When I was in government, I remember Ambassador Bill Burns saying many a time in meetings that we were doing a great job "admiring the problem." But we were not solving the problem. That comment reminds me of Trump & team's China policy. THREAD 1/

I applaud the Trump administration diagnosis of the China challenge. The 2017 National Security Strategy rightly focused on great power competition -- China and Russia -- as needing more attention. 2/

This summer and in a very long Policy Planning paper, Trump (or is it really presidential candidate Pompeo?) then overshot the mark. See my take here: Xi Jinping Is Not Stalin https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2020-08-10/xi-jinping-not-stalin?utm_medium=social via @ForeignAffairs 3/

Still analytically, the Trump team advanced a necessary diagnostic debate. (They diminished how the Obama admin had already pivoted analytically and somewhat prescriptively, but that discussion is for another day) 4/

But how many times can we keep "admiring the problem" without following up with bold policy responses commensurate the size of the challenge? 5/

If this moment really the beginning of Cold War 2.0 as Trump, Pompeo, et al claim, then why have not they organized a Bretton Woods 2.0? A Marshall Plan 2.0 to compete with the PRC's BRI, AIIB. etc? Where is the NATO 2.0 in Asia? Why did they pull out of TPP? 6/

There is one of 2 explanations. Maybe this moment is not really Cold War 2.0, and therefore we don't need the same commensurate response to the PRC that we constructed for containing the USSR in the 1940s and onward. 7/

Or maybe Trump's team was good at analysis but bad at creative policy design and USG reorganization. And that task will now be Biden's. 8/

A third explanation/conclusion is somewhere between the 2. Some elements of our relations with China today are like the Cold War. Others are not. The smart Biden path forward is having the wisdom the know the difference and then pursue a new China policy accordingly. END THREAD