Are we ready for the consequences of China’s collapse?
The most salutary and enduring effect Donald Trump’s presidency had on Washington was that it put the entire town into a new attitude of realism about China. While Trump conducted a phony trade war with China — one that he concluded by begging Chairman Xi to buy more soybeans from swing states — the rest of D.C. started noticing how belligerent China was on the world stage, with its “wolf warrior” diplomacy. Legislators started to put the screws to China and its multinational corporate partners for their participation in the oppression of Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region. The Biden administration kept many of the remaining anti-Chinese tariffs and then set about trying to cut China off from even participating in the future development of advanced microprocessors. Elbridge Colby became a fixture across much of Washington for his book, The Strategy of Denial, which outlined the seriousness of China’s military buildup and the limited resources the U.S. had to meet a potential threat in the Pacific theater. His book was respected if not exactly heeded, as the U.S. then recommitted itself to being the lead actor in European security.
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