The U.S. needs to find a way to carefully coexist with China, not pursue an endgame of regime change in Beijing, Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said Wednesday.
Speaking at the Stimson Center here, the Biden administration’s key official on the Indo-Pacific was responding to a recent article in Foreign Affairs that argued that America’s competition with China must be won, not managed.
The goal of U.S. policy should be “a China that is able to chart its own course free from communist dictatorship,” wrote former deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger and recently retired Rep. Mike Gallagher, former chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party.
The pursuit of such a path would be “reckless and likely unproductive,” Campbell countered.
With a raging war in Central Europe, uncertainties in Gaza and challenges in the Red Sea, “I do not believe it is in our interest at the current juncture to add to our list, ‘Let’s try to topple the other leading power on the global stage,’ despite our differences,” he said.
He gave two reasons. First, America’s allies and partners have witnessed previous attempts by Washington at regime change in other parts of the world and know that they have been unsuccessful. Second, the U.S. has for years overestimated its ability to influence the direction of Chinese foreign policy.
“We have to have a high degree of modesty of what we think is possible with respect to fundamental changes in how China sees the world,” Campbell said.
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Instead, the U.S. needs to accept China as a major player, understand its priorities, and “coexist in a manner that does not compromise our interests or the interests of our allies and partners,” he said.
Pointing to Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu’s recent visit to Washington, Campbell said his own takeaway was that China’s primary focus today is on its economy and seeking to reassure investors that it has a plan for the way ahead. Stable Sino-American relations fit those goals, he said.
In the longer run, Campbell said that unlike the U.S. and the Soviet Union in the Cold War, the U.S. and China have deep and profound economic interdependence and that it works both ways. “It’s very hard for China to take certain steps without harming its own economy, and I think we now understand that economic performance is central right now to what is important to President Xi [Jinping],” he said.
He said that the balancing act of strengthening America at home — such as through creating supply chains not overdependent on China — while also maintaining a careful coexistence with Beijing, “is one of the most difficult challenges in the history of American foreign policy.”
On July’s upcoming NATO summit in Washington, Campbell said the Indo-Pacific partners of Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand will highlight how the security of the Indo-Pacific and Europe are more linked than ever before. “The two countries that have done the most to support Russia’s retooling, reconstitution, since its first really failed steps at an invasion have been China and North Korea,” he said.
But Campbell said the alliance will “tread carefully” when it comes to future dialogues with the Indo-Pacific partners. NATO is not looking for more out-of-area missions at this juncture and will not seek to send out such a message, he said, in effect hinting that the previously floated proposal to open a NATO liaison office in Tokyo is not in the cards at this year’s summit.
