If Donald Trump returns to the White House in January 2025, what might his China policy look like? To answer that question, it behooves us to look at Trump’s China policy in the final two years of his first administration. One of the best narratives of Trump’s China policy in 2019 and 2020 is found in Washington Post reporter Josh Rogin’s book Chaos Under Heaven: Trump, Xi, and the Battle for the 21st Century.
Rogin noted that it was during the third year of Trump’s presidency that “[s]lowly but surely, America was waking up to the China threat.” The Trump administration consciously reoriented the machinery of the federal government to confront China rather than appease it or engage it. This was a whole of government approach, recognizing that engagement had failed to induce China to settle for a place in the U.S.-led world order. Trump’s national security team recognized, in Rogin’s words, “the degree to which China was having a chilling effect on American freedoms, but also what the Chinese government was doing on US campuses, how they were interacting with Silicon Valley, and how they were involved in our stock exchanges and capital markets.” America, Rogin said, was waking up to the insidious work of Confucius Institutes on America’s campuses, and how China leveraged its significant donations and investments in American academia. Chinese researchers at US institutions accessed information about Artificial Intelligence (AI), supercomputers, underwater robotics and other sensitive topics. When COVID-19 spread to the United States, Trump at the urging of Matt Pottinger, Robert O’Brien, and Peter Navarro, banned travelers from China from entering the U.S. Trump imposed tough tariffs on Chinese goods. More fundamentally, Defense Department strategist Elbridge Colby issued a National Defense Strategy that shifted our country’s focus from small wars and the Global War on Terror to great power competition, i.e, China.
In 2020, top Trump officials, including Attorney General William Barr, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and National Security Adviser O’Brien gave well-publicized speeches about China’s threat to U.S. national security. Rogin grudgingly gives credit to Trump for succeeding in “moving the government closer to a competitive stance vis-a-vis China than any administration that had come before.” Much of that ended with the Biden administration, which reverted to the engagement/competition duality of previous administrations.
During the Biden administration, China and Russia moved closer together, Russia invaded Ukraine, Iranian proxies in the Middle East struck at Israel, China rattled sabers in the South China Sea and western Pacific, and we suffered a humiliating defeat in Afghanistan. At home, our national security suffered from what some experts have called an “invasion” of illegal immigrants at our southern border. The Biden administration refused to acknowledge, or perhaps even recognize, that we were already in Cold War II with China. Biden reduced the number of warships in our navy and reduced naval shipbuidling, while China kept adding to their naval power. Biden talked “arms control,” while China significantly increased its nuclear weapons force. What the communists call the “correlation of forces” shifted in China’s favor. The Washington Examiner characterized the Biden presidency as “all crises and no solutions.”
The world could get a lot more dangerous in the next six months. Our enemies and allies both know that Biden is a cognitively-impaired leader who, unless he resigns or is forced out under the 25th Amendment, will continue to be the commander-in-chief of our armed forces. If he is not mentally up to running a presidential campaign, how can he be fit to be commander-in-chief? Will China, Russia, Iran and our other enemies seek to take advantage of the lamest-duck president we have ever had?
Should Trump regain the White House, it is likely that his administration will pick-up where it left off in dealing with China. After nearly four years of Biden, China is a more dangerous foe than ever before--it is stronger militarily, more confident diplomatically, and committed to ending what its leaders call the “century of humiliation” at the hands of Western powers. China has been unequivocal in its professed goal of reunification with Taiwan, and has repeatedly conducted “exercises” in the South China Sea which mock a potential invasion or blockade of Taiwan. Niall Ferguson has warned about a potential Chinese naval and air blockade of Taiwan, noting that it would be like a Cuban Missile Crisis in reverse--where China has all of the geographic and military advantages (like we did in 1962), while the United States would be in a position similar to the Soviet Union in 1962.
Earlier this year, two possible future Trump advisers wrote a book titled Embracing Communist China: America’s Greatest Strategic Failure, which may be a preview of China policy under a second Trump administration. James Fanell and Bradley Thayer are the authors, and the foreward to the book was written by Steve Bannon, a former Trump strategist whom Josh Rogin placed in the “superhawk” category among Trump advisers on China policy in his first term. Fanell and Thayer recommend a U.S. military buildup, most importantly in the naval and nuclear realms. They also call for a whole of government approach to “win” Cold War II with China, just as we did with the Soviet Union in the 1980s. This means more than simple “containment.” It would involve waging economic and political warfare against the Chinese Communist Party like the Reagan administration did against the Soviet Communist Party in the 1980s.
Such a policy would not mean war--Ronald Reagan defeated the Soviet Union without firing a shot. Donald Trump in his two previous campaigns and during his presidency preferred diplomacy and hard-headed negotiations to war. He saw what the “endless wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan did to our country and its standing in the world. He railed against neoconservatives in his own party that championed interventions abroad. Like Eisenhower in the 1950s, Trump sought and achieved peace and prosperity until COVID-19 created havoc across the globe. Like Reagan in the 1980s, Trump if he regains the presidency will likely try to win Cold War II without firing a shot. Trump will also likely not be distracted by “small wars” and will work to bring about a ceasefire in Ukraine instead of posing, like Biden has, as a Churchillian figure seeking victory. Trump recognizes that America has no vital interest in the complete independence of Ukraine. A second Trump administration will also likely try to separate Russia from China--weaken their self-proclaimed “strategic partnership” in a way that will benefit U.S. geopolitical interests. And under a second Trump administration, there really will be a “pivot” to Asia in recognition that in the 21st century Asia, not Europe, is the Clausewitzian “center of gravity” in the international arena.
Francis P. Sempa writes the Best Defense column each month.
