Joseph Nye, the emeritus professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School and former foreign policy adviser to Presidents Carter, Clinton, and Obama, who has advocated continued engagement with China even as the Chinese Communist regime looks to seize control of Taiwan and replace the United States as the world’s leading power, uses his syndicated column to accuse Donald Trump and his populist-nationalist supporters — close to half the voting public — of being a greater threat to America than the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Voters, embittered by loss of jobs to Chinese imports, Nye wrote, “responded readily to Trump’s populism and protectionism.”
Nye writes that the United States has “soft power” advantages over China that give it a “strong hand in the twenty-first-century great-power competition.” But he worries that Trump and his populist-nationalist followers — if they regain power — will weaken America and lead to its decline. Nye has been preaching his “soft power” mantra for decades now, but China’s leaders know that it is “hard power” that wins international rivalries. (READ MORE from Francis P. Sempa: China’s Defense Minister Is Now an Admiral. What Does That Mean for Taiwan?)
Nye worked for three failed foreign policy presidents, though in his most recent book Do Morals Matter?: Presidents and Foreign Policy from FDR to Trump he has the chutzpah to rank Clinton, Obama, and Carter ahead of Eisenhower, Reagan, Nixon, and George H.W. Bush. Nye in that book revealed himself to be nothing more than a partisan advocate who uses academic theories to support his preferred candidates — which are always Democrats. And now, Nye joins the leftist media narrative repeated daily on MSNBC that Trump and his followers are the greatest threat to America.
In an interview this past October, Nye calls himself a “liberal realist,” though he is anything but realistic about China’s rise and its long-term goals. U.S. policymakers have been engaging China since the early 1970s. During the Cold War against the Soviet Union, it made sense to engage China because it was a de facto ally of the United States during the final decades of the Cold War. Once the Soviet Union collapsed, Nye was one of those liberal internationalists that thought China could be integrated economically and politically into the U.S.-led liberal world order. In an article in 2006, Nye reflected on the Clinton administration’s policy toward China, which derided the “hawks” who called for containing China. “We … knew,” he wrote, “that if we treated China as an enemy, we were ensuring future enmity.” He characterized Clinton’s policy as a combination of “realism and liberalism: balance of power and economic integration.” In a January 9, 2024 column, Nye again praised Clinton’s approach to China, and lamented that engagement’s “last gasp” was in 2015 when China joined the Obama administration in supporting climate change policies and Xi and Obama agreed to refrain from cyber espionage. Engagement died when Trump became president. Voters, embittered by loss of jobs to Chinese imports, Nye wrote, “responded readily to Trump’s populism and protectionism.”
But engagement has risen from the grave with the Biden administration. Nye calls it by other names — ”managed competition” and “competitive coexistence” — but the substance is the same. And those embittered voters are now a greater threat to America than China, according to Nye.(READ MORE: The Folly of Empire, 20 Years Later)
Nye urges Americans not to “succumb to hysteria about China’s rise,” even as FBI Director Christopher Wray testified to Congress, “China’s hackers are positioning on American infrastructure in preparation to wreak havoc and cause real-world harm to American citizens and communities.” Wray warned that China is threatening “our security and economy.” Perhaps Director Wray has “succumbed to hysteria about China’s rise.” Back in 2015, Nye told The Diplomat that “it is doubtful that China will have the military capability to pursue any overly ambitious dreams in the next several decades,” and noted that he “welcomed” China’s “peaceful rise.” In 2022, Nye noted Xi Jinping’s more assertive policies, but cautioned U.S. leaders to avoid “ideological demonization and misleading Cold War analogies.” At least Nye is consistent — consistently wrong about the implications of China’s rise.
