As the 2024 U.S. presidential election approaches, I’m sitting here asking what the United States’ goal is when it comes to strategic competition with China. My thoughts come about because this weekend, the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic said that the world is nearing a hot war over Russia and China’s imperial ambitions, so how will the US win?
The Biden administration has said that it aims to “responsibly manage the competition” with China, but some prominent Republicans have criticized this approach and have called for “victory” as the superior objective. However, proponents of victory have not clearly spelled out what winning means.
Washington’s goal in its contest with China should indeed be victory, and winning means reaching a point where the Chinese government no longer has the will or the ability to harm vital U.S. interests. In other words, Washington should aim for the capitulation or incapacitation of the Chinese threat.
Just “managing the competition” does not make sense.
In any other competition, whether it’s something as simple as a game of tic-tac-toe or competing for the Olympics, the purpose must be not just to manage, but to win. Setting a goal of managing a competition raises the question: Manage to what end? Like every historical rivalry, the contest between Washington and Beijing will eventually conclude. (After all, Athens and Sparta are no longer competing.) So, what is Washington’s desired end?
Intelligence analysts assess threats by examining an adversary’s capability and intent, and the problem today is that China has both the capability and intent to actively and systematically harm the United States’ vital interests. Methods include military coercion against U.S. allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific, including daily military intimidation of, and threats to invade, Taiwan; reducing American prosperity through illegal trading practices; and corroding U.S. democracy— for example, by targeting voters with artificial intelligence-enabled disinformation operations.
More fundamentally, China seeks to displace the U.S.-led international system with a new global order centered in Beijing that is more supportive of autocracy and President Xi Jinping’s imperial ambitions.
This is China’s theory of victory, and its realization would severely undermine the well-being of all people in the United States and the whole Free World.
The Threat
If you don’t believe in the threat, look to see that last Monday, China Coast Guard ships intercepted Philippine vessels attempting to resupply their own sailors grounded on a shoal inside Philippines’ exclusive economic zone (EEZ, which are their own nation’s territorial waters), barely 100 miles off the western coast of the archipelago. The Chinese attack, including by axand knife-wielding Chinese crewmen, left one Filipino missing a thumb and with a Philippine rigid-hull inflatable boat in tatters. The Philippine Armed Forces chief of staff likened the Chinese assault to a pirate attack.
The latest Chinese escalation came just two days after the entry into force of a new coast guard regulation that allows Beijing’s military ships carte blanche to seize any foreign vessels anywhere it deems necessary, even if those foreign ships are inside their own waters or on the high seas. The measure, which pays no heed to international law, is part of the years-long militarization of the China Coast Guard and is meant to bolster Beijing’s ability to impose by force its long-planned annexation of a huge swath of open sea (this is to say, China will steal a large chunk of territory that belongs to other nations, and waters that are open for anyone to sail on).
With the violent confrontation this week, the showdown over otherwise unremarkable features such as Second Thomas Shoal and Sabina Shoal is threatening more than just the Philippines. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken reiterated Wednesday in a call with his Philippine counterpart that the U.S. defense commitment with Manila is “ironclad,” just days after State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller reaffirmed longstanding U.S. policy that any attack on Philippine vessels in the South China Sea will trigger the mutual defense clause of the 1951 treaty between the two countries. But the United States has not followed up with concrete action.
China has carefully ratcheted up its aggression, from using bullhorns and water cannons to ramming ships to now boarding them and assaulting sailors. But it has been a slow and calibrated boil that seems to fall just short of an outright trigger of U.S. defense conditions.
American Victory
A U.S. victory in the new cold war with China would mean eliminating the most serious Chinese threats to core U.S. interests. Absent a major war, there are three possible pathways to victory.
First, the United States could, over the course of years, aim to so thoroughly outcompete China across all dimensions of economic, technological, ideological, diplomatic, and military power that Beijing loses the capability to meaningfully harm U.S. vital interests. This would require strengthening U.S. economic and technological leadership and increasing de-coupling from the Chinese economy, which Joe Biden has been managing successfully but needs to ramp up.
The United States’ economic advantage has been growing thanks to Biden’s policies, as our economy moves this year to claim 26 percent of global GDP, our largest share in twenty years. Meanwhile, Xi may continue to kill off China’s successful growth model as he reasserts Chinese Communist Party (CCP) control over China’s once-vibrant private sector and moves the country to a war-time economy where they are producing factory equipment for tanks, planes, and guns.
The United States must take decisive action to reinforce its commitments to its allies and to uphold the rules-based international order. Memories of the Cold War against the Soviet Union are fading, and many balk at the idea of having a new cold war with China. However, the alternative to a new cold war is a hot one, and I would much rather a cold conflict. This is the dichotomy we face. Avoiding war means embracing the realities of what’s needed to combat China’s ambitions.
If the United States is to succeed, we must be clear about our objectives and the steps necessary to achieve them. Washington must spell out its fears explicitly and say in advance exactly what costs it is prepared to impose for crossing red lines. Escalation loves ambiguity, and escalation can get out of hand quickly.
A “Cold War mentality” might be just what is needed to avoid appeasement and its grim double: uncontrolled escalation. We must be prepared to call this new cold war accurately and act accordingly.
America’s goal in its strategic competition with China should be victory— victory that ensures China can no longer harm U.S. vital interests and that upholds the rules-based international order. This requires decisive, clearheaded action and a commitment to leading the free world in the face of growing authoritarian threats.
The stakes are too high for anything less.