WATCH: Ambassador Brownback on China, faith and the new Cold War

Video

Friday, May 29, 2026

OPINION:

From Taiwan to the Strait of Hormuz to underground churches, the stakes in America’s confrontation with China have never been higher.

Ambassador Sam Brownback joins Washington Times Commentary Editor Kelly Sadler on Politically Unstable to assess Trump’s Beijing summit and make the case for religious freedom as a strategic weapon in the new Cold War.

[SADLER] The president just came back from a trip to China, where he met with President Xi Jinping. Many things were discussed. There were not many deliverables, but it was a largely symbolic trip. Can you give us your perspective on how it went, what our diplomatic relations are with China, which is a closed totalitarian state, no religious freedom there? Xi Jinping is the head of the Communist Party and has pretty much a stranglehold on power. So, your thoughts of the trip, of the president’s trip and where we need to go with China?

[BROWNBACK] Well, Xi Jinping is a modern Chinese emperor. I don’t know that you could distinguish between him and any of the prior dynasties. I presume there’s ways to look at it, but I’m guessing if you’re in the Chinese population, you’re just kind of going, okay, different name, same things happen. I’ve got an emperor that sits on top of me. I can’t change the weather here. The only thing I pick is whether I put on a jacket today or not. So it’s just… That’s the way the system operates.

I thought President Trump got out of the meeting what he needed to get out of the meeting, which is really just to try to show the world, here are the two top leaders in the world. They can talk to each other. They can cool the temperature down. We can make things kind of move forward, recognizing that these are two systems in conflict now. In conflict, whether it’s Russia-Ukraine or Iran-Israel. These are puppeteers of China. And Xi Jinping, he pulls the strings on all of it. We are in a new Cold War era, but it’s hot in some places. And this is just a very testy, difficult atmosphere.

We’re too dependent upon China for too many things right now that are strategic to us, whether it’s rare earth minerals or pharmaceutical supplies. We got to break those supply chains. The president knows that, but it takes time to get those things done. And meanwhile, you got to kind of, okay, let’s dance around here on the fight floor for a while because we’re not ready to rumble just yet.

[SADLER] One of the things the president was criticized for coming out of that meeting was his remarks regarding Taiwan. Arms sales have been paused at this point to the island. What did you make of it? Others have said that he maintained the strategic ambiguity that has always been the U.S. stance. But some were critical that he didn’t show enough strength when it came to defending the island.

[BROWNBACK] I thought he did what he had to do again. I think it’s the strategic ambiguity that we’ve got to have. We’re just not in position right now. Taiwan produces 90% of these high-end chips that we’re dependent upon. You know, China goes to attack this place. Where are we going to get the chips? And we’ve got to build capacity here. We’re building capacity here. Direct foreign investment is falling in China. It’s rising dramatically in the United States. We let all that investment go for decades to China. We’re now starting to get it back. But all that takes time to move through the system. And so you really just got to kind of dance around for a little while, while we get in better position for what we need to do.

I would love to see the president sell lots of arms to Taiwan, be more confrontational. But maybe he’s using that as some negotiating chip and saying, for now, Xi acts responsible. I’m not doing this for a little while. As soon as something moves wrong, that happens. Xi knows it. Who knows? I don’t know. But it seems to me those may be calculations he’s making. And he’s done really an artful job of shutting down oil supplies to China — huge move. And Iran, really the same thing.

[SADLER] What did you make of China’s promises to help us out with the Strait of Hormuz? Since the president returned back to the U.S., it doesn’t seem like they’ve done much.

[BROWNBACK] It didn’t seem like to me they committed to much over there. Look, they could tell Iran to open that up, stop doing it, give up the uranium. None of that’s happened. They haven’t done that. I think this is just part of the war that we’re in with China and Iran is clearly their proxy.

The president’s been very aggressive, obviously. I mean, this is oil supply that’s primarily going to Europe and China. It’s not our oil supply that we’re dependent upon, but it has impact on us because of midterm election cycles and gasoline prices. And the communists never face an election. So they don’t have to worry about things like that. So there’s a near-term difficulty. Long term, I think the president’s really done an artful job of going at a strategic asset they need, and that’s oil and energy, and really bottling up a major piece of their supply in both Venezuela and to a pretty decent degree in Iran, too.