Kurt Campbell and Rush Doshi
For the first time in its modern history, the United States faces a rival — China — that has greater scale in most of the critical dimensions of power, and American national capacity alone may not be enough to rise to the challenge.
We are entering an era in which the true measure of American primacy will be whether Washington can build what we call allied scale: the power to compete globally in tandem with other countries across economic, technological and military domains.
President Trump appears to be moving in the opposite direction. His go-it-alone, tariff-centric diplomacy has alienated allies and left openings for Beijing to build its own coalitions. Mr. Trump’s recent imposition of high tariffs on India is just one example. The United States spent three decades courting India as a geopolitical counterweight to China. But after the tariffs were applied on India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi last week visited China for the first time in seven years, where he and President Xi Jinping agreed to move past a recent history of tense relations and work as partners, not rivals.
Mr. Trump is playing with fire.
Throughout the 20th century, America outproduced and out-innovated Germany, Japan and the Soviet Union. But China is different. On the metrics that matter most in strategic competition, it has already surpassed the United States.
Its economy, while slowing, is still nearly 30 percent larger than America’s when one accounts for purchasing power. China has twice the manufacturing capacity, producing vastly more cars, ships, steel and solar panels than the United States and more than 70 percent of the world’s batteries, electric vehicles and critical minerals. In science and technology, China produces more active patents and top-cited publications than the United States. And militarily, it has the world’s largest naval fleet, has a shipbuilding capacity estimated to be more than 230 times as great as America’s and is fast establishing itself as a leader in hypersonic weapons, drones and quantum communications.
No comments:
Post a Comment