President Donald Trump ran in the 2016, 2020 and 2024 elections on the promise that he would “Make America Great Again” — yet according to one geopolitical analyst, a main beneficiary of Trump’s policies has been America’s rival, China.
“I spent the past week in China and was struck by how many people there felt differently about this latest American war in the Middle East compared with the last major one,” The Washington Post’s Fareed Zakaria wrote on Monday. “During the Iraq War, Chinese strategists seemed almost gleeful at the spectacle of the U.S. mired in the desert. This time, officials, think-tank scholars and business leaders were mostly bewildered by America’s chaotic policy, worried about it and deeply uncertain about what President Donald Trump might do next.”
Zakaria pointed out that while some of this China needing the same oil and gas which passes through the Strait of Hormuz as the rest of the world, on a deeper level it’s because they realize their stability depends on “open sea lanes, functioning markets and steady rules of the game.”
He added, “Chinese officials repeatedly told me — echoing Xi Jinping — that the U.S. was taking the world back to the ‘law of the jungle.’ It’s less a moral critique than a strategic anxiety. In a globalized world, when the reigning hegemon becomes utterly unpredictable, it’s bad for everyone.”
Yet in a globalized world in which America no longer can be depended upon, China has abundant opportunities to position itself as a more reliable economic and military partner than the erratic United States. If that happens in the long-term, it will ultimately devastate America’s economy.
“All this threatens to end what has been called America’s ‘exorbitant privilege’ of having the world’s reserve currency,” Zakaria explained. “If that erodes, America will get a very painful shock when its government, and its households, can no longer borrow so much so cheaply.”
He concluded, “China is using this moment to burnish its reputation but mostly to build its power. If the correlation of forces moves steadily in its favor, if the U.S. continues to squander its global influence, one day Beijing might well decide that, after all, it does want to take on the mantle of the world’s leading power. And at that point, it will be too late for Washington to do anything about it.”
Zakaria is not the only foreign policy expert to worry that China is benefiting from America’s war with Iran. Respected security analyst Brandon Weichert, who has authored multiple books on China and Iran, declared Trump’s policy as a failure and that “China is very happy” with how things are playing out in Iran.
Arguing the U.S. and China “are working together smartly,” Weichert ended the message by saying that “what's happening, is he lost to China. Just like I warned he would if he did this stupid counter-blockade… Very predictable. People in MAGA don't understand that China has us by the short-hair b/c of trade [and] rare earths.”
The Bulwark’s Jonathan V. Last has made a similar point.
“When this war ends in ‘two or three weeks’ the Iranian regime will be more securely in power than it was before the war and it will have demonstrated the power of a strategic weapon,” Last said. “America will have lost. Iran will have won. Let’s examine the scope of our defeat and their victory.”
