Joe Biden departs on the South Lawn of the White House on October 12, 2022, in Washington, DC. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

The Biden administration’s National Security Strategy (NSS) correctly identifies China as the United States’ most “consequential geopolitical challenge.” But by calling climate the “existential” threat to the US and encouraging cooperation with Beijing on the issue, the strategy document creates a dangerous contradiction. In the Wall Street Journal, Hudson Senior Fellow Nadia Schadlow explains what Biden’s NSS gets right and wrong.

Key Insights

1. The NSS recognizes the need for US economic strength.

China has benefited from the openness of the international economy even as Beijing “frequently uses its economic power to coerce countries” while limiting access to its own markets, the strategy points out. The document reaffirms the link between economic strength and national security, recognizing that the US needs to produce goods, tie trade policies to the wellbeing of the American people, and retain its competitive edge across key technologies. It also affirms that a successful US approach to China will require the help of allies and partners, since the US and its allies make up about 65 percent of global gross domestic product.

2. The NSS overestimates the potential for US-China cooperation.

The document wants to portray the US as reasonable but fails to describe the world as it is. A rosy perspective is baked into the language, along with hopes that the US can work with China on nearly everything: “climate, pandemic threats, nonproliferation, countering illicit and illegal narcotics, the global food crisis, and macroeconomic issues.” Contrast these lofty ambitions with China’s construction of coal plants, refusal to allow investigations into the origin of COVID-19, aiding and abetting of North Korea’s nuclear program, and inaction on transnational criminal organizations that traffic fentanyl into the US. Through major energy purchases, China continues to support Russia’s war in Ukraine, which is leading to a global food crisis.

3. Biden ignores energy lessons from the Ukraine war.

Even as the Ukraine crisis has demonstrated the devastating consequences of phasing out natural gas, oil, and nuclear power when wind and solar can’t replace them, the strategy seems blind to reality. It insists on a “transition away from fossil fuels,” not acknowledging that natural gas itself is a transition fuel and that the US has the capability to produce and export more of it. The Biden strategy will also create dependencies on China analogous to the coercive power that Russia recently held over Germany’s energy supply.

Quotes may be edited for clarity and length. 

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