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Robert Gates said in a recent interview that Joe Biden hasn’t formulated an effective response to an emboldened China.
Gates, who served as Secretary of Defense from 2006 to 2011, during parts of the Bush and Obama presidencies, criticized Biden’s chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal in a CBS 60 Minutes interview.
But comments he made concerning Biden’s part in betting that China could be moved to be a freer nation via economic incentives and integration, must finally be acknowledged as a failure.
Gates gave credit to Donald Trump for recognizing that fact, and attempting a different approach:
“I think this is a place where President Trump got it right. He basically awakened Americans, and I would say especially the business community, to a China that—the assumptions about which we had gotten wrong. And the assumption for 40 years was that a richer China would be a freer China, and that’s clearly not going to happen.
“But there’s another piece of this puzzle with China, and that is the economic side. Chinese now manage something like three dozen major ports around the world. They are the biggest trading partner of more than half of South America. They are everywhere. And what are we doing in these non-military arenas to compete with the Chinese?”
The Trends Journal has pointed out the failures of accommodating China with offshoring U.S. production there, as well as failures to invest more in building mutually beneficial economic integrations in the Western hemisphere, in several recent articles:
- “BY LAND AND BY SEA: RE-THINKING OCEANIA” (28 Sep 2021)
- “CHINA CHALLENGING U.S. HI-TECH DOMINANCE” (13 Jul 2021)
China has stepped up aggressive moves against Taiwan in recent weeks, including repeated provocative military jet maneuvers.
They also reportedly surprised U.S. military intelligence, demonstrating hypersonic missile capabilities in a test that showed unexpected advances in that technology.
Mike Gallagher (R-WI) of the House armed services committee recently labeled Biden’s approach to China’s ambitions as “complacent, and sounded a stark warning: “We will lose the New Cold War with Communist China within the decade.”