Interests, Not Values, Should Guide America’s China Strategy
America should seek to expand its coalition of allies and partners—but based on a country’s ability and will to help address interests it shares with America, not on its history with Washington or the nature of the country’s political regime.
IT IS now widely accepted that the United States is in a great power competition with China, and that allies and partners are pivotal in this struggle. President Joe Biden ran on a platform emphasizing their elemental importance, and his administration has pledged to continue the Trump administration’s tough line on China. The question that now confronts Washington is how to realize the potential advantages afforded by this network.
That won’t be easy. It’s one thing to be linked with such a far-flung group that in aggregate constitutes enormous power; it is quite another thing to convert that potential into meaningful international political influence. Indeed, the intensity of the burden-sharing controversies in recent years—including with some of Washington’s strongest traditional allies like Germany—shows how difficult it is to turn the latent advantages of this network into real leverage, let alone action. And Europe’s Comprehensive Agreement on Investment with Beijing, concluded just before Biden’s inauguration, is only the most prominent example that his election has not wiped away many of the real divergences among Washington and its allies.
The Biden administration appears to have a theory of the case for how to turn the potential of this network into real leverage and action. This is a “global, values-based” model of alliances and partnerships. Biden himself laid out this approach in his February speech at the State Department and then even more clearly and pointedly at the Munich Security Conference later that month. In the latter speech, Biden contended that “we are in the midst of a fundamental debate about the future and direction of our world … [between those who argue] that autocracy is the best way forward … and those who understand that democracy is essential.” He invited “our fellow democracies … to join us in this vital work,” arguing that “our partnerships have endured and grown through the years because they are rooted in the richness of our shared democratic values.” Emphasizing his “belief that – [with] every ounce of my being – that democracy will and must prevail,” he contended that, “if we work together with our democratic partners with strength and confidence, I know that we’ll meet every challenge and outpace every challenger.” And Secretary of State Antony Blinken has repeatedly referred to the key divide in international politics as a competition between “techno-democracies and techno-authoritarians”—an ideological divide in which “techno-democracies” would be arrayed together on one side.
National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, meanwhile, has laid out the logic behind this approach in illuminating remarks at the U.S. Institute of Peace in late January 2021 as well as in a number of articles he authored before returning to government, particularly a piece he coauthored in Foreign Policy in May 2020. Sullivan recognizes that Washington’s relations with its confederates have to change, and he has a particular vision how. In his January remarks, Sullivan emphasized the importance of getting “in lockstep with democratic allies and partners” to generate “a chorus of voices that can drive the argument … to stand up for a certain set of principles.” Following from this logic, Sullivan indicated that no relationship would be “more critical than the transatlantic alliance,” and that “getting on the same page with the Europeans” would be the administration’s focus. Doing so would create what, quoting Dean Acheson, he called “situations of strength” relevant to the competition with Beijing.
Following this logic, the Biden administration’s approach appears likely to focus on the world’s democracies—particularly the leading ones of Europe—and, based on their (at least somewhat) shared values with the United States, to coordinate meaningful common action toward China. Biden himself has trumpeted the idea of a “Summit of Democracies,” contending in February that this would “rally the nations of the world to defend democracy globally [and] to push back the authoritarianism that has advanced.” Meanwhile, a slew of articles by Biden appointees and influential outside voices have argued for such an approach in a range of fields, from trade and technology to military posture and deployments. Put simply, the Biden team seems to be betting that democracies—wherever they are located—will align based on their shared values to stand up to the challenge of an authoritarian China.
The problem is that this approach will almost certainly disappoint and, if resolutely pursued, risks weakening U.S. links with many of the very countries that will be most key to confronting China—many of which are not democracies or are considered only “partly free” by institutions such as Freedom House. The basic flaw in this now ascendant U.S. approach is twofold. First, it mislocates the decisive arena of competition with China. The results of the competition with China will not primarily be determined by global political institutions and perceptions of our respective political systems but rather chiefly by the balance of hard economic and military power, especially in Asia. Second, it misidentifies the main reason countries will or will not collaborate with Washington vis-à-vis China. Exaggerating the role of “values” and ideology in international politics, it inherently downplays the salience of security and economic interests. This leads to an over-expectation of what democracies, especially in Europe, will do, while discounting the central importance of what other states, especially in Asia, need to do.
