Xu Xiaobing

Opinion | Listen to what US officials are saying and the divisive politics is clear

From Blinken’s implicit on-the-menu threat and Burns’ China-bashing, to Raimondo’s iPhone-on-wheels concerns, US politics, whether foreign or domestic, is looking divisive, racist, arbitrary and counterproductive

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Xu Xiaobing

Published: 8:30pm, 22 Mar 2024

Recent remarks by top US officials have attracted extensive attention. Last month, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said at the Munich Security Conference that the Biden administration has “made an investment, a reinvestment, in our alliances, in our partnerships, and in the multilateral system”.

He added: “We’ve seen our comparative advantage as having a strong network of voluntary alliances, voluntary partnerships. If you’re not at the table in the international system, you’re going to be on the menu”.

There was immediate debate on what he meant by “the multilateral system” and “the table in the international system”. Some argued that they refer to the multilateralism based on the Paris climate agreement and the United Nations family.

It is true that President Joe Biden on his first day in office ordered the United States to rejoin the Paris Agreement, and his climate envoy John Kerry wasted no time urging China to toughen up its emissions targets. And last July, nearly six years after withdrawing from Unesco, the US officially returned to compete with China’s influence there.

But with most states already in these multilateral systems, a warning to be at the table or risk being on the menu seems pointless. Therefore, the “table in the international system” must refer to the old path of bloc confrontation, replete with “voluntary alliances and partnerships” such as Nato in Europe, the US-Israel alliance in the Middle East, or the Aukus pact and Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) in the Asia-Pacific.

Indeed, the US relied heavily on these in supporting Ukraine’s resistance against Russia, siding with Israel to suppress the Palestinians, and competing fiercely against China. So for the US, the threat of being on the menu makes sense.