Transcription
I want to begin by being very clear about something. What I'm about to say is not designed to flatter anyone and it's certainly not meant to make people comfortable. It's meant to explain reality as it actually is.
For decades, the United States made a series of strategic choices toward China that I believe amount to the biggest foreign policy mistake of the postcold war era. And the consequences of that mistake are now unfolding right in front of us.
So, let me start with a question for you because this matters to every American watching this. Do you think the United States accidentally created its most powerful rival or do you think this outcome was inevitable? I want you to think about that and I want you to tell me what you think in the comments because this debate goes to the heart of American grand strategy.
I've spent my career studying great power politics, and one of the most consistent patterns in history is that great powers do not tolerate rivals in their region, and they certainly don't help create them. Yet, that is exactly what the United States did with China. We actively facilitated China's rise economically, technologically, and diplomatically under the assumption that it would become more like us. That assumption was wrong and it was wrong in ways that should have been obvious.
After the Cold War ended, the United States found itself in an extraordinary position. We were the most powerful country on the planet by a wide margin. There was no pure competitor. And instead of asking the hard question, how do we preserve this favorable balance of power? We convinced ourselves of a comforting story. We told ourselves that if we integrated China into the global economy, if we welcomed it into institutions like the World Trade Organization, China would liberalize, democratize, and ultimately become a status quo power. That belief guided US policy for decades.
But here's the problem. There is no evidence in history that economic engagement transforms great powers into benign actors. In fact, history teaches the opposite lesson. When countries get rich, they want more influence, more security, and more control over their surroundings. That's not ideology. That's basic realism. China was never going to rise peacefully into a subordinate role in an American-led order. That idea defied everything we know about international politics.
Let me be blunt. The biggest mistake the United States made was not underestimating China's potential. It was believing that China would not behave like a great power once it became one. We helped China grow into an economic and military heavyweight. And now we act surprised that it wants to dominate Asia the way the United States dominates the Western Hemisphere. That's not aggression born out of ideology. That's classic great power behavior.
I want you to think about this carefully. If China had helped Mexico or Canada become a military and economic giant right on America's borders, would we shrug and say, "That's fine. They're just participating in the international order." Of course not. We would see it as an existential threat. That's exactly how China views US power in East Asia today. and ignoring that perspective has led us into a dangerous strategic confrontation.
Another key part of this mistake was the belief that liberal values could override nationalist interests. American policymakers convinced themselves that markets and democracy were universal solvents. They believed that exposure to western capital and institutions would dissolve China's authoritarian system from the inside. But nationalism, not liberalism, turned out to be the most powerful force shaping China's rise. The Chinese Communist Party understood this far better than we did, and they used economic growth to strengthen, not weaken, their political control.
Every major decision reinforced this trajectory. We offshored manufacturing. We transferred technology. We allowed supply chains critical to national security to become dependent on China. All of this was justified in the name of efficiency and engagement. But efficiency is not strategy and engagement without limits is not realism. It was wishful thinking dressed up as grand strategy.
What makes this mistake even more striking is that there were voices warning about it all along. You didn't need a crystal ball to see where this was heading. The logic of power politics made it clear that a wealthy and powerful China would eventually challenge US dominance in Asia. The only real question was when, not if. Yet those warnings were consistently ignored because they clashed with the dominant narrative in Washington.
Now we find ourselves in a world where China is rapidly expanding its military capabilities, asserting control over the South China Sea, pressuring Taiwan, and building alternative institutions to counter American influence. And suddenly, policymakers act as if this rivalry emerged out of nowhere. It didn't. It was the predictable outcome of decades of strategic miscalculation.
Here's the hard truth that many people still don't want to accept. The United States and China are now locked in a security competition that neither side can easily escape. Trust is gone. Economic interdependence is turning into a weapon. And the risk of conflict, especially over Taiwan, is real and growing. This is not a failure of diplomacy. It's the natural result of creating a peer competitor and then trying to contain it after the fact.
