“Ely Ratner, a former Biden advisor now at the Center for a New American Security, co-wrote in Foreign Affairs in 2018, ‘Nearly half a century since Nixon’s first steps toward rapprochement, the record is increasingly clear that Washington once again put too much faith in its power to shape China’s trajectory…’
“Midway through the Obama administration, he was in China when it announced a ‘military defense zone’ in the airspace of U.S. allies in Asia, declaring planes could not fly through it without Chinese permission. ‘He pushed back in a way that caused the Chinese to cease and desist its efforts to try to enforce it,’ said Daniel Russel, Obama’s assistant secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific affairs, who was traveling with Biden at the time. ‘He made it clear that we were going to keep flying through the area, and that Japan and South Korea were 100% with us…'”