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7 August 2024

Embracing Communist China was the U.S.’ greatest strategic failure

James E. Fanell & Bradley A. Thayer

Due to its grievous mistakes, the U.S. permitted the rise of its enemy. Now Russia and Iran are operating in the space that the PRC provides them.

The foreign policy of the U.S. under President Biden has been a failure. From the disastrous retreat in Afghanistan, the war in Ukraine to the horrific terror attack on October 7th 2023 and the subsequent wars in the Middle East, the world has been thrown into flames. This is to say nothing of the daily threats that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is making against allies like the Philippines and key partners like India and Taiwan.

The deep causes of these problems are not found in Moscow, Tehran, Tokyo or Taipei, rather they are the result of two fundamental and interrelated grand strategic mistakes made by the U.S. First, the willful refusal to recognize the threat from the PRC. Second, the failure to balance against it to defeat the PRC. As a result of these mistakes, the U.S. is at risk of losing its national security vis-à-vis its dominant position in global politics to an emboldened PRC working in cooperation with Putin’s Russia and the mullahs in Iran.

Surveying the unrest in the world, it is important for Americans, allies, and partners like India to understand how this happened, how it was possible that the U.S. could achieve victory in the Cold War and give that away to the PRC and the unsatisfactory strategic condition America finds itself in today.

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