Despite the widening of the dispute between them
Cooperation between China and America is necessary to maintain life in the world
Air pollution from gaseous emissions is one of the most dangerous threats to the world.
archival
Bilateral talks between China and the United States stalled on the issue of climate change and others after Pelosi's visit to Taiwan.
AFP
Blinken: There is no way to solve climate change without Chinese leadership.
AFP
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The past few days have witnessed geopolitical tensions between China and the United States reaching an unprecedented stage, against the backdrop of the visit of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan, despite the strong Chinese rejection of this step, and Beijing responded to this by conducting unprecedented military exercises around the island of Taiwan.
However, the eminent American historian and strategist Hal Brands believes that the central dilemma facing American foreign policy today is the belief that China represents the greatest threat to the global order led by America, but that cooperation with it must be made so that the world remains a viable place for life.
This dilemma was clearly embodied when China responded to Pelosi's visit to Taiwan by halting bilateral talks with the United States on the issue of climate change and other issues.
Brands, Henry Kissinger Chair in Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, believes in an analysis published by Bloomberg News that Chinese President Xi Jinping is testing with these decisions the theory of his American counterpart Joe Biden, which says that Washington can cooperate with Beijing in some issues, despite their fierce rivalry in others.
From its early days, the Biden administration has argued that cooperation and competition are not completely opposite.
The US National Security Strategy of the Biden administration explicitly states that China is the "only competitor" capable of presenting "an ongoing challenge to a stable and open world order."
The United States should strengthen its alliances and invest in its core strengths to prevent China from imposing its will on the world.
At the same time, the US administration affirms Washington's need to work hard in order to establish fruitful relations on issues that achieve common interests for both sides.
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said last May, "We cannot let our differences prevent us from moving forward toward achieving priorities that need joint action by the two countries."
This vision aims to emulate one of the legacies of the Cold War era, when Washington cooperated with Moscow on issues such as global health and arms control despite the raging conflict between the two sides.
The climate change file is one of the most important files of potential cooperation between the United States and China, as they are the two largest emitting countries in the world, and the inability to achieve any tangible progress in facing the phenomenon of climate change in the world without the participation of a greater reduction in reliance on traditional energy on the part of Beijing, which produces About 25% of all global emissions.
"There is no way to solve the problem of climate change without Chinese leadership," Blinken said clearly.
But Brands says dividing US-China relations into areas where cooperation and competition will continue will not be an easy task.
The climate change issue cannot be an "oasis" for cooperation in light of the "desert" of competition between the two countries.
In 2021, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said, "America should create a suitable environment for environmental diplomacy by easing American anti-China policies on Taiwan, Hong Kong, and others."
This means that China links its cooperation in the climate change file to a set of geopolitical problems, which means that it demands a price for its cooperation in the climate change file.
But the Biden administration refused to make these concessions.
The US administration hopes that China will return to cooperation in the climate change file to achieve its own interests, when it realizes that Washington will not be satisfied with linking these files.
But the American vision was recently dealt a severe blow when China closed many diplomatic and military channels of communication with the United States and suspended bilateral dialogue with it on climate in response to Pelosi's visit to Taiwan.
Brands says Xi's decision reminds us that China has a bleak view of its military-to-military relationship with Washington, because the Chinese believe that the United States would be less willing to make bold moves in the Western Pacific if it were concerned that the tensions arising from such moves would be difficult to manage in a way. Safe.
The Chinese position also threatens to place the US administration in front of a sharp trade-off between two of its foreign policy priorities.
Xi is certainly trying to intensify tensions within the US administration and the Democratic Party, by pitting the hawks of addressing climate change against the hawks of addressing China, hoping for the victory of the first camp.
But this maneuver may not achieve Xi's goals.
China's withdrawal from global efforts to combat climate change will damage its image in the poorest and most affected countries.
Rising temperatures harm the economies of these countries, fuel illegal immigration, and lead to military, political and social unrest.
Finally, the policy of “climate blackmail” practiced by China could lead the Biden administration to abandon balanced policies towards Chinese practices in general, in the short term, but in the longer term, China could lose more, which means that the world needs cooperation between China And America to protect the environment and avoid the catastrophic repercussions of climate change.
• The climate change file is one of the most important files of potential cooperation between the United States and China, as they are the two largest emitting countries in the world.
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