The Marathon Initiative China’s “New” Diplomacy Opportunities for American Statecraft (Belgenin tamamı 32 sayfa) A. Wess Mitchelland Christopher Vassallo February 20, 2024

 

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The Marathon Initiative

China’s “New” Diplomacy

Opportunities for American Statecraft

(Belgenin tamamı 32 sayfa) 

A. Wess Mitchelland Christopher Vassallo

February 20, 2024

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Ø The People’s Republic of China has embarked on an ambitious diplomatic campaign to increase its influence in strategically-vital regions and burnish its credentials as a great power of global reach.

Ø The “new” Chinese diplomacy marks a departure from the blustery “warrior-wolf” diplomacy of the recent past in favor of gentler forms of persuasion and hands-on negotiations to resolve regional disputes.

Ø In making this turn, China is following the pattern of earlier rising powers that sought to expand their international influence to a level commensurate with their growing economic and military might.

Ø China’s efforts represent the employment of diplomacy as an instrument of grand strategy. A major focus is to have Beijing’s claim to the right to use force against Taiwan accepted as a matter of international consensus.

Ø Longer-term, China aspires to overturn the U.S.-centered international order. Its new methods have registered notable successes with persuadable audiences, especially in Southeast Asia and the Global South.

Ø China’s diplomatic campaign is encountering blowback due to the scale of the military threat Beijing poses to its neighbors, who will continue to look for a natural counteraction.

Ø Like earlier rising powers, China will have to choose among the objectives of political influence, economic growth and military expansion.

Ø Beijing’s “major power diplomacy” thus presents a danger for the United States and its allies, but also an opportunity to Washington to refine its own capacity for wielding diplomacy as an instrument of strategy in great power competition.

Ø The United States should respond to the Chinese diplomatic challenge by:

- Mandating a National Diplomatic Strategy, 

-  improving the alignment of diplomatic priorities with U.S. national security objectives,

- enhancing training and resources for career diplomats,  -       - 

 - finetuning the economic, reputational and suasive instruments that America uses to compete for positive influence in strategically vital regions, and  

- exploiting the fissures created by Beijing’s ambitions. 

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INTRODUCTION

Over the past year, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has undertaken an ambitious diplomatic offensive across the world’s major regions. In the spring of 2023, Chinese 

diplomats shocked the West by tabling a proposal to end the war in Ukraine. Shortly thereafter, Beijing announced that it had brokered a détente between Saudi Arabia and Iran, thereby moderating, at least temporarily, one of the Middle East’s most intractable conflicts. In the months that followed, teams of Chinese envoys crisscrossed Europe, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa in a determined effort to burnish China’s credentials as a mighty but also enlightened great power, capable of bringing order, stability and prosperity to regions far beyond its home area. Summing up the new approach, Xi Jinping declared late last year that China was opening a new chapter in “major-country diplomacy,” with “enhanced international influence, stronger capacity to steer new endeavors, and greater moral appeal.” (1)

China’s apparent embrace of diplomacy on the Western mold—understood as the use of negotiations to arrive at a reconciliation of conflicting interests—marks a departure 

from its “warrior-wolf” diplomacy of the recent past, which was distinguished by bluster, assertiveness and intimidation. It also seems to differ from the traditional model that 

characterized Chinese diplomatic practice back to imperial times known as “barbarian handling,” which sought to manipulate and ensnare rivals through bonds of asymmetric 

interdependence. Rather than bullying or deception, the “new” Chinese diplomacy appears to accept the concept at the heart of classical diplomacy—acquiescence to sovereignty on the part of states of all sizes—and its corollaries: the acceptance of selfrestraint and pursuit of comprises that represent a real harmonization of interests between states. 

It remains to be seen how deep all of this goes or what fruit it will bear. Perhaps because of its novelty, the U.S. reaction to the “new” Chinese diplomacy has so far been largely dismissive. Washington has a well-developed mental framework for assessing Chinese behavior that ascribes PRC diplomacy to the realm of deception and disinformation  —the so-called “China playbook.” For the most part, Washington has viewed China’s recent moves as a cosmetic deviation from that established script. The assumption seems to be that the new approach is transient and insincere; that Chinese diplomats remain wolves in sheep’s clothing; that the deals they strike won’t last; and that China’s 

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1 “The Central Conference on Work Relating to Foreign Affairs was Held in Beijing; Xi Jinping Delivered an 

Important Address at the Conference,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, December 28,

.

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behavior remains, at a fundamental level, committed to an underlying imperial model that is inherently self-defeating.2

However, it would be unwise to underestimate Beijing’s new diplomatic strategy and the damage it can do to U.S. interests. China’s evolution mirrors transformations that it has 

undertaken in recent years in embracing more ambitious programs in the military and economic spheres. In a cycle that has recurred across the ages, a rising power’s 

aspirations to project military and commercial power are driving it to conceptualize a more sophisticated diplomacy as an integral tool of grand strategy. In China’s case, that means pursuing political engagement and negotiations abroad with the same seriousness that it deploys force and wealth in service of a central objective: primacy in Asia and, ultimately, supplanting the United States as the world’s top power. In short, 

China is transitioning to classical “great-power” diplomacy.

All of this should be a prompt for Washington to up its game in international diplomacy. 

Since the end of the Cold War, the United States emphasized nation-building in the global periphery and courted cooperation from major opponents on “transnational” 

issues. Today, we should return to a hard-nosed conception of diplomacy aimed at gaining strategic advantage in competition with a major rival. Rather than waiting for the contradictions in Chinese strategy to manifest themselves, we should work actively to frustrate Beijing’s ambitions. This effort requires moving with urgency to consolidate and expand our own coalitions, invigorate our influence in strategically vital regions and, to the extent possible, steering the Sino-U.S. relationship toward a more stable and predictable path favoring U.S. interests.