Aaron L. Friedberg is professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University. He has served as national security aide to Vice President Dick Cheney and as an advisor to Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign.

As the long march to the presidential nomination begins, most of the likely Republican contenders are talking tough on foreign policy and criticizing the Obama administration for its evident failings in handling Russia, Iran, Syria, and the Islamic State and other Islamist extremists.

These threats are undeniably pressing but, in the long run, all of them pale in comparison to the strategic challenge posed by China. Yet China and Asia more generally have thus far been almost entirely absent from political discourse over the future of American foreign policy.


Over the next months this is likely to change on the campaign trail.

The challenge from China has been growing since the end of 2012, which marked both the reelection of an American president and the announcement of a new leadership team in Beijing. Since his elevation to the positions of president and general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping has proven himself to be a forceful, ambitious and effective figure. Moving quickly to consolidate his personal authority, Xi has also taken steps to secure and extend the CCP’s monopoly on political power. The anti-corruption campaign that he launched immediately on assuming office now targets thousands of mid-to-high-level officials in the military, state and Party bureaucracies. In addition to eliminating opponents and potential rivals it is clearly intended to bolster the regime’s legitimacy in the eyes of the Chinese people.

Even as he goes after official corruption, Xi has overseen a wide-ranging crackdown on dissent, Internet freedom and the operations of non-governmental organizations that seek to promote the development of civil society. According to the Orwellian-sounding “Document 9” (“Communique on the Current State of the Ideological Sphere”) issued in April 2013, these groups are rooted in a dangerous Western “socio-political theory,” which holds that “in the social sphere, individual rights are paramount and ought to be immune to obstruction by the state.” Such notions, together with the concepts of “Western constitutional democracy” and “universal values,” threaten to weaken “the theoretical foundations of the Party’s leadership” and must be vigorously opposed.

Like his predecessors, Xi hopes to push through measures aimed at sustaining economic growth and, with it, popular support. But in the political realm he is no reformer. To the contrary, China today is even more repressive and more militantly nationalistic than it was only a few years ago.

Another pillar of Xi’s program is the use of new rhetorical formulations that blend resentment over past abuses by foreign powers, and warnings about their continued malign intentions, with references to China’s glorious history, growing strength and future greatness. Xi has sought to back his bold words with a sweeping, if still incomplete, vision for a “new Silk Road,” a series of massive infrastructure development projects that will extend China’s reach and influence westward across all of continental Eurasia. Meanwhile, to the East, Xi has stepped up an aggressive campaign for asserting China’s maritime claims against its neighbors. Towards the end of 2013 Beijing unilaterally announced the creation of an Air Defense Identification Zone over a swath of ocean that includes islands currently controlled by Japan. In the past year China has dramatically accelerated a campaign of land reclamation, creating island bases that will greatly strengthen its ability to enforce its self-proclaimed right to control virtually all of the waters and resources of the South China Sea.

Behind all of this is the steady, seemingly relentless expansion of Chinese military power. Of particular concern to American planners is the rapid maturation of China’s so-called anti-access/area denial capabilities. As it builds out its network of sensors, missiles, ships, submarines, aircraft, anti-satellite systems and cyber weapons Beijing evidently aims to drive up the perceived costs and risks of any future U.S. attempt to project military power into the Western Pacific. The belief that Washington might hesitate to come to the aid of friendly nations, or act to preserve freedom of navigation, could undermine its alliances while increasing the danger of miscalculation and war.

With the United States constrained by tight budgets and preoccupied with other problems, China has been pushing hard, and with some success, to change the status quo and shift the balance of power in its favor. While some China watchers continue to argue otherwise, it has become increasingly difficult to escape the conclusion that Beijing’s ultimate aim is to displace the United States and resume its traditional position as the preponderant power in Asia. This is a strategic challenge of historic dimensions.

While attention remains riveted on other regions, there are a number of developments that could vault Asia, and China in particular, to the top of the foreign policy agenda. According to official statistics, economic growth has now fallen to its lowest level in twenty-five years and the reality may be even worse. A continued slump could heighten regime anxiety about domestic instability and reinforce the tendency, evident since the onset of the global financial crisis in 2009, to use foreign quarrels to divert frustration and rally popular support. China is already engaged in a pattern of provocative behavior towards its maritime neighbors; towing oil rigs off Vietnam, reclaiming islands off the Philippines, and flying aircraft close to the Senkakus. If one of these situations flares up, whether through inadvertence or by design, Beijing seems more likely to escalate than to back down. Whatever China’s leaders intend, a crisis with the United States could easily be the result.

