for nowhere more than our region. In his first term, the President made a strategic decision to increase the United States’ focus on the Asia-Pacific region by “rebalancing” US engagements, activities, and resources toward our region (originally known as “the pivot to Asia”).

Obama referred back to his 2011 speech before the Commonwealth Parliament:

The United States will play a larger and long-term role in shaping this region and its future, by upholding core principles and in close partnership with our allies and friends. Our approach is grounded in the proposition that the United States is a historic Pacific power whose economy, strength, and interests are inextricably linked with Asia’s economic, security, and political order…and we are here to stay.

Visibly this meant the shift of military assets - by the end of this decade, a majority of US Navy and Air Force fleets will be based out of the Pacific. Beyond military strategy, US foreign policy and economic diplomacy needs to focus more keenly on the Asia-Pacific region.

It is this staying power that has been questioned, especially considering the result of the mid-terms. Obama tackled the unspoken question directly and with vigour, and sounded reasonably convincing even as troops are committed to Iraq once more and Washington’s gaze remains firmly on the Middle East and Ukraine. But he also said “the US is the only superpower” and that statement is open to interrogation with the rise of China. In global governance terms - this was the million dollar question:

And speaking of China, the US will continue to pursue a constructive relationship with China. By virtue of its size and its remarkable growth, China will inevitably play a critical role in the future of this region and the question is what kind of role will it play?

There was a harder edge to Obama’s words at this point of the speech.

“We are also encouraging China to adhere to the same rules as other nations, whether in trade or on the seas,” he said, leaning in to the students in the front row. “We do not benefit from a relationship with China or any other country in which we put our values and our ideals aside.”

Much of these tensions play out in the economic arena central to the G20 - Chinese currency issues, US Congress blocking IMF voting reforms, the US creating a regional trade deal that excludes China in the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The TPP reference was probably the most controversial paragraph of the speech - with Twitter lighting up against the idea that the secretive TPP promotes transparency.

“We’re pushing new standards in this trade agreement requiring countries that participate to protect their workers better and to protect the environment better and protect intellectual property that unleashes innovation and meet baseline standards to ensure transparency and rule of law.”

But the tone in the climate section of the speech, the part that will lead the news bulletins and got the cheers, was so positive. “And if China and the US can agree on this, then the world can agree on this, we can get this done and it is necessary for us to get it done.” As a statement about global governance, it is a hopeful statement for a troubled region. Obama is still - less shiny, more rumpled - but still, all about hope.

Rory Medcalfe, my fellow UQ alumni, gave the speech a grading , writing in the Interpreter:

On Asia, this speech scores a credit – solid and respectable, but not spectacular. It won’t go down in history as the speech that categorically revitalized the rebalance. But at least it held the line.

We need to hear the bookend speech to the Australian Parliament by Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday and calibrate the two statements of vision. But for me, I give the speech a solid ‘A’. This latest statement finally made the rebalance policy feel less a security framework and more a holistic shift of focus towards our region. How will these values be realised in our region - dignity, choice, gender equality and human rights? We need to build our interconnectedness around that lake.

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Watch CBS News

First lady Michelle Obama faces scrutiny for China trip with daughters, mom

March 18, 2014 / 8:27 AM EDT / CBS News

First lady Michelle Obama is getting ready for her third overseas trip without her husband since arriving in the White House, but her journey to China may be watched more closely.

Mrs. Obama will be traveling with three generations. She'll be joined by Sasha, Malia and her mother, Marian Shields Robinson, a subtle gesture to traditional Chinese values. White House officials are calling this visit a "people to people" trip.

In between meetings with university students, the first lady will make stops at the Great Wall of China, the Terracotta Warriors Museum, and even the Chengdu Panda Base.

The highly-orchestrated visit is intended to help soften U.S.-China relations . It also includes a number of events with China's first lady -- less than a year after Mrs. Obama missed her visit to the U.S., which some read as a political snub.

Richard McGregor, of the Financial Times, says this kind of non-political diplomacy can go a long way.

"There are many ways to sort of cut the sausage if you like," McGregor said. "You don't have to have Mrs. Obama to go over there and lecture and chide the Chinese about its human rights record for her to have a positive impact. She should go over there with a different message, a softer message, a more inclusive message."

Critics say her schedule dodges important issues that have strained U.S.-China relations like China's history of human rights violations.

Previous first ladies have confronted those concerns. At a 1995 conference in Beijing, Hillary Clinton tackled them head on. She said then, "All governments here and around the world accept their responsibility to protect and promote internationally-recognized human rights."

And more than a decade later, Laura Bush spoke out against China's treatment of refugees along what was then the Thailand-Burma border.

Anita McBride, former chief of staff for Laura Bush, says the tone of Mrs. Obama's trip will be markedly different.

"She's essentially exporting what she does here at home and bringing it overseas," McBride said.

But McBride also says that's no reason for Mrs. Obama to avoid the tough topics.

"You're a leader," she said. "You're a woman leader, and people look to you and they want you to use your position for something that's good, not only for us at home, but for people around the world."

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President Obama Has a Full Plate in First Visit to China

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During his imminent visit to Asia , President Obama will stop in both Shanghai and Beijing. In the past, the benefits of the Sino-American economic relationship acted as a check against political disagreements. Unfortunately, this trip will see substantial and possibly growing economic tension.

The July meetings of the Strategic and Economic Dialogue between the U.S. and China focused on coordinating economic policy and initiating global rebalancing. Progress to these ends has been mixed, at best, and there is also increasing trade tension. The President will be hard-pressed to achieve any concrete economic cooperation.

Valuable Bilateral Coordination

Despite several daunting challenges, President Obama is, in an important sense, under less pressure than previous Presidents traveling to the PRC. There is now considerable communication between Washington and Beijing: Once rare, visits by cabinet secretaries and senior Chinese officials have become commonplace.

Recent communication between the two nations has been dominated by discussion of the policy response to the financial crisis and, increasingly, how to unwind that response. Frequent discussion helped facilitate similar policy steps by the two governments in late 2008 and early 2009. These steps, however, were harmful and dangerous in multiple respects, [1] making it vital that there be a prompt and well-implemented reversal. While there will be more disagreements on ending stimulus than there were on initiating it, established policy consultation will be useful in that regard.

Climate change--a priority for President Obama--is a more difficult element of bilateral coordination. High hopes in some quarters have been dashed by lack of progress. This is not due to lack of interest; there are extremely daunting economic obstacles blocking the control of greenhouse gas emissions by the PRC. [2] On the American side, government promotion of otherwise uncompetitive "green" energy has generated a series of problems. [3]

China Not Rebalancing Yet

It is broadly accepted that American under-saving and Chinese under-consumption contributed to the sharpness of the autumn 2008 economic downturn. The U.S. federal government budget deficit has since soared, cutting deeply into American national savings. Below the federal level, however, greater saving has essentially been forced on local governments and, most important, households.

There is as yet no matching improvement in Chinese economic structure. A central and unfortunate feature of the PRC's economy prior to the financial crisis was the transfer of wealth from households to firms through the financial system. Very low rates of return on bank savings robbed households of wealth, especially with few other options available for individuals and families and very low borrowing costs transferred that wealth to enterprises. [4]

The lauded PRC stimulus package intensified these transfers. The core of the stimulus was not the headline $585 billion in promised government spending but $1.1 trillion in new loans in the first three quarters of 2009, 75 percent more than all of 2008. To make the loans work, borrowing costs were extremely low. Such a high amount of lending in a poor climate would necessarily damage banks; their margins thus had to be shielded by paying savers almost nothing on deposits. The result: more money in the hands of firms to make things and less for households to buy things.

Another relevant crisis development is more tentative but even more disturbing: To this point, it has been universally assumed that more Chinese consumption meant more imports and, hence, smaller global imbalances. In the first three quarters of 2009, the PRC reported that retail sales rose 15 percent while imports fell 20 percent. There are several data issues but any hint that internal consumption could divorce from imports must be watched very closely. There are certainly powerful domestic business interests that will seek to secure for themselves nearly all of the benefits of stronger Chinese demand.

