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.”