State Department Official Says U.S. Should ‘Shift Away’ from Military Dominance in Asia

A current State Department official said that it is “dangerous” for Washington to attempt to maintain its military dominance in East Asia as a means of deterring a Chinese attack on Taiwan. That official, Rachel Esplin Odell, accused the U.S. of making war with China more likely and instead advocated a cooperative approach to dealing with Beijing on issues such as climate change, during a webinar hosted by her former employer, the controversial Quincy Institute think tank.

Critics complain that Quincy is soft on the Chinese Communist Party’s malign behavior and generally unsympathetic to human-rights concerns resulting from the Uyghur genocide and the quashing of freedom in Hong Kong. During her tenure there, Odell led a letter-writing campaign to urge that congressional China-focused legislation be watered down, and she defended the use of rhetoric that aped the party’s preferred language warning against a “Cold War mentality.”

Odell spoke on Wednesday afternoon at a virtual panel discussion to launch a Quincy Institute project she oversaw before taking a job as a “foreign affairs analyst” at the State Department last August. Although she specified that she was speaking in a personal capacity and not on behalf of the department, her comments, and the new report, make for a remarkable public repudiation of long-standing U.S. policy and some tenets of the Biden administration’s own approach. They also shed light on the perspective that this Quincy Institute alumna potentially takes to her work at the State Department.

“It’s crucial that the United States actually shift away from an emphasis on military tools of power, and we need to be investing more in economic engagement and engagement around human security issues like countering climate change, which will require cooperation with China,” Odell said, adding, “the current trajectory of United States defense strategy is putting us on the path to a dangerous conflict with China.”

Earlier in the event, she had argued that the U.S.’s military strength had eroded significantly amid China’s own military buildup. In comments likely to raise eyebrows at the State Department and beyond, she warned that Washington’s efforts to restore that dominance are “unlikely to succeed.”

“Not only would such efforts prove financially unsustainable, they could also backfire by exacerbating the risk of crises, conflict, and rapid escalation in a war,” she said, acknowledging that the U.S. and its allies “have legitimate concerns” about Beijing’s military ambitions.

The panel discussion and the report it highlighted were framed as a scholarly reappraisal of U.S. defense doctrine, incorporating the differing views of ten scholars to offer a leaner, defensive strategy for the U.S. and its Indo-Pacific allies.

Although the Biden administration has called for engaging Beijing on climate change and other issues, the perspective advanced in the report is far more accommodating than even the White House’s view, which blends competitive and cooperative policies toward China.

The new Quincy Institute report, which is called “Active Denial: A Roadmap to a More Effective, Stabilizing, and Sustainable U.S. Defense Strategy in Asia,” sneaks in arguments that could be read as critiques of the Biden administration’s China policy.

“Washington needs to prevent any further erosion of its One China policy and restore the credibility of that position with both Beijing and Taipei,” it states at one point. “Changes to how the U.S. articulates and interprets its One China policy — viewed in Washington as necessary responses to increased cross–Strait coercion by Beijing — have likely weakened deterrence in the Taiwan Strait rather than strengthened it.”

Chinese diplomats have also claimed that the U.S. has run afoul of its long-standing position on Taiwan, while top U.S. officials at the State Department and elsewhere have repeatedly said that the One China policy remains unchanged.

The report also said that future U.S. efforts to expand its alliances with countries in Asia could “further stimulate China’s fear of encirclement and provoke reactions that would undermine the security interests” of the U.S. and its partners. Instead, it urges “security dialogues and tension-reduction with China.”

Odell’s official title is foreign-affairs analyst, and it’s unclear whether the role is politically appointed. However, her hiring last summer came after a progressive advocacy network sent the White House a list of 100 potential appointees for it to consider, including Odell, as the Washington Free Beacon reported. Among several Quincy Institute affiliates included on the list, Odell is one of the few, if not the only one, who subsequently went to work in the executive branch.

While the report notes that “the research, workshop, and wargame phases” of the project took place before Odell entered government, the think tank said the State Department blessed her continued work on the report after she became a foreign-affairs analyst.

Quincy Institute communications director Jessica Rosenblum said in an email that Odell “received all of the State Department’s required clearances related to her work” on the report, characterizing NR’s questions on the topic as “spurious allegations.”

A State Department spokesperson said that Odell was only speaking “in her personal capacity and her remarks do not reflect State Department policy or perspective.”

The spokesperson did not specifically comment on the remarks by Odell that seemed to criticize U.S. policy.