The Biden administration’s senior-most national security officials are traveling this week to the Indo-Pacific, signaling that the administration’s China strategy remains a priority as it grapples with an increasingly volatile Middle East.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. CQ Brown will all be traveling throughout the Indo-Pacific region this week to meet with partners and allies. It marks the first trip for Brown since becoming chairman in September.
Austin leaves Wednesday for 10-day tour of India, Indonesia and South Korea. Blinken also left last week for a 10-day trip to Israel, Jordan, Turkey, South Korea and Japan, also making a stop in the West Bank to meet with Palestinian leadership there.
Blinken and Austin will both travel to India for a 2+2 Dialogue with their counterparts.
For several years now, US officials have stressed that China is the US’ top competitor — deemed “America’s most consequential geopolitical challenge” in last year’s National Security Strategy.
Relations soured between the US and China over the last year and a half, particularly around then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August 2022, the controversial transit of a Chinese spy balloon across US earlier this year, and most recently when a Chinese fighter jet came within 10 feet of a US Air Force B-52 bomber over the South China Sea. The Pentagon’s top official in charge of security in the Indo-Pacific, Ely Ratner, said last month that the US has seen more instances of “coercive and risky” behavior from Chinese pilots against US aircraft in the last two years over the East and South China seas than in the entire previous decade.
Meanwhile, talks between US and Chinese officials stalled until this summer when Blinken met with senior…
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