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If Democrats ride a “blue wave” to reclaim the House in November’s mid-term elections – a distinct possibility – U.S. China policy will become dangerously volatile.
Can Washington and Beijing sustain their hard-won detente? On May 14, the two nations’ leaders agreed to pursue a relationship based on “constructive strategic stability” – a framework emphasizing managed competition and durable peace. Yet in Washington’s corridors of power, the machinery of confrontation grinds on. Congressional hawks sharpen legislative knives. Bureaucrats draft fresh sanctions. Beneath the surface calm of summit diplomacy, powerful currents are pulling in the opposite direction.
However, if Democrats ride a “blue wave” to reclaim the House in November’s mid-terms – a distinct possibility – the party will continue to struggle to formulate an alternative China policy. Three significant deficiencies plague the Democratic foreign policy apparatus: the extinction of grand strategic thinking among the U.S. technocratic elite, a domestic narrative vacuum that corrodes the Democratic Party’s diplomatic foundations, and the institutional chaos likely to follow a split government. Together, these factors will render U.S. China policy dangerously volatile after the mid-term elections.
