The Obama administration took office in 2009 determined to move beyond might-makes-right-makes-might unilateralism of the Bush years, and reassert America’s global influence as the most principled and powerful guarantor of rule-based multilateralism.
With respect to China, this approach was presented as a doctrine of “strategic reassurance”.However, the policy has not yielded the systemic breakthroughs that the Obama administration hoped to achieve on climate change, non-proliferation, Middle East security, still less on U.S.-China relations.
Instead, increasingly acrimonious exchanges between Beijing and Washington reveal the contradictions inherent in attempting to shoehorn an authoritarian, mercantilist, and suspicious nation into a refurbished world system that ostensibly promotes democracy, open markets, multilateralism, while forcefully advancing American interests.
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