Mike Pence’s China speech is just a symptom of Donald Trump’s incoherent foreign policy, drowning out more rational voices
- The vice-president gave two speeches in one: for those in the US who still don’t realise the trade war is hurting them, the other for the realists who know how global supply chains work
In a keynote address honouring the 75th anniversary of the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), dean Eliot Cohen cited China’s arrival in international politics as one of the three most important geopolitical transformations since the school’s inception – the other two being the cold war and its dramatic conclusion.
Pence’s speech bounced between two opposite poles – hostility and outreach – more disorientingly than a schizophrenic on meth and, of course, got all the press.
This is why it is worth contrasting Pence’s remarks with Cohen’s. Johns Hopkins SAIS is as establishment as it gets when it comes to American foreign policy.
This strategy became and remained Washington’s default policy towards Beijing, surviving the turbulence of Tiananmen Square in 1989 and many other tests of the bilateral relationship.
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That’s why Pence’s speech produced compelling headlines but cancelled itself out, while Cohen delivered a more sober assessment. The speech by the dean of SAIS represented a quiet determination to continue a foreign policy that connects back to the post-war effort to build a rules-based, liberal and democratic world order.
Without mentioning Trump or US lawmakers who have made China-bashing a priority, Cohen ended his speech lauding the US as “what is, and will remain, the most important and powerful liberal democracy in the world”.
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During an interview with The New York Times in 1998, when President Bill Clinton was preparing for his first trip to China, “Barnett lamented the fact that the administration had lurched about on China policy so much that ‘there is still no political framework on which anyone can articulate a policy’”.
If Barnett were alive today, his criticism of the current administration might be less diplomatic.
Robert Delaney is the Post's US bureau chief. He is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies Hopkins-Nanjing Centre