In practice, such an approach will at best lead to a strengthening of effort where Washington really doesn’t need it that much, above all in Europe. Washington needs help primarily in Asia, and Europeans are unlikely to be willing—let alone able—to make a major difference there. More likely, this approach will lead to limited results from Europeans without strengthening America’s position in Asia; even worse, a global approach centered around ideology is likely to inhibit cooperation with—if not alienate—the very countries that Washington needs to collaborate with in Asia and the Middle East. Bluntly, such an approach may strengthen Washington’s hand in international organizations that, while significant, are more driven by than drivers of international politics, while distracting or inhibiting it from the work of strengthening an anti-hegemonic coalition’s vital military and economic position in the primary theater: Asia.
In lieu of this, the United States should pursue an interest-based approach to its network of allies and partners. Washington can best pursue this course by concentrating its alliance and partnership-building efforts on where our interests, especially on security and economic matters, align with those of other countries. This more than anything means working with countries that share our fears of Chinese—or Russian or Iranian—domination. In this approach, shared values can play a valuable role as a supplement to our fundamental approach but should not be the focus or driver of Washington’s strategy. This means prioritizing strengthening our side of the hard power balance in Asia and relieving ourselves of burdens in other theaters, while focusing efforts with wealthy Europe vis-à-vis China where their interests will most immediately be impinged upon by Beijing—the economic realm.
HOW WOULD such an “interests-based” approach work? First and foremost, it would proceed from a recognition of the fundamental reality that the United States is no longer as powerful relative to other countries as it once was. More than anything else, this is due to the rise of China. Indeed, China’s economy is already larger than America’s according to purchasing power parity metrics and may exceed it in market exchange terms in the coming decade.
The United States therefore cannot do everything it needs to do in the international arena on its own. Accordingly, Washington must focus on what really matters. The paramount interest of the United States is to deny any other state hegemony over one of the key regions of the world, of which the most important is Asia.
This is not a merely theoretical problem. China is now becoming a superpower, and Asia is the world’s largest market. China is pursuing regional hegemony over Asia—and from that position ultimately more. Indeed, Beijing is already throwing its economic weight around to cow the states of Asia. At the same time, China is building a military fully capable of taking on the United States and its allies, and has shown its increasing willingness to brandish that instrument to try to bend others to its will. If China could gain predominance over Asia, it could exclude the United States from fair trade with this great market, severely weakening our economy, and use the ensuing power advantage it would gain over us to coerce us over our domestic affairs. Consequently, because of China’s unique power and Asia’s status as the world’s largest market, the threat of Beijing establishing hegemony over Asia must be the primary international concern for Washington.
The only way to prevent China’s hegemony over Asia is through a coalition of states collaborating to resist it. America is just not strong, let alone resolute, enough to check Chinese domination over Asia by itself. Fortunately, there is growing evidence that such a coalition is forming to check Beijing’s aspirations, centered around the United States, Japan, India, and Australia but also including other Asian and possibly some extra-regional states. But this very progress increases Beijing’s incentives to use its growing power—including its military strength—to short-circuit or pry apart this aborning coalition. Preventing this must be Washington’s top strategic priority.
At the same time, though, the United States faces other challenges in the world. There are also Russia against NATO, transnational terrorists, Iran, and North Korea, to name the most prominent. Thus, the prime challenge to U.S. interests is China in Asia—but it is not the only one. But because of China’s power and wealth, the United States simply must play a leading role in blocking Beijing’s pursuit of hegemony in Asia; without U.S. leadership, no anti-hegemonic coalition in the region is likely to succeed. Given the high demands of this requirement, it will have to consume the primary portion of U.S. effort and attention.
Washington thus faces a widening shortfall between the threats Americans face and the resources we have to deal with them. And our focus on Asia will invariably leave exposed flanks. In particular, we will not be able to dedicate the level of resources and effort to the Middle East and Europe that we have in the past. We will therefore need allies and partners to do their part—not just to help defend our interests and enable a concentration on Asia, but to defend themselves.
How, then, can Washington try to orient its network of allies and partners to meet this standard?
