San Diego (CNN) President Joe Biden was accompanied Monday by a 377-foot submarine — the USS Missouri — as he announced an accelerated timeline for Australia to receive its own nuclear-powered submarines by early next year. that decade.
But even bigger is the increasingly tense US relationship with China, which has emerged as a central focus of Biden’s presidency. That relationship has been heightened in recent weeks by a flurry of world events, from the fatal crash of a Chinese spy balloon to the revelation that Beijing is considering arming Russia — all amid President Xi Jinping’s unprecedented consolidation of power and a growing. bipartisan consensus in Washington about China’s risks.
US officials have been quick to acknowledge that tensions with China are higher than they have been in recent years and that Beijing’s heated public rhetoric later reflects the state of private relations. This is why Biden’s multi-pronged China strategy involves a bid to normalize diplomatic relations even as the US pursues policies such as Monday’s submarine announcement designed to counter global influence. of China and its military movements.
“Today, as we stand at a turning point in history, where efforts to enhance deterrence and promote stability will affect the prospects for peace for decades to come, the United States could not ask for better partner in the Indo-Pacific. , where much of our shared future will be written,” Biden said Monday, standing alongside his Australian and British counterparts.
Efforts to reopen lines of communication with China, especially among each country’s top military brass after the spy balloon incident, have shown no signs of progress, according to a senior who is an administration official.
“On the contrary, China appears unwilling at this stage to actually continue to establish dialogues and mechanisms,” the official said. “What we need is the proper mechanisms between senior government officials, between the military, between the various crisis managers on both sides to be able to communicate when something is not an accident or just a mistake to understand.”
Against that backdrop, Biden faces a series of decisions in the coming weeks and months that have the potential to further exacerbate tensions, including placing new curbs on investments in companies in America in China and restricted or blocked the US operations of the popular social media platform TikTok. , which is owned by a Chinese company. And in Beijing, Chinese officials must decide soon whether to heed U.S. warnings and begin supplying Russia with lethal weapons in its war in Ukraine.
Monday’s update on a new three-way defense partnership between the US, Australia and the United Kingdom is the latest move aimed at countering China’s attempts to dominate the Indo-Pacific sea and, potentially , its designs on invading Taiwan’s self-government. Australia will now receive its first of at least three advanced submarines early next decade, faster than predicted when the AUKUS partnership was launched 18 months ago, and US submarines such as USS Missouri will rotate to Australian ports in the meantime.
“The United States has protected Indo-Pacific stability for decades, with many benefits to countries across the region from ASEAN to the Pacific Islands to the People’s Republic of China,” Biden said in his statements. “In fact, our leadership in the Pacific has been a boon to the whole world. We’ve kept the seas and skies open and navigable for all. We’ve maintained the basic rules of the road.”
His British counterpart was more blunt, naming China as a cause for concern.
“China’s growing assertiveness, Iran’s erratic behavior and North Korea all threaten to create a world defined by danger, turmoil and division,” Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said. “Faced with this new reality, it is more important than ever that we strengthen the stability of our own countries.”
Even before Biden traveled to the Naval Base Point Loma in California to announce the development with the prime ministers of Britain and Australia, China quickly dismissed the move as developing a “Cold War mentality and zero-sum games.”
That China did not wait to announce itself to fight is a sign of how closely Beijing views Biden’s moves in the Pacific, where the US military is expanding its presence and helping the other countries to modernize their fleets.
China’s Foreign Ministry also condemned the AUKUS deal on Tuesday, saying “the three countries […] completely ignoring the concerns of the international community and continuing on a wrong and dangerous path.”
This is another example of Biden’s view of China as the leading long-term threat to world peace and stability, even as Russia’s war in Ukraine consumes current US diplomatic and military attention.
The first shipment, due in 2032, is three American Virginia-class attack submarines, designed to use a number of different weapons, including torpedoes and cruise missiles. Subs can also carry special operations forces and carry out intelligence and reconnaissance missions.
That will be followed in the 2040s by British-designed submarines, with American technology, which will transform Australia’s undersea capabilities for the next 25 years.
Before that, US submarines will rotate to Australia to begin training Australian crews in advanced technology, increasing America’s defense posture in the region.
The submarines will not carry nuclear weapons and US, Australian and British officials have insisted the plans comply with international non-proliferation rules, despite Chinese protests.
The message sent by the announcement is unmistakable: The US and its allies see China’s growing naval ambitions as a major threat to their security, and are preparing for a long-term struggle. This year, the US announced that it was expanding its military presence in the Philippines and welcomed Japan’s moves to strengthen its military.
“This is a profound consequence,” a senior administration official said of the AUKUS partnership. “The Chinese know that, they know it and they want to engage accordingly.”
U.S. officials said Britain’s participation in the new submarine project was a sign of growing European concerns about tensions in the Pacific — concerns that have surfaced within NATO, even as the alliance remains in use. in the war in Ukraine. And in conversations with European leaders last month, including European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Friday, Biden raised the China issue in hopes of developing a coordinated approach.
The looming question now is whether China will choose to re-engage and improve diplomatic relations with the US despite rising tensions.
A series of phone calls and a November face-to-face meeting with Xi have so far only resulted in halting progress in establishing what administration officials described as a “floor ” in the relationship.
Four months after the meeting, progress has largely stalled on reopening lines of communication between Washington and Beijing, which was previously seen as the main takeaway from the three-hour session in Bali. Speaking to CNN in late February, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said it had been months since he spoke with his Chinese counterpart.
And public statements from Chinese leaders, including Xi, began to sharpen last week, a sign that the confrontational approach of the past year is not going away.
Biden and his advisers have largely played down the new, harsh tone coming from Beijing. Asked by CNN on Thursday about the meaning of the new reprimands from Xi and Foreign Minister Qin Gang, Biden quickly replied: “Not much.”
On Monday, US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said a conversation between Biden and Xi was likely to take place now that China’s National People’s Congress has ended and a slate of Chinese officials have took their new positions after the annual rubber-stamp parliamentary meeting.
“We said that when the National People’s Congress is over, as it is now, and the Chinese leadership returns to Beijing, and then all these new officials will take their new seats, because of course you have There’s a new set of numbers. In many leadership positions, we would expect President Biden and President Xi to have a conversation. So at some point in the near future,” Sullivan told reporters. aboard Air Force One.
He said no date has been set for a Xi-Biden phone call, but that Biden “indicated his willingness to have a phone conversation with President Xi once they return from the National People’s Congress .”
Tensions appeared to have hit a new level last week after Xi directly criticized US policy as “all-round containment, encirclement and suppression against us.” Qin, in comments the next day, described the “competition” that Biden has long sought to frame as central to the relationship between the two powers as “a reckless gamble.”
“If the United States can’t hit the brakes but continues to accelerate down the wrong path, no amount of guardrails can prevent the derailment, and there will certainly be conflict and confrontation,” Qin said.
A senior administration official acknowledged that Xi’s recent rhetoric is “more direct” than in the past, but said the White House continues to believe Xi “will once again sit down and participate at the highest level ” now that he has completed his latest consolidation of power.
