Brahma Chellaney, Taipei Times

Preserving its global dominance appears to have driven the West’s expanding involvement in the Ukraine conflict, with former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson recently arguing in a column that a Russian victory would be “a turning point in history, the moment when the West finally loses its post-war hegemony.” Such a decisive outcome, however, seems doubtful, given the attritional character of the Ukraine war and the progressively escalating Western involvement in the conflict.

The defining moment that formally brings the era of Western preeminence to an end is more likely to be a surprise Chinese aggression aimed at subjugating Taiwan.

With the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East testing U.S.-led alliances and with America already looking overextended, Chinese aggression against Taiwan could come sooner than many in U.S. policy circles expect.

There are ominous signs that Chinese President Xi Jinping is preparing his country for a war over Taiwan. But whether the U.S. is prepared to respond to such a contingency is becoming a vexed question, especially as international concerns grow that Xi might view America’s preoccupation with extended conflicts in Europe and the Middle East as a window of opportunity to act, without triggering a full-fledged war with the U.S.

The defense of Taiwan is assuming greater significance for international security for two other reasons. The first is the possibility that Xi might seek to replicate in the Taiwan Strait the techniques of incremental expansionism that his regime has successfully honed in the South China Sea without drawing a concerted U.S. response.

Tellingly, three successive U.S. administrations have failed to credibly push back against China’s intensifying expansionism in the South China Sea, relying instead on rhetoric or symbolic actions. As a result, the American debate now largely centers on how the South China Sea was effectively lost and what can be done now to respond to China’s increasingly aggressive sea tactics aimed at tightening its grip on this strategic corridor between the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

These tactics are triggering a number of incidents with other claimant states, particularly the Philippines and Vietnam, even as China seeks to interfere with U.S. and allied air and maritime transits.

China’s recent menacing military drills that encircled Taiwan seemed to be a rehearsal for implementing at least a blockade with the aim of slowly throttling the island democracy. In fact, this was the third Chinese dress rehearsal in less than two years for an assault on Taiwan.

Compared to the first large-scale Chinese military exercise in August 2022, when then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taipei, the latest drills were more sophisticated, elaborate and geographically expansive.

The second reason is the U.S. failure to genuinely pivot to Asia and the wider Indo-Pacific, despite U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin claiming that this region is “our priority theater of operations” and “the heart of American grand strategy.”

A just-released book, “Lost Decade: The U.S. Pivot to Asia and the Rise of Chinese Power,” by two former American policymakers, Robert Blackwill and Richard Fontaine, bemoans that America’s “pivot to Asia” strategy (first unveiled in 2011) has failed thus far because a coherent approach to the Indo-Pacific remains largely absent. Consequently, the U.S. has been unable to respond adequately to China’s aggressive rise, in what the authors call one of the greatest mistakes in American foreign policy in the post-World War II period.

The plain fact is that, as long as conflicts elsewhere distract the U.S. from the pressing Asian security challenges, the Indo-Pacific is unlikely to become the hub of its grand strategy.

The latest American foreign assistance package that provides $60.8 billion for Ukraine and a meager $8.1 billion for Indo-Pacific security, including Taiwan, has dimmed the prospects of a correction in skewed strategic priorities. In fact, U.S. President Joe Biden recently plunged the U.S. deeper into the Ukraine war by permitting Kyiv to use American-donated weapons to strike inside Russia.

More fundamentally, the drawn-out Ukraine war is crimping America’s China policy and weakening its deterrent posture in the Indo-Pacific, thereby making a Taiwan Strait crisis more likely.

In an effort to forestall the U.S. from realizing its worst geopolitical nightmare, a formal Sino-Russian alliance, and to dissuade China from directly aiding the Kremlin’s war machine, Biden has been compelled to adopt a more conciliatory approach to Beijing.

This approach, in turn, is emboldening China vis-à-vis Taiwan. While stepping up coercive pressures on Taiwan, Beijing is making its ultimate goal clearer. Xi recently declared that the “essence” of his national rejuvenation drive is “the unification of the motherland.” And his new defense minister, Dong Jun, while accusing the U.S. of “malign intentions [that] are drawing Taiwan to the dangers of war,” told the annual Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore that, “Anyone who dares split Taiwan from China will be smashed to pieces and court their own destruction.”

