America’s 250-year strategy meets China’s rise
China’s rise has ended America’s uncontested primacy in East Asia, forcing Washington to rethink how it can preserve its security and influence.
China’s rise has ended America’s uncontested primacy in East Asia, forcing Washington to rethink how it can preserve its security and influence.
Throughout its 250 years of independence, US grand strategy has focused on the balance of power in its flanking trans-oceanic regions. Its approach to great power politics across the Atlantic Ocean and across the Pacific Ocean has reflected an enduring concern that no country should dominate either region and thus challenge US security in the western hemisphere. As US capabilities have increased over the past 250 years, its role in European and Asian politics has evolved. But its strategic purpose has been steady. China’s rise has ended America’s uncontested primacy in East Asia, forcing Washington to rethink how it can preserve its security and influence.
During its first 150 years, the US benefited from balance-of-power politics and great power competition in Europe. Its victory in the Revolutionary War reflected French and Spanish assistance to the colonies and British dispersal of its naval forces to Europe, the Caribbean and North America to contend with rival navies. The Louisiana Purchase and the US victory in the War of 1812 reflected French and British focus on the Napoleonic wars.
The outcome of the US Civil War reflected French and British reluctance to intervene on behalf of the southern secessionists to ensure cotton supplies, lest they face a simultaneous challenge from its great power rival. American acquisition of Alaska in 1867 reflected Russian preoccupation with its security in Europe following its defeat in the Crimean war. And in 1901, Great Britain acquiesced to unilateral US construction of the Panama Canal because it was focused on the rise of the French and Russian navies.
Read the full text in Think China.
