Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China

by Hal Brands

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called for a global alliance of democracies to keep China in its “proper place.”31 This was the most dramatic change in U.S.-China relations since Nixon visited Beijing, and it wasn’t just talk. A significant bump in defense spending allowed the Pentagon to initiate its largest naval and missile expansion in a generation. Trump hit China with America’s most sustained and aggressive use of punitive tariffs since World War II. Washington layered on the tightest investment and technological restrictions since the Cold War, seeking to cripple Huawei and turn the world away from Chinese 5G providers. The U.S. Congress created the International Development Finance Corporation, a $60 billion answer to BRI, while the FBI was unleashed to go after China’s pervasive espionage and influence campaigns. The bureau, director Christopher Wray announced, was “opening a new China-related counterintelligence case about every 10 hours.”32 CIA director Gina Haspel steered that agency away from a generation-long preoccupation with counterterrorism to focus on the problems presented by big, threatening states.33 The U.S. national security bureaucracy was training its unrivaled capabilities squarely on China.