Yet some in the West insist that the U.S. must first rout Russia on the Ukrainian battlefield before turning to deter China. As if Xi would wait to move against Taiwan until the U.S. has humiliated Russia in Ukraine in a long war and then turned its attention to containing China. Indeed, the last thing Xi wants is an end to the Ukraine war because that would leave the U.S. free to pivot to Asia.

Make no mistake: With China’s lengthening shadow belligerently darkening Taiwan’s doorstep, the risks of failing to deter Chinese aggression against the self-governing island are increasing. Consequently, calls are growing in the U.S. that Washington must embrace strategic clarity in relation to Taiwan’s defense by abandoning its outdated strategic ambiguity policy, which was formulated when China was still backward and in no position to annex Taiwan.

America’s deepening involvement in the Ukraine war at a time it seems ill-prepared for armed conflict over Taiwan is a strategic mistake that could eventually come to haunt its long-term security.

Brahma Chellaney, professor of strategic studies at the independent Center for Policy Research in New Delhi, is the author of nine books, including the award-winning Water: Asia’s New Battleground (Georgetown University Press).

Japan should be worrying about Taiwan, not Ukraine.

Brahma Chellaney, Nikkei Asia

Japan has become one of Ukraine’s most-important financial backers, pouring in some $12.1 billion in aid to support the country’s war-battered economy and its defenses with nonlethal equipment such as anti-drone systems.

“As I often say, Ukraine of today may be East Asia of tomorrow,” Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told a joint session of the U.S. Congress two weeks ago, underlining the rationale for aligning Tokyo closely with America’s de facto proxy war against Russia.

But how does Kishida’s leadership role on Ukraine, including sanctions on Russia and a long-term commitment to support postwar reconstruction, tangibly advance Japan’s strategic interests at a time when its own neighborhood is becoming increasingly dangerous?

Oddly, there has been little debate in Japan on this issue. Yet the country’s deepening engagement with Ukraine at a time it is ill-prepared for armed conflict over Taiwan is a huge strategic mistake.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, left, with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida at the reconstruction conference held in Tokyo on Feb. 19. © Reuters

The drawn-out Ukraine war is not just impeding the U.S.-led attempt to rein in China’s aggressive expansionism, it is also stretching American resources thinly and weakening Washington’s deterrent posture in the Indo-Pacific region, thereby making a Taiwan Strait crisis more likely.

Kishida’s surprise move in December, at Washington’s urging, to ship Patriot air-defense systems to the U.S. to cover for ones being sent to Kyiv illustrates the risks of a Ukraine-centric approach.

Any Chinese operation to blockade or attack Taiwan would likely intrude into Japanese airspace and waters, conceivably pulling Tokyo into a war over the island democracy. Yet amid signs Chinese President Xi Jinping is preparing his country to go to war over Taiwan, Kishida has agreed to take weapons out of Japan’s air defenses for an increasingly hopeless war in distant Europe.

In fact, with U.S. attention and resources focused on conflicts in Europe and the Middle East, China’s efforts to alter the territorial and maritime status quo in Asia and secure strategic dominance are reaching a tipping point.

Yet some in the West myopically insist that the U.S. must first defeat Russia in Ukraine before pivoting to deter China. As if Xi would wait to move against Taiwan until the U.S. has humiliated Russia in a long war and was then ready to direct greater attention his way. Indeed, the last thing Xi would like is an end to the Ukraine war because that would leave the U.S. free to focus on the Indo-Pacific region.

This explains why China, as Washington now acknowledges, is quietly aiding the Kremlin’s war machine by supplying technologies and geospatial intelligence. The transfers suggest that, before making a move on Taiwan, Xi wants the Ukraine war to further deplete America’s weapons and munitions stocks.

The flip side to America’s deepening involvement in conflicts elsewhere is a desire to avoid direct confrontation with China. This explains U.S. President Joe Biden’s more conciliatory approach to Beijing in recent months, including a greater emphasis on diplomacy than on deterrence.

The U.S. may still be the world’s foremost military power, but it is in no position to meaningfully take on Russia and China simultaneously. According to its own official national security doctrine, the U.S. maintains the military capability to fight and defeat China or Russia with some allied support — but not both simultaneously.

In recent decades, the U.S. has waged overlapping wars, but these were against much weaker states, namely Iraq and Afghanistan. Still, these protracted wars exposed shortcomings in America’s ability to pursue two military missions simultaneously at full tempo.

