The President of the United States, Joe Biden, said on Tuesday (2) that he is not worried about the possibility of an armed conflict with China, adding that he has made it clear to Chinese President Xi Jinping that it is “competition” and not of “conflict”.
“Am I worried about an armed conflict or something accidentally happening to China? No, I’m not,” Biden told journalist Phil Mattingly of CNN, during a press conference to close his participation in COP26, the United Nations Conference on Climate Change.
Biden said at his next – but still undefined – virtual summit with Xi that he would continue to make clear: “This is competition. It doesn’t have to be conflict.”
“There is no reason for there to be conflict. But I’ve also indicated to him, so I don’t hesitate to say publicly, that we expect him to follow the rules of the road,” Biden said, adding the United States would not change its position on several issues, including international maritime lands.
“I’m not looking, I don’t foresee that there will be a need for physical conflict, but you know, as you’ve heard me say this before, my dad had an expression: ‘The only conflict worse than the one that’s intended is the one that isn’t intentional ,” added Biden.
Asked about the absence of China, Russia and Saudi Arabia in person at COP26, Biden said it was a “problem” but that the United States attended because of “a profound impact on the way the rest of the world views the United States. and its leadership role”.
Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin, two counterparts Biden desperately hopes to get personally involved as he works to keep already strained relationships from deteriorating further, did not attend any of the major summits this week.
The reason given for Xi and Putin’s absences from the summits is the Covid-19 pandemic. Cases are on the rise in Russia, and Xi hasn’t left China for 21 months, as the virus spreads around the world. The visit to the summits could also have subjected Xi to his country’s quarantine demands, making it difficult for him to attend an upcoming meeting of the party congress.
White House officials said Putin and Xi’s absence from the summits was not, in fact, a missed opportunity. Instead, they suggest that the vacuum allowed US and European leaders to set the agenda and lead the discussion on topics important to them, such as the climate and fighting the global pandemic.
Still, on nearly every major issue under discussion this week – climate, Covid-19, energy crisis, supply chain obstructions, Iran’s nuclear ambitions – Western nations must work with Russia and China to do whatever. significant progress.
And Biden, who has expressed a preference for face-to-face summits, is deprived of a critical opportunity to exercise his trademark personal diplomacy on some of the world’s toughest conundrums.
On Tuesday, Biden said staying at home may have cost Xi some influence on the world stage.
“By attending, we had a profound impact on how I think the rest of the world views the United States and its leadership role. I think it was a big mistake, frankly, for China,” said Biden.
“The rest of the world will look to China and say what added value they are providing and what they lost in building influential people around the world and all the people here at the COP.”
Kevin Liptak, also CNN, contributed to this report.
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Reference: CNN Brasil
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