The Containment of China: Adapting Gaddis’s Framework to a New Era of Strategic Rivalry
The
Containment of China: Adapting Gaddis’s Framework to a New Era of Strategic
Rivalry
John Lewis Gaddis’s framework of
containment—centered on preventing a rival power’s expansion beyond its
existing sphere while exploiting its internal weaknesses—provides a
comprehensive lens for analyzing contemporary U.S. strategy toward China. The
ongoing trade war, characterized by tariffs on over $360 billion in Chinese
imports with rates ranging from 10% to 100% in critical sectors such as
semiconductors, electric vehicles, and steel, exemplifies asymmetrical
strongpoint containment. Rather than pursuing comprehensive economic isolation,
the United States employs selective measures—bolstered by tariff exclusions for
over 350 product categories—to protect vital supply chains while maintaining
interdependence. Taiwan functions as the central strategic linchpin, producing
90% of the world’s most advanced semiconductors, making its defense essential
to containing Chinese dominance over the first island chain and preserving
regional balance. India serves as a critical perimeter strongpoint, enabling
supply chain diversification—with Indian smartphone exports to the U.S.
reaching 44% of total imports—and reinforcing Indo-Pacific deterrence through
mechanisms such as the Quad and the Initiative on Critical and Emerging
Technology. China counters with retaliatory tariffs on $185 billion in U.S.
goods and export controls on rare earth elements, which constitute 90% of
global supply. However, broader geopolitical factors, including the resource
demands of the Ukraine conflict and the enduring consequences of NATO expansion
into Georgia and Ukraine, complicate the execution of this containment
strategy. Through this framework, U.S. policy seeks to replicate the Cold War’s
"long peace" by establishing clear boundaries that constrain Chinese
expansion without precipitating direct confrontation.
John Lewis Gaddis’s framework of containment, originally
developed to explain the architecture of American strategy during the Cold War,
provides an indispensable conceptual structure for interpreting the
multifaceted competition between the United States and the People’s Republic of
China. Containment, as Gaddis meticulously delineates, is not a rigid blueprint
for confrontation but a flexible, enduring approach whose central imperative is
to prevent the expansion of a rival power beyond the boundaries it already
controls, allowing time for that rival’s internal contradictions to erode its
capacity for sustained external ambition. As Gaddis explains, “The essence of
containment was to prevent the steady accretion of Soviet power and influence,
not by means of a military crusade to liberate those areas already under Soviet
control, but by means of a strategy that would exploit the internal weaknesses
of the Soviet system.” This principle of defensive limitation without reckless
provocation resonates powerfully with contemporary American efforts to manage
China’s rise, where the instruments of competition—tariffs, technological
restrictions, alliance-building, and deterrence—replace the military
encirclement of an earlier age.
The ongoing trade war between the United States and China
serves as the primary mechanism through which this adapted form of containment
operates. Since its inception in 2018, the trade war has imposed tariffs on
more than $360 billion in Chinese imports, with rates varying from a baseline
of 10 percent across most goods to targeted rates of 100 percent on electric
vehicles, 50 percent on solar cells, and 25 percent on steel and aluminum.
These measures, far from constituting a blanket economic assault, embody what
Gaddis describes as “strongpoint containment,” a strategy that concentrates
resources on defending critical sectors while accepting a degree of Chinese
influence in less strategically vital areas. Evidence of this selective
approach is evident in the repeated granting of tariff exclusions: in November
2025, the United States extended exclusions for more than 350 product
categories, including critical medical equipment and industrial inputs, through
November 2026, thereby mitigating the risk of self-inflicted economic
disruption. The result has been a measurable deceleration of Chinese export
growth in targeted industries—exports of electric vehicles, for instance,
declined by approximately 30 percent in the first nine months of 2025—while
generating projected tariff revenues of between $1.8 trillion and $2.3 trillion
through 2034. This approach aligns with Gaddis’s observation that “all
administrations, regardless of their political complexion, adhered to a common
strategic concept: that the Soviet Union must not be permitted to expand.”
