The United States and China are locked into strategic competition that complicates international policy choices for the rest of the world. How do countries like Australia, Japan and other middle powers balance their security interests alongside their economic interests and avoid seeing them as a trade-off?
Can countries avoid a binary choice between the United States and China?
Economic policy was never separate from security considerations. But economics and security are increasingly entangled in a way that is damaging to both, creating a dangerous trade-off and a negative feedback loop.
The risks of international exchange are beginning to dominate the calculus for some policymakers as the world becomes more complex and uncertain. There are three main reasons for this: the rise of China, the rise in protectionism in the United States, and new technologies for which international rules don’t exist.
Strategic deployment of regional and plurilateral coalitions can help create rules from the bottom up that engage both China and the United States. At a time when the multilateral system is under threat, regional and plurilateral initiatives and agreements need to complement, preserve and strengthen multilateralism, not substitute for it.
