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Opinion
How Trump’s vision of a single-minded China containment has failed
Instead of disengaging to focus on China, Trump’s America is more deeply involved in Europe’s defence and the Middle East than before
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Wenran Jiang, the founding director of the China Institute and Mactaggart Research Chair Emeritus at the University of Alberta, is an adviser at the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy.
Half a year into Donald Trump’s second US presidency, a stark reality confronts Washington: the grand vision of an unprecedented focus on countering China, heralded by his strategists and supporters, has faltered.
The fundamental premise that America could dramatically disengage from Europe and the Middle East, freeing up resources for a singular containment strategy against Beijing, has collided against a resistant world. Instead of pivoting to pursue China, Trump finds himself owning the very conflicts he vowed to end, draining American power and granting Beijing breathing room.
Resolving the Ukraine war swiftly was a core pillar. As a presidential candidate, Trump boasted he could end the conflict “in 24 hours”, later revising that to weeks. Six months since he took office, Trump stands not as a peacemaker but as a reluctant wartime supplier. His initial threats to abandon Ukraine, aimed at forcing European capitulation or Kyiv’s concessions to Moscow, were met with fierce domestic and Nato resistance.
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