Alan Cafruny, the Henry Platt Bristol Chair of International Affairs and Professor of Government, recently published an article in the journal Russia in Global Affairs. “Can the United States Contain China? Contradictions of U.S. Trade Policy in the Trump Era and Beyond” focuses on what Cafruny calls “the increasingly erratic U.S. policy towards China” and whether the rivalry between the U.S. and China can be managed peacefully.
According to Cafruny, “The preoccupation with rhetoric and agency in the analysis of U.S. foreign policy overlooks the role of social forces and class interests.
“The confusion and vacillation in U.S. trade policy are amplified by the manifest dysfunctions of the Trump administration, but they ultimately reflect a deeper, double logic, expressing not only the ‘Thucydides trap’ in which a declining but still formidable hegemon contemplates submission to a rising power but also a crisis of neoliberalism,” he said.
