Diplomacy could be difficult with a state officially designated as genocidal.
Now it’s an issue for Biden. Photographer: NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP
In the final weeks and months of Donald Trump’s presidency, the State Department took some steps that are likely to be reversed. President Joe Biden’s administration is now reviewing these last-minute actions, such as designating the Houthi movement in Yemen a terrorist organization and imposing new sanctions on Iranian leaders and organizations, with a red marker in hand.
One 11th-hour policy change, however, may be here to stay: the designation of China’s repression of Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang province as genocide. At his confirmation hearing last week, and in his first press briefing this week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken agreed that what China’s government has done to the Uighurs was genocide.
But will the designation stick? At her confirmation hearing on Wednesday, Biden’s pick to serve as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said it was under review. While calling China’s treatment of the Uighurs “horrific,” she said that “all of the procedures were not followed” in the policy change and that the department is “looking to make sure that they are followed to ensure that that designation is held.”
It’s a strange remark. As a 2019 paper from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum makes clear, there is no formal, legal process by which the secretary of state determines when a crisis is genocide. It is the secretary’s decision to make.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s statement on Jan. 19 was only the sixth time since the end of the Cold War that the U.S. government has made such a determination. Pompeo on Wednesday told me that the decision, which was made on his last full day as secretary, was more than a year in the making. He consulted with policy bureaus, State Department lawyers, foreign governments and various government analysts.
Not everyone agreed, but in the end Pompeo said he was comfortable with the decision. “The process appropriately required a lengthy review because many voices needed to be heard so we could be sure all relevant facts, data and opinions came into account prior to making this historic determination,” he said.
Thomas-Greenfield was probably referring to reports that elements of the State Department, such as the Office of the Legal Advisor, objected to Pompeo’s designation. Some of the objections were legalistic.
The bar is high for determining whether a nation is committing genocide. Did the Chinese government intend to destroy the Uighurs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang Province? Or was the state’s practice of forced sterilization and harsh re-education camps merely a crime against humanity? Another objection was that Pompeo declined to say whether Myanmar’s campaign against the Rohingya Muslims was a genocide. Still another objection was that such a determination would further chill U.S.-China relations.
That last objection was not something that bothered Pompeo. As secretary of state, he saw China as a menacing adversary. He rallied allies to boycott China’s leading telecom, Huawei; he prodded businesses to re-route their supply chains away from China; and he declared political war on China’s favored officials in international organizations.
His parting shot was consistent with his broader strategy. “This determination has implications for how the United States government must interact with China, how American businesses should interact with the government of China, and how other nations need to take into account the history that we all know from the 1930s when they gauge how their relationship with China should move forward,” Pompeo told me.
It’s doubtful that Blinken sees this the same way. While he agrees that China’s campaign in Xinjiang Province was genocide, he does not appear to share Pompeo’s broader view that China should be treated with the kind of scorn reserved for the worst villains of modern times. On Wednesday, Blinken described the U.S.-China relationship as one that “has some adversarial aspects to it” but also “has cooperative ones,” such as working together to combat climate change.
That’s a fine way to approach a great power rival. But it’s an inadequate response to a state that the U.S. government says has committed genocide.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
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