'China represents most consequential geopolitical challenge to US': Biden's national security adviser

Washington [US]: China represents America`s most consequential geopolitical challenge to the United States, said National Security Advisor (NSA) Jake Sullivan on Wednesday as the Biden administration released a key policy document on national security. "Next, we recognize that in the geopolitical space, the PRC represents America`s most consequential geopolitical challenge. And while that will play out in the Indo-Pacific to a significant extent, there are global dimensions to the challenge as well," Sullivan said during an on-the-record press call previewing the Biden-Harris administration`s national security strategy. The policy document contends that competition with China is most pronounced in the Indo-Pacific, but it is also increasingly global.

"Around the world, the contest to write the rules of the road and shape the relationships that govern global affairs is playing out in every region and across economics, technology, diplomacy, development, security, and global governance," it adds. The US Security Strategy highlighted that the next ten years will be a decisive decade of competition with China.

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The National Security Strategy states that both China and Russia, who announced a "no-limits partnership" this year, are increasingly aligned with each other but the challenges they pose are distinct. However, Sullivan the security strategy also makes clear that the US avoid seeing the world solely through the prism of strategic competition and it intends not to try to divide the world into rigid blocks. 

"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. We`re going to engage countries on their terms and pursue an affirmative agenda to advance common interests and to promote stability and prosperity," he said. 

"We stand now at the inflexion point, where the choices we make and the priorities we pursue today will set us on a course that determines our competitive position long into the future," the document says. The policy states that many US allies and partners, especially in the Indo-Pacific, stand on the frontlines of China`s coercion and are rightly determined to seek their own security, and prosperity. "We will support their ability to make sovereign decisions in line with their interests and values, free from external pressure, and work to provide high-standard and scaled investment, development assistance, and markets," it adds. 

On the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the document says Moscow`s "imperialist foreign policy" culminated "in a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in an attempt to topple its government and bring it under Russian control. "Over the past decade, the Russian government has chosen to pursue an imperialist foreign policy with the goal of overturning key elements of the international order, the document says. The Biden administration says that Russia now poses an immediate and persistent threat to international peace and stability.