In this light, Biden has stepped up his administration’s outreach to Beijing to help avert a Chinese attack on Taiwan that could result in a direct war between the U.S. and a near-peer adversary. But with the U.S. looking overextended and Xi viewing Biden’s conciliatory posture as one of weakness, the risks of failing to deter aggression against Taiwan are increasing.

The risks are particularly acute for Japan, whose southernmost islands lie close to Taiwan. As former Prime Minister Taro Aso has warned, if Taiwan falls, “Okinawa could be next.”

Japan should recall that U.S. appreciation of its generous financial support for previous missions has been fleeting.

A classic example is the 1991 Gulf War campaign against Iraq for which Japan contributed $13 billion. Yet then-U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker III said, “Your ‘checkbook diplomacy,’ like our ‘dollar diplomacy’ of an earlier era, is clearly too narrow.”

Today, Japan needs to shed its zeal toward Ukraine and focus squarely on Taiwan. This should include not sending more Patriots or other defense systems to backstop Kyiv.

An overstretched America and a Japan straining to avert recession must persuade Europe to step up and take primary responsibility for Ukraine, its own neighbor.

To safeguard Asian security and the region’s balance of power, there can be no substitute for a prudent, balanced and forward-looking approach.

With China’s lengthening shadow darkening its doorstep, Japan needs to focus primarily on its combustible neighborhood and prepare for a Taiwan Strait contingency.

This should include assuring its ability to respond to a scenario in which Xi seeks to bring Taiwan to its knees by employing the techniques of incremental expansionism that his regime has successfully honed in the South China Sea without triggering a concerted U.S. response.

Not Ukraine, but the South China Sea of today could be the Taiwan of tomorrow. This means that Japan, without being unduly distracted by developments afar, must find effective ways to beat back China’s hybrid warfare.

Brahma Chellaney is professor emeritus of strategic studies at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi and a former adviser to India’s National Security Council. He is the author of nine books, including “Water: Asia’s New Battleground.”

BY BRAHMA CHELLANEY, The Hill

The congressional breakthrough on the $95 billion foreign assistance package after months of political wrangling provides President Joe Biden’s administration with arms outlays that are larger than the defense budget of every country other than the United States, China and Russia. Biden now has considerable leverage to further conflict or deterrence across three large geographic regions encompassing more than half of the world — Europe, the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific.

The package effectively opens the floodgates to the greater flow of sophisticated American weapons, especially to Ukraine. In fact, even before Biden signed the foreign assistance bill into law, Ukraine began using longer-range ATACMS missiles against Russian forces that the U.S. had secretly supplied. And as the law took effect, the Pentagon immediately rushed $1 billion worth of American weapons to Ukraine.

The package reflects the Biden administration’s skewed strategic priorities: It provides $60.8 billion for Ukraine in its war of attrition with Russia, with much of the funding going to U.S. defense contractors and the Pentagon; $26.4 billion for Israel and America’s supporting military operations in the Middle East; and a relatively miserly $8.1 billion for Taiwan and other security challenges in the Indo-Pacific region — the world’s center of gravity where America’s main rival, China, is incrementally changing the territorial and maritime status quo.

The congressional logjam over the package had jeopardized the centerpiece of Biden’s foreign policy, which has focused America’s attention and resources on the wars in Europe and the Middle East. But the region central to the global balance of power and peace is the Indo-Pacific.

The longer the U.S. remains involved in the conflicts in Europe and the Middle East, the greater will be the likelihood of China invading Taiwan. It is telling that, under Biden, an overextended America is seeking to dissuade Chinese President Xi Jinping from launching an attack on Taiwan more through diplomacy than deterrence.

Biden’s latest defense budget, and the small outlays for the Indo-Pacific in the $95.3 billion package, show that deterrence against China has assumed a subsidiary policy role. The budget not only underfunds key enabling capabilities for the Indo-Pacific but also cuts programs, including slashing the production goal for Virginia-class submarines from two per year to just one.

China, on the other hand, is engaged in a frenzied naval buildup. China’s surface naval fleet is now already much larger than the American fleet. In terms of number of submarines, China, by embarking on a new generation of nuclear-armed subs, possibly with Russian assistance, is set to go beyond its current near-parity with the U.S. Meanwhile, qualitative improvements in battle force ships and more aggressive tactics by the Chinese navy are already making it more challenging for American ships and submarines to operate in China’s maritime backyard.

