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Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers says that the United States is facing new challenges as China expands its influence on the global stage.
In a new Bloomberg interview, Summers says that while the US is spearheading the campaign against Russia’s agenda in Ukraine, oil-rich countries such as Saudi Arabia and Iran are starting to take cues from China.
According to Summers, the US is doing the right thing in opposing Russia’s military campaign. However, he says that some nations are beginning to follow the lead of another major economic power.
“The Chinese-brokered restoration of diplomatic relations between Saudi and Iran is a symbol of something that I think is a huge challenge for the United States. We are on the right side of history with our commitment to democracy, with our resistance to aggression in Russia. We are very much on the right side of history, but it’s looking a bit lonely.”
Summers also says that other countries are more satisfied establishing trade relations with China than the US.
“I think there’s a growing acceptance of fragmentation and maybe even more troubling, I think there’s a growing sense that ours may not be the best fragment to be associated with.
Somebody from a developing country said to me, ‘What we get from China is an airport. What we get from the United States is a lecture. We like your values better than we like theirs, but we like airports more than we like lectures.’”
