THE EVERYWHERE STRATEGY (It didn’t have to be this way.)

24 October 2022

THE EVERYWHERE STRATEGY (It didn’t have to be this way.)

The Chinese communist system may be repressive and rigid, but it is more steady than the trajectory of the United States, with long-term plans that can run decades. U.S. diplomacy, on the other hand, has become too capricious, unreliable and exposed to partisan deadlock, officials and analysts say...

In diplomacy, China intends to be everywhere. In particular, Chinese diplomats lavish attention on two regions that are often afterthoughts in U.S. policy — Africa and Latin America — while devoting significant resources to their Asian neighbors. This can mean building big embassies or simply having a small outpost with a few diplomats, just to mark a presence. That includes places right on America’s doorstep, like the Caribbean.

Illustration by Pablo Delcan for POLITICO

". . .It didn’t have to be this way.

In late 2017, the then-U.S. ambassador to Panama, John Feeley, urged American firms to compete to build what’s called the “fourth bridge.” It was a sensitive time. Earlier that year, Panama had switched its diplomatic relations from Taiwan to Beijing, blindsiding Washington. A bid for the $1.5 billion project could have signaled America’s enduring interest in this country in its own hemisphere, home to a canal whose U.S.-led construction transformed global trade over a century ago. But U.S. firms, for various reasons, declined to bid. And unlike his counterparts from China, with their communist rule and state-owned enterprises, Feeley, a mere U.S. diplomat, held little sway over American companies.

“I felt frustrated and powerless,” Feeley recalled. “I rang every bell in Washington that I could to try to drum up U.S. private sector interest. I asked for a commercial delegation to come down, and I got nothing.”

Such scenes have been playing out from Kenya to the Solomon Islands as the United States and China engage in a growing contest for international influence that could heavily shape geopolitics in the decades ahead. Beijing’s success in bolstering its presence in the Americas attests to the scope of its ambitions and the extent of the United States’ challenge in answering them. President Joe Biden and his aides recognize the stakes involved, and they argue that to compete with China, the United States must, above all, invest in its physical, technological and even sociological infrastructure at home.

But when it comes to the global faceoff, America’s approach to diplomacy could prove its biggest weakness, according to conversations POLITICO held with more than 50 former and current U.S. and foreign officials, diplomats, analysts and others who follow international affairs, as well as reviews of an array of congressional, think tank and other studies. Some of the people interviewed were granted anonymity to more candidly discuss a sensitive issue. . ."