2.     Like the eagle in the Great Seal of the United States, the United States offers China the choice of the olive branch of cooperation or the thunderbolt of confrontation.  For decades, the United States has cooperated with China and aided in its growth assuming that it will become a responsible stakeholder of the rules-based system.  The assumption was wrong: China is today an adversary and will remain one under the leadership of Xi Jinping.  Selective cooperation with China is still possible and necessary.   But it is confrontation that sets the tone of the relationship.

3.     The goals of the United States in this confrontation are to limit China’s capacity to harm the interests of the United States and the Free World; to impose such costs on China that it will restrain or abandon its malign policies; and to position the U.S. and the Free World to prevail against China in the current confrontation and in a possible future conflict.

4.     Among the means of the China confrontation policy are: Increased defense spending; selective economic decoupling;  imposing meaningful costs for malign actions; forming defensive military groupings among countries threatened by Chinese expansionism; calling out China’s human rights violations and illegal economic practices; and opposing its attempts to censure criticism in the Free World.

5.     The United States is also challenged by countries in the League of Dictators that include major regional powers Russia and Iran, as well as North Korea, Venezuela, and Cuba.  These countries frequently make common cause with China.  Importantly, after the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, ISIS and Al Qaeda must also be added to this list.

6.     To face China and the League of Dictators, the United States needs to lead a Free World coalition of allies and partners.  Our closest allies will always be nations strongly committed to democracy.  But membership in the Free World network must be open to any country opposed to China’s designs.

7.     In this confrontation, the Free World led by the United States needs to build a broad-based, diverse, and flexible network of alliances and partnerships.  Some already exist, like NATO and the Quad.  Others need to be created, like Democracy-10 and Technology-12.  Also necessary is a Free World economic alliance with an Article V so China cannot use economic blackmail against another country the way it did against Australia without incurring retaliation.

8.     The Free World network will collaborate to defend and revitalize the Rules-Based System.  Since World War II, this system has helped prevent another world war.  It has also contributed to an unprecedented increase in prosperity and in the number of democratic countries.  But its institutions need updating and its members need to do better in burden-sharing.

9.     The United States should have an Open Invitation policy toward Russia.  It is in the United States’s interest to work out mutually acceptable arrangements with Russia if it abandons its aggressive, expansionist, and revisionist policies, distances itself from China, and supports the United States and the Free World.  This is not possible today but is more likely in the future with Russia than with China.  Long-term strategic trends are unfavorable to Russia.  It has a declining population, a low GDP per capita, and a technologically unsophisticated economy dependent on hydrocarbon exports in a world moving away from them.  Someday, the Russian people will force their leaders to follow the path of the former Communist countries of Eastern Europe which joined the Free World and adopted political and economic reforms that lead to prosperity. Also, an expansionist China with 1.4 billion people will eventually become an acute strategic threat to Russia with 140 million people and its sparsely populated, yet resource-rich Siberia neighboring China.  There is a precedent for such a switch:  Communist Russia was initially allied with Hitler but later came to the side of the allies.

10.  In this environment of increased tension, the United States must significantly increase dialogue with China and the League of Dictators to prevent accidental military conflict. 

China’s actions are a grave threat to America’s security, freedom, and prosperity.  But it is not the first time that America faces a totalitarian foe that seems formidable and has dreams of world domination.  America won against such adversaries in hot and cold wars, in World War I, World War II, the Cold War, and the War on Terror.  And she will win again.

Mr. Negrea is a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council.  He held leadership positions in the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff and Economic Bureau during the Trump Administration.

Image: Reuters