Imagining Engagement, Part III: The Nuances of Realpolitik

From working groups to a US-China Secretariat — a proposal for a new architectuere of engagement

This final installment of “Imagining Engagement” is intended to be a reality check. I started out focusing on what an ideal US-China re-engagement might look like (Part I: Defining the Goal). That was followed by an assessment of benefits, what could be gained by a shift from conflict escalation to conflict resolution (Part II: Making the Case for ‘Why’). In what follows, I take up what could well be the toughest aspect of this challenge — moving from the abstract to the achievable.

I start with the inarguable assertion that the current architecture of Sino-American engagement has failed. As I noted in Part I, the Mao-Nixon leader-to-leader approach that was so successful in the early 1970s has outlived its usefulness. The inevitable frictions of a codependent relationship have been compounded by the interplay between domestic political pressures and thin-skinned, egocentric leaders. Leader-driven diplomacy, while still necessary for engagement, is far from sufficient in today’s very different and far more complex world. The worrisome trajectory of US-China conflict escalation over the past seven years is prima facie evident that a different approach is needed.

I am certain that my core conceptual proposal for a new architecture of engagement comes as no surprise to readers of Accidental Conflict and/ or subscribers to this Substack, Conflict. I favor a blended approach that combines diplomacy with a new institutional framework centered on my proposal for a US-China Secretariat. The secretariat idea was first introduced in my last book and detailed elsewhere. But a brief summary is in order before getting to a nuanced realpolitik agenda of how to bring this new architecture to life amid the current climate of strife and conflict between the United States and China.

A US-China Secretariat, which would be the first such bilateral arrangement for two major powers, is envisioned as a permanent organization, operating full time, 24 x 7. Located in a neutral venue (i.e., not the US or China), the Secretariat would be staffed by equal complements of American and Chinese professionals. Its remit would be broad, covering all aspects of the bilateral relationship — from economics and trade to technology and innovation, to subsidies of state-owned enterprises and technology transfer, to mutual existential issues such as climate change, disease and health, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and human rights.

The Secretariat would be problem-oriented, empowered to produce jointly authored policy “white papers” that would be submitted to respective legislative authorities in both nations. It would have responsibility for building and maintaining a joint data base, ensuring that both sides operate off a common set of facts. A US-China Secretariat would also oversee surveillance and compliance of existing and new agreements between the two nations, as well as oversee a dispute screening and resolution function that would adjudicate the inevitable tensions that frequently arise in complex relationships. Additionally, it would have a robust convening function to summon outside experts to assist in dealing with unexpected issues and developments that often arise between the two countries or in the world at large.

The greatest advantage of a Secretariat would be its full-time operability. Diplomacy, mainly centered on periodic leader-to-leader meetings, or in the past on annual or bi-annual strategic and economic dialogues, lacks the continuity of ongoing engagement that a secretariat would offer. Even working groups charged with task-specific responsibilities that meet, at most, several times a year, do not possess the full-time monitoring, problem solving and troubleshooting capacity that a permanent secretariat would offer. A secretariat provides depth and continuity to relationship management that diplomacy cannot hope to match.

So much for the concept. I have promised in this final installment to address a tougher question: How can this new architecture of engagement be brought to life in today’s highly politicized climate of distrust, animosity, and conflict? My basic answer is to keep it simple at first. Rather than present a full-blown secretariat proposal to two suspicious governments that may be understandably wary of committing resources and political capital to a comingled bureaucracy, my suggestion is to build upon a framework that both nations have been comfortable with in the recent past, namely a US-China working group structure that covered five main areas — economics, finance, trade, commercial engagement, and climate, with ancillary groups set up to tackle military-to-military communications and counternarcotics (i.e., fentanyl).

