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Foreign Affairs published a groundbreaking essay " Underestimating China:  Why America Needs a New Strategy of Allied Scale to Offset Beijing’s Enduring Advantages", by  Kurt M. Campbell and Rush Doshi

Success in great-power competition requires rigorous and unsentimental net assessment. Yet the American estimation of China has lurched from one extreme to the other… 

 

While the world is grappling with the scope and likely impact of President Donald Trump's MAGA fired global round of customs tariffs which emanated from the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, Campbell and Doshi propose a radically different strategy for America and the collective West (Putin's definition).

They see the US as a relatively small and vulnerable opponent of the giant China which is about to dominate the world due to its huge advantage in numbers and scale.

Accounting for purchasing power and local prices using the World Bank’s methodology, although imperfect, reveals instead that China’s economy surpassed the U.S. economy about a decade ago and is 25 percent larger today: roughly $30 trillion to the United States’ $24 trillion. This purchasing power adjustment captures the real cost of the determinants of national power, including infrastructure investment, weapons systems, manufactured goods, and government personnel—key factors in sustaining long-term strategic advantage

Americans tend to underestimate China's power by using the same traditional statistical methodology which had led Europeans to underestimate Russia's power.

The current Ukraine war proved an ugly surprise, and the current war of tariffs between the US and China is likely to yield similar surprises. The US is in danger of losing its status as the global hegemon. China's advantage of sheer scale also shows in the field of armaments:

On critical metrics, China has already outmatched the United States. Economically, it boasts twice the manufacturing capacity. Technologically, it dominates everything from electric vehicles to fourth-generation nuclear reactors and now produces more active patents and top-cited scientific publications annually. Militarily, it features the world’s largest navy, bolstered by shipbuilding capacity 200 times as large as that of the United States; vastly greater missile stocks; and the world’s most advanced hypersonic capabilities—all results of the fastest military modernization in history. Even if China’s growth slows and its system falters, it will remain formidable strategically.

In this dire situation, what should America do?  Should it accept its fate of sliding down the ladder, losing its supremacy and becoming number two on the global scale, pushed around by dictatorships such as China, Russia and Iran?

No, the authors believe. However, they cautiously avoid to indicate the first step of what is required: getting rid of Donald Trump, his MAGA circus and trying to repair -- as far as possible -- the damage done by four years of  slash and burn Trumpism.

Their recipe for survival contrasts with MAGA: seeking to establish a coalition of the collective West based on closer than ever cooperation and burden sharing. America should integrate the collective West as a loose association somewhere between a Commonwealth and a Common Market.  This association would be more powerful than China:

Together, Australia, Canada, India, Japan, Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, the United States, and the European Union have a combined economy of $60 trillion to China’s $18 trillion, an amount more than three times as large as China’s at market exchange rates and still more than twice as large adjusting for purchasing power. It would account for roughly half of all global manufacturing (to China’s roughly one-third) 

To achieve scale, Washington must transform its alliance architecture from a collection of managed relationships to a platform for integrated and pooled capacity building across the military, economic, and technological domains. In practical terms, that might mean Japan and Korea help build American ships and Taiwan builds American semiconductor plants while the United States shares its best military technology with allies, and all come together to pool their markets behind a shared tariff or regulatory wall erected against China. 

A bold new vision. Even if the US would change tack and repel Trumpism it would be difficult to overcome the destruction caused by MAGA. America's reputation as a reliable ally and reasonable global power is in tatters. Any post-Trump administration will face an uphill battle trying to revive the old image and restore the confidence basic to a powerful association of the collective West that the US needs to save itself from losing its global pre-eminence to China.

Heinrich von Loesch

 

 

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For Trump and his allies, what’s happening now is necessary “medicine.” Trump views global trade in zero-sum terms: He appears to think trade deficits are a sign of American weakness (rather than, say, a reflection of the power of the U.S. consumer). He believes U.S. purchases of foreign goods are “subsidies” to other countries with money that should be spent at home. And he sees tariffs as a tool to raise funds and bring back manufacturing to the hollowed-out industrial heartlands of the United States.

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Since the 19th century, an economic policy geared towards current account surpluses and protectionist employment stabilization has been referred to as neo-mercantilism.

wikipedia

 

Mercantilism promotes government regulation of a nation's economy for the purpose of augmenting and bolstering state power at the expense of rival national powers. High tariffs, especially on manufactured goods, were almost universally a feature of mercantilist policy.[2] Before it fell into decline, mercantilism was dominant in modernized parts of Europe and some areas in Africa from the 16th to the 19th centuries, a period of proto-industrialization.[3] Some commentators argue that it is still practised in the economies of industrializing countries[4] in the form of economic interventionism.[5][6][7][8][9]

wikipedia
 
 
...Trump and Musk explicitly see Milei’s transformation of Argentina as an example to follow. In a matter of months, Milei has slashed government ministries from 18 to eight, dispensed with state efforts to support gender equality and human rights, axed tens of thousands of federal workers, curtailed state spending and reduced inflation. The scale and mercilessness of Milei’s approach inspired Trump’s team. “After conversations with Javier,” Federico Sturzenegger, Argentina’s minister of deregulation, told Schmidt, Musk “realized that there was an opportunity for the state to do this kind of work.”

