{"slug": "will-us-or-china-win-the-next-war-thats-the-wrong-question-to-ask", "title": "Will US or China win the next war? That’s the wrong question to ask", "summary": "A Foreign Affairs special issue on US-China rivalry argues that the focus on which country would win a war is misguided, advocating instead for avoiding conflict and addressing mutual threats like climate change. Contributors including Paul Scharre and Admiral Dennis Blair highlight technological competition in AI and robotics, with Scharre noting that new technologies erode US power and Blair asserting China's military build-up is offensive. The issue frames the contest as a clash between US-led maritime order and China's land-based revisionism.", "body_md": "# Will US or China win the next war? That’s the wrong question to ask\n\nWe should be asking how we can avoid conflict and work towards ending mutual threats, such as climate change and human injustice\n\n[technological rivalry](https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3360897/us-china-ai-rivalry-becomes-battle-export-competing-tech-governance-visions?module=inline&pgtype=article). At its core is a clash of strategic philosophies between the US-led order and China’s world view, which has propelled the latter’s rise to the world’s second great power.\n\nThe magazine’s contributors reflect a deeply ingrained Western strategic tradition, rooted in liberal realism, that says that the United States must maintain its primacy to underwrite global stability, defend democracy and retain its financial, technological and military power. Any challenger is inherently revisionist.\n\nLead essayist Paul Scharre argues that new technologies in drones, artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics challenge not only America’s traditional air and naval power but also allow states such as Iran to conduct asymmetric warfare, which erodes US hard and soft power.\n\nFormer US Pacific commander Admiral Dennis Blair reinforces this view, arguing that China’s military build-up is not defensive but designed to overturn the status quo in East Asia. He advocates deterrence, using US alliances, forward deployments and technological leadership to guarantee regional stability.\n\nAcademics Michael Beckley and Hal Brands apply the Anglo-American strategic views of land-based “heartland” (introduced by British geographer Halford Mackinder) and coast-based “rimland” (developed by Dutch-American political scientist Nicholas Spykman) in framing the US-China contest as an age-old struggle between incumbent maritime powers consolidating their positions against land-based revisionists.\n\nThey correctly argue that the “autocratic axis” is united less by ideology than by a shared resentment of US dominance, while the democratic coalition is fractured by competing interests and sometimes opposite views on how to engage Beijing.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/will-us-or-china-win-the-next-war-thats-the-wrong-question-to-ask", "canonical_source": "https://www.scmp.com/opinion/china-opinion/article/3362476/will-us-or-china-win-next-war-thats-wrong-question-ask?utm_source=rss_feed", "published_at": "2026-07-31 21:30:06+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-31 21:35:35.173229+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-policy", "ai-ethics"], "entities": ["Foreign Affairs", "Paul Scharre", "Dennis Blair", "Michael Beckley", "Hal Brands", "Halford Mackinder", "Nicholas Spykman"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/will-us-or-china-win-the-next-war-thats-the-wrong-question-to-ask", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/will-us-or-china-win-the-next-war-thats-the-wrong-question-to-ask.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/will-us-or-china-win-the-next-war-thats-the-wrong-question-to-ask.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/will-us-or-china-win-the-next-war-thats-the-wrong-question-to-ask.jsonld"}}