President Joe Biden's administration said it would prioritise winning over China, seeing it as the only global rival to the United States, even as it works to constrain a "dangerous" Russia.
Key points:
- The Biden administration's long awaited national security strategy says maintaining a "competitive edge over" over China remains a main goal
- It emphasised risks from China, warning that its rapid advances in technology aimed to mould the world order
- The president's approach to foreign policy was not fundamentally altered by the war in Ukraine
"The post-Cold War era is over, and the competition is underway between the major powers to shape what comes next," Mr Biden's national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, said in a speech at Georgetown University to unveil the national security strategy.
The strategy said the 2020s would be a "decisive decade for America and the world" – for reducing conflict, promoting democracy over authoritarianism and confronting the key shared threat of climate change.
"We will prioritise maintaining an enduring competitive edge over the PRC (People's Republic of China) while constraining a still profoundly dangerous Russia," the strategy said.
Vladimir Putin's Russia "poses an immediate threat to the free and open international system, recklessly flouting the basic laws of the international order today, as its brutal war of aggression against Ukraine has shown", the strategy added.
China, "by contrast, is the only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to advance that objective".
The release of the strategy was delayed by the Ukraine war, with Mr Biden spending most of this year rallying allies against Russia and marshalling billions of dollars in weapons to Kyiv, but it remains largely consistent with interim guidance laid out shortly after he took office in January 2021.
"I don't believe that the war in Ukraine has fundamentally altered Joe Biden's approach to foreign policy, which long predates his presidency," Mr Sullivan earlier told reporters.
"But I do believe that it presents in living colour the key elements of our approach – the emphasis on allies, the importance of strengthening the hand of the democratic world and standing up for our fellow democracies and for democratic values," he said.
China wants to be 'world's leading power'
The strategy said the United States was willing to work even with competitors on shared interests, amid Mr Biden team's talks with top carbon emitter China on climate change, described as "the existential challenge of our time".
But the White House emphasised the risks from China, warning that its rapid advances in technology aimed to mould the world order in support of "its own authoritarian model".
Despite Beijing's repeated denials it is seeking hegemony, the strategy said China "has ambitions to create an enhanced sphere of influence in the Indo-Pacific and to become the world's leading power," using the favoured US term for the broader Asia region.
The White House also tied a rising China to Mr Biden's vows to prioritise the US middle class, saying Beijing was seeking to make the world dependent on its economy while limiting access to its own billion-plus market.
The strategy called for major investment at home, two months after Mr Biden signed a $US52 billion ($83 billion) package to improve US capacity for building semiconductors, but also said the US sought to "coexist peacefully" with China and manage the competition "responsibly".
"We are not seeking to have competition tip over into confrontation or a new Cold War and we are not engaging each country as simply a proxy battleground," Mr Sullivan said.
The strategy release comes as Mr Biden vows a reassessment of relations with one longtime US ally, Saudi Arabia, which moved to slash oil output – benefiting energy exporter Russia and potentially raising gas prices for American consumers weeks before congressional elections.
Amid reconciliation between Israel and Gulf Arab states, the strategy called for a "more integrated Middle East" that would reduce the long-term "resource demands" of the United States, which for decades has provided security for oil-producing nations.
The strategy also acknowledged the need to address democratic shortcomings at home, where former president Donald Trump refused to concede defeat in the 2020 election and whose supporters led a deadly assault on the US Capitol.
"We have not always lived up to our ideals and in recent years our democracy has been challenged from within. But we have never walked away from our ideals," it said.
China's embassy in Washington did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
Mr Biden has yet to resolve some key foreign policy debates, including tariffs on Chinese goods established by his predecessor that cost US importers billions, and faces new ones brought into high relief by Russia's actions, including fraying relations with long-time ally Saudi Arabia and India's reliance on Russian energy.
Daniel Russel, the top US diplomat for East Asia under former president Barack Obama, said the strategy was consistent with Mr Biden's stated priorities of domestic renewal, strengthening alliances and democratic institutions, and balancing cooperation and competition.
"However, during its 21-month gestation period, the strategy has clearly shifted to place overwhelming emphasis on competition with China," he said.
He added that while it pledges to avoid looking at the world solely through the prism of strategic competition, "competition with China suffuses every chapter".
Russel said the paper pledged to build the broadest coalition of nations to address global challenges, but it would be difficult to do this without China and there was no indication how such cooperation might be secured.
A lone reference in the document to North Korea underscored limited US options to contain its nuclear and missile programs.
This was striking, Mr Russel said, "not only because it passes so quickly past a persistent and existential threat, but also because it frames the strategy as 'seeking sustained diplomacy toward denuclearisation,' when North Korea has so convincingly demonstrated its utter rejection of negotiations".
AFP/Reuters