With President Biden hosting his first international meeting at Camp David, one global policy expert warned that the summit is one of Biden’s last options to address the Chinese threat.
“We have very few plans left that even do this in the United States, [it’s] probably the right move,” Atlas Organization founder Jonathan D.T. Ward said on “Mornings with Maria” Friday. “So, [I’m] glad to see that that’s still a policy instrument.”
The Biden administration claimed Thursday that the meeting with Japan’s prime minister and South Korea’s president at Camp David represents a “turning point” in Indo-Pacific relations.
Fox News has reported that rising military tensions from China and North Korea have now brought Japan and South Korea – two former enemies – together.
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“It’s not just about containment of China,” Ward reacted. “It’s also about building our relations with our allies and ensuring that the structure of the U.S. system remains intact despite the challenge from Moscow and Beijing.”
“So the Camp David summit, in that regard, is absolutely a win,” he continued. “Getting Korea and Japan together has been an enormous challenge in U.S. foreign policy for decades. And here we are at hopefully the beginning of bringing a real important trilateral together with China and North Korea as the focus.”
Japan and South Korea are home to approximately 100 permanent U.S. military bases, accommodating nearly 80,000 American troops, according to Fox News chief national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin.
In their summit Friday at the presidential retreat in Maryland, Biden along with President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida are expected to announce plans for expanded military cooperation on ballistic missile defense and technology development, according to two senior Biden administration officials.
While a “real risk” of military conflict exists, Ward argued the bigger risk lies in China’s economic competition.
“Chinese companies and the Chinese state are deeply intertwined. That’s the nature of the system, very few things really get outside of the bounds of that relationship,” Ward said.
“But the major advantage the U.S. has to play is to win an economic competition while we still can,” he added, “while we’re still the world’s largest economy, while we’re still the reserve currency, while we still can sanction all kinds of entities around the world.”
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Rep. Mark Alford, R-Mo., echoed concerns and also told host Maria Bartiromo on Friday that China has its “tentacles in everything we do in America.”
“China has been playing chess, and Joe Biden and this administration has been playing a game of Tiddlywinks,” Alford criticized.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.