Contributing to weak import demand is the RMB's peg to the dollar. Beijing actually tightened the peg several months before Lehman Brothers collapsed. Its refusal to let the RMB move against the dollar during the crisis and the recent depreciation of the RMB against the euro and East Asian currencies made it notably more difficult for the global economy to adjust. This obstacle to adjustment is especially formidable, because China is the second-largest global trader and soon to become the second-largest economy. Happily, it seems that the PRC might be starting to consider a looser peg. [5]

U.S. Begins to Regress on Trade

There are bright spots in U.S.-PRC trade and investment relations. Congress has shown considerable restraint on trade given the extent and stubbornness of domestic unemployment. The Obama Administration seems to have a better understanding of important aspects of the Sino-American relationship than early in the year. [6] And Chinese investment in the U.S. continues even outside of Treasury bonds, to the tune of $5 billion committed, including $1.6 billion just last week in power company AES. [7]

That is far from the whole story, however. The Obama Administration, through the Department of Commerce and the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), has taken a series of small, sector-specific trade actions aimed at the PRC. Tire tariffs gathered the most attention, but last week's duties on pipe were larger. [8]

These just put the fine point on a disturbing trend. In July 2008, Commerce and the ITC began to focus more narrowly on China. The ITC is the culmination point of the process. Since mid-2008, over 60 percent of ITC findings of possible trade harm have included Chinese goods, including no less than 36 such findings to date in 2009. Both the proportion and the absolute number are notable increases over earlier periods. [9]

This is absolutely the wrong way to shrink the trade imbalance and one that ultimately costs American consumers more in an already difficult time. Now that the genie is out of the bottle, it will be difficult to re-embrace open trade, especially with U.S. unemployment over 10 percent and looking to remain there for some time. If unemployment does stay that high, the restraint shown by Congress may not last, adding fuel to the Administration's small protectionist fire.

Recommendations

President Obama's first visit to China is valuable in itself. Much more value, however, would come from genuinely moving the PRC toward the rebalancing that has been discussed for the past six years. Both to make American arguments more credible and because it will benefit the U.S., the Obama Administration should offer to dramatically reduce deficit spending and halt creeping protectionism.

• Sino-American communication and coordination efforts are commendable and should be maintained;
• Climate change discussions are very unlikely to be fruitful and should be downgraded as a priority, if this has not already occurred;
• Discussions of an exit strategy from crisis stimulus are inadequate. The U.S. must push the PRC for a specific--even if long-term--restructuring plan where domestic consumption is no longer suppressed and market access is gradually improved;
• As part of this long-term restructuring plan, the U.S. should push for a much looser peg of the RMB to the dollar, moving toward an eventual free float of the RMB;
• The American federal government budget deficit should be cut quickly and aggressively, both to help the U.S. economy and to strengthen the dollar;
• The Administration should reconsider the policy directives behind Department of Commerce investigations that have triggered the rush of findings against China.

For decades, America's and China's limited understanding of each other was a serious threat to bilateral relations. Now mutual understanding is better, and the two countries are challenged to get their own houses in order while not using the other as an excuse to avoid difficult decisions.

[1] William W. Beach. "Fiscal Challenges for Government at All Levels: How Economic Stimulus Drives Up Deficit and Debt," Heritage Foundation WebMemo No. 2227, January 16, 2009, at http://www.heritage.org/Research /Economy/wm2227.cfm ; Alan Wheatley, "A Year On, China's Stimulus Postpones Its Problems," Reuters, November 10, 2009, at http://in.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idINIndia-43832220091110 (November 10. 2009).

[2] The White House, remarks by the President at the U.S./China Strategic and Economic Dialogue, July 27, 2009, at http://www.whitehouse.gov/ the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-at-the-US/China-Strategic-and -Economic-Dialogue/ (November 10, 2009); Derek Scissors, "Ten Things About China and Climate Change," Heritage Foundation Special Report No. 68, November 2, 2009, at http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment /sr0068.cfm .

[3] For example, Kim Chipman and John Duce, "Bar Funds for China-Backed Wind Farm, Senator Says," Bloomberg, November 6, 2009, at http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601080&sid=a3sGCD6uuJN8 (November 10, 2009).

[4] Nicholas R. Lardy "Financial Repression in China," Peterson Institute for International Economics, September 2008, at http://www.iie.com/pub lications/pb/pb08-8.pdf (November 10, 2009).

[5] Reuters, "China Signals That It May Allow Currency to Rise against Dollar," November 11, 2009, at http://www.cnbc.com/id/33850971 (November 11, 2009).

[6] Derek Scissors, "U.S.-China Trade: Do's and Don'ts for Congress," Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 2299, July 20, 2009, at http://www.heritage.org/Research/tradeandeconomicfreedom/bg2299.cfm . When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited in February, she urged China to buy American bonds. See Indira A. R. Lakshmanan, "Clinton Urges China to Keep Buying U.S. Treasury Securities," Bloomberg, February 2, 2009, at http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601070&sid=apSqGtcNsqSY (November 10, 2009). This is a misunderstanding of the situation--under present conditions, the PRC must buy American bonds. See Derek Scissors, "China Is a Banker over a Barrel," Heritage Foundation Commentary , March 16, 2009, at http://www.heritage.org/Press/Commentary/ed031609b.cfm . Thankfully, the Administration has now realized this.

[7] Steve Mufson, "Chinese Company to Buy a Stake in AES: Arlington Firm Seeks Money for New Projects, Ties to Asia," The Washington Post , November 7, 2009, at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009 /11/06/AR2009110601977.html (November 10, 2009). See also China Global Investment Tracker: Chinese Outward Investment, The Heritage Foundation, at http://www.heritage.org/cda/upload/China_Global_Investment_Tracker.xls .

[8] Doug Palmer, "U.S. Sets More Duties on China Pipe in Record Case," Reuters, November 6, 2009, at http://in.biz.yahoo.com/091105/137 /bauify.html (November 10, 2009).

[9] Press releases, United States International Trade Commission, 2008-2009, at http://www.usitc.gov/press_room/news_release/ (November 10, 2009).

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America’s “China-First” grand strategy and the transatlantic bargain: revisiting the security–economics nexus

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Since Washington announced its “rebalance to Asia” in 2011, debates about America’s Europe strategy have centered on whether America’s European allies could defend themselves without the USA. This debate has overlooked a crucial point: Washington’s security commitment to Europe is not only about military power but also hinges on European acquiescence to Washington’s politico-economic leadership position. US policymakers today increasingly view China as the main challenge to the latter. Accordingly, this article’s driving hypothesis is that the more significance the USA assigns to its European allies in the context of its China agenda, the more it will, for better or worse, seek to maintain (some degree of) European security dependence on the USA. Case studies of the Europe strategies of the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations, respectively, serve as a vehicle to probe the plausibility of this argument.

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Introduction

How does the rise of China and America’s preoccupation with the balance of power in East Asia impact the USA’s Europe strategy? US scholars continue to debate the extent to which any “China-first” grand strategy requires Washington to drawn down military resources in Europe (Colby 2021 ; Mazarr 2023 ). Relatedly, scholars on both sides of the Atlantic disagree about the prospect of US military abandonment of Europe, and on the question of whether or not America’s European allies can/or should be able to defend themselves without the USA (Snyder 1984 ; Biscop 2013 ; Howorth 2018 ; Posen 2020 ; Brooks and Meijer 2021 ). Such debates have become more salient following Russia’s re-invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, with the most outspoken “Asia-firsters” in the USA arguing that “Ukraine is a distraction from Taiwan” (Colby and Mastro 2022 ; see also Townshend 2022 ). But if Washington’s security commitment to Europe is truly driven by concerns about the continent’s military balance of power, it remains puzzling that various US administrations often reacted lukewarm to European defense integration efforts that aimed to make America’s European allies more military capable, independently of the USA (Howorth and Keeler 2003 ; Fiott 2019 ; Bergmann and Besch 2023 ). After all, having more capable European allies would arguably make it easier for the USA to reallocate its scarce resources to China and East Asia. Several observers have made precisely this point and warn that the USA is militarily overstretched (Colby 2021 ; Ashford et al. 2023 ). Nonetheless, even the Biden administration, despite its preoccupation with China, has not heeded calls within the USA to fundamentally downscale Washington’s role as Europe’s security provider and pass the buck to the continent’s local powers.