I want to pause here and challenge you directly. Ask yourself whether American leaders truly understood the forces they were unleashing or whether they were blinded by ideology and short-term economic gains. Because the answer to that question should shape how we think about foreign policy going forward.
In the next part, I'm going to dig deeper into how this rivalry is likely to play out, why Asia is the central battleground of the 21st century and what the United States can and cannot realistically do about China.
Now, let me continue by stripping away another illusion that has distorted American thinking about China. For a long time, policymakers in Washington believed that interdependence would prevent conflict. The idea was simple and seductive. Countries that trade together don't fight each other. But great power politics doesn't work that way. When survival and dominance are at stake, economic ties become leverage, not safeguards. We are watching that reality unfold in real time.
As China grew stronger, interdependence didn't pacify competition. It intensified it. Both sides now worry that the other will exploit economic connections for strategic advantage. Supply chains, rare earths, semiconductors, energy routes. These are no longer neutral economic concepts. They are instruments of power. And once you reach that point, cooperation gives way to suspicion, decoupling, and strategic hedging. That's exactly where we are today.
Asia is the core theater of this competition. And that's not accidental. Just as the United States spent the 19th and early 20th centuries pushing European powers out of the Western Hemisphere, China is now trying to push the United States out of East Asia. That is the fundamental strategic objective driving Beijing's behavior. Everything else, rhetoric, diplomacy, economic initiatives flows from that core goal.
From China's perspective, American military forces sitting off its coast are intolerable in the long run. US alliances with Japan, South Korea, Australia, and the Philippines look less like stabilizing arrangements and more like encirclement. You don't have to like that view to understand it. You just have to recognize that great powers always seek regional hegemony when they can. The United States did it. China wants to do it. Pretending otherwise is intellectual dishonesty.
This brings us directly to Taiwan, which is the most dangerous flash point in the world today. Taiwan is not just a moral issue or a democratic symbol. It is a strategic lynchpin in China's near seas. From Beijing's point of view, allowing Taiwan to remain aligned with the United States is like allowing a hostile power to sit inside your defensive perimeter. No Chinese leader, regardless of ideology, can easily accept that.
And here's the part that should make everyone deeply uncomfortable. As China's power grows, its willingness to tolerate the status quo on Taiwan diminishes. Meanwhile, the United States, having publicly committed to Taiwan's defense, finds itself drawn closer to a potential war with a nuclear armed peer competitor. This is not a situation designed for stability. It's a classic recipe for miscalculation.
I want you to think seriously about this. Deterrence is not a magic wand. It works until it doesn't. And the closer China believes it is to achieving military parity or superiority in its own region, the more it may believe it can revise the status quo at an acceptable cost. At the same time, American leaders face immense domestic and alliance pressure not to back down. That combination is volatile.
Another major consequence of America's original mistake is that we are now forced into a containment strategy that is far more costly and dangerous than it would have been decades ago. Containing a weak China would have been easy. Containing a rich, technologically advanced, nuclear armed China is extraordinarily difficult. And yet that is the strategic box we've built for ourselves.
Look at the resources required. Forward deployed forces, expanded alliances, massive defense budgets, technological races in AI and cyber warfare. All of this is now essential just to maintain a balance of power. And even then, success is not guaranteed. History is littered with examples of rising powers and ruling powers stumbling into catastrophic wars because neither side could safely retreat.
What makes this rivalry especially dangerous is that both sides believe time may not be on their side. In Washington, there's growing concern that China will soon surpass the United States economically and militarily in Asia. In Beijing, there's fear that the United States is trying to lock in China's disadvantages before it's too late. When both sides feel urgency, the risk of escalation skyrockets.
I want to emphasize something here that often gets lost in political debate. This is not about good versus evil. It's not about democracy versus authoritarianism. Those narratives may be emotionally satisfying, but they obscure the real drivers of behavior. This is about power, security, and fear. Those forces don't disappear because we wish them away or wrap them in moral language.
