New PRC Policy

Robert Blackwill, writing for The National Interest, has suggested we need one.  He’s not far wrong, because as he puts it,

there is no real prospect of building fundamental trust, a peaceful coexistence and mutual understanding, a strategic partnership or a new type of major country relations between the United States and China.

The core of his new policy is this:

  • revitalizing the US economy to nurture those disruptive innovations that bestow on the United States asymmetric economic advantages over others
  • substantially increasing the defense budget and consequently shifting US defense resources to Asia
  • creating new preferential trading arrangements among US allies and friends to increase their mutual gains through instruments that consciously exclude China
  • recreating a technology-control regime involving US allies that prevents China from acquiring military and strategic capabilities enabling it to inflict “high-leverage strategic harm” on the United States and its partners
  • concertedly building up the power-political capacities of US allies and friends on China’s periphery
  • improving the capability of US military forces and allies to effectively project power along the Asian rimlands despite any Chinese opposition
  • all while continuing to work with China in the diverse ways that befit its importance to US national interests.

Expect activities that satisfy that last bullet to be few and far between.  There are very few ways in which the modern incarnation of the Warring State would be willing to work with us.

Someone else <ahem> wrote much the same sort of thing a short while ago, too.

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