Keeping Up with American Values 

To begin moving toward an effective strategy in dealing with China, the United States needs to make some significant policy changes, focusing on America’s authentic values embedded in its founding documents and traditions. It must start with the bipartisanship that is sorely needed to address these overdue issues, especially working with a democratic India over an autocratic China.

As Vandenberg counseled to leave behind “partisan politics at the water’s edge,” then Senators Joseph Biden and Richard Lugar have clearly demonstrated the possibility of coming together to uphold American traditions and values. In fact, four former Republican staffers noted in a recent op-ed, “from 2003 through 2006, Lugar was chairman [of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee], while Biden was ranking member. They flipped roles in 2007 when Democrats won control of the Senate. Despite major policy differences between Lugar and Biden and the typical rivalry between their staffs, there never was a moment when we doubted that Biden’s main objective as an elected official was the well-being of the United States.”  

In America, it is still possible for Democrat and Republican leaders to craft a bipartisan foreign policy with national interests in mind “to form a more perfect Union” as the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution demands. 

Dr. Patrick Mendis, a former American diplomat and a military professor, is a Taiwan fellow of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of China and a distinguished visiting professor of global affairs at the National Chengchi University as well as a senior fellow of the Taiwan Center for Security Studies in Taipei.

 Joey Wang is a defense analyst in the United States. They are alumni of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. The views expressed in this analysis neither represent the official positions of the current or past institutional affiliations nor the respective governments.