A US Long-Term Strategy - Appia Institute

The US has no problem bigger than China’s challenge, yet Beijing is ready for drawn-out friction, so the US may need a long-term strategy.

On March 8, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post opined that the meeting between US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky showed that America is leading a retreat from parts of the world, namely Europe.[1] It may open opportunities for China. It suggests that the Ukrainian War was a form of deterrence against Beijing and that the US is giving up on that part of deterrence.

Thus, perhaps if the Russian invasion had gone well and, in a couple of weeks, had taken over Ukraine, weakened NATO, and pushed the USA out of Europe, China might have been tempted to make a similar move in Asia. Conversely, the bloodshed in Ukraine proved to China that war was very uncertain and could threaten its government.

Now, the “retreat’s” backdrop is a strategy of driving a wedge between Russia and China, the reverse of what Nixon did with Mao in late 1971. In theory, it is possible, but in practice, it is a gamble.

Nixon-Mao or Trump-Putin

When Nixon opened to China in 1971, China had broken with Russia for ten years. Mao had expelled all Soviet advisers in the 1960s, and the two countries had been clashing along the border in early 1971. Plus, in 1970, Mao invited journalist Edgar Snow (considered a middleman with America) to stand next to him on the Tiananmen rostrum. It was meant as a signal from Beijing to Washington. Additionally, in 1964 Snow was invited to Beijing to interview Premier Zhou Enlai, and the Chinese had started contacts with American diplomats in Eastern European countries in those years. All in all, there were plenty of telltales that China had already been distancing itself from Moscow despite both still supporting North Vietnam. And yet, until Kissinger’s secret trip to Beijing in July 1971, Americans were skeptical of the break.

But now, the two are far from having broken off. Hundreds of Chinese engineers are powering Russian military re-industrialization, China props up the Russian economy in many ways, and China is supporting North Korea’s military supplies to Russia. Thus, they have a powerful tie, despite whatever reciprocal suspicions. They are apparently very wary of America. They believe the US wants to peel them off from one another, play them against each other, and then have a separate reckoning with both.

In these conditions, they could play along, get whatever they can from America, extract more each day, and put off their own concessions. They will be cautious in complying with whatever America wants. Russia, so far, has received many overtures made by the US on Ukraine without reciprocating.

They have reasons not to behave differently. They may believe that Zelensky was discarded just after his country went to war for the West. A similar pattern was shown in Afghanistan and Vietnam, where the US-loyal governments and their officials were cast off when no longer needed. In any case, in Vietnam and Afghanistan, the change was prepared by years of meticulous negotiations. Peace in Ukraine is apparently rushed, with nobody ready for it.

The US may need a different strategy to approach the two and a massive effort to speak to the world.

Speaking about US Autocracy

Trump is very effective in speaking to America but not so much in talking to the world. China speaks two languages, one domestically and one abroad, with different contents. It can do it because not many foreigners speak Chinese. For Americans speaking English, the international language, it’s more complicated. In the past, American presidents spoke to the world and almost subsequently to the American people. Now, Trump talks to the guts of Americans, with a tone different from the international lingo. It creates a gap in perception, scaring many.

Vice President JD Vance and presidential advisor cum richest man in the world, Elon Musk, are also like Trump. Their voice backfires on America. Secretary of State Marco Rubio seems to have the sensible touch to dialogue with the world.

There is perhaps a deeper element: the fascination of parts of America for autocracy, giving fast and decisive power of intervention to the top leader, something harder to achieve in liberal systems.

Yet, the history of modernity and the West is the history of democracy, where more liberal, Republican systems have always prevailed against more autocratic ones.

Very simplistically: more liberal England and Holland managed to stave off and eventually prevail over more autocratic Spain. More liberal American colonies managed to overcome the more autocratic kingdom of England. More liberal England vanquished Napoleonic France. Liberal countries in the 19th century won against conservative authoritarian kings. In the 20^th century, liberal systems prevailed first against fascists, then against communists.

Over 300 years of history prove that liberal organizations always beat autocracies. In a nutshell, it may be because mobilizing wealth and energies from the people by calling on their voluntary efforts is more effective than pressing them in line. In the first case, people willingly bring in their resourceful initiatives; in the second case, they remain passive. An army of patriotic volunteers has always been more effective than one of drafted conscripts.

What works

Now many Americans feel their democracy is not working; it needs to give more power to the president. It may be true. However, if this capsizes the liberal system and turns into an autocracy, it may be dangerous for America. Americans do not know how to run an autocracy; conversely, Russia and China have a long history with it and are very effective at it.

It would take more than a presidential election and bureaucratic shake-up to turn the US into an effective autocracy. It’d be like turning a gunman into a swordsman without much training. The good swordsman can tell the gunman: the gun has six shots, but what do you do when you run out of bullets? Better give up the pistol and take a rapier. If the gunman believes it, who is going to win the duel?

