U.S. Foreign Policy toward China

"The cycle, which is endless, develops from disequilibrium to equilibrium and thence again to disequilibrium. Each cycle, however, leads to a higher level of development. Imbalance is normal and absolute, while equilibrium is temporary and relative." Mao Zedong

American foreign policy in this 21st century has two very well-defined structuring pillars. Both start from a bipartisan consensual agenda, of Republicans and Democrats. The first is structural, based on "historical exceptionalism", that is, the fundamental belief that there is no nation above the United States in terms of power in the International System. This translates into a deliberate policy of its uncontested military supremacy. The second, closely linked to the first, is the containment of China in the global power struggles in the Modern World System.
The United States took too long to realize the size of the Chinese challenge. It was only in this century that they belatedly began to wake up to the elephant in the room.

It was only during the Obama/Biden administration that a reformulation in American foreign policy was attempted, to prioritize not the Middle East anymore, but the "Asian challenge".  China, at that point, was a challenge evident as the noonday sun. The then Democrat president thus formulated the "pivot to Asia" and the "Pacific Alliance" (TPP). Both were resounding failures. The Asian pivot did not get off the ground because the United States could not get out of the Middle East. The "Twin Wars" in Afghanistan and Iraq became endless. Later came the "War in Libya," Hilary's Iraq. And still the "War in Syria", humiliating for the Obama administration. In addition to the emergence of the terrorist group ISIS. All this, in the context of the Arab Spring. Already the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership), the free trade treaty that would bring together the US and the major encomiences of Asia and the Pacific, in a clear attempt to isolate China, has been imploded by the Trump administration.

Trump's Foreign Policy was marked by an arrogant isolationism. With contempt for "Multilateral Organizations" and even traditional US allies such as Germany and France. However, it was in the Trump administration that the so-called "Trade War on China" was initiated.  Since Trump's election in 2016, a consensus has formed in the U.S. State Department, whether Democrats or Republicans, military, politicians, high-ranking and low-ranking congressmen, secretaries of state, diplomats, think tanks, several universities and research groups, intellectuals in the service of the state, journalists and the media in general, etc. ... that the great U.S. challenge is no longer "terror" or "terrorism," but China, and that it is necessary to contain it tenaciously.
The Biden/Harris administration, after the disastrous US withdrawal from Afghanistan, has finally begun to realize the once sketchy pivot to the Pacific in order to contain China's expansion. Biden began to move the pieces around on the geopolitical chessboard. He created QUAD (Quadrilateral Partnership on

Security between the United States, India, Australia, and Japan), and later, AUKUS: an alliance of technological and military cooperation involving the United States, together with the United Kingdom and Australia. Both, an evident strategy to contain China in the Indo-Pacific.
A decisive point in the reorganization of the geopolitics of power that is taking place in the world-system is the umbilical involvement of the US in the "Ukraine War". The confrontation with Russia has reached systemic proportions, implicating the great global powers, which has triggered the tightening of a Sino-Russian "alliance without limits" - which just completed one year this February - according to Henry Kissinger, the worst case scenario for American Foreign Policy.

The two countries announced an alliance of a higher level and unprecedented in the history of the World-System: "The new inter-state relations between Russia and China are superior to the political and military alliances of the Cold War era. The friendship between the two states has no limits, there are no 'forbidden' areas of cooperation," the document says.

The Biden Administration has taken a decisive step in containing Chinese power. The "Technology War" against China. Biden has released a broad set of export controls that prohibit Chinese companies from buying advanced chips. The recent US sanctions against China are unprecedented in modern times. US officials have spoken about the measure as an act in order to protect national security interests. The chips that the United States is trying to control are semiconductors, the processors that drive cell phones, autonomous cars, advanced computing, drones, military equipment - and they have become essential to the technological dispute of this decade.

In summary, the Biden administration has not only continued the "Economic War" with China, started by Trump, but has elevated it to a "Technology War" and even a "Humanitarian War", in the style of the Democrats. This is a path with no turning back.

Pedro Costa Junior is a researcher at the Department of Political Science (DCP) at USP and author of the book "American Power in the Modern World System: Collapse or Myth of Collapse?", Curitiba: Appris, 2019.