This article argues that much of the debate on what a “China-first” America means for Europe seems to be neglecting a crucial point, namely that the military alliance between both sides of the Atlantic is but one—if a critical—part of a broader transatlantic strategic bargain. Specifically, since the end of World War II, the relationship between the USA and its European allies has been characterized by a hierarchical political order, in which the dominant state (the USA) promised to protect its subordinates (the European allies) from threats, and in exchange demanded the latter to comply with the rules of the dominant state-led order (Lake 1999 ; 2009 ). Historical scholarship has long noted that Washington’s security commitment to Europe was never only about maintaining a favorable military balance of power on the continent. Rather, it was and remains also partially motivated by a US expectation of European acquiescence to the USA’s broader politico-economic leadership position (Ikenberry 2001 , 163–214; Leffler 2018a , 2018b ; Horovitz 2018 ; Horovitz and Götz 2020 ). While this bargain—or, in David Lake’s words: “social contract”—of exchanging security provision in exchange for politico-economic influence was never made explicit, it continues to offer a relevant lens to think about the drivers of America’s Europe strategy today (Lake 1999 ; 2009 ). In light of China’s emergence as an economic and technological powerhouse, issues related to trade, investment and technological innovation have become important vectors of Sino-American rivalry (The White House 2017 , 2022 ; US Department of Commerce 2022 ). Footnote 1 If history offers any guide to the future, this suggests that the evolution of Washington’s security commitment to Europe is, to some extent, also influenced by the significance it assigns to its European allies in the context of its China agenda. Concretely, the driving hypothesis here is that the more significance the USA assigns to its European allies in the context of its China agenda, the more it will, for better or worse, seek to maintain (some degree of) European security dependence on the USA. Rather than looking at America’s evolving Europe strategy through the prism of military abandonment (Snyder 1984 ), the bargain lens allows for a more comprehensive modeling of this relationship, that recognizes that military, political and economic factors together drive strategy. Footnote 2 In probing this hypothesis, this article fills an important gap in the literature on the impact of America’s “China-first” strategy on the transatlantic relationship.

This article conducts a plausibility probe of its driving hypothesis through three concise case studies examining the Europe strategies pursued by the Obama, Trump and the Biden administrations. The goal here is not to delve into the intricacies of specific decision-making processes or the domestic political factors constraining successive administrations. Instead, the aim is to highlight the value of the bargain prism to show how the USA’s role in Europe’s military balance of power is not only driven by military considerations, but also by US interests in the politico-economic sphere. As such, the article traces the efforts of successive administrations to recalibrate their approach to Europe in accordance with their China-centric global agenda. Each case first briefly asserts that Washington indeed adopted a “China-first” grand strategy and describes how much significance it assigned to its European allies in this regard. Afterward, the cases delineate the consequences for successive administration’s respective Europe strategies. Concretely, in order to probe the plausibility of the hypothesis, particular focus is directed to the extent to which each administration believed it could leverage its security commitment for influence in non-security related matters, and, in connection with this, the expected implications arising from a scenario where the USA is marginalized within the European (military) balance of power. To do so, the article draws on a combination of primary sources, research interviews and secondary literature.

While modesty is warranted in presenting any decisive conclusions due to the data access limitations that inevitably accompany efforts at analyzing contemporary events, the plausibility probe underscores the value of the bargain lens in grasping the impact of the US preoccupation with China on its Europe strategy. In the case of the Obama administration, its emphasis on prioritizing China and East Asia does appear to be one of the drivers behind its efforts to downgrade the security element of the transatlantic bargain and reduce the US role in the continent’s security architecture. Although a reduction in the US role in the continent’s military balance of power risked curtailing US influence over its European allies, this does not seem to have been a major concern for Obama. This was the case because the Obama White House did not view the US–Europe relationship as “the central axis” around which to organize responses to global challenges, including within the framework of its “rebalance to Asia” (Jones 2010 , 77; Leonard and Kundnani 2013 ). In contrast, Trump’s approach reflected a conviction that Sino-American competition compelled an important readjustment of the US–European arrangement. In spite of all its criticism of European free-riding on the USA for security, the Trump White House did not propose a “restraint-style” pull back from Europe (Posen 2018 ). Rather, Trump’s team seemed highly concerned with maintaining influence over Europe, and it sought to more effectively leverage the US security commitment to prevent the adoption of policies by Europeans that it believed would bolster China’s rise while undermining Washington’s own policy preferences. Finally, the Biden administration has been eager to emphasize the US continued commitment to its role as security provider in Europe and has even modestly increased America’s military presence on the continent. To a significant degree, the USA’s evolving military posture under the Biden administration should, of course, be assessed within the context of the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war. Nonetheless, if Biden were only concerned with military considerations, one might have logically expected him to seek to pass more of the burden onto America’s European allies. Instead, Biden has been careful to assert European military dependence on the USA. In essence, Biden seems to view the US military role in Europe as critical for asserting leadership over the “rules-based international order” and expects European support in defending this order against the distinct, yet combined challenge of both Russian and Chinese power at the same time (The White House 2022 , 8).

By making the case that assessments of what a “China-first” America means for Europe ought to move beyond discussions on the distribution of military resources between regions, this article makes a threefold contribution. First, combining insights from the historical literature on the transatlantic relationship and the literature on political order, the article provides a framework to integrate military, political and economic factors into assessments of America’s contemporary Europe strategy. Despite the fact that most scholars and policymakers recognize that non-military factors also drive US strategy, there is a surprising lack of modeling of these factors together in the context of Sino-American rivalry, specifically. In the debate on US grand strategy, for example, advocates of a grand strategy of “restraint” or “offshore balancing” focus on the European military balance above all, and rightly criticize “deep engagers” for downplaying the possibility of military overstretch and backlash effects. At the same time, they also argue that the USA could probably pull back militarily from Europe and not suffer significant consequences with respect to its overall global position (Posen 2014 ; Mearsheimer and Walt 2016 ). In making this case, however, they additionally have to grapple with the question of how much influence the USA buys over Europe’s broader international outlook, including on politico-economic matters, in exchange for this security commitment. This raises an important question for this argument going forward: Does America’s influence over Europe—including Europe’s China policy—outmatch the argument of having more resources to spend elsewhere, be it in East Asia or at home?

Second, and in alignment with a call put forth by Horovitz and Götz ( 2020 ), this article contributes to a broader effort aimed at investigating the interplay between security and political economy in the study of US foreign affairs. Much of the existing scholarship tends to concentrate on questions related to how states employ economic instruments of statecraft to advance their security objectives (Zielinski et al. 2021 ). This article turns this logic on its head and looks at how military instruments of statecraft are used in pursuit politico-economic aims (see also Horovitz and Götz 2020 ). Such a perspective is becoming particularly relevant at a time when long-standing orthodoxies about the relationship between security and economics are becoming more and more contested on both sides of the Atlantic (Farrell and Newman 2019 ; Norloff et al. 2020 ; Weiss 2021 ). Stated differently, as American policymakers rethink what mix of security and economic policies is most appropriate to respond to China’s rise, it becomes imperative for analysists of US foreign policy to recalibrate their analytical toolkit accordingly.

Third, and on the European side, the bargain lens underlines how hard it is—and will remain—to adopt an independent China strategy for as long as Europe remains dependent on Washington in security affairs. Exchanging security provision for acquiescence to US broader strategic designs makes sense to the extent that what good is for the USA is good for Europe. In other words, for a transatlantic bargain to be strategically sustainable, the dominant state (the USA) ought to provide “just enough political order” to gain the compliance of its subordinate states (the European allies) to the “constraints required to sustain that order (Lake 1999 ).” If this is not the case, subordinates may choose to defect, and seek more autonomy in security affairs as a precondition for freedom of action on other dossiers. This triggers an important question for Europeans: Is the USA’s China policy in the European interest?

The remainder of this article is divided in four sections. The first three sections present case studies of Washington’s efforts to reconcile its Europe strategy with its “China-first” grand strategy under the Obama administration, the Trump administration and the Biden administration, respectively. The fourth and final section summarizes the main findings, links them back to the article’s main driving hypothesis and suggests avenues for further research.

