(CN) — In his first trip to Europe as America's top diplomat, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday called on European allies to join the Biden White House in challenging China and Russia by proving the strength of democracy.
Blinken's trip to meet European diplomats and NATO's leadership in Brussels was designed to shore up and revive transatlantic relations after four turbulent and difficult years of the Trump administration's “America First” foreign policy approach.
“We’re determined to revitalize our alliances, to revitalize our partnerships, starting with NATO,” Blinken said in comments at the NATO headquarters in Brussels on Tuesday.
He said the massive problems of the future – cyberspace threats, the rise of autocratic governments, climate change – cannot be solved by the U.S. alone.
“When we look at virtually all of the challenges that we face as a country and that are actually going to potentially affect the lives of our citizens, not a single one of them can be effectively dealt with by any one country acting alone, even the United States with all of the resources that we have,” he said.
The warming of transatlantic ties was showcased Monday by a coordinated effort by the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom and the European Union to impose sanctions on China over its alleged widescale human rights abuses against the Uyghur Muslim minority in the Xinjiang region of northwestern China. These are the first sanctions the EU has placed on China since the Tiananmen Square massacre 31 years ago. These new EU sanctions though were limited to four officials and one entity believed to be overseeing abuses against Uyghur Muslims.
The U.S. is accusing China of genocide against Uyghur Muslims. In a statement with Canada and the U.K., the U.S. alleged there is overwhelming evidence that China is guilty of an “extensive program of repression includes severe restrictions on religious freedoms, the use of forced labor, mass detention in internment camps, forced sterilizations, and the concerted destruction of Uyghur heritage.”
China immediately struck back. It slapped sanctions on the EU, including on several critics of the Chinese government in the European Parliament. The tit-for-tat sanctions put China-EU relations on rockier ground and come just three months after German-led talks brokered a controversial investment deal that gives EU companies more access to China.
Getting the EU to sanction China can be viewed as a victory for the U.S. in its titanic struggle to curb the rise of China, which is expected to overtake the U.S. as the world’s largest economy in the coming years.
To counter China’s rise, Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO secretary-general, said the Western military alliance must not lose sight that collectively it accounts for half of the world’s wealth and half of global military might.
He said NATO will lay out a new overarching strategy at a summit later this year where the alliance will focus on expanding its security agenda, upgrading technology and infrastructure and making its militaries better equipped for the extreme conditions caused by global warming.
In this trip to Europe, the contours of President Joe Biden's foreign policy are coming into better focus. His administration is making the protection of human rights a central difference between the U.S. and its allies and autocracies.
Blinken, a long-time U.S. diplomat with a soft-spoken and self-reflective style, makes for a sharp difference from former President Donald Trump's tough-talking and abrasive secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, and the Trump administration’s disjointed approach to human rights. Trump lavished praise on autocratic rulers around the world and mocked human rights issues at home, such as the plight of asylum seekers at the Mexican border and police brutality against Blacks.