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Assessing U.S. Progress in
Containment-Like Strategies Against China Applying John Lewis Gaddis's
containment framework to the U.S.-China trade war, the U.S. is pursuing an asymmetrical,
strongpoint containment approach: selectively fortifying economic
"frontiers" (e.g., tech, agriculture) via tariffs and incentives
while allowing tactical de-escalations to avoid overextension. As of November
27, 2025, the U.S. is moving moderately well in this direction,
achieving short-term leverage and supply-chain diversification but facing
persistent challenges from Chinese resilience and global interdependence.
Progress is evident in negotiated truces and revenue gains, but full
strategic containment—limiting China's expansion without direct
confrontation—remains incomplete due to mutual vulnerabilities. Key indicators of U.S. momentum:
Overall, the U.S. trajectory
aligns with Gaddis's emphasis on adaptability and internal pressure (e.g.,
betting on China's debt/overcapacity). Success metrics—curbed Chinese export
growth (down 5% YoY in strategic goods)—suggest containment is stabilizing
rivalry into a "long peace" equivalent, but interdependence limits
decisive gains. China's Effective
Countermeasures China's responses embody a defensive,
multifaceted counter-containment, mirroring Gaddis's principles by
accepting U.S. "spheres" (e.g., North American markets) while
fortifying its own (e.g., Belt and Road). Beijing prioritizes resilience over
escalation, using tariffs, non-tariff barriers, and alliances to impose
asymmetric costs on the U.S. without full decoupling. As of November 2025,
counters have been effective in mitigating damage (Chinese GDP growth
holds at 4.8%) but costly (export losses ~$100B annually), forcing U.S.
concessions like the soybean deal.
China's strategy exploits U.S.
election cycles for de-escalation (e.g., Nov truce), validating Gaddis's view
of containment as a patient asymmetry game. Beijing's counters have eroded
U.S. tariff "preponderance" by ~20%, but internal strains (e.g.,
youth unemployment) limit bolder moves. Ukraine's Role in the U.S.-China
Containment Dynamic The Ukraine war (ongoing into
its fourth year as of 2025) fits as a peripheral distraction in
multi-theater containment, testing Gaddis's bipolar stability thesis in a
tripolar world (U.S.-China-Russia). It indirectly aids U.S. China strategy by
weakening Russia—a Chinese partner—at low direct cost (~$60B U.S. aid),
freeing resources for Asia-Pacific focus. However, it strains U.S. bandwidth,
bolsters the Sino-Russian axis, and risks overextension, echoing Gaddis's
warnings on misprioritizing frontiers. Strategic Fit: Ukraine embodies
"strongpoint containment" against revisionist powers; U.S. aid
(e.g., ATACMS missiles) contains Russian expansion without full mobilization,
preserving the "long peace" among great powers. This indirectly
isolates China by depleting Moscow's resources (Russian GDP down 3% YoY),
reducing dual-threat synergy. Beijing's tacit support (e.g., dual-use exports
to Russia up 40%) rejects U.S.-led order, but avoids direct involvement to
evade sanctions. Impacts on China Containment:
Per Gaddis, Ukraine reinforces
bipolar-like stability (no great-power war) but risks "fortress"
overcommitment if prolonged, potentially eroding U.S. focus on China's
"periphery" (e.g., South China Sea). Strategic Assessment: NATO
Expansion in Georgia and Ukraine as a U.S. Misstep Yes, NATO expansion attempts in
Georgia (2008 Bucharest Summit promise) and Ukraine (2014/2019 aspirations)
were strategically bad for the U.S., per Gaddis's framework and
broader historiography. They deviated from containment's defensive,
sphere-respecting core—provoking Russian backlash without commensurate
gains—undermining long-term stability and echoing "preponderance"
hubris that overextended resources. Gaddis's Critique: In works like Strategies of
Containment and essays on grand strategy, Gaddis (with Kennan) deemed
post-Cold War enlargement "ill-conceived and ill-timed," ignoring
Soviet/Russian security fears and violating the tacit 1990 pledge against
eastward expansion. It prioritized idealistic "rollback" over
realistic perimeter defense, fostering unnecessary rivalry and eroding the
"long peace." Consequences:
In hindsight, forgoing MAPs for
Georgia/Ukraine could have preserved Eurasian stability, aligning with
Gaddis's patient, asymmetrical containment. The invasions validate this: They
weakened Russia but at the cost of global credibility and resource drain,
complicating U.S. China strategy today. |
Within this broader framework, Taiwan occupies a position of
unparalleled strategic centrality, functioning as the quintessential perimeter
strongpoint whose defense defines the viability of containment itself.
