The China hawks are an industrious bunch. Full of ideas and financing, they are never short of time and fill it with lengthy publications from their comfy sinecures arguing about what Washington “needs” to do to confront the “China Threat.”

One of the most notable of these comes curtesy of life-long government employee, Robert D. Blackwill. A creature of the swamp through and through, having served in every capacity imaginable from diplomat to ambassador, Harvard professor to NSC staffer, lobbyist and CFR member, none are more qualified to articulate an option about what Washington should do to win its newest self-selected battle for world supremacy.

Indeed, Blackwill has done so often and at length. One of the more readable and interesting arrived in 2020. Having not released an update since then, it seemed appropriate to go ahead and provide a glimpse into how the plans of Washington hawks like Blackwill are going half a decade on.

Framed as a series of 22 recommendations, evaluations will be given as follows: 0 being not accomplished at all, 1 being totally accomplished, and everything in between representing the degree to which it has succeeded or failed.

Note: we will set aside the first six points, which deal with things to be done strictly within the United States, focusing instead on points 7-22, which provide the policy prescriptions dealing with actions to be taken abroad—interested readers can check and see for themselves that points 1-6 include such not-insane and not-impossible gems like:

“The United States should mobilize all instruments of its national power to skillfully manage its economy; modernize its basic infrastructure; reform its immigration system; reduce its entitlement spending; rehabilitate the structure and quality of its education system; and address the serious political, economic, and societal divisions within the country.”

That said, let’s dig in to a typical internationalist hawk’s prescriptions for defeating China:

• Point 7: Don’t be diverted from China by regional problems around the globe. A failure so obvious it scarcely needs comment: 0
• Point 8: Intensify all aspects of alliances with European and Asian partners. Other than continuing to militarize East Asia, placing new launchers and equipment in the northernmost reaches of the Philippines for example, economic and diplomatic relations have been increasingly strained—particularly in Europe: .25
• Point 9: Essentially a recapitulation of the China Pivot’s call to refocus deployments to East Asia. Again, the failure here is so obvious it scarcely needs comment: 0
• Point 10: Push China adopt reciprocity in all aspects of the economic relationship. Pushing has happened, but it has been effectively fruitless—if anything, President Donald Trump’s attempts to throw Washington’s weight around have resulted in exposing just how little leverage it has over Beijing (particularly telling was Trump’s quick climb-down following Beijing’s restrictions on rare earths, over which it has a virtually monopoly on processing): 0
• Point 11: Washington should stop its public rebukes of China’s political, economic, and social practices, as they will accomplish nothing but a furthering, unnecessary souring of the relationship between Beijing and Washington. Despite recent more conciliatory comments in the face of mounting problems, since entering his second term Trump and his highest officials (like Rubio and Navarro) have had taken numerous shots at China’s economic structure, but this is still an improvement over Trump’s first term as well as that of his predecessor, Joe Biden: .5
• Point 12: Calls on Washington to stay the course regarding the established relationship between Washington and Taipei, strictly adhering to strategic ambiguity and the one China policy. This is all basically sound—particularly if just walking away is deemed not a viable option. Tellingly, this section contains the unsurprising admission: “In eighteen consecutive unclassified war games simulating U.S.-China military conflict over Taiwan, the United States reportedly has never prevented China from conquering the island, which profoundly calls into question the persuasiveness of U.S. deterrence on this issue in Beijing.” Washington has definitely walked back its language on Taiwan since the nadir of the Biden days, but its push for enormous amounts of arms sales, as well as the continued presence of hundreds of U.S. military personal on Taiwan, weigh heavily in the opposite direction: .25
• Point 13: Advocates Washington start systematically retaliating against “Chinese” cyberattacks, and that it seek to develop with Beijing agreed rules of the road regarding cyber conflict. This kind of gray zone activity presents special problems, and the authors agree that misattribution is likely to occur, and that retaliation against Chinese firms, individuals, et cetera, is likely to be harmful to relations—their argument that the costs of not doing this are too high is left undeveloped, and the idea that private American firms need to be cajoled into doing more smacks of something that needs resisting. At the same time, it is good that the authors advocate Washington and Beijing “attempting to concur on definitions and understandings of, terms including defensive and offensive operations, cyberattack, cyber weapons, and even cyberspace, for which no mutual understanding exists. The two sides should formally pledge to avoid cyber activity that interferes with the operations of each other’s critical infrastructure and banking systems.” All great, but so far there has been no movement on this front that we know of: 0
• Point 14: Eliminate China’s influence operations in the United States and foster non-state Chinese media via grants. Strengthening FARA, as the authors recommend, would be welcome, but the Trump administration is going in the opposite direction there. Not that using it to selectively target China while ignoring Israel, the UAE, et cetera, would be any better. As for handing out more aid money for dubious projects, that’s a hard pass: 0
• Point 15: Avoid making the region all about China by focusing on regional allies. To the extent that is possible, the Trump administration has been doing that, solidifying and clarifying defense pacts and bringing new capabilities into the region. Neither it or the Biden administration before it have made moves toward the G-2 the authors fear: 1
• Point 16: Work to undermine China’s growing geoeconomic predominance, especially in East Asia. In typical CFR style, the authors suggest doing everything Washington has been actively not doing for over a decade: join the Asian Infrastructure Bank (AIB) and join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP)—formerly known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Barack Obama-era idea of which was sound enough, write the rules for the next century’s most important economic zone and then exclude and handicap China as much as possible. Trump killed that agreement in 2016 without even knowing what its purpose was. This is all just too silly, and with China dominating both, as well as being the most important trading partner for all involved: 0
• Point 17: Reconstruct Presdient George H.W. Bush’s “Coalition of the Willing.” Nowhere on the horizon, with Europe moving decidedly in the opposite direction: 0
• Point 18: Make concessions to Moscow in order to make sure they don’t grow too close with Beijing. Yeah, about that: 0
• Point 19: Interestingly, the authors propose that Washington approach Beijing about helping with North Korea’s nuclear program—dropping demands of denuclearization in favor of a nuclear pause in exchange for sanctions relief. That would actually be great, and there was a brief moment in Trump’s first term where it looked possible, but it seems far away now, and there are no signs of change on the horizon: 0
• Point 20: With the backing of all its clients Washington should approach Beijing about an understanding in the South China Sea. The kind of “understanding” the authors have in mind is one that sees China cease its status quo interrupting activities, establishing outposts, making claims, leaving Washington free to dominate its accustomed territories. Tellingly, one of the authors’ fears, was that such an agreement would only be possible if Washington were to privately hint that it would itself take an active stake in such disputes, has already come and gone, with no change in China’s behavior at all: 0
• Point 21: Launch an urgent bilateral talk with Beijing about a comprehensive climate plan. Nothing could be further down the list of priorities: 0
• Point 22: “As Washington implements policies to deal with the threatening aspects of the rise of Chinese power and gives Beijing incentives for moderation through the policies enumerated above, it should also construct a plausible path of classic diplomacy with China that would seek to ameliorate the growing tension between the two countries.” The hawks couldn’t be more delusional—“Hey, I know we’re trying to knee-cap and surround you at every turn, but can’t we be friends?” Unlikely: 0

And has been just seen in Iran, the more Washington tries to turn the screws on China, the more likely it is to result in more own goals on the part of Washington.

Beijing can’t be bought or bulled—again, see the example of Iran.

Not that such failures deter Washington’s hawks.

After all, being so unwilling to accept the reality of a world after unipolarity is one of the key requirements of getting and keeping a job in official Washington circles.