NEWS AND ANALYSIS:
The Biden administration has failed to win the strategic competition with China through ineffective policies toward Beijing, the senior Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said this week.
Sen. Jim Risch of Idaho faulted the policies in a highly critical opening statement on Tuesday at a committee hearing with Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell. He noted Beijing’s global ambitions, its trafficking in deadly fentanyl and its spying post in Cuba as evidence.
The Chinese activities “demonstrate a desire to target the United States and undermine our efforts to prioritize resources to compete with them,” Mr. Risch said. “The administration wrongly insists it is winning the competition with China. [It is] not so.”
“The balance of power in the region continues to move in China’s favor. The administration’s response to China’s escalation against the Philippines at Second Thomas Shoal has been limited to verbal assurances but no concrete action. Talking about a treaty without strong action only encourages China to further test U.S. resolve,” he said.
The lawmaker also questioned the administration’s centerpiece allied security project — the U.S.-Australian-British program known as AUKUS to build nuclear attack submarines for Australia.
AUKUS “was supposed to be a game-changer, but [the State Department’s] exclusion of the exact technologies we need to advance AUKUS has inhibited this partnership from moving aggressively to reality,” Mr. Risch said.
Mr. Risch on Monday published a 160-page report highlighting the shortcomings of U.S.-European cooperation in confronting China. The report stated that the administration “has made grand announcements, but repeatedly failed to implement them.”
The senator said the record in dealing with an aggressive and expansionist China is “dismal.” Rather than positively influencing China’s behavior, the policy is driving Beijing toward closer linkages with adversaries including Russia, Iran and North Korea.
Mr. Risch said State Department officials have also been advocating the inclusion of China in a future peace process with Russia on the Ukraine conflict, something he said he strongly opposes.
Mr. Campbell said that it is too soon to talk about peace talks, but he is unaware of any State Department officials trying to include China in future discussions.
China is also using the administration’s policy seeking diplomatic engagement to manipulate the United States, including the U.S. government’s eagerness to discuss climate change initiatives with state and local government, “even though China clearly sees subnational diplomacy for malign purposes,” Mr. Risch said.
The senator said he warned last year that China is using dialogue with U.S. officials and nongovernmental organizations to challenge American national interests.
The Chinese “just did that by canceling arms control talks yet again. How did State respond? By publishing — publishing — our U.S. nuclear stockpile totals so [Chinese President Xi Jinping] knows that we are reducing our capability while China’s grows,” Mr. Risch said, adding that China made no reciprocal disclosure of its warhead stockpile.
“The only thing it did was save China the expense of going through the usual spy proceedings to get the size of our U.S. nuclear stockpile — ridiculous.”
“This is not competing. This is pandering. We cannot keep making these mistakes,” Mr. Risch said.
Congress needs to strengthen the Foreign Agents Registration Act toward Chinese agents, reduce foreign influence in the nation’s universities and think tanks and punish China for its abuse of diplomats, he said.
“It’s past time we take a tougher line to stop Chinese malign influence,” Mr. Risch said.
Russian, Chinese bomber flights tracked near Alaska
Despite the muted U.S. and Canadian military response to the recent unprecedented flight of four Russian and Chinese bombers near Alaska, a Russian military blogger has revealed new details of the provocative nuclear saber-rattling mission.
The four bombers — two Russian Tu-95s and two Chinese H-6s — were tracked during two separate flights into the U.S. air defense identification zone after taking off from a strategic bomber base in eastern Russia called Anadyr, according to the online Russian think tank Rybar.
Rybar, a Telegram channel by military blogger Mikhail Zinchuk, a former reporter at the Russian Defense Ministry, posted a map showing that the operation was more extensive than U.S. military officials have let on.
In addition to the four bombers, Russian A-50 and Chinese KJ-500 airborne warning and control aircraft took part in the July 24 operation.
The bomber patrol was the first time Russian and Chinese nuclear-capable bombers conducted a joint operation near U.S. territory, in what U.S. officials said highlights growing strategic nuclear forces cooperation.
Rybar, which has over 1 million subscribers, also provided the first details on the U.S. and Canadian jet fighters that were dispatched to shadow the bombers.
The map showed that the four bombers flew south from the Anadyr base to an area close to the western Aleutian Islands and were met there by four U.S. F-35 and F-16 jets, along with two Canadian air force CF-18 jets. A second bomber patrol of the four aircraft flew north through the 51-mile-wide Bering Strait separating Alaska and Russia.
An Air Force E-3 airborne warning and control aircraft also flew in an area between the Aleutians and the Bering Strait, according to the map published on X. The U.S. interceptor jets took off from Eielson Air Force Base near Fairbanks, and the Canadian jets departed off from Elmendorf Air Force Base near Anchorage.
Spokesmen for the Indo-Pacific Command and Norad did not respond to email inquiries regarding the Rybar map.
The joint U.S.-Canadian North American Aerospace Defense Command initially declined to identify the intercepting jets or release details about the incident.
Later, NORAD posted online photos of the intercept that identified the U.S. and Canadian aircraft used in the intercept in the caption. The photos showed several of the Chinese and Russian bombers being escorted by the fighters flying behind the wings at a safe distance.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters after the incident that the joint bomber patrol had not been observed previously. He vowed that the U.S. military would protect the American homeland from any threatening aircraft intrusions.
As for NORAD, it sought to play down the unprecedented bomber patrol in its statement, describing the bomber activity as “not seen as a threat.”
That drew criticism from retired Navy Capt. Jim Fanell, former director of intelligence for the Pacific Fleet, who dismissed the statement as appeasement of China.
“It is hard to comprehend such a statement given the PRC characterization of the flight as being a ‘strategic patrol’ — a euphemism for nuclear warfare training,” he wrote in a recent article penned with China affairs analyst Bradley Thayer.
China exploiting U.S. ambassador vacancies
Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell told a Senate hearing this week that a large number of American diplomats are still awaiting Senate confirmation as ambassadors and that China is exploiting the gap in the lack of American representatives at embassies and within international organizations.
Mr. Campbell said that career diplomat Dorothy Shea has been waiting nearly two years for confirmation to be deputy U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
“The place that really the Chinese are taking it to us is in international organizations,” Mr. Campbell told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “We have to be able to contest there.”
China is succeeding in a comprehensive strategy, particularly within the United Nations, of seeking to redefine democracy and human rights to fit its communist ideology, he said.
Mr. Campbell also said he does not like traveling to a foreign nation and meeting its leader without a U.S. ambassador in place: “I find it embarrassing. I think it is antithetical to our strategic interests and so yes, I do believe we should put these folks on the field.”
In addition to getting ambassadors confirmed for posts within international organizations, more confirmed diplomats are needed in nations of the developing world, such as small countries in Africa, where China is making a major push to displace the United States.
About 50 nominees for leadership posts at the State Department, U.S. embassies and international organizations are awaiting Senate confirmation.
President Biden has failed to even put forth a nominee for 19 other positions.
Nearly 40 U.S. embassies, about 20% of diplomatic posts, are waiting for confirmed ambassadors, including eight critical positions in the Indo-Pacific region.
More than 80% of the nominees are career Foreign Service diplomats.
• Contact Bill Gertz on X @BillGertz.
• Bill Gertz can be reached at bgertz@washingtontimes.com.
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