Biden Admin’s ‘Subnational Diplomacy’ Undermines the US

Commentary

The Biden administration announced the appointment of its first “Special Representative for Subnational Diplomacy” on Oct. 3. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the position would “spearhead the Department’s efforts to engage local partners, foster connections among cities in the United States and abroad, develop solutions and partnerships to key issues facing local actors, and fundamentally strengthen the Department’s ties to our cities and communities.”

Subnational diplomacy will help address issues such as “climate change, economic justice, and democratic renewal,” according to Blinken, which have an impact at the local level but are also global challenges. The program will link local officials to international programming, information sharing, and funding.

Connections between U.S. and foreign cities would be fine if the latter were friendly, for example, from Japan, India, and the European Union. But the announcement shows little concern for the dangers of highly centralized adversaries, who control their local governments, exploiting subnational links.

The subnational diplomacy is thus vulnerable to the local promotion of more economic links to China on the discredited assumption (or self-serving illusion) that such profitable engagement will reform rather than empower the totalitarian country.

Nor is there sensitivity shown to this issue in Blinken’s choice of the individual to lead the initiative.

It’s no wonder, as Blinken himself is close to a China-linked organization that practices subnational diplomacy. The new envoy, Nina Hachigian, also supports the organization, which is an object lesson in the danger, not success, of the practice.

Asia Society, headquartered in New York City, is usually soft on China and has immense influence over Democratic policymaking in the country. It is funded, at least in part, by entities with business ties to China. According to my source, one of the China-linked billionaire funders pressured a candidate for Asia Society president not to say anything negative about China. (As a result, the candidate honorably declined what is now a million-dollar job and is presently the U.S. ambassador to China.)

Hachigian is the former deputy mayor for international affairs for Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti. Garcetti sat on the advisory board of the Southern California branch of Asia Society. His engagements with global leaders, including Carrie Lam, known for her administration’s human rights abuse in Hong Kong, and his sitting on the same board as Michael Riady, whose uncle was convicted in relation to illegal campaign contributions in the 1996 Democratic fundraising scandal, have shown extraordinary tone deafness to concerns about expanding business and political links to America’s biggest adversaries.

Hachigian didn’t raise these controversial examples of subnational diplomacy, of course, in her bromides about the appointment.

“Communities, cities, and states are coming up with some of the most innovative and creative ideas for tackling many of the global challenges we face,” she gushed to the Los Angeles Times before her appointment. “It is vital that we at the State Department harness the ingenuity of our local communities as we strive to build a foreign policy for all Americans.”

But a disorganized and potentially corrupting foreign policy by local governments could hurt national bargaining leverage, most importantly with Beijing, by causing local governments to compete with each other for China’s business and, in the process, create special or even compromised interests that conflict with national security goals, including on the linked issues of decreasing emissions and economic growth.

“When former President Trump attempted to back away from efforts to combat climate change, it was local or regional entities—such as California—that persisted in adopting programs to contain waste, pollution and the explosion in climate destruction,” according to the LA Times.

However, these laudable actions on the environment have negative economic effects and hurt U.S. leverage at the national level to force China into climate concessions. Los Angeles decided on unilateral climate giveaways that allowed China’s environmental brinkmanship to achieve more economic growth for itself by unleashing emissions and with less fear of causing a climate disaster. This is a clear example of a local government undermining national economic strength and bargaining leverage.

In a Foreign Affairs article published just after the 2020 presidential election, titled “Cities Are Transforming U.S. Foreign Policy: Biden Would do Well to Work with Them,” Garcetti and Hachigian take a unilateralist tone in the very title of their piece.

Unilateralism is exactly what Beijing wants subnational identities to pursue. Bargaining with subnational entities is how Beijing sought to undermine the Trump administration’s tougher China policies after his election in 2016. Dealing with European countries at the nation-state rather than at the EU-level is how Beijing frustrated EU attempts to address Beijing’s human rights violations in Hong Kong and the international law of the sea in the Philippine exclusive economic zone. China gives economic concessions to Hungary, so Hungary vetoes EU resolutions critical of China.

Quid pro quo corruption is so much easier at the subnational level. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned against falling for China’s exploitation of subnational diplomacy and business, but unfortunately, Blinken’s State Department is feeding it to us hook, line, and sinker.

Scholars concerned about China’s malign global influence identified both Garcetti and Hachigian and demonstrated how they undermined the Trump administration’s trade war against China with shrill claims about the supposed harm it would do to Los Angeles shipping and poverty. The reality was much less dire.

In their article, Garcetti and Hachigian do not address how a balkanized American diplomacy might hurt the U.S. ability to leverage our massive economy, with one unified collective bargaining voice in the person of the U.S. trade representative, to promote democracy and human rights globally, including in China. In their article, the authors only pay lip service to human rights.

The 2014 Los Angeles County report, titled “Growing Together: China and Los Angeles County,” demonstrates an even worse approach to human rights. In one section, it uncritically repeats multiple Chinese Communist Party talking points almost verbatim, including on the subject of human rights.

Blinken’s subnational initiative will be popular with small-town officials who have big-city ambitions, and big-city bosses, like Garcetti, who in 2018 mused about running for president.

Promoting the leap of cities and states to the international level gives the Biden administration an opportunity to energize local party machines, just when needed for midterm elections. As with President Joe Biden’s stimulus-fueled inflation and student loan giveaways, however, he buys short-term public support in a demagogic coin that has debilitating long-term consequences for our nation.

From a more lucid corner of Biden’s administration, the director of National Intelligence, came better policy. A July report, titled “Safeguarding Our Future: Protecting Government and Business Leaders at the U.S. State and Local Level from People’s Republic of China (PRC) Influence Operations,” stated, “Understand that what may seem good for your city, county, state, or business in the short-term could undermine strategic U.S. interests over the long-term.”

This should be the administration’s watchword to local governments rather than subnational diplomacy.

Let the State Department focus on the tough problem of international politics, and let local governments do what they do best: fix local problems like poverty, drug abuse, and crime. The national government’s job is to protect our localities and citizens, not throw them to the international wolves.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.