Editor's note: Hamzah Rifaat Hussain is a former visiting fellow at the Stimson Center in Washington and serves as an assistant researcher at the Islamabad Policy Research Institute (IPRI) in Pakistan. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

When U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken affirmed that American domestic policy is linked with its foreign policy, then this ideally entails dealing with the pandemic, reversing Trump's protectionist, isolationist and unilateral policies while simultaneously enhancing multilateral collaborations and vaccine diplomacy across the world. This obvious linkage, however, did not detract from what was actually the defining feature of his major address. It was about investing in democracies and supporting American workers towards tackling the threat of China instead of promoting their own well-being. According to the Biden administration, the geopolitical test of the 21st century is Beijing, not the well-being of the international community. 

If the systematic campaign to encircle and pressurize China since assuming office is anything to go by, then this global strategy disproportionately focuses on curbing what Washington views as a rampant, expansionist and draconian communist state through forging democratic alliances. This mindset is evident with the recent remarks of a U.S. State Department spokeswoman hailing the deployment of a German frigate in the South China Sea as a testament toward supporting an American "rules based order" in the region. Through multilateralism, Washington is trying to build consensus in the international community that China's policies are akin to disruption and subversion which threaten democratic values across the world. There is an attempt to augment the threat in the words of Blinken himself of China's economic, political and military might as a challenge to the stability of the international order. Nothing is farther from the truth and nothing of this is short of a farce. 

The reasons are obvious. China's relationships with democracies such as Germany are nuanced and based on strong trade relations and amiable ties based on soft power. This in itself becomes a geopolitical test for Washington given that ties with democratic countries such as France are clearly irking the new Biden administration. Such strategic depth and intricacies can be contrasted with the pomposity in Blinken's address with the administration being more concerned about delivering campaign pledges made during the 2020 presidential elections instead of pursuing anything concrete. For a country that was ravaged by domestic terrorism and also acknowledged it hitherto, the focus is ironically now on squarely curbing China through multilateralism given Blinken mentioning how the January 6th insurrection is a blight on American democratic traditions.

From Beijing's perspective the question still remains, where are such American threat perceptions coming from? Taking Blinken's speech taken at face value, it is due to China running contrary to the American view of the world instead of international principles where Washington has made it clear that it will only engage with Beijing from a position of strength as the Secretary of State mentioned. A rising economic profile, vaccine cooperation appreciated by the developing world and the common denominator that Blinken alluded to engaging China from a position of strength entails possible coercion, more rhetoric on subjects such as Hong Kong and even lobbying non-democratic Asian states such as India and Japan to adopt more assertive postures let alone Europe. If this is part of the new American global strategy of the Biden administration, then this will not strengthen the free international order but reinforce controversial American interventionism. The policy of rallying democracies to push Beijing politically, economically and militarily on the back foot underlines nefarious designs.

If one is to go by President Biden's simultaneous release of the "interim strategic guidance" on Wednesday, then the wording is clear regarding re-establishing America's position as the leader of the international community. The document states that the global security landscape is considered to be vulnerable where democracies are threatened by states such as China. The document completely discards the irrefutable fact that there is no evidence that Beijing coerced any sovereign democratic state nor does it have global ambitions of subverting Western alliances. It is actually to the contrary; attempts at leveraging regional bodies such as ASEAN towards adopting nationalistic stances towards China is Washington D.C.'s preferred strategy.

That China is considered to be the geopolitical threat of the 21st century based on such concocted scenarios is unfortunate given that Biden's global strategy is more about American ambitions rather than assuming global leadership as a responsible power. 

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