Is China turning U.S. conservatives into multilateralists?

Earlier this week, the National Interest published a piece by a gaggle of experts at the Heritage Foundation, one of Washington’s most prominent conservative think tanks. They labor to prove that the Trump administration doesn’t deserve the reputation it has won for abandoning multilateral engagement (while quietly acknowledging that the administration’s chaos has weakened U.S. multilateral diplomacy).

The article’s most intriguing passage is the following:

Acting the reluctant internationalist, however, won’t cut it anymore. And that’s largely because of China. The Chinese Communist Party has a deliberate strategy of placing individuals who are answerable to the party in high posts at international organizations. Chinese nationals are already in charge of four of the U.N.’s key fifteen specialized agencies…If the United States does not counter the Chinese Communist Party’s assault, then Beijing will bend global norms, removing any obstacles to the expansion of Chinese power. American interests can’t be protected unless the U.S. takes a more proactive and constructive role. 

The authors go on to urge the administration not to jettison the World Trade Organization (as a Republican senator recently proposed) and to fix rather than abandon the much maligned World Health Organization. Their call for multilateral engagement has its limits: they don’t see any U.S. interest in participating in the UN Human Rights Council and they endorse measures against the International Criminal Court.

But those arguments shouldn’t obscure the piece’s broader relevance: that there is an active strain of thought in U.S. conservatism focused on competing with China in the multilateral sphere and concerned about abandoning the arena.