The Ukraine war, for its part, has helped raise the specter of the U.S. realizing its worst geopolitical nightmare: a Sino-Russian strategic axis. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken this month called China “the primary contributor” to Russia’s defense industrial base.

The conflict has already exposed NATO’s military shortcomings, including its struggle to scale up weapons and munitions manufacturing to match the output of Russia’s war economy. Chinese President Xi Jinping seems to be aiding the Kremlin’s war machine in an apparent effort to keep the U.S. tied down in Ukraine and further deplete Western arsenals before invading Taiwan.

Against this background, the massive new U.S. funding for Ukraine will further deepen American involvement in the conflict without any prospect of changing the tide of the war. U.S. officials now acknowledge that there is little prospect of Ukraine regaining the 20 percent of its territory already occupied by Russia.

The Biden administration’s narrative on the war has evolved through three distinct phases. In the immediate aftermath of the Russian invasion, the “save Ukraine” narrative was dominant, before being overtaken by the “bleed Russia” narrative, which presented the Western supply of weapons and battlefield intelligence to Ukrainian forces as a cost-effective investment to severely “weaken” an adversary militarily.

Even after the much-hyped Ukrainian counteroffensive floundered last summer, dashing NATO’s hopes of a major military breakthrough against Russia, the administration — anxious not to lose public support for the war — continued to peddle the line that Ukraine was winning the fight against Russia.

The third phase, “help Ukraine stave off defeat,” began more recently, when CIA Director Bill Burns warned that Ukraine could lose the war to Russia by year’s end absent additional American aid. The shift in the narrative from “Ukraine is winning” to “Ukraine may be facing defeat” was jarringly abrupt.

Make no mistake: Even if the new U.S. assistance of $60.8 billion helps Ukraine avert defeat, it is unlikely to dramatically reverse Ukrainian fortunes on the battlefield against a much stronger foe. Indeed, the longer the war extends, the greater is likely to be Ukraine’s devastation, making reconstruction more costly and onerous.

By sending more lethal and longer-range weapons to Ukraine, the U.S. funding, however, carries the risk of triggering a direct NATO conflict with Russia, which has the world’s largest nuclear arsenal. Western powers have also increasingly provided Ukraine battlefield targeting data and even some actual assistance on the ground near the front lines.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz faced some flak in February for inadvertently exposing the role of Britain, France and possibly the U.S. in militarily helping direct attacks on Russian targets from Ukrainian soil through “target control.” Scholz said that if Germany followed Britain and France in supplying Ukraine with long-range missiles, it would make it a “participant in the war,” too.

Throwing good money after bad and hoping for a miracle isn’t a strategy. Yet that exactly is the basis of the new foreign assistance package.

A wise course for Biden would be to leverage the package by quietly pushing for a ceasefire in the Ukraine war through back-channel diplomacy. The alternative is to sap America’s strength by continuing to invest heavily in a failing war, thereby creating more strategic space for China to overthrow U.S. global preeminence.

Brahma Chellaney is a geostrategist and the author of nine books, including the award-winning “Water: Asia’s New Battleground” (Georgetown University Press).

Brahma Chellaney, Taipei Times

Can US dialogue and cooperation with the communist dictatorship in Beijing help avert a Taiwan Strait crisis? Or is US President Joe Biden playing into Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) hands?

With America preoccupied with the wars in Europe and the Middle East, Biden is seeking better relations with Xi’s regime. The goal is to responsibly manage US-China competition and prevent unintended conflict, thereby hoping to create greater space for the two countries to work together in areas where their interests align.

The existing wars have already stretched US military resources thin, and the last thing Biden wants is yet another war. So, to forestall a war over Taiwan, Biden has made a series of overtures to Xi’s regime, including stressing, along with his G7 partners, that the West is seeking to “de-risk” its relationship with China, not “decouple” from the world’s second-largest economy.

Notably, after sending a string of cabinet officials to Beijing, Biden held a summit meeting with Xi in Woodside, California, last November. Biden’s recent phone call with Xi was part of the ongoing effort, as the White House put it, to responsibly manage ties with China.

But what stands out is the current US focus on a thaw with Beijing, instead of concentrating on deterring China’s aggressive expansionism. In fact, with Biden’s China strategy incorporating no clear vision of success, a “managed competition” has become an end in itself, instead of being a means to an end.