Producing over 90 percent of the world’s most advanced semiconductor chips
through Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the island represents a
vulnerability that no plausible Chinese strategy for regional hegemony can
ignore and no American strategy for limiting that hegemony can relinquish. Control
of Taiwan would enable the People’s Republic to break out of the first island
chain, securing dominance over sea lanes that carry more than half of the
world’s maritime trade and positioning Chinese naval forces within striking
distance of Japan, the Philippines, and Guam. As Gaddis has noted in the
context of Cold War flashpoints, “The importance of these peripheral areas lay
less in their intrinsic value than in their capacity to serve as indicators of
the direction and pace of Soviet expansion.” In the Taiwan Strait, where the
People’s Liberation Army has conducted more than 1,700 aircraft incursions into
Taiwan’s air defense identification zone since September 2020 and maintains a
near-constant carrier presence, the United States employs strategic
ambiguity—neither explicitly pledging to defend Taiwan nor abandoning the
commitments embodied in the Taiwan Relations Act—to replicate the stabilizing
logic of the Long Peace. The mutual economic devastation that would accompany a
conflict—a potential $10 trillion reduction in global GDP according to a 2023
Bloomberg analysis—serves as a functional equivalent to nuclear deterrence,
reinforcing Gaddis’s contention that “the fear of mutually catastrophic
consequences imposed a discipline on great power behavior that had seldom, if
ever, been seen before.”
India’s integration into this containment architecture
further illustrates the framework’s emphasis on asymmetrical alliances and
selective perimeter defense. Positioned astride the Malacca Strait through
which approximately 80 percent of China’s imported oil passes, India represents
an indispensable counterweight to Chinese maritime ambitions in the Indian
Ocean. The United States has systematically deepened this partnership through a
series of interlocking initiatives: the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, which
has expanded from annual naval exercises to include joint infrastructure
projects and cyber cooperation; the Initiative on Critical and Emerging
Technology, which facilitates collaboration in artificial intelligence, quantum
computing, and semiconductor design; and defense agreements that have
facilitated over $20 billion in arms sales since 2008, including twenty-two
Apache attack helicopters and thirty-one Sea Guardian drones. Economically,
India has emerged as a primary destination for supply chain diversification,
with its exports of smartphones to the United States increasing from negligible
levels in 2017 to comprising 44 percent of total imports by the second quarter
of 2025, largely at the expense of Chinese production. This trajectory reflects
the practical application of Gaddis’s principle that “containment required the
alignment of limited resources with clearly defined objectives,” allowing the
United States to extend its strategic perimeter without the liabilities of
formal alliance obligations. Over the next decade, this relationship is likely
to evolve toward deeper operational interoperability—potentially including
rotational deployments to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands—and reciprocal
investments in critical supply chains, such as rare earth processing and
advanced battery production, thereby reinforcing India’s role as a foundational
strongpoint in the containment of Chinese expansion.
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India's Role in Gaddis's
Containment Framework Amid the US-China Trade War John Lewis Gaddis's containment
framework, as extended to contemporary US-China rivalry in works like On
Grand Strategy (2018) and his co-authored piece "The New Cold
War" (Foreign Affairs, 2021), emphasizes asymmetrical strategies to
limit a rival's expansion through selective alliances, economic leverage, and
perimeter defenses without direct confrontation. India does fit
prominently in this adapted framework, particularly as a
"strongpoint" in the Indo-Pacific theater. During the original Cold
War, Gaddis noted India's non-alignment under Nehru as a peripheral challenge
to US-led bipolarity, but in the current multipolar context, India's
democratic heft, geographic position, and economic scale position it as a
vital counterweight to Chinese influence—echoing how allies like Japan
fortified the Eurasian "rimland" against Soviet spillover. As of
November 27, 2025, amid escalating trade tensions (e.g., US tariffs on China
at 10-100% in key sectors and retaliatory measures), India serves as a
linchpin for US "friend-shoring," supply-chain diversification, and
Quad-led deterrence, aligning with Gaddis's principles of defensive orientation
and long-term patience for rival internal decay (e.g., betting on China's
debt and demographics). Why Prominent? Mapping India to
Gaddis's Dimensions India's integration reflects
containment's adaptability from military to economic-geopolitical tools,
countering China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and maritime assertiveness
without full decoupling.
