While U.S. President Donald Trump was busy turning the United States inward, Chinese President Xi Jinping stepped up to become the driver of globalization. Most of the world enthusiastically welcomes the United States’ return. But Washington is coming back wielding a smaller share of global GDP and facing a challenger whose economy is now, by some metrics, as large as its own. Thus, the United States will struggle to establish level playing fields on which global competition can deliver win-win results and ensure that it gets its share of the winnings. Nonetheless, this is what has to be done—and no one said statecraft was easy.
...As happens often in history, success in addressing the grand challenge of one generation creates a new, more formidable challenge for those who follow. Engagement with China allowed the United States to prevail in the cardinal struggle of the twentieth century. It also left Washington in a long-term rivalry with what the Singaporean statesman Lee Kuan Yew rightly called “the biggest player in the history of the world.” In the broad sweep of history, this is the United States’ fate: to confront successively graver challenges, from the Revolutionary War to the Cold War. As Washington contends with the current contest with Beijing, it is worth recalling words Kissinger said in a 1976 speech about dealing with the last great challenge: “We know what we must do. We also know what we can do. It only remains to do it.”
Graham Allison and Fred Hu, An Unsentimental China Policy