First, we should seek to add new partners and, where sufficiently compelling, formal allies to increase the cumulative power of our overall coalition, focusing principally on Asia. Second, we should encourage allies and partners to focus their efforts on things they have a strong interest in doing rather than trying to “globalize” our alliances based on notionally shared values. Third, the United States should make it easier—not harder—for our key partners to do the things we want them to do, even if they do not share our political system or values.
AMERICA SHOULD seek to expand its coalition of allies and partners—but based on a country’s ability and will to help address interests it shares with America, not on its history with Washington or the nature of the country’s political regime.
The contemporary military threats to American interests stem from China across Asia and, to a lesser degree, Russia in Eastern Europe, transnational terrorists largely in the Middle East, Iran in the Persian Gulf area, and North Korea in Asia. Yet the United States’ traditional closest and most significant allies are largely clustered in Europe. The problem is that many of these countries feel quite secure and are little motivated to contribute to more distant threats. This leaves wide areas, such as Southeast Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East, for which longstanding U.S. alliances are of minimal help.
The natural way to rectify this is for the United States to add partners and, where the reasons are compelling enough, alliances to help address these gaps. Fortunately, there is plenty of opportunity to do so. Many countries that are not our traditional close allies share our interest in checking China’s bid for hegemony in Asia, resisting Russian or Iranian aggression, or combating transnational terrorism. Bound by some degree of overlapping threat perception, we can collaborate more closely with countries like India and Sri Lanka in South Asia; Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia in Southeast Asia; and the Gulf States in the Middle East to pursue our shared goals. Many of these countries are highly motivated to address the threat that bears on them. India, for instance, is directly confronting the Chinese military along the Line of Actual Control in Ladakh and Vietnam is contesting Beijing’s territorial claims in the South China Sea. The United Arab Emirates (UAE), meanwhile, is playing a leading role in pushing back on Tehran’s ambitions in the Middle East.
It is important to emphasize two points regarding this effort to expand our roster of allies and partners.
First, we should very carefully distinguish between expanding our formal alliances or quasi-alliances from expanding our partnerships. The former should be approached very conservatively, while the latter can be approached more liberally. When we extend an alliance commitment or something tantamount to it (as we have in the case of Taiwan), we tie our credibility to that nation’s fate. We should therefore be chary about doing so. When we add a partner, however, we may have deep engagement with that state and indeed even elect to come to its defense, but our credibility is not tied to it. Washington should thus seek to expand partnerships wherever possible. In particular, we should focus on increasing them in Southeast Asia, South Asia, and the Pacific Islands, where China otherwise might have an open field to subordinate states and add them to its pro-hegemonic coalition. We should therefore seek to deepen partnerships with countries like Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh.
Second, our effort to expand our network of allies and partners should primarily be focused on states with shared threat perceptions. It has become a commonplace that shared values form the bedrock of our alliances. But while it is true that such values help bind states together, the most effective partnerships generally proceed from shared fears. The best motivator is self-defense; thus, states that have a shared interest in preventing Chinese, Russian, or Iranian hegemony over themselves have a natural alignment with our own interests. This is true whether or not they are democracies.
As such, key allies or partners in blunting China’s pursuit of hegemony could include not only model democracies like Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, but also semi-democracies like Malaysia and Singapore and even authoritarian governments like Vietnam. And our natural partners in blocking Iranian ambitions in the Persian Gulf include the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and other monarchical states. Meantime, most European states are unlikely to add much hard power in Asia or supplant the efforts of the monarchies in the Middle East.
EXPANDING OUR network, though, is not enough. Rather, given the scale of challenges we face, the United States should encourage allies and partners to assume a greater role in handling shared security challenges. This is, of course, the burden-sharing problem—and easier said than done. The reality we need to reckon with is that most countries will only do so much if they do not feel directly threatened. We should acknowledge and work with this tendency rather than vainly try to overcome it.
Instead, we should focus on urging countries to increase their efforts where they will be able to generate sufficient political will to make an effective contribution to shared interests. This would be a change from recent decades for Washington. For years, for instance, Washington urged NATO allies and others like Australia and South Korea to contribute troops to Afghanistan and Iraq; even more recently, it pressed Canberra to contribute to missions in the Persian Gulf. Meantime, Washington urged countries like India and Vietnam to join in sanctions against distant Russia with which those states enjoyed longstanding good relations. In effect, we were trying to “globalize” our alliances and partnerships—to get our confederates to act as if they fully shared our global interests.
