Are China and Russia Evil Regimes? Kirby: 'It's a Criticism That You're Posing as a Question' (May 31, 2023)

A reporter at the White House asked a question that Ronald Reagan answered 40 years earlier: Are the regimes in China and Russia evil?

“If you have governments that are running concentration camps or launching unprovoked wars where hundreds of thousands of people are being killed, and the President of the United States calls the leader of that regime a war criminal, I don’t see what it is that prohibits you from calling a spade a spade and saying these are evil regimes,” the reporter told John Kirby, the National Security Council spokesman [1].

Kirby would not say it. “It’s not — it’s not a simple question, James. It’s a criticism that you’re posing as a question,” he said. “You’d like to see us put a label on these two countries, and President Biden just doesn’t conduct foreign policy that way” [1].

The video above shows the exchange from the May 31, 2023, White House briefing. Quotes are from the official transcript published by the American Presidency Project [1].

”Calling a Spade a Spade”

The reporter said the two had already argued about it on one of Kirby’s untranscribed Zoom briefings. “The colloquy you and I had was about whether China and Russia, or either one, should be considered an evil regime,” the reporter said [1].

The reporter cited two Republican presidents. “President Reagan described the Soviet Union as the ‘locus of evil’ in the modern world. George W. Bush referred to an ‘axis of evil’ after 9/11,” the reporter said [1].

Kirby brushed it off at first. “Well, I appreciate your advice on policy, and I’ll take that back, James. But the President’s never been one —” he began. “It’s a simple question,” the reporter cut in. “Why don’t you consider these evil regimes?” [1]

“Unsafe” and “Unprofessional”

Earlier in the same briefing, Kirby described a Chinese fighter jet’s intercept of a U.S. Air Force reconnaissance plane. “Well, it was unsafe, and it was unprofessional,” he said. “You can see that they forced that RC-135 to go through the jet wash of the Chinese fighter, which just tells you how close it was — several hundred feet. That’s dangerous” [1].

He admitted that military talks with Beijing were frozen. “Well, right now, unfortunately, the military-to-military vehicle is just not open to us,” Kirby said [1].

”Go Look at the National Security Strategy”

Kirby pointed to paperwork. “I think — go look at the National Security Strategy. Go look at the National Defense Strategy. Take a look at anything that the President has said over his time as Commander-in-Chief about Russia and China,” he said [1].

“We’re speaking pretty plainly to the American people and to those countries and those leaders about how we view these — their behavior, their conduct on the world stage, and our relationships with them. We’ve been very, very honest about that,” Kirby said [1].

The reporter also asked that Kirby’s Zoom briefings be transcribed. “So if I could just use this opportunity, first, to register mild protest that we should receive transcripts of those briefings. We’re not currently,” the reporter said [1].

What Reagan and Bush Said

Reagan used the word in his March 8, 1983, speech to the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando, Florida. While the Soviet leaders “preach the supremacy of the state, declare its omnipotence over individual man, and predict its eventual domination of all peoples on the Earth, they are the focus of evil in the modern world,” he said [2].

In the same speech, Reagan warned against those who would “ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire” [2].

Reagan was blunt about where it would end. “I believe that communism is another sad, bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages even now are being written,” he said [2].

Bush used it in his State of the Union address on Jan. 29, 2002, four months after the Sept. 11 attacks. “States like these and their terrorist allies constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world,” he said of Iraq, Iran and North Korea [3].

By the Numbers

40 years: from Reagan’s “evil empire” speech to Kirby’s answer [2][1].
2: regimes, China and Russia, the reporter wanted labeled evil [1].
20 days: from Kirby’s answer to Biden calling Xi Jinping one of the “dictators” [1][4].
2002: the year Bush named the “axis of evil” [3].

What Happened Next

Biden used a label anyway. On June 20, 2023, at a fundraiser in Kentfield, California, Biden said Chinese leader Xi Jinping was upset about the spy balloon the United States shot down. “That’s what’s a great embarrassment for dictators, when they didn’t know what happened,” Biden said [4].

“I shot that balloon down with two boxcars full of spy equipment in it,” he said. “When it got shot down, he was very embarrassed. He denied it was even there” [4].

He added that Xi “wants to have a relationship again,” and praised Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s trip to Beijing: “Tony Blinken just went over there—our Secretary of State; did a good job” [4].

For how the White House handled the Chinese balloon itself, see HYGO News’ page on the balloons under Trump.