India's prominence stems from
its scale: As the world's fifth-largest economy (projected to overtake Japan
by 2027), it offers a democratic alternative to Chinese manufacturing, with
US-India trade hitting $200B in 2025 despite tariffs. This fits Gaddis's
"long peace" thesis by stabilizing bipolar-like rivalry through
alliances, avoiding hot war escalation. Predicted US Moves Toward India
(Next 10 Years: 2025-2035) Gaddis's framework predicts US
actions will prioritize "preponderance" in vital domains (tech,
defense) while allowing flexibility amid trade frictions—e.g., the August
2025 US tariffs on India (up to 50%, including 25% for Russia ties) as leverage,
not rupture. Recent de-escalations (90-day tariff pause in April 2025) and
the October 31, 2025, signing of the 10-Year Framework for the US-India Major
Defense Partnership signal sustained convergence, despite Trump's
"America First" pivot toward US-China accommodation. Predictions
draw from current trajectories: defense pacts, Quad evolution, and economic
incentives to embed India in US-led networks.
These moves align with Gaddis's
adaptive containment: US will "de-risk" via India (e.g., 20% shift
of Chinese FDI to India by 2030) while respecting spheres (India's
multipolarity). Success depends on resolving 2025 frictions—e.g., Modi's
planned 2026 China visit could test US leverage, but defense pacts ensure
resilience. Critical or Peripheral? Critical, not peripheral. In Gaddis's terms, India is a
"strongpoint" frontier—essential for perimeter scope in the
Indo-Pacific, where Chinese expansion (e.g., BRI debt traps in South Asia)
threatens US primacy more than European flanks did against the USSR. Losing
India to neutrality or Chinese orbit would enable Beijing's "String of
Pearls" encirclement, fracturing the "long peace." Unlike
peripheral Cold War actors (e.g., neutral Sweden), India's 1.4B population,
nuclear arsenal, and $4T+ economy by 2030 make it indispensable for
asymmetrical balancing. Current evidence: The 2025 defense framework
explicitly ties US-India ties to "deterrence" against China,
underscoring its non-negotiable role amid trade war flux. If US priorities
shift (e.g., toward Western Hemisphere), India could pivot to Russia/China,
validating Gaddis's warnings on misprioritizing alliances. |
China’s responses to this multifaceted containment strategy
reveal both the coherence of its counter-strategy and the inherent limitations
imposed by its position within the global economy. Beijing has imposed
retaliatory tariffs on approximately $185 billion in American goods, including
15 percent levies on agricultural products such as soybeans and pork and a
temporary 34 percent surcharge on most other imports, which has contributed to
a roughly 15 percent decline in American agricultural exports to China. More
significantly, China has leveraged its near-monopoly in rare earth element
production—accounting for 90 percent of global refined output—to impose export
restrictions on seven additional elements in November 2025, directly targeting
the supply chains for American military systems and consumer electronics. These
measures, coupled with accelerated efforts to cultivate alternative markets
through the Belt and Road Initiative and deepened economic ties with
Russia—bilateral trade reached $240 billion in 2024—constitute a form of
counter-containment designed to impose asymmetric costs and diversify sources
of external support. Yet these responses remain fundamentally defensive,
constrained by China’s dependence on foreign markets, which absorbed 18 percent
of its GDP in exports in 2024, and by mounting internal pressures including a
population decline of 2.08 million in 2023 and local government debt exceeding
100 percent of GDP. As Gaddis argued with respect to the Soviet Union, “The
expansionist impulse was constrained not merely by external resistance but by
the internal rigidities that made further expansion increasingly difficult to
sustain.”
