Opinion | Deteriorating US-China relations threaten an Asian arms race. It’s time for a reboot
- Ties between Beijing and Washington have been on a downward spiral since the end of the Clinton administration two decades ago
- Today, a US foreign policy that requires the choosing of sides has little future. This should be obvious when Asian countries like the Philippines feel the need to buy missiles
I look back in anger. There’s no other way emotionally to cope with the sense that, ever since the exit of the Clinton administration two decades ago, relations with China have gone from “the good and the bad” to mostly bad.
It’s not that the Clinton crowd had some magic touch – far from it. But, in spite of not having a fully thought-out overall policy towards a re-emerging China, they muddled through well enough and kept the bilateral diplomatic ball bouncing.
They emphasised the positive with China wherever credible, tried to keep their hawkish fits under control, and stuck with promoting trade as the totem of the United States’ capitalist personality. It was practical policy, literally businesslike: granular rather than inspirational, but real in not going beyond what would get you by, day to day.
If anyone honestly thought the US policy of engagement, as it was known, would lead to some sort of almost-overnight Prague Spring, I never met that person on my reporting trips to Washington.
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CPTPP could become game changer and supplant 'out-of-date' WTO, after mainland China, Taiwan apply
Oh sure, that puffy thought entered the rhetoric, but the administration’s smartest thinkers – foreign policy stars Winston Lord, Jeff Bader and Anthony Lake – operated without illusion.