We should now approach things differently, focusing on encouraging our allies and partners to act where their own interests already are deep and align with our own. In East and Southeast Asia, given the scale of the threat posed by Beijing, we should concentrate our allies’ and partners’ military efforts on strengthening themselves vis-à-vis China, including readying to defend themselves alongside U.S. armed forces. Japan and Australia can, though, meet a higher threshold by preparing to contribute to a joint defense of Taiwan or the Philippines alongside the United States. Meanwhile, the United States, alongside Japan, Australia, and other wealthy regional confederates like South Korea, should assist states like Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, and Malaysia with whatever means available to bolster their economic resilience and strength in the face of an ever more powerful China.
At the same time, the United States should urge India to concentrate on countering Chinese regional influence in South Asia and adjacent Southeast Asia. This would be different than much of Washington’s past practice, which has urged India to try to project power out of its core region, for instance into the South China Sea, and conform to our line on issues like Russia and Iran. Instead, the United States should aid India in focusing on its own region, including by helping New Delhi support the autonomy of vulnerable proximate states like Burma, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives. This will allow the United States to focus more on East and Southeast Asia, where the threat from China is most acute and Washington’s efforts are most needed.
In the Middle East, the United States should urge and support Israel and Washington’s Arab partners to take a greater role in containing Iran, enabling the United States to prioritize Asia. Fortunately, recent moves by the UAE, Bahrain, and hopefully other Arab states to forge links with Israel indicate that a more cohesive regional coalition may be forming that can do just this. The United States should encourage and promote this kind of dynamic in order to reduce its own role in the region.
In Europe, this interest-based approach would be less ambitious than a global, ideological one, but be more likely to pay dividends. The United States should recognize that Europe is unlikely to be willing or able to contribute much to the hard power balance in Asia. Any soft power gains through a Summit of Democracies or the like, meanwhile, are likely to be ephemeral and derivative. The United States should accordingly focus its policy toward Europe on where European interests are most directly implicated vis-à-vis China, and otherwise encourage the Europeans to handle the bulk of their own defense and consume less American diplomatic capital that can then be allocated to Asia.
In the military sphere, the overall U.S. goal should be, while preserving the fundamental U.S. commitment and readiness to contribute to NATO’s defense, to have Europeans shoulder more of the burden of defending the alliance. The reality is that, given the stakes and consequences, the United States must prioritize Asia. The United States must therefore economize in its second theater, Europe. Since the United States will not have a military large enough to mount two major simultaneous wars with China and Russia, this means that it must prioritize Asia, even if war breaks out in Europe. Indeed, even if a war broke out only in Europe, the United States could not take too much risk in Asia and thereby open the way for Chinese opportunistic aggression there. NATO will therefore need to prepare for defense of its European members with an expectation of a more limited contribution from the United States.
In the political sphere, meanwhile, the United States should husband more of its political capital for Asia rather than spend it on Europe. In practice, this means Washington should defer more to European preferences on regional issues, for instance in Central Asia, the Near East, and North Africa, in exchange for Europeans taking responsibility for addressing these challenges. While Washington should oppose a European third pole or equidistance between China and the United States—which by definition implies a distancing and even alienation from the United States—it should support European empowerment and be willing to defer more to Europe’s preferences over issues within its own sphere that do not materially affect Washington’s primary concerns, particularly over China.
The economic sphere is the main arena where Europe, with its large market area, can contribute to Washington’s priority of taking on China. Moreover, while Europe’s direct security interests are less touched by China’s rise, it emphatically does share America’s interest in avoiding a China that is economically dominant and can dictate the terms of global trade and economic activity. Indeed, an economically weaker and more fractious Europe actually has, if anything, more of an interest than America in ensuring it is not prey to Beijing’s economic domination. In light of this, Washington should press Europe to do two things that are in its own interest. First, strengthen Europe’s own resilience against Chinese political and economic leverage, for instance by rejecting Huawei. Second, work to build economic scale with the United States and Asian partners like Japan, India, and Australia in order to develop a market that can match China’s enormous size while ensuring fair and equitable terms among its participants.