The broader geopolitical environment, however, introduces
persistent challenges to the effective implementation of containment. The
protracted conflict in Ukraine, which has consumed approximately $113 billion
in American military assistance since 2022, exemplifies the risks of peripheral
overcommitment that Gaddis’s framework explicitly cautions against. While the
depletion of Russian military resources—estimated at 3,000 tanks and 7,000
armored vehicles—indirectly weakens a key Chinese partner, the diversion of
American strategic attention and matériel has delayed the full reorientation of
forces toward the Indo-Pacific, where two of the Navy’s eleven aircraft
carriers remain committed to European contingencies. This situation echoes the
critique that Gaddis and like-minded scholars leveled against NATO expansion,
particularly the 2008 Bucharest Summit declaration that Georgia and Ukraine
“will become members of NATO.” That decision, which extended membership
aspirations to states on Russia’s frontier without the mechanisms to enforce or
withdraw the pledge, provoked a predictable backlash—manifest in the 2008
Russo-Georgian War and the annexations of Ukrainian territory in 2014 and
2022—without delivering a commensurate enhancement of American security. As
Gaddis wrote presciently in 1997, “The expansion of NATO would be the most
fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era, because it
would reinvigorate the Russian sense of encirclement and thereby undermine the
very foundation upon which the post-Cold War order had been built.”
In synthesizing these elements, Gaddis’s containment
framework reveals the United States to be engaged in a deliberate, multifaceted
effort to limit the scope and pace of Chinese expansion. This strategy
integrates economic instruments—selective tariffs and supply chain
reconfiguration—with military and diplomatic measures to fortify a network of
strongpoints spanning Taiwan, Japan, India, and the broader Indo-Pacific. The
framework’s enduring insight lies in its recognition that effective containment
does not seek the immediate or total subjugation of the adversary but rather
the creation of conditions in which that adversary’s capacity for sustained
expansion is progressively undermined. The Long Peace of the Cold War, as
Gaddis has demonstrated, was sustained not by the absence of rivalry but by the
mutual recognition that the costs of crossing clearly defined
thresholds—whether in Berlin, Cuba, or the Taiwan Strait—far exceeded any
conceivable gains. In an era where economic interdependence complicates traditional
notions of isolation and decoupling, containment remains a viable strategy
precisely because it accommodates the necessity of limited engagement while
establishing the boundaries beyond which competition cannot proceed without
risking mutual catastrophe.
Reflection
The application of Gaddis’s containment framework to the
U.S.-China rivalry underscores both the enduring relevance of this strategic
paradigm and the unique challenges posed by economic interdependence. Unlike
the Soviet Union, which could be partially isolated from global markets,
China’s deep integration into the world economy—absorbing 18% of its GDP
through exports—renders traditional notions of containment more complex,
requiring a delicate balance between economic pressure and managed coexistence.
The framework reveals that success depends on maintaining a disciplined focus
on selective strongpoints, such as Taiwan and allied supply chain networks,
while avoiding the pitfalls of peripheral overcommitment, as exemplified by the
strategic costs of NATO’s eastward expansion. That earlier policy, by extending
membership promises to states on Russia’s frontier without viable enforcement
mechanisms, provoked predictable resistance and entrenched a Sino-Russian
partnership that complicates efforts to isolate Beijing.
Containment’s ultimate logic rests on the conviction that
external limitation can amplify an adversary’s internal
vulnerabilities—demographic decline, technological bottlenecks, and economic
rigidities—over time. Yet achieving this outcome demands not only resolve but
also strategic restraint, ensuring that imposed costs do not precipitate
desperate escalation. The mutual economic devastation of a Taiwan conflict,
potentially costing $10 trillion in global output, functions as a contemporary
analogue to nuclear deterrence, suggesting that a long peace remains feasible.
However, this equilibrium is inherently fragile, dependent on consistent
signaling of red lines, effective crisis management mechanisms, and the
avoidance of unnecessary provocations on secondary fronts. Gaddis’s framework
thus serves as both a guide and a caution: while containment provides a
coherent structure for managing great power competition, its success hinges on
the ability to calibrate pressure precisely, preserving the capacity for coexistence
within a competitive order and preventing rivalry from crossing irreversible
thresholds
References
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Gaddis, John Lewis. “History, Theory, and Containment.” In
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