Washington has a China fixation and France got in the way

In Washington, sooner or later, everything comes down to China.

The Biden administration justifies US policy on infrastructure, the economy and even on public services by the need to strengthen the country to better compete with China. America's foreign policy is increasingly organized as a bid to counter the rising great power. President Joe Biden keeps saying he had to get out of Afghanistan because China loved the US being bogged down there. Take some of the biggest issues rocking Washington -- the Covid-19 pandemic and the fight against climate change -- and China is at the center of them. The furor over the new book by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa about Donald Trump's final days in office was most heated over claims that the top US military officer called Chinese counterparts to reassure them the then-President wouldn't attack.

China's perceived power is so great that the idea it poses a threat is about the only issue on which Republicans and Democrats, Trump and Biden supporters can actually agree. Biden has put democracy promotion at the center of his presidency -- there's no need to guess why. And President Xi Jinping has taken on an outsized persona. Both the current and former president have each publicly boasted about their phone calls with the Chinese leader to highlight their own status and toughness.