Anti-liberals believe that 40 years ago, the US hoodwinked Moscow’s leaders into thinking the USSR didn’t work. So now the anti-liberals may be trying to convince democratic countries that democracies don’t work. The theory sounds like the German nazis arguing that the 1918 peace was a betrayal, and that Germany should not have surrendered.

There are grounds in reality—democracy may do a poor job, and Russia may have been mistreated. But authoritarian countries are worse, and mistreatment is no justification for aggression. Plus, everybody wants freedom, although not chaos, including the Chinese and the Russians. And although the road to freedom without chaos isn’t easy, the answer perhaps is not to refuse the capitalist freedom that produced wealth at an unprecedented pace in human history.

China’s long wager

The problem with China is just the opposite: it doesn’t know how to run a democracy, and it fears it will lead to chaos. People in Beijing claim that the plan to inch China into a democracy is a conspiracy to create chaos and disrupt their country.

Yet China’s system as it is now doesn’t work; it is unsustainable in the long term. Or it could be sustained only if a trade surplus finances domestic growth until domestic consumption picks up. Domestic consumption, although slightly rising, so far is no substitute for the present main driver – growing through internal debt and trade surplus.

According to the IMF, China’s debt-to-GDP ratio should be over 300% in 2025.[2] This debt ratio is sustainable only if the RMB and the Chinese markets are partially closed to prevent capital flight, or if the economy grows faster than the debt/GDP ratio. This year, according to estimates, the real budget deficit should be around 15% of GDP, producing 5% economic growth. The estimate sums up local stimuli plus the central budget stimulus. Having 15% monetary injection to produce 5% growth means the economy is agonizing.

Yet, China has a plan B: it will try to expand exports as much as it can, for as long as it can, in any way it can. If something goes wrong, it’ll close and prepare to face a very long winter “North Korea” style, hoping something will change outside. Meanwhile, it may hope to gain a technological upper hand, making its exports hard to replace and its army equipped for a high-tech war. This could give China some breathing space and room to adapt the “North Korea strategy.” In the long term, it could win against the US, as in 10-20 years, domestic consumption, potentially the largest in the world, might have picked up.

In this picture, Russia’s support would be nice, but it’s not essential. A vast program of nuclear power plants should, in the long term, make China independent from foreign oil. Present reliance on food imports could be managed by working with some neighbors. It wouldn’t be pretty, but neither would it be impossible.

It’d be a thwarted export-centered model disruptive of the present liberal order. The order created the global wealth which made China thrive in the past 40 years. The Chinese government could politically survive, but the world and China itself could be plunged into utter misery.

If America were to behave in some special ways like China, it’d help China’s plans, not America’s or the present liberal order.

US Strategy

The US apparently has a strategy in the short term: watch out for China’s economic difficulties. It’s working because it “accompanies” China’s present troubles. It’s unclear whether the US has a strategy for China’s evolving position, short of fighting a war sometime in the future.

Apparently, the US is working on rebuilding its economy and possibly even its society. Improving health and education for Americans enhances the real national strength, but it requires a lot of resources. And, yes, the US should talk to Russia and China although it can’t wager on it.

The US may need a comprehensive strategy to face China and convince it of the truth of the USSR—that the USSR didn’t give up because of a ruse but because its system had imploded. Similarly, today the Chinese system is choking not because of an evil US plan, but just the opposite—because, for whatever reasons, China refused to implement reforms foreigners suggested and that would have forestalled present difficulties and created a vibrant domestic market.

Now the US might want to ready a cordon of cooperation around China that will expand and entrench the US footprint in the world and limit China’s thwarted export-intensive model.

The US could foster economic alliances around China and launch multiple initiatives for infrastructure and transportation alternatives to China’s BRI (Belt and Road Initiative), like the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), an economic passage planned to bolster connectivity and integration between Asia, the Persian Gulf, and Europe. There could be similar corridors from Oslo to Cape Town, Djibouti to West Africa, Anchorage to Tierra del Fuego, Bahia in Brazil to Lima in Peru, from Mumbai to Jakarta and Ho Chi Minh City.

It could mobilize resources and attention away from the China-Russia bloc, pulling the two apart and creating a positive movement centered on the present order. Then, if either China or Russia wants to join, they would have to oblige the liberal conditions. Otherwise, they can remain stuck surrounded by roads and activities excluding them.

The strategy is long-term, not bitterly confrontational, countering China’s long-term strategy short of a World War. It would reaffirm US centrality as a state and a liberal system in a moment of doubt. Maybe the world, and even China and Russia, need it.

Finis

[1] https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3301181/old-world-order-new-again-and-time-us-leading-retreat?tpcc=GME-O-enlz-uv&utm_source=cm&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20250308_Two_Sessions_FW_RU&utm_campaign=GME-O-enlz-uv&UUID=3769df00c11d7d299996f31d820ff494&CMCampaignID=3322f7579ee667b2720a1db7826dc62a