Some older flashpoints, quiet for a time, may also be due for a flare up. In January 2016 Taiwan will hold its own presidential election and the results could bring to power an administration far less congenial to the mainland than the Kuomintang government that has ruled the island for the past eight years. As it has done in the past, Beijing may use threats or displays of force to try to influence the outcome of the election. In contrast to 1996, for example, when for lack of better options it fired dummy missiles into the Taiwan Straits, China today has far more capability. In part as a result it may also have less patience.

Developments within China itself could have an impact on its dealings with the United States and perhaps on American presidential politics. In 2012 the unexpected defection of a little known civil rights lawyer threatened to send U.S.-China relations into a tailspin and the administration’s handling of the resulting crisis provoked criticism from the Romney campaign. Despite the fact that he appears for the moment to be in firm control, Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign has clearly stirred fear and resentment among some of his colleagues, and some observers have speculated that it could even trigger a coup attempt. While such an event is highly unlikely, the opacity of high level Chinese politics makes it impossible to rule out.

Whatever happens in the outside world, the dynamics of the presidential race will probably make Asia policy an issue. If, as most expect, Hillary Clinton emerges as the Democratic nominee she will try to run to the right of her Republican opponent on the question of how best to deal with China. She will almost certainly prefer to talk about this than the failed “reset” to Russia, or the premature withdrawal from Iraq, or the inadequate protection provided for American embassy personnel in Benghazi. Clinton will assert, with some justification, that between 2010 and 2012 she pushed the Obama administration to take a tougher stance towards China. She will likely claim authorship of the “pivot” to Asia, arguably the administration’s signature foreign policy initiative, and she may even point with pride to the fact that during the latter stages of her time in office she was regarded with open animosity by Beijing.

The answer to these arguments will come in three parts:

First, notwithstanding her subsequent toughness, Clinton’s initial approach to China was friendly to a fault. During her first visit to Beijing in early 2009 the Secretary of State reassured her hosts that she would not allow differences over human rights to “interfere” with efforts to address “the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis, and the security crisis.” This was consistent with the new administration’s parallel attempts to improve relations with Moscow, Tehran and Pyongyang. The results were equally unimpressive. Instead of eliciting cooperation, Washington’s conciliatory stance appears to have been interpreted as a sign of weakness and it was followed by an increase in Chinese assertiveness towards U.S. friends and allies in East Asia.

The pivot was the Obama administration’s response to fear that this shift in Chinese behavior provoked in regional capitals. While the idea of focusing more attention and resources on the Asia-Pacific was strategically sound, the implementation of the new policy was remarkably poor. In its eagerness to score political points at the expense of its predecessor, the administration declared that America was “back” in Asia, presumably after a decade of distraction and wasted effort in Afghanistan and Iraq. In addition to being factually inaccurate, the suggestion that the United States had somehow abandoned the region conveyed an image of fickleness and unreliability. If it had “left” once, who was to say that it might not do so again? The muscular metaphor of the “pivot” was not much better, arousing anxieties in Europe and unrealistic expectations about Washington’s ability to disentangle itself from the Middle East, while at the same time enabling the Chinese to accuse the United States of “militarizing” Asia and fueling a regional “arms race.” During the last year of Secretary Clinton’s term in office U.S. officials spent an inordinate amount of time responding to these criticisms and concerns, eventually settling on the bland term “rebalancing” to explain what they were trying to do.

Therein lies the real problem: the weakness of the pivot is not rhetorical or conceptual but material. Having talked tough, the Obama administration has not done nearly enough to bolster the rapidly eroding balance of power in East Asia. Deep defense cuts, with more yet to come, will make it increasingly difficult for the United States to develop the capabilities needed to counter China’s evolving A2/AD network. This weakens the credibility of U.S. security guarantees and eats away at the foundation of its regional alliances. Meanwhile, Washington has been caught flat-footed by China’s recent land reclamation campaign in the South China Sea and, aside from public protests, it has yet to formulate a coherent response. By the time President Obama leaves office China will have “created facts” that will likely prove impossible to reverse, greatly strengthening its ability to enforce claims over the vital waters and resources off its coasts.

In other areas too, the administration seems to have mistaken words for deeds. Having called out Beijing on the issue of cyber-security, Washington has done virtually nothing to impose costs for its massive and ongoing theft of intellectual property. More and more the United States appears to be behind the curve, reacting (or failing to react) to initiatives that strengthen China’s standing in Asia at America’s expense. The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank debacle, in which the administration very publicly failed to persuade some of its closest allies not to join an institution that will weaken efforts to promote liberalizing reform in the developing world is only the most recent example of this worrisome trend.

Policies must be judged by their results and, regardless of the intentions behind it, the Obama administration’s loudly proclaimed pivot has not stopped a serious, ongoing erosion in the American position in East Asia. In the long run this failure will likely prove to be even more significant than the other errors and missteps that presently command the most attention. And the candidates of 2016 will have to deal with it.