Obama’s rebalance to Asia and the downgrade of the transatlantic bargain

Since at least 2011, successive US administrations have sought to redirect the USA’s attention and resources toward the Asia–Pacific region, particularly in response to China’s growing economic and military influence in that region. References to the Asia–Pacific as the emerging center of gravity of global politics and economics came early on in the Obama administration, even culminating at some point in Obama’s self-proclamation as the USA’s first “Pacific President” (Obama 2009 ; The White House 2010 , 2015 ; Clinton 2011 ; US Department of Defense 2012 ). Obama officials always insisted that the so-called “pivot” or “rebalance” to Asia was not about any particular country, but more broadly about preserving peace, stability and the free flow of commerce in a vital region (Ratner 2013 ). Rather than seeking to contain China, the Obama White House accepted China’s rising influence in the Asia–Pacific as a premise and combined a strategy of engagement with hedging to encourage Beijing to become a “responsible stakeholder” (Brands and Cooper 2019 ). This section examines what, if anything, such growing preoccupation with China’s growing power in Asia implied for Obama’s Europe strategy.

While Asia–Pacific issues did feature occasionally in high-level transatlantic consultations, the general perception in Europe was that the Obama administration did not assign major importance to its European allies in the context of its China agenda (Transatlantic Security Task Force 2012 , 3–4; Smith et al. 2020 ). Footnote 3 Indeed, rather than emphasizing the development of a transatlantic joint approach for engaging with China, Obama seemed to favor Europeans concentrating their foreign policy efforts on European regional matters (Wright 2017 ). Footnote 4 Thus, they would help enable but not join the rebalance by allowing the USA to reallocate some of its resources to focus on Asia. For instance, when it came to Obama’s agenda on issues such as global economic stability, Beijing itself was America’s primary counterpart, even if the US–China relationship remained complex (Garrett 2019 ; Geithner 2014 ). Geo-economics was also at the core of the rebalance as Obama’s efforts to conclude the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) were, in part, a tool to strengthen ties with China’s immediate and extended periphery to let “America, not China, lead (Obama 2016 ; Garrett 2019 ).” While negotiations for a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) have by some observers been described through a similar lens, they also agree that Obama was not very committed to TTIP, and TPP was always considered the priority (Garrett 2019 ). All in all, garnering European support for its politico-economic agenda did not seem a priority for the Obama administration.

More concretely, the available data so far suggests that, in Obama’s view, the promise of European support for America’s twenty-first century designs for global order did not necessarily outweigh the costs of America being Europe’s security provider. Driven be a commitment to “rebalance to Asia,” the Obama administration sought (with mixed success) to reallocate US national security resources to East Asia, in part by withdrawing them from other regions, including the Middle East and Europe (US Department of Defense 2012 ; Flournoy and Davidson 2012 ). Footnote 5 The consensus view among scholars of the transatlantic relationship is that Obama consistently sought to downgrade the security element of the bargain, with the objective of reducing the US role in the continent’s security architecture (Hallams and Schreer 2012 ; Simón 2015 ; Overhaus 2016 ). This was, in turn, intended to alleviate the USA of what some considered an uneven “burden” and help resource a sustainable rebalance to Asia (Wright 2017 ). Footnote 6 Obama implemented several policy initiatives that indicate this commitment to reducing the cost of America’s role as Europe’s security provider. On the one hand, Obama, the administration reduced the US national security resource allocation to the region, both in military and in diplomatic terms (Simón 2015 ). On the other hand, Obama stressed the importance of burden-sharing within NATO, pushing for increased defense spending by other NATO members and referring to his NATO policies as part of an “anti-freerider campaign” (Obama as cited in Goldberg 2016 ; Krieg 2016 ; Löfflman 2019 ). In a way, the term burden-shifting may better capture the administration’s approach, as it seemingly sought to reduce the US role within NATO in favor of a more symmetric alliance. Footnote 7 Tellingly, and in contrast to his predecessors, Obama even welcomed the European Union’s (EU) efforts to advance its defense arrangements independently from NATO. Long-standing questions about the implications about any such initiatives for the relations between the EU and NATO, for their part, were temporarily set aside. All in all, Obama appeared more focused on encouraging Europeans to overcome their weaknesses rather than being concerned about Europe become “too strong” (Kandel and Perruche 2011 ; Bergmann et al. 2021 ; see also Desmaele 2023 ). Footnote 8

In hindsight, one can only speculate whether the Obama administration would have opposed EU efforts in defense integration if it believed that Brussels could become sufficiently empowered to challenge US influence, and to upend the long-standing social contract between both sides of the Atlantic accordingly. However, the key issue here is that Obama did no try to obstruct any limited defense initiatives by the EU, in contrast to many of his predecessors’ actions (Bergmann et al. 2021 ). Footnote 9 Indeed, proponents of a larger role for the EU in defense matters argued that during Obama’s tenure, a critical window of opportunity existed for advancing in this direction (Kandel and Perruche 2011 ). Importantly, none of this is to say that Obama was entirely uninterested in the European military balance of power. In the aftermath of Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea, for instance, Washington pledged 1 billion USD to for a military reinforcement program in Europe and deployed additional troops on a rotational basis (BBC 2014 ; Löfflmann 2015 ). But while speaking of a “unified response,” Obama in fact largely allowed Berlin to act as main interlocutor of the West (Löfflmann 2015 , 325). Overall, therefore, the pattern of behavior that emerges is one of American relative military disengagement and restraint, aimed at solidifying Berlin’s position as the emerging—if reluctant and contested—leader of the continent (Siddi 2018 ). In a way, it is therefore unsurprising that the debate about Europe’s ability to defend itself without the USA gained renewed prominence during the Obama era (Biscop 2013 ).

Taken together, the above analysis suggests that the prioritization of East Asia did incentivize the Obama administration to allocate fewer national security resources to Europe. While a diminished US footprint on the continent may have resulted in a decrease of US influence over its European allies, the lack of substantial importance attributed by Obama to these allies within the framework of its China-related policies indicates that any such reduction in US strategic leverage was likely not viewed as a major concern. In other words, Obama’s China agenda did not complicate or conflict with his desire the reduce the cost of the US security commitment to Europe, which in turn implied that the USA might have less influence over Europe. In short, in order to reconcile his approach to Europe with his efforts to reorient the US focus to East Asia, Obama oversaw a de facto US downgrade of the transatlantic bargain along both the security and politico-economic dimensions.

Trump’s competition with China and the purported correction in America’s Europe strategy

The link between the US reorientation toward East Asia and concerns about China’s rise, specifically, has become ever more explicit over the years, as evidenced by the Trump and Biden administration’s labeling of China as a “strategic competitor” (McCourt 2021 ; The White House 2022 ). While the Obama administration avoided casting the US–China relationship in competitive terms, the Trump administration elevated the notion of Sino-American competition to the center of US grand strategy (Simón et al. 2021 ). Even if strategic documents published by the Trump administration often lumped China and Russia together, the 2017 National Security Strategy (NSS) distinguishes China from Russia on two counts. First, whereas Russia is described by the Trump administration as primarily a military threat, China is described as a military and economic threat (The White House 2017 , 8, 21). The 2017 NSS, for instance, described China as challenging “American power, influence, and interests … across political, economic, and military arenas,” aiming “to change the international order in [its] favor.” A second difference is that China is described as “seeking to displace the USA in the Indo-Pacific region (…) and reorder the region in its favor,” whereas Russia is perceived to be just seeking to “restore its great power status and establish spheres of influence near its borders (The White House 2017 , 25).” How did such preoccupation with Sino-American rivalry impact the Trump administration’s Europe strategy?

It is true that during Trump’s tenure, the perception in much of the US strategic community was that Europe was years behind in adapting to the “new realities” of great power politics of the twenty-first century (Small et al. 2022 ). At the same time, and importantly, the Trump administration’s criticism of Europeans’ trade and security practices also indicated an awareness in Washington that Europe’s actions on the global stage had significance and could not just be dismissed. Andrew Small, for instance, wrote in 2019 that as US–China rivalry expanded beyond the military realm to encompass issues like technology, trade and economics, the EU also gained more significance for Washington due to its power in those areas (Small 2019 ). The key goal of the Trump administration seemed to try and prevent the EU’s power from being available to Beijing in a way that might support China’s ambitions vis-à-vis the USA (Desmaele 2022 ). Trump therefore put forward a course correction of the transatlantic bargain to ensure that America’s allies’ policies would strengthen rather than undermine US power. Thus, Trump’s focus on China did not result in a military abandonment of Europe; instead, it prompted him to seek and optimize the politico-economic element of the transatlantic bargain.

