That's not a response but a sophomoric jibe. Trump and Xi reached an agreement from the tariff war that China has only fulfilled 57%. Is that due to lowered economic activity during the pandemic or is China simply not honoring the agreement? If China is simply breaking the bargain, do we attempt to force them to do so? Or do you assert, as Biden's Joint Chief Chairman MIley does, that China is not an enemy and we continue business as usual?
The trade war was never only about leavening trade with China but part of a realignment of the West regarding China. Warts and all, here's Paul Taylor, senior fellow at Friends of Europe:
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Biden time
But after the November elections, studiously neutral Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg could hardly disguise his eagerness in inviting President-elect Joe Biden, whom he called a "strong supporter of NATO and the transatlantic relationship" to visit Brussels for what he unmistakeably called a "summit," to be held as soon as the new administration can possibly manage it.
Having a less unpredictable partner in Washington is hugely important, as NATO is in the process of improving its recognition of and response to serious challenges facing the 30 governments. "It's been a wild roller-coaster ride," Paul Taylor, senior fellow at Friends of Europe, tells DW. "At the end of it, NATO has survived Donald Trump — not unscathed and not unchanged."
For better, for worse
Some of those changes have been at least partially positive, even if they left scars on the alliance's psyche. For example, while Trump did not, as he frequently misstates, prompt a reversal of allies' decline in defense spending — that already happened in 2014 — it is credible that nations boosted their military budgets faster toward the NATO goal of 2% of GDP in an effort to avoid his public haranguing.
"He also got [allies] talking about China," Taylor notes. "That's something that was never on NATO's agenda. And whether it would have come anyway, I don't know, but it happened on his watch and it happened at his insistence."
But it would be hard, if not impossible, to find an upside to the uncoordinated and abrupt withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan and Iraq, where NATO service members are helping train local forces to eventually manage their own security. Trump's surprise announcements were unsettling to both NATO, which was not consulted, and to governments with personnel on the ground that will now be in a more vulnerable position without added American backup.
The "China challenge"
Their new report, "NATO 2030: United for a New Era," (Dec. 2020) concludes a "persistently aggressive" Russia will continue to be the biggest military threat to the alliance over the next decade, but China definitely steals the thunder as an up-and-comer.
"It was manifestly clear from our consultations with experts and with allies," Mitchell told a Carnegie Europe briefing on the report. "The rise of China is is the single biggest, most consequential change in NATO's strategic environment and one that the alliance really has to reckon with." What's next for NATO after Donald Trump? | DW | 28.12.2020
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Suddenly, Chris Wray wakes up and gets it:
According to Wray, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s government steals “staggering” amounts of information, causing “deep, job-destroying damage across a wide range of industries — so much so that … we’re constantly opening new cases to counter their intelligence operations, about every 12 hours or so.”
“There is just no country that presents a broader threat to our ideas, our innovation, and our economic security than China,” he said.
According to the FBI director, Beijing uses an “insidious” strategy of announcing their desire to build up various industries — “like robotics, green energy production and vehicles, aerospace, biopharma, and so on,” as Wray put it.
“And then, they throw every tool in their arsenal at stealing that technology to succeed in those areas,” he went on. “Here in the US, they unleash a massive, sophisticated hacking program that is bigger than those of every other major nation combined. Operating from pretty much every major city in China, with a lot of funding and sophisticated tools, and often joining forces with cyber criminals, in effect, cyber mercenaries.”
He also contrasted the dangers posed by China with those presented by the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
“The Soviet Union didn’t make much that anyone in America wanted to buy. We didn’t invest in each other’s economies or send huge numbers of students to study in each other’s universities,” Wray said.
“The US and today’s China are far more interconnected than the US and the old USSR ever were, and China is an economic power on a level the Soviets could never have dreamed of being.” FBI Director Christopher Wray says China is top threat to US
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Now, answer the questions I posed to you above, or continue taking positions on things you don't understand while talking as if you do.
