New U.S.National Security Strategy: Long on Realism, Short on Geo-Economics
The new National Security Strategy (NSS), which the White House rolled out on December 18, is long on self-described realism but short on geo-economic strategy. Proclaiming a return to principled realism, the NSS defines the international system as one of great power competition in which China and Russia are revisionist powers challenging the status quo and strategic competitors to the United States. The NSS also lays the charge that for several decades U.S. foreign policy has been shaped by the misguided belief that “engagement with rivals and their inclusion in international institutions and global commerce would turn them into benign actors and trustworthy partners.”
This realist conceptual framework is a welcomed and long overdue departure from previous and successive administrations. However, the NSS triumphantly kills some darlings of liberal internationalist foreign policy only to replace them with a few of its own making — economic nationalism with a singular if not myopic obsession with trade reciprocity and bilateral trade agreements. To be sure, the White House is correct to take a tougher approach toward China on unfair trade practices, particularly involving intellectual property rights and technology transfer, as well as enhanced scrutiny of Chinese investment in the United States. Also, greater trade reciprocity would strengthen the U.S. balance sheet vis-a-vis China on a bilateral basis.
Such bilateral and retaliatory measures offer little in terms of challenging or offsetting China’s geoeconomic ground game in Asia. With only three years left in office, some of which will be focused on renegotiating NAFTA and KORUS, the administration will be hard pressed to negotiate enough bilateral FTAs in Asia to compensate for having withdrawn from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). At a minimum, the White House would need to initiate and successfully conclude FTAs with Japan and Vietnam as well as resuscitate talks with the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. This is a moon shot considering that the zero-sum priority on lowering trade deficits is likely to complicate or derail FTA negotiations — if not overall relations — with regional allies and emerging security partners.
Conspicuously, the NSS makes no mention of China’s Belt and Road Initiative — the most ambitious and potentially transformational geo-strategic project in the world — or the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which together offer a parallel Sino-centric order or sphere of influence. Neither does the NSS recognize efforts by Japan and the remaining TPP members to move forward without U.S. participation or even acknowledge other regional multilateral trade initiatives such as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) which would exclude the United States. In short, the White House trade agenda risks setting up the U.S. to be caught on the outside of the trend in regional trade architecture to the benefit of China.
