Former top US diplomats take aim at Donald Trump over ‘dangerous’ China policy
- War talk no way to conduct foreign policy, Stapleton Roy, one-time US ambassador in Beijing, says
- ‘North Korea and climate change’ are just two areas where Washington and Beijing could be talking more
US President Donald Trump’s lack of understanding about China is to blame for Washington’s deteriorating relationship with Beijing, two former senior US diplomats said.
“There [used to be] presidential guidance in terms of how to handle the [foreign policy] issues,” said Stapleton Roy, a former ambassador to China, at an event hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) think tank in Washington on Wednesday. “We don’t have that type of leadership at the present time.”
Roy, founding director emeritus of the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars policy forum, said “there’s a lot of talk about war with China” when it came to containing Beijing’s ambitions to replace the US as the dominant power in East Asia.
He was referring to US’ belief that it could have East Asian countries flocking to its side because they would want its military to help stop China’s rise.
“But we can’t have war with China without it being suicidal,” Roy said. “We didn’t talk about war with the Soviet Union during the Cold War because we recognised it was too dangerous.
“The part of the problem is [that] we are not electing presidents capable of addressing that issue. The state department can’t work out those types of issues. There has to be a higher level of guidance.”