On the one hand, Trump was unafraid to express his dislike for the terms of the US security commitment to its European allies (Schreer 2019 ). Indeed, a key theme of Trump’s Europe strategy was that the USA’s long-standing Atlanticist foreign policy outlook was simply not paying off for the USA. Despite having held up its end of the transatlantic bargain through its role as security provider, Trump appeared convinced that America had been getting too little in return from its European counterparts (Mead 2019 ). While Trump may have shared with Obama a frustration about what they viewed as European free-riding on the USA, his administration was unequivocal in its opposition to any type of EU-defense scheme. Without negating the confounding effect of domestic political considerations, it still seems evident that the Trump White House was concerned about Russia’s military power and adventurism in Europe (The White House 2017 , 35). Trump’s team also constantly complained about Europeans not spending enough on defense. Whenever European countries undertook initiatives within the EU to enhance defense cooperation, or to better organize and increase national investments in the EU’s defense sphere, however, Washington privately and publicly expressed its disapproval (Hutchinson 2018 ; Sondland 2019 ). To be sure, some scholars have made the argument that the USA cannot afford to significantly downscale its security commitment to the continent because they argue that Europeans are today unable to defend themselves against any large-scale Russian aggression (Brooks and Meijer 2021 ). Even if one accepts that analysis, it remains puzzling that Washington would push back against European efforts to strengthen their military capabilities and contribute more significantly to the overall military balance on the continent in the longer term. This is all the more the case in light of Washington’s designation of both Moscow and Beijing as major military threats.

Essentially, rather than seeking to decrease European security dependence on the USA, the main modus operandi of the Trump administration was one in which Washington used American laws and military or economic leverage to address US grievances and stiff-arm allies on a case-by-case basis into following in line (Desmaele 2022 ). Stated differently, Trump’s efforts to seek and undermine European unity, both in matters of defense and beyond, appeared at least in part driven by concerns about US influence over its allies. After all, a more united Europe would surely be more resilient against Russian or Chinese pressure, but it would also become less receptive to the influence of the USA (Pisani-Ferry 2018 ). Reflective of the Trump administration’s efforts to renegotiate the post-World War II transatlantic bargain are the recurring signals that any constructive US–Europe relationship in matters of security was conditional upon Europe’s acquiescence to the administration’s broader political preferences. For instance, when it comes to China specifically, Washington’s repeatedly warned Europeans that using technology from Chinese telecommunications manufacturer Huawei could hurt their intelligence sharing with the USA. When several Europeans did not comply with this request to ban the use of Huawei technology, the USA announced sanctions “to restrict foreign tech manufacturers of selling computer chips built with US technology” to Huawei leaving several European countries little choice but to reject Huawei after all (Delcker 2020 ; Desmaele 2022 , 186). In addition, Trump’s top envoy for arms control, Marshall Billingslea, reportedly pushed Europeans to pressure China over its nuclear weapons program (Salama 2020 ). Washington also aimed its pressure campaigns at particular countries on a case-by-case basis, like when it sought to prevent Portugal from granting a 50-year concession of the new Sines container terminal to China or when it pushed the UK to reconsider Chinese involvement in the construction of nuclear power plants (Esteban and Otero-Iglesias 2020 ). Even in the absence explicit threats to reduce the US security commitment to the continent, the prevailing sentiment in many European capitals was that with Trump as the commander-in-chief and the USA as their main security provider, countries could simply not risk displeasing Washington (Esteban and Otero-Iglesias 2020 ). Meanwhile, the Trump administration was careful to ensure that it retained a seat at the table in European discussions on Beijing. For instance, and in spite of its confusing rhetoric about the value of NATO to the USA, it pushed its allies to formally include Beijing on the Alliance’s agenda (Heisbourg 2020 ). Relatedly, in 2020, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also famously proposed to launch an “Alliance of Democracies” against China (Pompeo 2020 ). Yet, rather than viewing this as an invitation for participation in a joint venture, the general perception in many European countries remained that they were under pressure to join in on “a China strategy they did not fully believe in” themselves (Small et al. 2022 , 8).

When assessed in its totality, the pattern of behavior outlined above appears to provide support for the hypothesis that Washington’s security commitment to Europe is partially contingent upon the relevance its assigns to Europe in the context of its China agenda. In spite of Trump’s complaints that the USA was being exploited by its allies, his administration did not propose for the USA to “come home” and pass the buck to Europe’s local powers in the way that proponents of a grand strategy of restraint or offshore balancing are. Rather, accessible date on the driver of Trump’s policies so far reflects a preoccupation with maintaining influence over Europe, including on issues related to technology, trade and economics. Put differently, in order to align its Europe strategy with its efforts to outcompete China, the Trump administration sought to correct the transatlantic bargain to more explicitly and effectively leverage its security commitment on the continent to get Europeans in line on all things related to China.

China, Russia and Biden’s quest to assert American leadership of the “rules-based international order”

The Biden administration has maintained the trajectory set by its predecessor and declared US–China competition as its foreign policy priority. It is particularly noteworthy, in this regard, that key strategic documents released by the administration after the start of Russia re-invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 explicitly identify China as the primary challenger for the USA. Specifically, the 2022 National Security Strategy states that the USA will prioritize “maintaining an enduring competitive edge over the PRC while constraining a still profoundly dangerous Russia.” (The White House 2022 , 23; see also US Department of Defense 2022 ). It further describes China as “the only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do it” (The White House 2022 , 23) In other words, the “rebalance to Asia” may have experienced a temporary reduction in intensity under the Biden administration due to developments in Europe, but it has by no means been abandoned.

Since the beginning of his presidency, Biden has consistently emphasized the importance of America’s European allies in the context of Sino-American competition (Sullivan 2019 ; Biden 2021 ; Haar 2021 ). He has doubled down on the politico-element of the transatlantic bargain, in particular. Among other, under Biden, the USA and the EU have established various dialogues and institutional structures, including the Trade and Technology Council (TTC), the EU-US Dialogue on China and the EU-US Dialogue on the Indo-Pacific. Importantly, even when these initiatives are framed in broader terms rather than exclusively targeting China, observers agree that Biden considers them essential components of his China strategy (Congressional Research Service 2023 c). Furthermore, the Biden administration has not shied away from pressuring its European allies regarding various China-related issues. Its criticism of the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) and efforts to convince the Netherlands to block ASML from selling chipmaking machines to China are but two prominent examples (Kandel 2021 ; Race 2023 ). On top of that, Washington has also pushed to make China a more central issue on the NATO agenda, even if several European countries remain skeptical on whether NATO is the appropriate forum to address issues related to Beijing (Haroche and Quencez 2022 ).

Biden’s policies have frustrated scholars of the restraint and offshore balancing school of US grand strategy, who have long advocated a reduction of the US military role in Europe. Recently, in light of China’s rise, these scholars have found new allies among what can be called the “Asia-firsters.” The latter argue that the USA should today urgently shift at least part of its military resources away from Europe and direct them toward China in East Asia instead (Colby and Mastro 2022 ; Mazarr 2023 ). Biden has done nothing of the like, however. On the contrary, after February 2022, the Biden administration deployed additional troops to NATO allies in Eastern Europe to offer reassurance amid concerns that the Russo-Ukrainian war might spill over their border (Congressional Research Service 2023b ). The Biden administration has also played a leading role in providing military and financial assistance to Ukraine (Congressional Research Service 2023a ). Although it has continued to advocate for European countries to increase their defense spending, it appears to view such efforts as complementary rather than replacements for US contributions (Bergmann and Besch 2023 ). In other words, and in contrast to the Obama administration, Biden’s policies have signaled a commitment not to burden- shifting but to bolstering NATO’s military strength at the aggregate level. The fact that the new US-EU dialogue on security and defense cooperation, established in 2021, has as its stated goal to raise “the level of ambition” for the EU-NATO partnership is indicative of this approach (US Department of State 2021 ; Barigazzi 2021 ).

