Thread by @EvanFeigenbaum

1: A few folks asked me to elaborate on this. I'll try. And please note that I don't mean to pick on the Kahl speech per se, since his speech isn't really about China. But the way China is framed there is (1) endemic in US rhetoric but (2) spectacularly ineffective, in my view.

https://twitter.com/EvanFeigenbaum/status/1593623323136638977

2: To be blunt, experience and intuition tell me that Washington is delusional if thinks this kind of stark, binary message on China is going to work in most regions of the world - inclusive of, but not limited to, the Middle East and North Africa.

https://twitter.com/DOD_Policy/status/1593628730676711424?s=20&t=FOVtK9QCzIRIzd1u-srUvg

3: Of course, one problem is that big powers are self evidently self-interested. So calling China “transactional and opportunistic” while presenting the US as purely “altruistic” will presumably be laughed out of the room in most global capitals.

4: But frankly, the bigger problem is that it talks down to third countries to imply that they are fools and waifs. The reality is many governments in the Global South understand that China is opportunistic but don’t care because what China is offering fits THEIR needs and goals.

5: We are publishing a stream of work at @CarnegieEndow on this, including from the Middle East, and it is clear to me from this that the US will get nowhere by presuming that countries don’t know what they are doing and need to be instructed by Washington about Chinese perfidy.

6: That research stream, which we call #ChinaLocalGlobal, includes granular analysis that shows a very opportunistic and transactional China but one whose entities adapt to local conditions. The US ignores this dynamic, not static, competitor at its peril. carnegieendowment.org/specialproject…

7: It’s also generally the case that reducing people to OBJECTS and proxies in your own strategic competition with China, rather than the SUBJECT of their own stories, both patronizes and insults them. It's a bad look.

8: And of course, it risks inviting comparisons, both implicit and explicit, between what Washington is offering and what Beijing is offering. That comparison can work in Washington's favor ... but not always.

9: Take Asia writ large: the US is diplomatically challenged and commercially weak in around two-thirds of the Eurasian continental landmass—including many countries in Central Asia, South Asia and mainland Southeast Asia. The comparison will often benefit Beijing not Washington.

10: So trashing China can signal other capitals that their countries are of little interest to the US on their own terms. Their takeaway will surely be that Washington pays attention to them only in the context of its own strategic competition. That is a piss poor message.

11: I wrote on this at some length in this 2018 essay, "Reluctant Stakeholder." carnegieendowment.org/2018/04/27/rel…

12: And I talked about it some more in a keynote speech in Ottawa earlier this month that @SinicaPodcast just re-ran this week in lieu of its usual podcast: thechinaproject.com/podcast/evan-f…

13: And by the way, this approach has had market tests over the last few years and produced ... not much. An example: the 2019/2020 US roadshows on 5G. Very effective in Europe and industrial East Asia, in my view, but quite ineffective in, say, the Gulf. thenationalnews.com/business/techn…

14: And we see these contradictions EVEN in countries that have obvious tensions with Beijing and are deeply suspicious of Chinese power. Take this #ChinaLocalGlobal paper: perversely, Huawei ended up as Indonesia's partner of choice on cybersecurity! carnegieendowment.org/2022/07/11/loc…

15: Now flip back to the Middle East. Guess who's doing cloud services in Saudi Arabia? Guess who's doing other tech-related Vision 2030 projects with the Kingdom? scmp.com/tech/big-tech/…

16: So the US should compete and compete hard, not least because US offerings (and especially private sector offerings) are absolutely spectacular: best-in-class financial services, amazing tech firms, world-beating innovations, and so on.

17: But I question the effectiveness of persistent US messages to the Global South that begin with, “don’t you guys understand why China is bad for you?” Most countries understand China better than we think. But they also understand their own goals and needs better than we think.