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The nascent trade war between China and United States offers unique opportunities for Europe. Both countries will start hoarding huge quantities of exportable goods sitting idle in warehouses, ports and airports. Steep sale price increases caused by the tariffs will throttle demand in the U.S. and China creating enormous stocks of unsold goods. Exporters in both countries will have to slash prices in order to entice the rest of the world to absorb the excess stocks.

This is where Europe as the world's largest market comes in because it could absorb part of Chinese and American overproduction if prices fall enough to attract European consumers.

European producers will, of course, try to impede these cheap imports, be it American soya beans or Chinese dollar store gadgets. Still, European consumers will benefit from Trump's trade war. 

This advantage would largely compensate Europe for the loss of its own exports to the USA due to Trump's new tariffs

Heinrich von Loesch
 
 
US tech giants. Amazon, Meta, Google and Co. earn around half their profits in the EU. A digital tax or punitive measures would hit them directly and hard. Never before has the matter been so openly talked about in the EU. Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai and other Trump-loving CEOs will want to prevent this happening at all cost. Particularly because their companies have lost billions during the short time Trump has been in office. ... It's time they used their influence. "
                                                                                                                                                                          Tagesspiegel
 
Every crisis offers an opportunity. Trump's “America First” policy could force Europe to remedy strategic weaknesses and adapt to a multipolar world. Europe's unity is necessary in order to secure market power and options for self-determination in a world characterized by geopolitical risks.
 

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General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, Ambassador of Ukraine to the United Kingdom and former Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine spoke at an event at the Tank museum in Bovington, Dorset, U.K.

The general gave a measured and statesman like address amongst the Russian and Ukrainian tanks on display. His quiet dignified resolve, that Ukraine will keep fighting the tyranny from the east for as long as it takes, is in stark contrast to the bluff and bluster from the man in the White House who wants to bribe and be bribed to end the killing in Ukraine. General Zaluzhnyi also made it clear how very important Britain’s steadfast support has been from the outset and the vital role the British Army has had in training thousands of conscripts. Boris Johnson, this time, must take huge credit for getting behind Kyiv from the outset, as also should Sir Keir Starmer who is galvanising Europe to stand up the tyrant in the Kremlin.

Ukraine, with British help, and other members of the “Coalition of the Willing” is sorting out its manpower problem, whereas Russia just throws untrained conscripts to their certain death in the meat grinder of the front. Putin’s latest mobilisation of 150,000 young Russians could be his latest and most damaging strategic error. When he tried a similar mobilisation at the beginning of the war, thousands of Russians “patriots” fled the country, and now the” Mothers of Russia” are rising against him if recent reports are to be believed. He knows, more than most, that it was the mothers who forced the Kremlin to withdraw in defeat from Afghanistan in 1984, and defeat in Ukraine will not lead to a peaceful retirement for the Russian dictator.

General Zaluzhnyi gave me confidence that the UK and Europe can help Ukraine prevail with or without Trump.  At last Europe is getting serious about its own defence, and at least Trump’s ramblings have made this possible. I know military planners have been burning the midnight oil for months to assemble and train a force capable of enforcing a peace in Ukraine. This also involves drawing up plans to assemble an air defence force of around 140 fighter jets to secure the skies and create a ‘No Fly Zone’ over the front lines.   

The Russian air force is in similar disarray to its Navy and Army and this considerable show of resolve by Europe, led by the UK and France, should be enough to hold and turn the Russians: even if the Americans refuse to get out of their trench to help, as their forebears always did in the past.


For thirty years, Hamish de Bretton-Gordon has served and volunteered in conflict zones around the world. As the army's foremost chemical weapons expert, he built a unique first-hand understanding of how to prevent attacks and train doctors on the frontline - saving countless lives in the process.

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Rich Russians are eyeing and buying expensive real estate in New York for the first time in a decade, Air Mail reported. “We’re seeing a lot of Russian nationals. I’ve had five Russians look at properties in the $10 million to $20 million range in the past few weeks—condos and town houses,” a New York broker said. One returning Russian just signed a contract for a $20 million trophy property in Midtown. The buying spree is spurred by the cozy relationship between Trump and Putin, the broker said. “A couple of years ago, oligarchs couldn’t buy anything in the U.S., and Putin put pressure on Russians not to buy here or in Europe.”

Russians may also feel more reassured in the knowledge that, back in the day, their fellow nationals (including oligarchs and ex-cons) bought lots of Trump-branded properties. Some even found ways to provide Trump with cash when U.S. banks would not. Or, as Eric Trump told a golf reporter in 2014, “We have all the funding we need out of Russia.”

The broker said about the current influx of oligarchs: “They aren’t afraid to buy anymore…That’s what’s changed.” And, thanks to Trump, there is less to fear. Sanctions against the Russian government, companies, and some individuals are still in place, but after only weeks in office, the administration took an ax to anti-corruption initiatives, disbanding Justice Department units such as Task Force KleptoCapture that investigated dirty money invested in assets like yachts and real estate.

Trump also watered down the Corporate Transparency Act, making it easier for foreign investors to create American companies where they can park assets. “If you are a Russian oligarch and your goal is to move, hide, and invest your dirty money in the U.S., you now have a new incentive to form an anonymous company inside the United States,"

Michael Bociurkiw  

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