Against a background of ongoing war in Ukraine, Biden’s emphasis on bolstering NATO’s capabilities may seem unsurprising. However, it is important to note that Biden has not deviated from the recurring US inclination to push back against any initiatives that risk its marginalization within the European military balance of power. Indeed, while the Biden administration has not resorted to the Trump administration’s forceful rhetoric and interventions, it has nevertheless signaled ambivalence when it comes to European defense cooperation. Among others, it has been eager to conclude an administration agreement that provides the USA increased access to EU-defense funding (Bergmann and Besch 2023 ). Julliane Smith, the US ambassador to NATO, has likewise expressed some muted disappointment that American firms were unable to take part in the EU’s new initiative for joint ammunition procurement (Grieco and Jourdain 2023 ). In summary, and in spite of its identification of China as its foreign policy priority, the Biden administration has chosen not to pass the buck, but rather to reaffirm US leadership and influence within NATO and matters of European security (Porter 2023 ; Menon and DePetris 2023 ).

Rather than viewing the transatlantic relationship as an explicit “security for diplomatic and economic support” quid pro quo, as was seemingly the case under Trump, the Biden administration appears to have adopted a more nuanced approach. At its core, Biden’s grand strategy centers on using US power, especially military power, to uphold what the administration refers to as the “rules-based international order” (Biden 2023 ; Beinart 2021 ; The White House 2022 , 8, 16, 18, 38, 42) According to Biden, the sustainability of this order is inherently linked to the US military alliances that underpin it. Biden has refrained from framing global politics solely in terms of raw power, however. Instead, Biden officials consistently refer to notions such as “rules of the road” or “the competition for order” (The White House 2022 , 4; Blinken 2022 ; Biden 2023 ). China and Russia, for their part, are seen as each posing a “distinct,” yet highly related challenge to the rules-based order (The White House 2022 , 23).

Through its efforts to boost the credibility of US security assurances to Europe, Biden has aimed to reinforce US leadership of said rules-based order (Garamone 2022 ; Biden 2023 ) Concurrently, as previously mentioned, Biden has also attempted to pull Europeans into America’s competition with China as a means of defending this order. Importantly, by framing the challenge as a combined Sino-Russian threat to the rules-based international order, it becomes politically easier for Europeans (and the EU) to cooperate with the USA in countering China, without fully embracing Washington’s more hawkish rhetoric. This approach of framing global competition through the lens of order building further also serves to underscore that Europeans stand to benefit from Washington’s efforts as well. Thus, just as the USA is helping Europeans in their efforts to counter Moscow, it also expects Europeans countries to push back against China (Lynch et al. 2023 ; Tierney 2023 ). In fact, if one accepts Biden’s framework, refusing to confront China can be seen as not endorsing the rules-based international order.

In summary, Biden’s prioritization of China has so far not led it to significantly reduce its role in Europe’s military balance of power. Instead, this role has taken on a pivotal function as a means to assert American leadership over “the rules-based international order.” It is crucial to acknowledge that Biden’s European strategy is, to a significant extent, a response to ongoing events in Ukraine. At the same time, if Biden’s European strategy were only driven by concerns about the continent’s military balance of power, one might logically expect Biden to encourage Europeans to assume a larger role in European regional geopolitics, independently of the USA. This is not the path that Biden appears to be pursuing. In fact, Biden’s China policy seems to caution against such burden-shifting. Biden’s overarching goal has remained similar to that of the Trump administration: Getting Europeans in line on all matters related to China. The key difference lies in the means by which Biden is pursuing this objective. In contrast to Trump, the Biden administration has sought to emphasize its leadership of the “rules-based international order” in order to upgrade both elements of the transatlantic bargain—military and politico-economic. Biden has presented them as mutually reinforcing because they both serve to uphold and defense the “rules-based international order” against the “deepening Sino-Russian partnership” and challenge to the order (NATO 2022 , 5; Ettinger 2023 ).

This article has sought to advance understanding of the impact of “China first” on America’s Europe strategy. Existing debates on this issue often center either on questions of regional tradeoffs in the allocation of military resources, or on questions related to economics, but rarely model these factors together. Considering them together, through the prism of a transatlantic bargain, clarifies how the USA’s security commitment to Europe remains tied to an (often implicit) expectation of European support for broader American politico-economic designs. The latter have become increasingly intertwined with China in recent decades, as issues like trade, investment and technological innovation have become vectors of Sino-American competition. With this in mind, it becomes much less surprising that Washington has often reacted lukewarm to, if not outwardly opposed, European efforts aimed at advancing cooperation in defense matters without the USA. Instead, the article’s main hypothesis is that the more significance the USA assigns to its European allies in the context of its China agenda, the more it will, for better or worse, seek to maintain (some degree of) European security dependence on the USA. Three case studies of the Europe strategies pursued by the Obama, Trump and the Biden administration served as a vehicle to test the plausibility of this hypothesis.

The findings of the case studies provide preliminary support for the hypothesis. Trump and Biden, in particular, both regard(ed) Europe as crucial to their China agendas. While the specific way in which they linked the US security commitment to Europe to their efforts to counter Chinese power differed, the overarching goal remained consistent. In both cases, the seeming desire for influence over Europe led them to take (some) precautions to prevent the marginalization of the USA in the European military balance of power. In contrast, Obama did not appear to view Europe as central to his China agenda. Consequently, he showed less concern about maintaining influence over Europe and placed a higher priority on burden-shifting over burden-sharing. In other words, Obama placed reduced emphasis on preserving a significant US role in Europe’s military balance of power. The key take-away here is that Washington’s ability to influence Europeans’ foreign policy vis-à-vis China, by virtue of its security commitment to the region, has at times discouraged efforts to make the NATO alliance more reliant on European military power.

The analysis presented in this paper has some limitations and provides avenues for future research. Most importantly, as already mentioned, there is the challenge of accessing reliable data on contemporary events. In addition, it remains difficult to disentangle the relative weight of various factors driving US policy decisions. For example, the analysis certainly does not rule out the possibility that US policymakers may have genuine concerns about the ability of Europeans to defend themselves without US support. That being said, the case studies do indicate that a desire for US leverage over Europe in a broader politico-economic context plays some role in US calculations. While the US agenda in this regard goes much beyond China, this article has only sought to illustrate how Europe matters in Sino-American competition, specifically. Moreover, the analysis has alluded to a recent renewed US effort to extend NATO’s relevance beyond the Euro-Atlantic theater, particularly in response to China’s rising power. While the idea of a “global NATO” is not new, its previous prominence during the immediate post-Cold War period and the War on Terror was an era during which Russia was not considered as a major problem. This is no longer the case. In today’s landscape, a crucial question arises about how Biden, and a potential successor, will strike a balance in designing policies to counter the influence of both Russia and China simultaneously within NATO. This question underscores the relevance of a growing debate within the US strategic community about the connections, or lack thereof, between various regions and competitors within US grand strategy (Cohen 2023 ). It also underscores the need for Europeans to assess the credibility and sustainability of their continued security dependence on the USA.

In addition, and relatedly, the article has highlighted the (implicit) link between security and politico-economic factors in America’s Europe strategy. In the past, however, both of these elements were targeted at the same adversary, the Soviet Union. This is no longer the case either. As a consequence, the question arises on how to redefine the transatlantic bargain in a less US-centric world. This article hopes to have helped provide a framework for discussions on these important topics. More work is needed on how to model military and politico-economic factors together in assessment of how Sino-American competition plays out in regions that are not the immediate neighborhood of Washington and Beijing.

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Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Nele Marianne Ewers-Peters, Jim Goldgeier, Elie Perot and the journal’s three anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier versions of this document.

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Desmaele, L. America’s “China-First” grand strategy and the transatlantic bargain: revisiting the security–economics nexus. Int Polit (2024). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41311-024-00577-6

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Is This Obama, Fauci, and Gates at a Wuhan Lab in 2015?

What's a conspiracy theory without miscaptioned illustrations, published july 13, 2020.

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In July 2020, a photograph supposedly showing then-U.S. President Barack Obama, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and Melinda Gates at a laboratory in Wuhan, China, in 2015 started to circulate on social media:

This is a genuine photograph of Obama and Fauci — but it was not taken in Wuhan, China, in 2015. Also, the woman in the red shirt is not Melinda Gates.

