Can the United States contain China? Contradictions and limits of U.S. power in the trump era and beyond

Abstract

What factors account for the increasingly erratic U.S. policy towards China, marked by growing domestic divisions and tensions over means and ends? Can the United States contain China, as called for by its military leaders and a growing segment of corporate America? Or, can the Sino-American rivalry be managed peacefully and without plunging the world into depression? The preoccupation with rhetoric and agency in the analysis of U.S. foreign policy overlooks the role of social forces and class interests. The confusion and vacillation in U.S. trade policy are amplified by the manifest dysfunctions of the Trump administration, but they ultimately reflect a deeper, double logic, expressing not only the “Thucydides trap” in which a declining but still formidable hegemon contemplates submission to a rising power but also a crisis of neoliberalism.