Disengagement With Chinese Regime Will Continue Globally: Mike Pompeo

The hegemonic ambitions of China’s leadership will see the disengagement with China started by former President Donald Trump continue globally and in the White House, Mike Pompeo said Saturday.

“[T[here will be no doubt that there will be disengagement—decoupling, some have called it—that will almost certainly have to take place,” he said during an interview with The Epoch Times’s American Thought Leaders at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando, Florida.

Pompeo said that the longstanding strategic engagement approach toward the Chinese regime, which was established during the Richard Nixon era by his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, has failed.

He believes that countries including the United States will move forward to abandon this engagement approach.

“They’re going to do some of them differently,” he said. “For 40 plus years, Democrat or Republican, there was this idea of engaging with China and things will get better. We saw that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) took advantage of that and trashed American jobs and destroyed so much of what we care about so deeply here in the United States.”

During his speech earlier the day, Trump’s top diplomat touted the success of Trump’s “America First” foreign policy achievements, including a “maximum pressure” approach to Iran, moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, de-escalation of tensions with North Korea, and the historical Abraham Accords that offer a new path to peace in the Middle East.

The Trump administration succeeded in a wide range of foreign policy areas that others thought were impossible, Pompeo stated.

“We were told you can’t move the United States Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem: ‘There’d be a war.’ Well, we did, and there was not a war,” he told the audience.

Then-U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping toast during a State Luncheon for China at the Department of State in the District of Columbia on Sept. 25, 2015. (Paul J. Richards/AFP via Getty Images)

During his four years in the White House, Trump’s approach toward the CCP acted as a wake-up call for Western countries. Though it’s unclear if the Biden administration and other western countries will fully follow Trump’s approach, many countries are expected to adopt it partly.

President Joe Biden said China is America’s “most serious competitor” but also stated that his administration is willing to work with China’s ruling CCP.

“But we’re ready to work with Beijing when it’s in America’s interest to do so,” he added, suggesting a policy of greater engagement.

Samuel Allegri and Tom Ozimek contributed to the report.