Aaron Friedberg on Fallout from the China Summit

“China is aiming to enhance its power with respect to the United States in particular, and eventually to emerge as the dominant player in the international system, and it’s working towards that goal…. It is not clear to me at this point what our strategy is, or even if we have one.” So argues Princeton Professor Aaron Friedberg in a new Conversation assessing the state of US-China relations in the wake of President Trump’s China summit and the ongoing Iran War. While the Iran War does not represent a decisive shift in US-China relations, Friedberg explains that it is viewed from Beijing as a “net positive” because it has weakened US relations with its traditional allies. In a bracing synopsis, Friedberg presents China as working diligently to overtake the US as the dominant power on the world stage, while the Second Trump administration has failed to counter with a coherent strategy.