U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken revealed yesterday that when it comes to understanding the dynamics of China’s engagement in Africa, he really doesn’t know very much.
When a young person floated him a softball question about how the U.S. plans to compete with China in Africa, a topic he must have expected, the Secretary gave a meandering answer that clearly showed that he’s not at all well-versed in the issue.
Most of his answer was a re-hash of the tired debt trap and Chinese labor narratives that have long been disproven and, for the most part, have been abandoned by much of his own State Department.
These are the same message points that his predecessors relied on, dating back all the way to 2011, when Hillary Clinton was Secretary. Ten years ago! A decade later and the U.S. is still relying on the same narratives.
How is that possible?
Ten, fifteen years ago, it was understandable that officials like Blinken may have had some blind spots about the then-emerging China-Africa relationship. But with so many subject experts, books, data feeds, podcasts and countless other resources available now, it’s inexcusable that someone in his position is not better informed on an issue as important as China and the Global South.
Three factors, in my view, might explain Secretary Blinken’s blinkered view:
- He’s too deeply entrenched in the State Department system: that would explain why Blinken’s messaging points were almost word for word the same as his predecessors. It’s possible that he consumes far more internal reporting than external sources that could challenge his worldview. This is a common shortcoming in organizations as large as the State Department and the US government.
- He’s not being properly briefed: the deep subject expertise among the professional staff is not making the jump from the 6th Floor of the State Department where the regional desk bosses are, to Blinken’s office on the 7th floor. There are entire teams within the U.S. government monitoring and analyzing Chinese engagement in the Global South, but clearly, their insights are not making it into Secretary Blinken’s briefing books.
- He’s from a different generation who just doesn’t get it: Blinken is a product of another era that was dominated by the Transatlantic Alliance and European multilateralism. China’s emergence as a peer competitor to the United States may still be a foreign concept and he just hasn’t taken the time to immerse himself in the complexities of China and the realities of today’s emerging world order.
I have no idea which, if any, of these explains the performance we saw during yesterday’s video call, but regardless, I have to be honest that it worries me… a lot.
We’ve seen intelligence breakdowns like this before and it led to disastrous consequences, for example for both the United States and Iraq. At present, the stakes are very high. The U.S. and Chinese militaries are literally staring each other down in the South China Sea and they’re also engaged in a low-grade cyber conflict.
The fact that the Secretary is so clueless on the basics of Chinese engagement in Africa and the Global South is worrisome.
We all need to hold the Secretary to account to do better and to improve his understanding of China and how the U.S. should best respond to Beijing’s engagement in Africa and the wider Global South.
Let’s all hope for our sake that he gets up to speed, and fast.
