Countering China's Great Game

The United States is in the midst of a new cold war with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and America is losing. That claim, at the core of Michael Soboliks new book Countering Chinas Great Game: A Strategy for American Dominance, challenges the Washington, D.C. conventional wisdom about U.S.-China relations. Officials in Washington are reacting to the CCP and playing defense. Like Americas efforts to contain the Soviet Union in the twentieth-century Cold War, the United States needs a strategic vision to overcome the CCP. Sobolik offers a plan for American victory over the CCP and presents a roadmap to sabotage the crux of the CCPs foreign policy: the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). At its core, the BRI is not an economic venture. It is a geopolitical gambit. Chinese leader Xi Jinpings project of the century has entered its second phase: leveraging yesterdays investments for todays political and military ends. Xi will never do away with the BRI because it is strengthening Beijings strategic position from Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands to Africa and Latin America. The BRI is the apotheosis of the CCPs grand strategy. America needs a blueprint to take it down. Sobolik provides this blueprint by identifying the BRIs core weakness: imperial overstretch. After identifying Chinas penchant for empire-building, he identifies the BRIs key weaknesses globally and traces them back to the CCPs vulnerabilities at home. Soboliks work offers policymakers a plan to go on the offense and win Americas new cold war.