Washington should couple its arguments on these issues by making its approach to the European Union (EU) contingent on how Europe responds. If the EU and the leading European states constructively work with Washington and its Asian partners, Washington should be willing to work with and promote Brussels. If, on the other hand, they try to equilibrate between the United States and China by pursuing a “third pole,” as sometimes bruited about by some European leaders, then Washington should work bilaterally or in coalition with more sympathetic European states. Blindly supporting Brussels and further European integration even as Europe undermines primary U.S. interests would truly be “brain dead.”
FINALLY, THE United States should act to make its network of allies and partners more effective. It has the power to do so in ways that will make a difference. This too requires a break from the past. For many years, the United States used sanctions and restrictions on arms sales and technology transfers as leverage to try to push partners toward domestic political reform or alignment with distant foreign policy goals, for instance against Asian states over Russia.
This needs to change. Washington needs to strengthen those who will actually help in pursuing our shared interests, most importantly on China but also on secondary threats such as terrorism and Iran. We should build up and enable states willing and able to do so with favorable treatment, including the use of arms sales, technology transfers, and the like—and avoid penalizing them.
In this vein, we must fundamentally move away from using these tools as well as sanctions to try to force key partners to undertake domestic political reform or align on unrelated geopolitical objectives. We must keep our eye on the prize. China is the primary challenge to our interests in the world, including, for that matter, the future of freedom. Our top priority must therefore be to block Beijing from gaining predominance in Asia. This means strengthening states in the region against Chinese power, whether they are model democracies or not.
This is especially important in Southeast and South Asia, which will be key theaters of competition with Beijing, but where—at least according to Freedom House—there are no model democracies. We cannot afford to alienate or weaken these states. Rather, we should seek to encourage their standing strong against Beijing and build their capacity to do so however possible. In this context, Washington should remove penalties and barriers associated with legislation like the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, or CAATSA, that inhibits our ability to work with and aid key countries like India, Vietnam, and Indonesia.
It is also important in the Middle East, where we have a strong interest in building up the capacity of states like the UAE and Saudi Arabia to shoulder more of their own defense against Iran. Consistent with maintaining Israel’s qualitative military edge, we should strengthen like-minded countries in the region even if they do not undertake major domestic political reform or align with us on the range of broader issues.
It is worth emphasizing in this context that, while our interests in preventing Chinese hegemony are primarily geopolitical and economic in nature, the reality is that such an outcome would also have major ideological consequences. If China is ascendant in the world, there seems little doubt that authoritarian governments will also flourish. Preventing that outcome requires strong and resolute allies and partners—even if we have (often highly justified) objections to their internal behavior or if their policies do not fully align with ours on other matters. By contrast, the most likely route to enduring liberalization is through succeeding in great power competition—it was no accident that many countries democratized as the Cold War ended.
Meanwhile, if the Europeans are willing to broadly align in supporting Washington’s efforts to balance China, the United States should be willing to support some European positions that it has traditionally opposed. For instance, Washington could take a more receptive stance toward initiatives such as the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) initiative while lowering barriers to purchases of European military equipment and undertaking more ambitious collaborative technology development. These kinds of steps would benefit Europeans but also open up greater efficiencies and economies of scale for the U.S. defense establishment.
AMERICA NEEDS its allies to do more. That much is clear. The question now is how. The idea of a league of democracies is a stirring answer, but is very likely to be more inspirational than consequential. Washington must instead found its efforts with allies and partners on sturdier, if perhaps lower, ground—that of common interest. With this approach, America can collaborate with a wide variety of different types of states in differing arrangements, bound together by shared fears and organizing based on aligned interests. America can and should still stand for freedom, decent treatment, and republican government, but within the constraints and logic of this overarching interest-based approach—not as a primary driver of U.S. strategy. This approach may move hearts less, but it is more likely to move mind and muscle—and ultimately to better protect Americans’ own freedom and prosperity as well as the autonomy of other countries to chart their own futures free of another’s domination.
Elbridge Colby is Co-founder and Principal of the Marathon Initiative. He led the development of the 2018 National Defense Strategy as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy and Force Development from 2017–2018. He is the author of the forthcoming book, The Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict from Yale University Press.
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