Specifically, I would propose that each working group, now largely suspended during Trump 2.0, be restarted and converted into full-time status. That need not happen for all working groups at once. But the idea here is to shift the process of engagement away from sporadic calendar specific meeting intervals (i.e., bi-monthly, quarterly, bi-annually, or annually) to ongoing, permanent dialogue and issue-specific problem solving. Each working group would be housed in a neutral jurisdiction and staffed on a full-time basis with co-equal complements of US and Chinese professionals and respective support staffs, tasked with developing prioritized policy agendas in their specific areas of coverage and responsibility. In effect, each newly established permanent working group would be transformed into a mini secretariat. New working groups can, of course, be added as circumstances suggest.

There is a final piece that ties this proposal together. Over time — hopefully within a few years — an oversight capacity should be added to the broad collection of well-functioning working groups. Initially, the oversight function would be more administrative than policy directed, focused at first on coordinating the disparate channels of secretariat engagement. The eventual goal would be to transform the umbrella oversight function into the full-blown multi-functional secretariat that I have long advocated. That transformation would be based on the success of little steps at the individual working group level rather than on breaking a seemingly intractable political gridlock between two conflicted superpowers.

That poses what could well be the toughest issue of all — resolving a clash between über nationalistic politics in both the US and China and the realpolitik of superpower engagement. On one level, China is not the problem — it was more than willing to participate in joint working groups with the US during 2022-24. But would the Trump Administration ever consider restarting a Biden era framework? Donald Trump’s anti-Biden venom is hardly encouraging in that regard. But to the extent that America was just as tough on China under Biden as it was during Trump 1.0 — a case I made in Chapter 7 of Accidental Conflict — there would hardly be a loss of political face if working groups were restarted during Trump 2.0. That underscores the most important tactical advantage of this approach: Inasmuch as both the US and China have already invested considerable political capital in the working group concept, it wouldn’t take a major leap of faith to take the additional steps I have outlined above.

As an aside, there is an important historical footnote to my working-group conversion proposal. Back in 1983, only a few years into their formal relationship, the US and China established the Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade. The JCCT, which met annually twenty-seven times up until 2016, eventually consisted of some of some sixteen active working groups that addressed a variety of issues, from agriculture and pharmaceuticals to intellectual property and the environment. While it was a robust mechanism of engagement, unfortunately terminated by the first Trump Administration in 2017, it met formally only once a year and never took advantage of the sum-of-the parts coordinating overlay that I am suggesting above. As far as I am concerned, that was an opportunity squandered.

I started this three-part effort with the assertion that “there is literally no constituency in the United States un favor of Sino-American engagement.” With that as a backdrop, I certainly concede that any grand proposal for re-engagement is likely to be dismissed out of hand. While that is especially the case in the United States, where Sinophobia has run rampant, others are more receptive to the idea. In the interest of full disclosure, I have taken my original secretariat proposal on the road in my global travels over the past three years. There is considerable interest in the idea in Asia — especially China — and even in some quarters of Europe. But that is not so in the United States, where most minds are made up that engagement is, indeed, a four-letter word when it comes to China.

I am not hopelessly naïve in thinking my proposal will sway the overall anti-China view of US officials, let alone public opinion. Nor do I think that China would opt for such an approach on its own. But I would hope that the prospects of a costly decoupling and the mounting perils of accidental conflict are enough to convince both sides of the necessity of committing to a new architecture of engagement. Yes, such a commitment would lack the bravado of the grand breakthrough as loudly promised in the “art of deal.” But that’s why the nuanced pragmatism of realpolitik is so appealing. Starting small at the working group level offers a continuum of hope through limited success by example.

In the end, of course, a deeply troubled US-China relationship needs far more than a secretariat to repair the damage and chart a different course. But at this point, more than anything, it needs a new idea, a concept, a goal-oriented proposal to break the fever of conflict. It also needs a framework that allows the two sides to begin working together again, day-to-day in the same building. Close physical proximity breeds friendship and trust. A secretariat not only offers a framework for conflict resolution but the very real possibility of instilling a renewed sense of camaraderie between the two sides, recapturing a small piece of the spirit of engagement between the US and China that was so powerful in the early 1980s. As I stressed at the outset, it will take imagination to think out of the box and bring this superpower conflict to an end — before it is too late.