This photograph was taken in December 2014 at the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, and shows Obama and Fauci with U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Burwell and Chief of the Biodefense Research Section Nancy Sullivan.

The photograph is available via the NIH Director's blog , where it is accompanied by the following caption: "Dr. Nancy Sullivan of NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) discussing Ebola research with President Barack Obama as NIAID Director Dr. Anthony Fauci and HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell look on."

Dr. Francis Collins went on to write in the blog:

Today, we had the great honor of welcoming President Barack Obama to the campus of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, MD—to see first-hand the progress that biomedical research is making against Ebola virus disease. The President toured the NIH Vaccine Research Center, and met with scientists who are working hard to develop ways to combat this deadly virus that continues to devastate West Africa. And, in a speech before a packed auditorium at the NIH Clinical Center, the President praised the contributions of NIH staff. He also emphasized the need for emergency Congressional authorization of resources to ensure that our nation’s research and public health efforts against Ebola will lead as quickly as possible to an end to this devastating outbreak.

A number of similar images from this visit are available via Getty Images .

The text accompanying this viral image also full of misinformation. We addressed this alleged grant to a laboratory in Wuhan, China, more in depth in this article .

In short, the National Institutes of Health awarded the New York-based environmental health nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance a $3.7 million grant to fund research into how bat coronavirus could emerge and spread to human populations. A portion of that money — about $600,000 — went to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Although this grant was initially awarded under the Obama administration in 2014, it was renewed in 2019 under the Trump administration. In April 2020, as coronavirus spread across the United States, the Trump administration canceled this funding for coronavirus research.

Collins, Francis.   "President’s Visit to NIH Highlights Research on Ebola."     NIH Director Blog .   2 December 2014.

Lim, David; Ehley, Brianna.   "Fauci Says White House Told NIH to Cancel Funding for Bat Virus Study."     Politico .   23 June 2020.

By Dan Evon

Dan Evon is a former writer for Snopes.

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Marian Robinson, the mother of Michelle Obama who lived in the White House, dies at 86

FILE - Marian Robinson, mother of first lady Michelle Obama, center left, smiles as she boards Air Force One with President Barack Obama en route to the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday,” a landmark event of the civil rights movement, from Andrews Air Force Base, Md., March 7, 2015. Robinson, who moved with the first family to the White House when son-in-law Barack Obama was elected president, has died, according to an announcement by Michelle Obama and other family members Friday, May 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)

FILE - First lady Michelle Obama, left, and her mother Marian Robinson react as Ret. Navy Admiral John B. Nathman speaks to delegates at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., Sept. 6, 2012. Robinson, who moved with the first family to the White House when son-in-law Barack Obama was elected president, has died, according to an announcement by Michelle Obama and other family members Friday, May 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)

FILE - Former first lady Michelle Obama’s mother Marian Robinson, center, arrives for a ceremony as President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden host former President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama for the unveiling of their official White House portraits in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Sept. 7, 2022. Robinson, who moved with the first family to the White House when son-in-law Barack Obama was elected president, has died, according to an announcement by Michelle Obama and other family members Friday, May 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — On election night 2008, as Barack Obama sat nervously in a Chicago hotel suite and awaited news on whether he would become the country’s first Black president, his mother-in-law was by his side.

“Are you ready for this, Grandma?” Obama asked Marian Shields Robinson, who years earlier had doubted that he and her daughter, Michelle, would last.

Six months, tops, she had predicted.

“Never one to overemote, my mom just gave him a sideways look and shrugged, causing them both to smile,” Michelle Obama wrote in her memoir, “Becoming.” “Later, though, she’d describe to me how overcome she’d felt right then, struck just as I’d been by his vulnerability. America had come to see Barack as self-assured and powerful, but my mother also recognized the gravity of the passage, the loneliness of the job ahead.”

She continued: “The next time I looked over, I saw that she and Barack were holding hands.”

The union of Barack and Michelle Obama, the 20-something lawyers who met one summer while working at a Chicago law firm, endured and made history. In her own way, Mrs. Robinson would, too.

She died peacefully on Friday, the former first lady and her brother, Craig Robinson, and their families announced in a statement.

“There was and will be only one Marian Robinson,” they said. “In our sadness, we are lifted up by the extraordinary gift of her life. And we will spend the rest of ours trying to live up to her example.”

Besides being the mother of the nation’s first Black first lady, Mrs. Robinson was also unusual for being one of the few in-laws who lived at the White House with the president and his immediate family.

Until January 2009, Mrs. Robinson had lived her entire life in Chicago. She was a widow and in her early 70s when Obama was elected in 2008 and resisted the idea of starting over in Washington. President Obama said the family suggested she try Washington for three months before deciding. The first lady enlisted her brother to help persuade their mother to move.

“There were many good and valid reasons that Michelle raised with me, not the least of which was the opportunity to continue spending time with my granddaughters, Malia and Sasha, and to assist in giving them a sense of normalcy that is a priority for both of their parents, as has been from the time Barack began his political career,” Mrs. Robinson wrote in the foreword to “A Game of Character,” a memoir by her son, formerly the head men’s basketball coach at Oregon State University.

“My feeling, however, was that I could visit periodically without actually moving in and still be there for the girls,” she said.

Mrs. Robinson said her son understood why she wanted to stay in Chicago, but still used a line of reasoning on her that she would use on him and his sister. He asked her to think of the move as an opportunity to grow and try something new.

“As a compromise, I opted to move to the White House after all, at least temporarily, while still reserving lots of time to travel and maintain a certain amount of autonomy,” she wrote.

Granddaughters Malia and Sasha were just 10 and 7, respectively, when they started to call the executive mansion home in 2009 after their dad became president. In Chicago, Mrs. Robinson had become almost a surrogate parent to them during the presidential campaign. She retired from her job as a bank secretary to help shuttle them around.

At the White House, she was a reassuring presence, and her lack of Secret Service protection made it possible for her to accompany them to and from school daily without fanfare.

“I would not be who I am today without the steady hand and unconditional love of my mother, Marian Shields Robinson,” Michelle Obama wrote in her memoir. “She has always been my rock, allowing me the freedom to be who I am, while never allowing my feet to get too far off the ground. Her boundless love for my girls, and her willingness to put our needs before her own, gave me the comfort and confidence to venture out into the world knowing they were safe and cherished at home.”

Her White House life was not limited to caring for her granddaughters.

Mrs. Robinson enjoyed a level of anonymity that the president and first lady openly envied, allowing her to come and go from the White House as often as she pleased on shopping trips around town, to the president’s box at the Kennedy Center and to Las Vegas or to visit her other grandchildren in Portland, Oregon. She gave a few media interviews but never to White House press.

She attended some White House events, including concerts, the annual Easter Egg Roll and National Christmas Tree lighting, and was a guest at some state dinners.

White House residency also opened up the world to Mrs. Robinson, who had been widowed for nearly 20 years when she moved to a room on the third floor, one floor above the first family.

She had never traveled outside the U.S. until she moved to Washington, taking her first flight abroad on Air Force One in 2009 when the Obamas visited France. She joined them on a trip to Russia, Italy and Ghana later that year, during which she got to meet Pope Benedict, tour Rome’s ancient Colosseum and view a former slave-holding compound on the African coast.

She also accompanied her daughter and granddaughters on two overseas trips without the president to South Africa and Botswana in 2011, and China in 2014.

Craig Robinson wrote that he and his parents doubted whether his sister’s relationship with Obama would last, though Fraser Robinson III and his wife thought the young lawyer was a worthy suitor for their daughter, also a lawyer. Craig Robinson and his parents were sitting on the front porch of their Chicago home one hot summer night when Obama and his sister stopped by on their way to a movie.

Her parents exchanged knowing glances as soon as the couple departed. “Too bad,” Mrs. Robinson said. “Yep,” answered Fraser Robinson. “She’ll eat him alive.”

Craig Robinson wrote that his mother gave the relationship six months. Barack and Michelle Obama tied the knot on Oct. 3, 1992 and have been married for 31 years.

Marian Lois Shields Robinson was born in Chicago on July 30, 1937. She attended two years of teaching college, married in 1960 and, as a stay-at-home mom, stressed the importance of education to her children. Both were educated at Ivy League schools, each with a bachelor’s degree from Princeton. Michelle Obama also has a law degree from Harvard.