If you care about avoiding a catastrophic war, you have to start by understanding the world as it is, not as you want it to be. The United States cannot will China into becoming a status quo power. It cannot shame it into abandoning regional ambitions. And it cannot indefinitely dominate Asia without provoking resistance. Those are structural realities, not policy preferences.
So here's the uncomfortable question I want you to wrestle with. Given the choices already made, what strategy actually minimizes the risk of disaster? Is it doubling down on confrontation everywhere at once? Is it pretending economic separation will solve security dilemmas? Or is it acknowledging limits, prioritizing interests and managing competition with ruthless clarity?
In the final part, I'm going to talk about what realism demands going forward. why restraint is not weakness and what lessons the United States must learn if it wants to survive this rivalry without repeating the worst mistakes of history.
Let me finish by saying something that many people will find deeply uncomfortable, but it has to be said anyway. The United States does not get to decide whether China rises. That ship sailed a long time ago. The only meaningful question left is how we deal with a powerful China in a way that avoids catastrophe. And answering that question requires a level of strategic discipline that America has struggled to show.
Realism begins with accepting limits. It means recognizing that not every problem has a solution and not every rival can be transformed. China is not going to abandon its quest for regional dominance in Asia, just as the United States never abandoned its quest for dominance in the Western Hemisphere. Expecting otherwise is fantasy, not strategy.
Once you accept that, the entire debate shifts from moral posturing to hard choices. One of those choices involves restraint. Restraint is not appeasement. It is not surrender. It is the recognition that pushing endlessly against a rival's core interests increases the probability of war. Taiwan sits at the center of this dilemma. The United States must ask itself whether it is prepared to fight a major war, potentially a nuclear war, over an island sitting just off China's coast. That question cannot be answered with slogans or emotional appeals. It has to be answered with cold strategic logic.
I am not arguing that the United States should simply walk away from Asia or abandon its allies. But alliances are not blank checks. And credibility is not preserved by making promises that drag you into unwinable conflicts. Credibility comes from aligning commitments with capabilities and interests. When those diverge, credibility collapses rather than strengthens.
Another hard truth is that economic decoupling is not a silver bullet. You cannot unwind decades of interdependence without enormous costs. And you cannot isolate a country of China's size and importance without destabilizing the global system. Selective decoupling in critical sectors makes sense. Total economic warfare does not. Strategy requires prioritization, not ideological purity.
What realism demands is a clear hierarchy of interests. Not every issue with China is existential. Not every dispute requires maximalist responses. The United States should focus relentlessly on preventing Chinese regional hegemony while avoiding unnecessary provocation that accelerates conflict. That means strengthening defensive capabilities, maintaining balance of power coalitions, and avoiding moral crusades that turn competition into holy war. It also means being honest with the American public. The era of unchallenged primacy is over. Sacrifices will be required, tradeoffs will be unavoidable, and outcomes will be imperfect. Any leader who promises otherwise is selling illusions.
Democracies are capable of strategic realism, but only if citizens understand the stakes and the constraints. The biggest danger going forward is not that China is strong. The biggest danger is that the United States refuses to adapt to a world where it is no longer dominant everywhere at once. Great powers that fail to adjust to shifting balances of power often overreach. and overreach is how disasters happen. History is brutally consistent on that point.
I want you to reflect on something as we end. America's greatest strength has never been moral certainty or ideological zeal. It has been strategic flexibility. The ability to recognize changing realities and adjust course before it's too late. That strength is being tested now more than at any point since the Cold War. So when we talk about America's biggest mistake against China, we're not just talking about the past. We're talking about whether we will repeat that mistake by clinging to comforting myths instead of confronting hard truths. The future of US China relations and possibly global peace depends on whether realism finally replaces illusion.
If you found this argument challenging or unsettling, that's the point. Strategy is not supposed to be comforting. It's supposed to keep you alive.