That deterrence has assumed a subsidiary role in policy is apparent from Biden’s latest proposed defense budget, which reinforces the administration’s approach of not taking the China threat seriously. It significantly underfunds key enabling capabilities for the Indo-Pacific and even cuts programs, including slashing the production goal for Virginia-class submarines from two per year to just one.

Funding just one Virginia-class attack boat is a break from the US navy’s steady two-per-year demand signal. The US is committed to selling up to three Virginia-class submarines to Australia in the 2030s under the AUKUS deal, which would make the American submarine deficit worse. In fact, America’s fiscal year 2025 budget seeks only six new battle force ships while retiring 10.

Contrast that with the way China churns out ever more weapon systems and platforms, with its surface naval fleet now significantly larger than the American fleet in number of ships. And, in terms of number of submarines, China, by embarking on a new generation of nuclear-armed subs, possibly with Russian assistance, is set to go beyond its current near parity with the US.

Meanwhile, qualitative improvements in battle force ships and more aggressive tactics by the Chinese navy are already making it more difficult for American ships and submarines to operate in China’s maritime backyard.

Make no mistake: Biden’s more conciliatory approach to China has so far yielded no tangible dividends. It has neither eased Beijing’s coercive pressures on Taiwan nor diminished China’s aggressive efforts to entrench its dominance in the South China Sea.

If anything, it has only emboldened China’s pursuit of strategic dominance in Asia. Washington now admits that China is even aiding Russia’s war in Ukraine by transferring technologies and sharing geospatial intelligence.

According to Beijing’s readout, Xi cautioned Biden during their recent phone conversation that Taiwan is a “red line that must not be crossed.”

With Xi preparing China for war against Taiwan, it has become more imperative than ever for the US to strengthen deterrence, including bolstering Taiwan’s defenses.

Yet, there is a huge backlog in US military sales to Taiwan, with weapons deals announced as long ago as 2017 still unfulfilled. For Taiwan, the US Congress previously authorized a US$1 billion-a-year replenishment of drawdown funding, but that has been slashed to US$500 million in the Pentagon’s latest budget.

In contrast to the Biden administration’s generous weapons shipments to Ukraine, there appears no urgency in providing arms to Taiwan to counter China’s increasing aggressiveness.

The administration also seems loath to address its resolve gap by stating unambiguously that the US has the strategic intent and political will to defend Taiwan against an attack.

Biden, asked last September whether American forces would defend Taiwan if China attacked, replied with a caveat, “Yes, if in fact there was an unprecedented attack.” But what would be the US response if, instead of an unprecedented attack, Xi launched a wily strategy of gradually escalating aggression against Taiwan anchored in stealth, deception and surprise?

Deterrence — or peace through strength, as it is commonly called — has stood the test of time. It has prevented wars of aggression. But failure to build and sustain adequate deterrent capabilities, by signaling weakness, can invite aggression.

Deterrence, however, must always be accompanied by diplomacy so as to forestall a destabilizing arms race or unintended conflict and create space for eventual compromise and reconciliation.

Under then-US president Ronald Reagan, the US grand strategy against the Soviet Union was designed to apply maximum pressure on the Soviet Union — diplomatic, ideological, economic and military — while pursuing a policy of engagement with Moscow. It was as much carrot as it was stick, contributing ultimately to the Soviet Union’s disintegration.

By contrast, Biden’s approach to China is more carrot than stick. “I don’t want to contain China,” Biden gratuitously declared while visiting Hanoi last September. “We’re not trying to hurt China.” The goal, Biden said, is “getting the relationship right” between the US and China.

Biden has repeatedly assured Xi that the US would not seek to change China’s political system or direct alliances against it.

Prioritizing diplomacy over deterrence has resulted in a strange paradox: the stronger established power, in attempting to preserve the status quo, is seeking to appease the revisionist power, whose expansionism continues apace.

Brahma Chellaney, professor of strategic studies at the independent Center for Policy Research in New Delhi, is the author of nine books, including the award-winning Water: Asia’s New Battleground (Georgetown University Press).

With the wars in Ukraine and Gaza stretching its military resources thin, a direct confrontation with China is the last thing the US needs. But America’s refusal to rein in China’s aggressive expansionism, not least in the South China Sea, may well make a clash more likely – and more destructive.