Fraser Robinson was a pump operator for the Chicago Water Department. He had multiple sclerosis and died in 1991.

Besides the Obama family, Mrs. Robinson is survived by her son, Craig, his wife, Kelly, and their children Avery, Austin, Aaron and Leslie.

He hoped the two countries would abandon distrust and misunderstanding, strengthen exchange and cooperation, so as to push US-China relations forward.

Wen said the Sino-US cooperation can play a unique role in advancing the establishment of the new international political and economic order, as well as promoting world peace, stability and prosperity.

Wen also said he did not agree with the suggestion of a "Group of Two" (G2), saying that China is still a developing country with a huge population and has a long way to go before it becomes modernized.

On Tuesday, Obama held talks with Chinese President Hu Jintao. A China-US Joint Statement was issued following the summit. The two countries reiterated in the statement their commitment to building a "positive, cooperative and comprehensive relationship in the 21st century" and promised to jointly cope with common challenges.

Obama also met with Wu Bangguo, chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, on Tuesday.

Obama started his China visit Sunday night from Shanghai and arrived in Beijing Monday afternoon. He met with Shanghai municipal officials and had a town hall meeting with college students on Monday.

China was the third leg of Obama's Asian trip, which had taken him to Japan and Singapore, where he attended the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.

Chinese Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei, Chinese Ambassador to the United States Zhou Wenzhong and U.S. Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman saw Obama off at the airport Wednesday afternoon.

Marian Robinson, Michelle Obama's mother, dies at 86

WASHINGTON — Former First Lady Michelle Obama’s mother, Marian Robinson, has died, according to a family statement shared with NBC News. Robinson was 86 years old.

“She passed peacefully this morning, and right now, none of us are quite sure how exactly we’ll move on without her,” the family statement said.

The family statement is from Michelle and Barack Obama; Craig Robinson and his wife, Kelly; and Marian Robinson’s grandchildren, Avery, Leslie, Malia, Sasha, Austin and Aaron.

Robinson became known to Americans as the country’s first grandmother after her son-in-law, Barack Obama, won the 2008 presidential election. She was a fixture in the White House during his eight years in office, though she kept a low profile. She attended holiday events, the occasional overseas trip and concerts in the East Room. But most often she was with her granddaughters, Sasha and Malia.

Having lived in Chicago her entire life, Robinson agreed to move to Washington, D.C., in 2009 to live in the White House residence and help take care of her granddaughters, who were seven and 10 years old at the time.

“I felt like this was going to be a very hard life for both of them,” she later said in a CBS interview , referring to her daughter and son-in-law. “And I was worried about their safety, and I was worried about my grandkids. That’s what got me to move to D.C.”

In their statement Friday, Robinson's family members said she agreed to leave Chicago with "a healthy nudge."

"We needed her. The girls needed her. And she ended up being our rock through it all," they said.

"She relished her role as a grandmother. ... And although she enforced whatever household rules we’d set for bedtime, watching TV, or eating candy, she made clear that she sided with her 'grandbabies' in thinking that their parents were too darn strict," they added.  

In a statement released Saturday, President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden said, "We knew Mrs. Marian Robinson as a devoted mother and grandmother with a fierce and unconditional love of her family. With the blessing of friendship, we felt that love ourselves — with every quiet smile or warm embrace she shared with us."

"The entire Biden family sends its deepest love to Michelle, Craig, Barack, Kelly, and the six irrepressible grandchildren whom she helped to raise and so loved, and in whom her kind and gentle spirit lives on," the statement added.

Robinson was born in Chicago in 1937 and grew up in the city’s South Side, where she raised her daughter and son, Craig Robinson. She was married to Fraser Robinson, who died in 1991 from multiple sclerosis.

The former president once called his mother-in-law “the least pretentious person I know.” Indeed, Robinson said in the CBS interview that it was a “huge adjustment” being waited on by White House residence staff, whom she said she convinced to let her do her own laundry.

"Rather than hobnobbing with Oscar winners or Nobel laureates, she preferred spending her time upstairs with a TV tray, in the room outside her bedroom with big windows that looked out at the Washington Monument," the family said in its statement Friday. "The only guest she made a point of asking to meet was the Pope."

The former president credited Robinson with keeping his daughters grounded while they grew up in the White House.

“She’s down to Earth and she doesn’t understand all the fuss,” he said in an interview on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert."

Michelle Obama was deeply close to her mother. It was Robinson who narrated the biographical video introducing her daughter at the Democratic National Convention in 2008. And after leaving the White House, Robinson said, “My saying is when I grow up, I would like to be like Michelle Obama.”

Just a few weeks ago, Michelle Obama paid tribute to her mother on Mother’s Day by announcing that an exhibit at the Obama Presidential Center Museum in Chicago will be named after her.

“In so many ways she fostered in me a deep sense of confidence in who I was and who I could be by teaching me how to think for myself, how to use my own voice, and how to understand my own worth,” the former first lady said in a video announcement. “I simply wouldn’t be who I am today without my mom.”

The family statement released Friday said "there was and will be only one Marian Robinson," adding, "In our sadness, we are lifted up by the extraordinary gift of her life. And we will spend the rest of ours trying to live up to her example."

Kelly O’Donnell is Senior White House correspondent for NBC News.

Carol E. Lee is the Washington managing editor.

US Lawmakers Pledge Support for Taiwan and Its New President After China's Military Drills

A U.S. congressional delegation has met Taiwan’s new leader in a show of support shortly after China held drills around the self-governing island in response to his inauguration speech

US Lawmakers Pledge Support for Taiwan and Its New President After China's Military Drills

In this photo released by the Taiwan Presidential Office, Taiwan President Lai Ching-te, right, puts on a cowboy hat given by Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas during a meeting in Taipei, Taiwan, Monday, May 27, 2024. A U.S. congressional delegation met Taiwan's new leader on Monday in a show of support shortly after China held drills around the self-governing island in response to his inauguration speech. (Taiwan Presidential Office via AP)

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — A U.S. congressional delegation met Taiwan's new leader on Monday in a show of support days after China held drills around the self-governing island in response to his inauguration.

Rep. Andy Barr, the co-chair of the Taiwan caucus in the U.S. Congress, said the United States is fully committed to supporting Taiwan militarily, diplomatically and economically.

“There should be no doubt, there should be no skepticism in the United States, Taiwan or anywhere in the world, of American resolve to maintain the status quo and peace in the Taiwan Strait,” the Republican from Kentucky said at a news conference in the capital, Taipei, after the delegation met Taiwan President Lai Ching-te.

China regards Taiwan as a renegade province that must come under its control, by force if necessary. The U.S., like most countries, does not have formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan but is bound by its own laws to provide the island with the means to defend itself.

The Chinese government expressed strong opposition to the congressional visit, saying it undermined China-U.S. relations and peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, referring to the waterway between China and Taiwan.

The lawmakers' five-day visit “ran against the political commitment of the U.S. government to maintain only unofficial relations with Taiwan, sending a seriously wrong signal to the separatist force of Taiwan independence,” Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Mao Ning said in Beijing.

Lai, who took office one week ago, is expected to continue the policies of Tsai Ing-wen, his predecessor from the same Democratic Progressive Party.

The new foreign minister, Lin Chia-lung, noted the recent Chinese drills and called the American delegation's visit “an important gesture of solidarity” at a critical time.

The delegation included four Republicans and two Democrats and was led by Rep. Michael McCaul, the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Last year, China sanctioned the Texas Republican after he visited Taiwan in April.

“America is and always will be a reliable partner, and no amount of coercion or intimidation will slow down or stop the routine visits by the Congress to Taiwan,” he said.

McCaul cited congressional approval last month of a military aid bill for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. China firmly opposes the U.S. arming Taiwan, Mao said.

The other delegation members were Republicans Young Kim from California and Joe Wilson from South Carolina and Democrats Jimmy Panetta from California and Chrissy Houlahan from Pennsylvania.

Moritsugu reported from Hong Kong. Associated Press video producer Liu Zheng in Beijing contributed to this report.

Follow AP's Asia-Pacific coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/asia-pacific

Copyright 2024 The  Associated Press . All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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