America and China at the Edge of Ruin

Since the early 2010s, U.S.–China relations have moved from guarded engagement to structured rivalry, with both governments increasingly treating the other as a systemic threat rather than a difficult partner. FPI Fellow David Lapton examines how that shift became embedded not only in military strategy and economic policy but also in domestic political incentives, institutional behavior, and public narratives on both sides.

He argues that deterrence dynamics in the western Pacific, the securitization of trade and technology, and the erosion of cultural and academic exchanges have created a self-reinforcing cycle of mistrust. What makes the current moment especially perilous, they suggest, is not the inevitability of deliberate war, but the growing likelihood of miscalculation between two nuclear-armed powers whose competition has become normalized.

Yet the piece is not simply diagnostic. Drawing on decades of firsthand experience with earlier periods of confrontation and rapprochement, Fellow David Lapton contends that the present trajectory is not irreversible. He outlines what a “new normalization” might look like, one grounded in strategic reassurance over Taiwan, targeted economic recalibration, renewed people-to-people ties, and institutionalized military dialogue.

Read More Here: A Last Chance to Step Back From the Brink