Joe Biden’s voyage of seduction in Europe comes down to a brutal question: does the United States still have the means to achieve its ambitions?
China is at the center of the discussions Biden will hold with G7 leaders or with Vladimir Putin.
Whenever these leaders sit down with Biden, they’ll wonder if his presidency ushers in a new era of American and world politics, or if it’s just a parenthesis while waiting for the Republicans to come back in force. A return that could occur as early as 2022.
To be sure, Republicans and Democrats jointly passed a bill in the Senate aimed at strengthening America’s faltering domination over China. But Donald Trump’s administration has been so incompetent that the possible return to power of Republicans is of great concern.
All G7 leaders understand that China has become a threat to democracy and to the group’s economic domination. But there is disagreement on how to counter China.
Great Britain and Canada are more linked than the other members of the G7 to American interests. Other countries cannot risk betting everything on the United States.
Hence their procrastination vis-à-vis China.
China has a good game
The fact remains that beyond these calculations and bargaining, the G7 countries will find it difficult to explain that they condemn the dictatorship in China or Russia, but that they are always ready to maintain the most cordial relations with countries like Saudi Arabia or Turkey.
The Chinese ambassador in London has also driven the point home by declaring the days when the world was dominated by a small number of countries are over. All countries are equal, he said in substance. Really ?
Xi Jinping’s government wants China’s abusive and dishonest business practices to be placed on an equal footing with the reprehensible economic behavior of Americans. Let the grave and daily human rights violations in China be put into perspective with the racial or economic problems of the United States. That the rogue diplomacy it has inflicted over the past few years be seen as tantamount to Trump’s vehemence.
However, it is not.
Obvious choice
The post-war United States wanted to build a decolonized world, with trade rules that are the same for all and where freedom reigns.
On the contrary, Xi Jinping’s Communist Party seeks to kill freedoms, as it so well demonstrates in Hong Kong and elsewhere. Of the trade rules, he only retains one: that he is above the law. In diplomacy, he returned to the medieval practice of hostages.
Between a world dominated by China or by the United States, the choice remains obvious, if it still exists.
