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The United States’ strategy towards China is premised on an unending rivalry. Yet history tells us that strategic competitions do end– and America needs, Mike Mazarr argues, to imagine how its conflict with China might one day do so…

The American rivalry with China continues to deepen, characterised on both sides by zero-sum expectations and paranoia. Tensions are rising over Taiwan and the South China Sea. There is an increasingly bitter contest for the commanding heights of science and technology, disputes over economic and cyber strategies, and much else. More concerning may be that neither side appears to have any vision of a world beyond their rivalry. America’s strategy seems predicated on relentless, unending competition; its definition of success is getting and staying ahead of China in a dozen areas. There is no concept, in other words, of how this rivalry might end.

Yet most rivalries do end. In 1805 the leaders of Britain and France could hardly have imagined that within a few decades they would transcend their age-old hostility to become geopolitical partners. Not every rivalry produces such comprehensive reversals, but even the most intractable stand-offs can evolve into something less volatile. In How Rivalries End, Karen Rasler, William Thompson, and Sumit Ganguly explain that, of all great power rivalries since 1816, only three endured for a century. On average, they lasted about 60 years. If we take the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 as the starting point, the current US-China contest has already lasted longer than that. Even using the more recent intensification of the rivalry of around 2010 as a starting point, we’re almost a quarter of the way through the average length.

It is a mistake, therefore, to approach this rivalry without any theory of how it might conclude. The case for competing vigorously to deny certain Chinese ambitions is self-evident, and the US-China relationship has distinct features – such as stark cultural differences – that will complicate any effort to transcend the rivalry. Adding a conception of an endgame would strengthen the US hand in the ongoing competition and help steer the contest in ways that prevent disaster.

American strategy today focuses on progressively outperforming China in a series of ongoing competitions: military, economic, technological and diplomatic. Endgames are left mostly unstated, out of a belief that too much focus on outcomes is pointless and may even be counterproductive.

Current National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell laid out a version of this approach in a 2019 essay in Foreign Affairs. ‘Rather than relying on assumptions about China’s trajectory’, they wrote, ‘American strategy should be durable whatever the future brings for the Chinese system. It should seek to achieve not a definitive end state akin to the Cold War’s ultimate conclusion but a steady state of clear-eyed coexistence on terms favorable to US interests and values.’

A steady state of clear-eyed coexistence – this is the long-term vision, an endless struggle for predominance with elements of self-interested cooperation mixed in. Coexistence, they concluded, ‘means accepting competition as a condition to be managed rather than a problem to be solved’.

The same concept has cropped up in multiple administration statements and speeches and arguments by outside analysts. Rush Doshi, until recently the senior China official at the National Security Council, explained that current policy embodies a rejection of the idea that ‘the contest with China can end as decisively and neatly as the Cold War did’. Rather than seeking to transform China, ‘the United States can compete intensely by blunting Chinese activities that undermine US interests and building a coalition of forces that will help the United States secure its priorities – all while managing the risks of escalation’. Analysts David Santoro and Brad Glosserman have argued that ‘for now, pursuing a specific endgame with China is pointless and problematic’. American strategy should aim to ‘keep the United States in and ahead of the game, i.e., in a competitive and dominant position vis-à-vis its strategic rival’.

Much of this view is clearly correct. There is no way to know how the rivalry will end or how China’s ideology or character will evolve. American actions can’t force ideological or behavioural change onto China, and talking up a future that assumes such change can imply existential threats to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). It might take decades for all this to play out; discussions about endgames today are mostly theoretical. It makes sense to focus on competing as a persistent challenge, adjust as the situation changes, and let the endgame define itself.

Yet a strategy of open-ended competition without a clear endgame has many downsides. For one thing, it magnifies the risk of getting caught in an endless cycle of competing for competition’s sake on almost every issue. The lack of a clear picture of a world beyond the rivalry leaves American officials at a loss to prioritise: because they can’t be sure what factors are likely to determine the favoured outcome, every square mile of the competitive landscape has to be contested…

… The problem with American strategy today is not that the United States should not compete. It is that persistent contestation alone is an incomplete recipe for success. Unmoored from any concept of an endgame, American competitive instincts can run out of control and guide US grand strategy rather than serving it…

[Mazarr considers options and suggest a framework for thinking about an endgame…]

… The United States can’t know precisely when or why the rivalry will mellow, but it can have a strong sense of how it will happen: a mutual decision that both countries’ interests are best served by winding down the confrontation. Such a development isn’t likely soon – but history suggests that it is inevitable at some point. Managing the trajectory to that point is the great challenge for America’s China strategy – and embracing the idea of an endgame would inject new energy into the American approach to its most potent competitor…

On the importance of ends, not just means: “Imagining the endgame of the US-China rivalry,” from @MMazarr in @EngelsbergIdeas.

* Herman Melville

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As we take the long(er) view, we might recall that it was on this date in 2005 that the Provisional Irish Republican Army (the IRA) called an end to its thirty-year-long armed campaign against British rule in Northern Ireland.

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