The US May Not Be Looking For a Fight with China, But It’s Preparing For One

By Walter Pincus

Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist Walter Pincus is a contributing senior national security columnist for The Cipher Brief. He spent forty years at The Washington Post, writing on topics that ranged from nuclear weapons to politics. He is the author of Blown to Hell: America's Deadly Betrayal of the Marshall Islanders. Pincus won an Emmy in 1981 and was the recipient of the Arthur Ross Award from the American Academy for Diplomacy in 2010.  He was also a team member for a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 and the George Polk Award in 1978.  

OPINION — “We’re engaged in an intense competition with China across many areas, but it’s not in our interest for that competition to end in conflict. If we can do anything to avoid that, and we’re determined to do that, that starts with communications.”

That was Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken speaking last Tuesday at a Senate Appropriations hearing, which was almost the last place I expected to hear an in-depth presentation of the Biden administration’s China policies.

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