Trump Must Change Policy in Asia to Avoid a War with China

Hunter Marston, Nicholas Borroz

Security, Asia

To reduce tension with Beijing, America should expand economic ties instead of ramping up military engagement.

The Trump administration’s new budget proposal seeks a $54 billion boost to defense spending, much of which would go to the United States’ military presence in Asia.

The president’s Asia advisors, composed primarily of China hawks, have reinforced a do-or-die mentality regarding the rising superpower. Donald Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, stated in a radio show last year he believes the United States and China will go to war in the next decade. Trump’s Asia advisors, Peter Navarro and Alexander Gray, advocated in a recent piece a policy of “peace through strength,” calling to expand the U.S. Navy to 350 ships. In his Senate confirmation hearing, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson suggested implementing a blockade to prevent Chinese access to its man-made islands in the South China Sea.

Realist international relations scholars like John Mearsheimer and Robert Kagan affirm the United States and China are drifting closer to a destructive confrontation. This is because the ability and willingness of China to reshape the international order are increasing, just as the United States’ capacity to preserve the status quo is declining.

Of course, in our current era of globalization, economic interdependence will hinder any conflict between China and the United States from going “hot.” It is the interest of both countries to avoid war, which would entail catastrophic costs to both sides and could easily be the largest war in world history. Top decisionmakers on both sides know this. The Chinese foreign minister, for instance, recently stated that “there cannot be conflict between China and the United States because both will lose, and both sides cannot afford that.”

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