Insight
The new US National Security Strategy: Battling China for technological leadership by Carl Bildt, 24 October 2022 Despite the gravity of the war in Ukraine, the focus of the new US National Security Strategy is China. The document says plenty about the importance of technology, but ignores the relevance of trade to national security. The National Security Strategy (NSS) issued by each US administration is always a key document. It is of particular interest to note how priorities and policies evolve between the different administrations in Washington. In March 2021 I published a paper for the European Council on Foreign Relations that compared the Interim National Security Strategy that the then incoming Biden administration had just published with the previous ones of the Obama administration in February 2015 and the Trump administration in December 2017. There were obvious differences, such as the shift from ‘America Alone’ to ‘America and Allies’ between 2017 and 2021. There were also more subtle shifts running through all three documents, notably from the 2015 endorsement of an ambitious free trade agenda to Trump and Biden’s retreat from any coherent trade policy. The gradual rise of China was a feature of all the documents. On the interim strategy in 2021 I concluded: “the US will now prioritise strategic competition with China, a new approach to trade, the rise of technology, the defence of democracy, the urgent climate and health crises, and efforts to avoid ‘forever wars’ in the Middle East”. It took until October 2022 to issue the final National Security Strategy, reflecting the fact that the global situation has turned out to be more challenging than the authors of the interim strategy had foreseen. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 fundamentally altered the strategic situation, while it took longer than anticipated to hammer out a coherent approach to China. It also proved hard to fit the different policies into the framework of competition between democracy and authoritarianism that was prominent in the early days of the Biden administration. The December CER INSIGHT: The new US National Security Strategy: battling China for technological leadership 24 October 2022
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