In a quite deliberate way, the United States has in the last several days (finally) articulated its ideological line respecting the nature and course of U.S. relations with China.
The first was delivered by Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Christopher Wray,
The Threat Posed by the Chinese Government and the Chinese Communist Party to the Economic and National Security of the United States, Remarks delivered at the Hudson Institute (July 7, 2020). It sought to deveklop notions of U.S principles of international engagement through the lens of allegations of Chinese spying (suggesting good versus bad values).
The second was delivered by Attorney General William P. Barr,
Remarks on China Policy at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum, Grand Rapids, Michigan (Thursday, July 16, 2020).It sough to develop notions of complicity and collusion, as well as suggest markers of national loyalty measured by adherence to its values.
The third was delivered June 24, 2020 by National Security Advisor Robert C. O'Bien,
The Chinese Communist Party’s Ideology and Global Ambitions, Remarks delivered in Phoenix, Arizona. This sought to contrast the values basis of liberal democratic systems by contrasting them against his version of values inherent in Chinese Marxist Leninism.
And the last, intended to put the four together, was that of Secretary of State Michael Pompeo,
Communist China and the Free World’s Future, Speech delivered at Yorba Linda, California, The Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum (July 23, 2020).
My remarks today are the fourth set of remarks in a series of China speeches that I asked National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien, FBI Director Chris Wray, and the Attorney General Barr to deliver alongside me. We had a very clear purpose, a real mission. It was to explain the different facets of America’s relationship with China, the massive imbalances in that relationship that have built up over decades, and the Chinese Communist Party’s designs for hegemony. Our goal was to make clear that the threats to Americans that President Trump’s China policy aims to address are clear and our strategy for securing those freedoms established. Ambassador O’Brien spoke about ideology. FBI Director Wray talked about espionage. Attorney General Barr spoke about economics. And now my goal today is to put it all together for the American people and detail what the China threat means for our economy, for our liberty, and indeed for the future of free democracies around the world. (Michael Pompeo,
Communist China and the Free World’s Future, Supra).
The importance of the exposition of this political and ideological line ought not to be taken lightly. But like the ideological pronouncements of their Chinese Communist Party counterparts, the global intelligentsia will spend far more time engaging in clever complement than in carefully considering the meaning and consequences of the line itself. That has been a costly mistake in the context of understanding China; it will be an equally pathetic mistake by intellectuals (and their masters) intent on dismissing the content because of their contempt for the individual for are making them.
But that has been the way of the intelligentsia for a generation. Still one ought not to be consumed by the folly of this group. Whether one likes the line or not, whether it makes sense or not, whether it will work or not, the reality is that these three speeches, when aggregated, now represent the American political Basic Line respecting not just relations with the People's Republic of China, but the ideological basis for its approach to all problems of government (and governance affecting domestic and international American interests. If for no other reason, a careful study of the speeches will guide one in understanding both the approach and the limits of conceptual possibilities built into this ideological line.
Indeed, that exercise of dismissive criticism makes it easy to miss a number of quite telling points that mark a
surprising similarity in approaches to the ideological lines of both
the United States and China. First both are obsessed with the other;
both view themselves measured against the other, the one to surpass the
old empire, the other to ensure that the young empire does not
undermine its own leading role. Second, both understand the process of
politics as inherently values laden; that is that politics is a moral
project. Built into that is the idea that values are themselves not
autonomous items floating in free space, but particularized expressions
of a unified approach to the organization of society through shared
values and the expression of those values in law and policy. Third,
each has constructed the other as the measure against which its own
distinctiveness and value can be assessed.
And, indeed, they ought to be read the way one might read the speeches of Xi Jinping and his trusted officials, and the way one approaches the General Program of the Chinese Communist Party. They are all born of the same impulse--to carefully and transparently describe the fundamental premises through which one might "look" at the world, analyze and understand events, give meaning to them, and to craft and value approaches to respond. More importantly, the speeches provide the values system through which legal and policy tools will be deployed to attain the goals and preserve the principles at the core of the ideological system. For the United States that will likely mean both much less porous borders as barriers against penetration by enemies and strategic competitors, and much more porous engagements with friends and allies. It will mean, in short, that the Americans, like their Chinese counterparts, have begun to recognize the inevitability of the rise of two self-reflexive and competing imperial orders, and, like their Chinese counterparts, have begun to develop the basis for empire, this time "with American characteristics." Mr. Pompeo hints quite clearly about the rise of a new multilatertalism built around a set of ideological values that will create a space in which a coherent values consensus based economic and societal ordering might be created, and protected against those who would threaten it, whose own values systems must be undermined. A mirror image of the emerging New Era ideological line in China.
The generation of intellectuals, academics, officials, and civil society actors who have been brought up in the old order, and who have profited from successfully navigating its hierarchies, will not like this. And they will work diligently to either mock this to death (e.g.,
Analysts Blast Pompeo’s China Speech as Unrealistic, Divorced From Reality) or undermine it in the service of a unitary imperial vision that appears to linger only as an ember of history. For a time they will find refuge in Europe. But only for a while. But that is to be expected. None of it, however, will change much. Both sides, it seems, are now committed to a New Era world order. It is with this in mind that the three speeches are brought together below. Whatever one concludes (and I have been careful here to avoid any of my own conclusions--worried more about the inevitable gaps between ideology and action; an irony commentary on a key point in Mr. Pompeo's speech), the ideology is worth noting, and understanding, for however long it holds power over the minds of the governmental vanguard of the United States. But again, at the end of the day, this is ideology--the proof of its utility--and its value as a basis of accountability, remains to be seen. And that is a quite worthy aim of critique.
The publication includes conversations with a number of people with quite interesting perspectives and insights. They include: Mehmet Ogutcu (Chairman of the London Energy Club, pp. 19-23); Arshin Adib-Moghaddam (Chair of the Centre for Iranian Studies at the London Middle East Institute, pp. 24-25); Marvin Zonis (Professor of international political economy and leadership at the University of Chicago, pp. 26-27); Osman Faruk Logoglu (a senior member of Turkey's CHP and veteran politician, pp. 28-29); Nicholas Onuf (one of the founders of constructivism in International Relations, pp. 30-31); Paul R. Pillar (an academic and 28-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), serving from 1977 to 2005, pp. 32-33); Charles Taliaferro (Professor, St. Olaf's Department of Philosophy since 1985, pp. 34-36); Richard Anderson Falk (professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, pp. 37-42); Robert Jervis (Adlai E. Stevenson Professor of International Politics in the Department of Political Science at Columbia University, member of the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies in the School of International and Public Affairs, pp. 43-44); Robert Edwards Hunter (Ambassador to NATO during the Clinton Administration, pp. 45-46); Mahmood Monshipouri (chair/professor of International Relations San Francisco State University and Lecturer, Global Studies/University of Berkeley, California, pp. 47-49); John Dunn (focuses on applying a historical perspective to modern political theory, pp. 50-51); Urban Rusnák (Secretary-General of the Energy Charter Secretariat, pp. 52-53); Kazuto Suzuki (Professor of international politics at Public Policy School of Hokkaido University; served as an expert in the Panel of Experts for the Iranian Sanction Committee under the United Nations Security Council from 2013 to July 2015, pp. 54-55). My own contribution, "Will COVID-19 infect the world order?" is also included (pp. 10-18). 
