(CNN)President
Joe Biden is suddenly waging a bitter two-front confrontation with America's foe in the last Cold War -- Moscow -- and the US adversary in a possible next one -- China. Nasty personal insults are flying between the White House and the Kremlin even as staggeringly blunt rhetoric erupts in the administration's first big talks with China called to lay down the law on Biden's tough new policy toward the dominant Asian power.
A remarkable day of intercontinental squabbling confirmed that US relations with China have plunged to their lowest point since President Richard Nixon's pioneering mission to "open" the then-isolated communist state in the 1970s. US-Russia ties are, meanwhile, at their most difficult point since the fall of the Soviet Union.
A simmering feud with Russia escalated when Biden blasted Vladimir Putin as a "killer" in an interview this week, promoting the stung Russian strongman and his aides to brand the new US commander-in-chief old and senile.
In Alaska, meanwhile, there were extraordinary exchanges in front of the press between US and Chinese officials on Thursday.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke of "deep concern" he had picked up about China's behavior during a tour of Asia and condemned China for breaking rules that keep at bay a "a more violent world." National security adviser Jake Sullivan defended the US from Chinese critiques by saying it had "secret sauce" that helped it mend its imperfections -- in a clear slam of China's authoritarian state rule.
China's top diplomat Yang Jiechi then further shattered the normally choking protocol of US-China talks by asking: "Is that the way that you had hoped to conduct this dialogue? Well, I think we thought too well of the US."
The exchanges -- the diplomatic equivalent of a head-to-head quarrel that will reverberate across the Pacific -- prompted a senior US official to accuse the Chinese of arriving "intent on grandstanding, focused on public theatrics and dramatics over substance."
The most alarming feature of the showdown is how quickly it ramped up, with neither side willing to back down and each seeking to get the upper hand and have the last word in front of the cameras. This cycle of escalation will worry experts who fear that one of the many flashpoints between the rivals -- including over Taiwan or China's territorial claims in the South China Sea -- could quickly erupt into an international crisis.
Given the brittle global situation, an attempt by a new American President to flex power in such an overt manner against two nuclear rivals might seem rash. But if anything, Biden is reacting to a strategic calculus that has shifted since he served as vice president in the Obama administration, that sought to reset relations with Russia and based its China policy on managing the peaceful rise of the coming economic power in the east.
Chinese President Xi Jinping's assertive, nationalist, authoritarianism has since transformed China's global outlook and willingness to project strength. It is now locked in a regional and increasingly global competition with Washington.
While lacking the strategic weight of the former Soviet Union, Moscow has made undermining US influence and internal political cohesion a centerpiece of its global strategy -- witnessed by its meddling in two US elections.
It's clear that Biden's tough talk, boasting about a coming US economic recovery and declarations that "America is back," is designed to undercut the shared view in Moscow and Beijing that the US is gravely weakened by two decades getting into and out of the Middle East, its paralyzing political divides and one of the world's worst pandemic responses.
Biden's insults for Putin and efforts to get other major Pacific powers like India, Japan, Australia and South Korea on side before meeting China send another message: that the chaotic foreign policy in which former President Donald Trump fawned over autocrats in Moscow and Beijing, ignored allies and undermined his administration's sometimes tough strategy is on history's trash heap.