BRAHMA CHELLANEY, Project Syndicate

HANOI – For over a decade now, China has been working stealthily to alter the territorial and maritime status quo in the Indo-Pacific – an effort that has increasingly stoked tensions with regional neighbors like Australia, India, Japan, Taiwan, and several Southeast Asian countries, as well as the United States. And with US attention and resources focused on conflicts in Europe and the Middle East, China has lately become even more aggressive in its expansionism. Chinese regional hegemony is closer than ever.

Almost daily, China finds a new way to bully Taiwan, which Chinese President Xi Jinping has repeatedly pledged to “reunify” with the mainland (though that objective has no basis in international law or history). As China takes steps like encroaching on Taiwan’s air-defense zone and encircling the island with warships, it raises the risk of a war that would transform global geopolitics.

There are war clouds also gathering over the Himalayas, where a military standoff triggered by China’s repeated furtive encroachments on India’s borderlands has dragged on for nearly four years. And in the East China Sea, China’s intrusions into the territorial waters and airspace of the Japanese-controlled Senkaku Islands, which China claims as its own, are fueling Japan’s drive toward rearmament.

But the biggest risks of escalation may well lie in the South China Sea, where China’s aggressive efforts to entrench its dominance have regularly led to dangerous near-confrontations, including with US warships and aircraft. For years, China has been working relentlessly to cement its dominance over the South China Sea and exploit that region’s vast resources and strategic position as a critical corridor through which one-third of global shipping passes.

To this end, China has constructed artificial islands atop remote reefs and atolls and transformed them into forward military bases. Though these activities constitute a blatant violation of international law, including a 2016 ruling by an arbitral tribunal at The Hague that invalidated Chinese claims in the South China Sea, there has been little pushback from three successive US administrations. As a result, China has managed to expand its maritime borders unilaterally without firing a single shot.

Now, China’s navy and air force routinely patrol its neighbors’ exclusive economic zones (EEZs), and its coast guard – the world’s largest and most militarized – has conducted “intrusive patrols” of others’ offshore oil and gas fields. Chinese coast-guard vessels, including megaships, wantonly employ “non-lethal” weapons like high-pressure water cannons and long-range acoustic devices.

Moreover, China has been sending its navy and coast guard to shadow, hound, and harass vessels belonging to the US, as well as to smaller neighbors, such as the Philippines and Vietnam, with territorial claims in the area. Even fishing boats have been targeted and destroyed. With Chinese ships now being deliberately designed for “ramming” and “shouldering” other vessels, it seems clear that China will become more aggressive in asserting its territorial claims – and the associated fishing and energy-exploration rights – in the South China Sea.

China’s militarization of the South China Sea poses the greatest threat to the Philippines and Vietnam. But whereas Vietnam pursues an independent foreign policy, which its prime minister calls a historical imperative, the Philippines is a longstanding US ally, with a mutual defense treaty in place since 1951.

And yet, when it comes to China’s expansionism in the South China Sea, the US has largely left the Philippines to fend for itself. In 2012, when China occupied the Scarborough Shoal, a traditional Philippine fishing ground located within the country’s EEZ, US President Barack Obama’s administration stayed silent. Since then, China has steadily eroded the Philippines’ control of other areas within its EEZ, but the US has offered its ally little beyond statements of support.

This is unlikely to change any time soon. With the wars in Ukraine and Gaza stretching American military resources thin, a direct confrontation with China is the last thing the US needs. But refusing to stand up to China may well make a clash more likely – and more destructive.

Already, the US has allowed China to gain such a strong footing in the South China Sea that restoring the status quo of just a decade ago would be all but impossible without a full-scale war. And, as the recent increase in provocations in the South China Sea indicate, Xi is bolder than ever, despite the rising risk of escalation, accidental or otherwise. In the meantime, America’s failure to rein in China’s aggressive expansionism is undermining its own security and trade interests.

US President Joe Biden insists that the US wants “competition with China, not conflict.” But China wants strategic dominance – beginning with the South China Sea – and it is willing to risk conflict to get it. The South China Sea has become a test of American resolve, which Xi is expecting Biden to fail. The world, especially the countries on the front lines of Chinese expansionism, can only hope that Xi is wrong, and that the US finds ways to rein in China without armed conflict.

Brahma Chellaney, Professor of Strategic Studies at the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research and Fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin, is the author of nine books, including Water: Asia’s New Battleground (Georgetown University Press, 2011), for which he won the 2012 Asia Society Bernard Schwartz Book Award.

© Project Syndicate, 2024.