In his Tuesday speech on voting rights, Biden likened election reforms, such as those about to be enacted in Texas, to “the most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War. That’s not hyperbole. Since the Civil War.” Setting aside that the proposed Texas voting measures were actually far less restrictive than those Biden has backed in his home state of Delaware for over a half-century, as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has pointed out, Biden’s reference to the Civil War in a speech on voting rights this week could not have been timed any worse.
Total deaths in the Civil War number at least 620,000, and U.S. deaths from the Coronavirus as of this week stand at almost exactly that number, or 606,000, according to the Centers for Disease Control. For Biden to reference the Civil War at a time when real questions remain about the seriousness of his efforts to probe the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) culpability in manipulating and unleashing the virus on the world, causing the same number of U.S. deaths, is not only unfortunate, it is incredibly tone-deaf.
Six weeks ago, Biden was forced to order the U.S. intelligence community to conduct a 90-day review of the origins of the virus, after initially punting that question to the World Health Organization to resolve. That review is now half underway, and, despite a commitment to receiving a 45-day review in mid-July, so far it’s crickets from the White House, with a number of analysts skeptical of whether the intelligence community will draw a definitive conclusion on the CCP’s culpability at all given the disruption to the world order that such a move would drive.
To their credit, House Republicans proceeded forward in June with a top-to-bottom look into the CCP’s culpability in developing and spreading the virus. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has refused to allow Democrats to participate in the GOP’s efforts, causing Leader Kevin McCarthy to call her and Biden out for remaining on the sidelines. He wrote last month, “President Joe Biden has failed to utilize any of his broad powers to hold China accountable...It is clear the American people can’t count on the Administration or Democrats in Congress to take meaningful action to find the truth and demand justice.” In the same missive, McCarthy unveiled an eight-point-plan for holding the CCP leadership accountable for its actions, including allowing for greater sanctions against leaders who have engaged in a coverup of the virus, waiving sovereign immunity to allow U.S. families to sue the Chinese government for damages from the virus, and stripping the 2022 Olympics from China for their stonewalling.
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McCarthy and his colleagues deserve much credit for laying out several practical and realistic steps on accountability. Their message is clear: even if U.S. intelligence officials are firmly committed to pursuing the truth on the origins of the virus, there is no way that CCP officials will provide them with the information they would need to reach an irrefutable conclusion one way or the other. Following that logic to the next step, and given that signs point overwhelmingly to the lab-generation theory, the burden of proof needs to rest with CCP officials to prove otherwise, and sooner rather than later.
A reasonable way forward is to give CCP officials until Labor Day to disprove to the world that the virus came from the Wuhan Lab, and between now and then, U.S. congressional and administration officials should consider a menu of options on holding the CCP accountable in a much stronger way than previously contemplated, in addition to the moves on sanctions, lawsuits and Olympics hosting highlighted by McCarthy and House Republicans.
While no decisions can be made until then, possible additional actions against the Chinese leadership for having developed and spread the virus resulting in over 600,000 U.S. deaths could include some very momentous steps, such as:
· Sanctions against U.S. firms doing business with any Chinese military entities at a minimum, or even some or many commercial entities, resulting in a partial or total de-coupling of economic relations;
· Reparations or charges cutting into China’s debt to America;
· Naval ship and combat aircraft visits, perhaps developing into a regular seasonal schedule, of U.S. and, later, Quad countries, to the Republic of Taiwan, demonstrating that we are going to go out of our way to step up our military presence permanently in the region to counter Chinese military aggression.
Each of these possible additional steps carries with it enormous downsides and risks for the American people to weigh as they are setting policy through their elected leaders, but the point is everything needs to be on the table if we are to consider a proper response to losing the same number of Americans over the last 18 months due to Chinese actions than we did in one of the deadliest wars in our nation’s history over a century and a half ago.
John Ullyot was Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and NSC Spokesman from 2019-2021.
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