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| Mitt Romney (Wiki Info) |
By Michael Swaine & Raymond Lu
Are Romney’s China complaints campaign rhetoric or genuine belief? Either way, he must resist ideologically pleasing solutions that risk military overreach.
During the recent visit of Chinese heir apparent Xi Jinping to the United States, Mitt Romney lambasted the Obama administration for approaching Beijing as a “near supplicant” and permitting “the dawn of a Chinese century” to continue unopposed. The way forward: tougher economic penalties to reverse Washington’s “trade surrender,” and an invigorated military presence in the Pacific to force China to abandon its dreams of regional hegemony.
The conventional reading of Romney on China suggests that such chest-thumping rhetoric will fade with the election, giving way to the mainstream consensus that pairs economic and diplomatic engagement with strategic hedging.
Though this is at least partially true, leaving the next administration’s China policy to the learning curve is still risky. Romney’s tough talk on China conceals some profoundly deterministic – and pessimistic assumptions – about the future of U.S.-China relations that could accelerate existing momentum for future confrontations.
Read the full 2 page story at The Diplomat