Interview, Fireside Chat
Henry Kissinger: how Biden should handle China
- The global outlook anticipates a return to significant conflicts, including potential superpower confrontations, driven by an increasingly confrontational trajectory in US-China dialogue where emerging issues hinder mutual understanding.
- A fundamental agreement on principle between the United States and China is predicted to be essential and inevitable in the near future to exclude high-tech war and ensure both sides exercise restraint in bilateral and global relations.
- The Biden administration is currently in a preliminary phase of internal assessment and initial engagement with China, characterized by a team described as competent and a tone viewed as improved compared to the previous administration, though political pressure from Republicans regarding perceived softness remains a factor.
- Domestic US politics reflect a commonplace view of China as a threat, requiring the administration to balance the definition of the international order with the necessity of maintaining domestic cohesion against the opposition party's potential to exploit foreign policy.
- The outlook projects that China's performance level will sustain its current magnitude indefinitely, necessitating a necessary but not automatic coexistence between the democratic US and the Confucian-Marxist China to avoid a fundamental confrontation challenging either side's basic structure.