The U.S. State Department’s new China strategy paper, released on Nov. 20, brings to mind an old line from British playwright Tom Stoppard: “It’s half as long as Das Kapital and only twice as funny.” The document is a slog. It is a mix of a bill of particulars about China’s aggressive tactics, often-strained explanations of Marxist-Leninist theory that recall a college political science paper, ideological jingoism, and, ultimately, 10 ideas for what the United States should do going forward—recommendations that are most notable for what they fail to address.
The topic of the paper is an urgent one. The world has, as the Trump administration’s 2017 National Security Strategy put it, reentered an age of “great power competition.” It is common to talk about relations with Russia and China in this regard, but while Russia’s destructive power—both its arsenal of nuclear weapons and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s penchant for invading neighbors…
— to foreignpolicy.com
