Opinion | New Huawei move shows Biden is ultimately worse than Trump

By Tom Fowdy

When Trump left office and the Biden administration came into the White House, some people actually believed a nightmare was over. On the back of the January 6th capitol riot, the ongoing presidency was portrayed as unhinged, dangerous and chaotic. Biden, as it goes, was supposed to be an adult in the room that would restore common sense and decency to America, bringing surety, stability and maturity back to politics.

When it came to foreign policy as such, many also believed that the Trump administration's hyper-aggressive approach to China, which had been engineered by NeoConservative fanatics such as Mike Pompeo and Matthew Pottinger, would also offset, and there would be room for new stability and predictability in deteriorating ties with Beijing. As Biden once said during an early Presidential debate, "they're not gonna eat our lunch" and it was believed he would not pay into the anti-China extremity Trump's lackeys pushed.

Exactly two years later, that sentiment could not have been more wrong. While Biden of course does not insult people on Twitter and act uncordially, the reality is that when it comes to foreign policy, and China especially, he's actually worse than Trump, much, much worse, and nothing can reflect that reality more than the fact the administration is now set to land even harder restrictions on Huawei, revoking export licenses and cutting them off from US technology sources in its entirety, all as Blinken prepares for a visit (it is the norm for the US to announce new sanctions before any diplomatic engagement).

One thing often misunderstood about US foreign policy is that it does not operate according to party lines, or if it does, the differences are purely incremental. US foreign policy exists in a separate dimension from the hugely controversial aspects of "culture wars", ranging over debates such as gun control, abortion, LGBT rights, etc. It is a top-down institution, and owing to how it has monopolized media and narratives, the public does not debate it as per domestic issues, but they follow it. In other words, US foreign policy is an elite consensus that is not democratized, and therefore is not a subject of party politics.

While Trump obviously added his own personal character and preferences to US foreign policy, he was merely one figure in a changing consensus on China driven by the Washington D.C blob. While he was unpredictable, abrasive, and destructive in his personal conduct, Trump was also pragmatic in ways that the elite resented, such as for example his decision to negotiate directly with Kim Jong-un, or his willingness to even make deals with China as opposed to the all-out thirst to contain it (The latter ultimately won over in the end due to the events of covid). Trump's attitude to China often shifted abruptly based on political circumstances, always of course driven by his own self-interest (as we know Trump only cared about himself) but never in a linear fashion.

Biden on the other hand, is not a pragmatic "wheeler-dealer" like Trump, but a NeoConservative fantasist who appears to have become the most brutal and aggressive Democratic President in Foreign Policy since Harry Truman. When viewed in this light, "unpredictable" is not a positive, but a negative because he is predictably and consistently hawkish at full throttle in a way that is universally dangerous. There is less space as such to negotiate with Biden than there would have been with Trump. The latter could restrain the ultra-hawks if he could find deals that benefitted American interests, but the former has no interest in negotiating and has set his goal on an all-out containment of Beijing going deeper, more destructively and more aggressively than his predecessor ever did.

Coupled with that, Biden has initiated an all-out proxy war against Russia on its own border and shows no willingness to relent or compromise. Trump on the other hand, knew the importance of being pragmatic with Moscow and was quite right in his own assertions that such a conflict would a) never have happened and b) would end quickly, if he was in office. Even his most fanatical accomplices such as Mike Pompeo, inherently knew this was a bad idea. It does not speak highly of Trump of course to mention this, but ultimately to be more than damning of Biden who is undoubtedly the most dangerous US President in living memory, yes even more so than George W. Bush given the latter had much more unrivaled power, and his targets were all low scale with little underlying risk to the rest of the world (such as Saddam Hussein's Iraq).

Biden might give you a smile. He might not call people rude names on Twitter, and he might not incite his supporters to overturn election results and make American politics nasty and crass, but let's put it this way none of this compensates for the fact he is dangerous, and worse than his predecessor.

The author is a well-seasoned writer and analyst with a large portfolio related to China topics, especially in the field of politics, international relations and more. He graduated with an Msc. in Chinese Studies from Oxford University in 2018.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.

Read more articles by Tom Fowdy:

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