Just over a month into office, President Joe Biden and his team have repeatedly claimed that the United States is back on the world stage to defend and promote the liberal international order in the face of the challenge posed by China. Their assurances began in late January with Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s public affirmation of the previous administration’s statements that Beijing is committing “genocide” against its own citizens. When a coup in Myanmar this month presented an early test of America’s renewed commitment to democracy, the Biden administration imposed direct sanctions on those military leaders responsible and threatened additional measures depending on the military junta’s future actions. The White House is sending an important message: the floundering legitimacy of U.S. democracy both at home and abroad will not deter the United States from attempting to be a global leader on human rights.
It is not yet clear, though, how Washington will integrate the human rights agenda into its broader geopolitical strategy toward China and work with allies to restrain Beijing’s troubling and growing abuses. Under the prior administration, Washington imposed a series of sanctions on individuals responsible for the atrocities in Xinjiang and the new national security law in Hong Kong. Yet key U.S. allies in the region, most notably Japan—the first and potentially most active proponent of the “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” concept—have been noticeably less vocal, even somewhat disengaged, on these issues. It is time for the United States and its Indo-Pacific allies, starting with Japan, to realign their priorities to ensure that a human rights agenda is afforded equal status in their respective approaches to China.
