Foreign Policy > China

Washington Is Still Chasing Two Rabbits

If you chase two rabbits at once, you catch neither. That may be the simplest way to describe American foreign policy today. 

Travis Lynch | June 3, 2026

If you chase two rabbits at once, you catch neither. That may be the simplest way to describe American foreign policy today. For years, Washington has said that China is the most important strategic challenge of the twenty-first century. Yet in practice, it still behaves as if the unipolar moment of the 1990s never really ended.

On paper, the priorities seem clear. Republicans talk about competition with China. Democrats say much the same. Realists, nationalists, and even some traditional interventionists have accepted that the future of American power will not be decided merely in the Middle East, but in the Indo-Pacific, in supply chains, advanced technologies, strategic industries, semiconductors, shipbuilding, and economic competition with Beijing.

But as soon as a crisis flares up in another corner of the world, the old memory of American foreign policy comes alive again. Washington speaks in a new language. It talks about “America First,” strategic focus, burden-sharing with allies, and the end of endless wars. Yet its practical instinct is often the same old instinct: a return to the role of global policeman.

The issue here is not merely a contradiction in rhetoric. It is a contradiction in strategy.

The rise of China was not simply the addition of one more rival to America’s list of concerns. It called into question the very foundations of America’s view of the post-Cold War world. For three decades, the United States saw itself as the principal guarantor of the international order -- an order resting on American military superiority, the security of allies, the management of regional crises, and a broad........

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