The American Foreign Policy Council, a neocon outfit in Washington with the likes of Paula Dobriansky, Newt Gingrich, Robert Joseph and James Woolsey, published an article National Interest under the title “Is America Ready for China’s Belt and Road Challenge?” Interestingly, it offers an honest and quite interesting analysis of the Belt and Road, although intended as a warning. Their conclusion: “The BRI remains salient, and now has new coherence and direction. The Biden administration is going to need a coordinated, multifaceted plan to counter the changing shape of the BRI if it means to truly engage in great-power competition with Beijing.”
But their honest account is another example of anti-China institutions which are increasingly forced to at least acknowledge that the BRI is not any of the horrible things the Pompeo types say it is, but a powerful program for development and support for a deeply troubled world. Some examples:
