In February this year, United States President Donald Trump and his new administration imposed tariffs on all Chinese steel and aluminium entering the US market. It was the first direct move by Trump in his new term targeting Beijing.
China is the largest steel producer in the world. Even though direct US imports of Chinese steel have declined since Trump’s first round of tariffs, which the Biden administration largely kept in place, Chinese steel has continued to reach the American market indirectly, routed through third countries that buy and re-export it.
Beijing did not wait long to respond. China announced new tariffs of 15% on American imports of chicken, wheat, corn and cotton, and 10% on red meat and dairy products. The message was clear: trade tensions between the two powers are escalating again.
Behind these tariff battles lies a deeper American fear of China’s economic rise. After roughly two decades of rapid and sustained growth, Beijing has become a real contender for the top spot in the global economy. According to World Bank data for 2023, China’s GDP is around 17.8 trillion dollars compared with 27.7 trillion dollars for the United States.
But this economic competition is only the visible layer of a larger political and strategic struggle over who will shape and control the international order in the coming decades. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, Washington has enjoyed uncontested global primacy. No rival came close.
Today, even official US National Security Strategy documents acknowledge that China is the only actor with both the “intent and capability” to reshape the global system. From a Western perspective, the challenge is even more serious because China comes from a political and cultural space very different from the liberal Western model that has dominated the world order for decades.
This is why the US China rivalry is not simply a clash between two heavyweights. It is a structural contest that is helping to redesign the world we know. Unsurprisingly, it has become a central case study for international relations scholars.
One theory in particular has gained renewed attention: John Mearsheimer’s “offensive realism”, which carries a grim prediction for the future of the international system in general, and for US China relations in particular.
Liberal Optimism vs Realist Pessimism
Contemporary international relations theory is often divided between two broad schools: realism and liberalism (sometimes called idealism).
The liberal school, which grew out of European Enlightenment thought, rejects the idea that competition for power and war are the “natural state” of relations between states. Instead, liberals argue that the ultimate goal of all nations is stability, cooperation and peace, achieved through democracy, economic interdependence and international institutions.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, liberals enjoyed a historic moment of triumph. The collapse of the Eastern bloc, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the global spread of liberal democracy produced a wave of optimism. Some scholars even argued that history itself had reached its final stage.
The most famous expression of this mood was Francis Fukuyama’s book “The End of History and the Last Man”, which predicted that ideological conflict would fade as more countries adopted Western-style democracy and free market capitalism. If democracies do not fight one another, as liberals claimed, then a more peaceful world seemed possible.
This optimistic reading was even extended to China. Many believed that sustained economic growth would strengthen China’s middle class, which in turn would push the country toward democracy. The famous thesis of Barrington Moore, “no bourgeoisie, no democracy,” was frequently cited: no middle class, no democratic transition.
On the opposite side stand the realists, who insist that the international system is inherently competitive and conflict-prone. In their view, power is the central currency of world politics, and moral arguments play only a marginal role.
The roots of realism go back to Thucydides, who chronicled the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta. He argued that the war was driven by Sparta’s fear of a rising Athens. From this reading, modern scholar Graham Allison coined the term “Thucydides Trap” to describe the strong tendency toward war when a dominant power feels threatened by a rising one.
Over centuries, realist thinkers such as Niccolò Machiavelli and Thomas Hobbes developed a bleak view of political life. Hobbes described the “state of nature” as a war of all against all, and argued that security can only be achieved by power and control. Although Hobbes focused on individuals and the state, his logic applies to relations between states: in a dangerous world, every state must rely on its own capabilities.
However, early or “classical” realists were often criticised for attributing war mainly to human nature, leaders’ personalities, or geography. This opened the door for a new generation of realists to offer a more structural explanation.
From Structural Realism to Offensive Realism
The turning point came with Kenneth Waltz and his 1979 book “Theory of International Politics”, which laid the foundations for neorealism or structural realism.
Waltz argued that the international system is fundamentally anarchic: there is no central authority above states that can reliably protect them. Unlike domestic politics, which tends to be hierarchical and organised, the international sphere is decentralised. All states perform similar basic functions, but differ in capabilities, especially military and economic power.
For Waltz, the core concern of every state is survival and security. Because no state can be entirely sure of others’ intentions, each has strong incentives to secure itself, often by building military power or forming alliances.
Within realism, two main variants emerged:
- Defensive realists, such as Stephen Walt and Barry Buzan, argue that most states seek enough power to feel secure, not unlimited power. They believe that war is often too costly and that, in many situations, cooperation and restraint make more sense than expansion.
- Offensive realists, however, argue the opposite. From their perspective, security is never guaranteed, so states must constantly try to maximise power and widen the gap between themselves and potential rivals. The safest position is to become a regional or global hegemon, dominating one’s surroundings so thoroughly that no rival can threaten the state’s survival.
Here enters John Mearsheimer, the leading voice of offensive realism.
The Tragedy of Great Power Politics
In his book “The Tragedy of Great Power Politics”, Mearsheimer sets out five core features of the international system that push great powers toward competition and conflict:
- The system is anarchic: there is no higher authority to enforce rules or guarantee protection.
- Great powers possess offensive military capabilities that can harm or destroy one another.
- States can never be fully certain about other states’ intentions.
- The primary goal of every state is survival.
- States are rational actors, generally responding to costs and benefits rather than pure emotion.
Put together, these conditions create a world where great powers are almost forced to behave aggressively. Whenever a rival grows stronger, the dominant power fears losing its position and may move to contain, weaken or even attack that rival.
The nuclear age did not end this logic. During the Cold War, the nuclear arms race between Washington and Moscow illustrated how mutual fear, rather than goodwill, drove policy. Each side kept building more destructive weapons to preserve deterrence and avoid being outmatched.
At one point, the world came dangerously close to nuclear war in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when Soviet missiles were deployed to Cuba and the US responded with a naval blockade and direct threats. Only careful, rational calculation on both sides prevented catastrophe.
Eventually, mutual vulnerability led to a kind of “nuclear peace,” especially between the two superpowers themselves, even though smaller wars continued in the Global South.
US Strategy: Regional Hegemon and Global Balancer
After the Soviet Union collapsed, it seemed that the United States had an open path to absolute global dominance. In practice, according to Mearsheimer, even the US could not achieve global hegemony.
The reason is geography. The world is too large and too divided by oceans for any one state to control every region directly. Instead, what great powers can realistically aim for is regional hegemony: dominating their own neighbourhood while preventing rivals from doing the same in theirs.
This is exactly how Mearsheimer interprets US history:
- First, the United States expanded across North America, securing its borders and eliminating serious regional threats.
- Then, once its home front was safe, Washington intervened in the “Old World” to prevent any other great power from dominating Europe or Asia.
- From World War I and World War II to the Cold War, the US repeatedly acted as an “offshore balancer”, entering major conflicts to stop Germany, Japan or the Soviet Union from achieving regional hegemony.
The pattern is simple:
Control your own region, then stop others from controlling theirs.
China’s Rise Through the Lens of Offensive Realism
Mearsheimer’s core claim is that China will follow the same logic.
As China’s economic power has grown, it has begun to behave like any rising great power: trying to secure its regional environment and gradually pushing back against foreign influence, particularly that of the United States.
For Beijing, the first objective is clear: become the dominant power in East Asia and its surrounding waters. However, China’s neighbourhood is not empty. It is full of US allies and military bases:
- Taiwan, which Beijing considers a part of its territory but which benefits from US political and military backing.
- Japan and South Korea, both treaty allies of the US that host tens of thousands of American troops and numerous bases.
From the Chinese point of view, the United States is effectively sitting inside its strategic backyard. From the American point of view, this forward presence is necessary to contain China and reassure allies.
This is precisely the type of configuration that offensive realism sees as dangerous.
Economically, Mearsheimer argues, wealth is latent power. A state that becomes very rich can, over time, convert its economic strength into military might. That is what Washington fears and what Beijing is already doing.
The Military Dimension: From Shipyards to Missiles
Officially, the United States still spends far more on defence than any other country, with an estimated 883 billion dollars in 2024 and around 3.4% of GDP devoted to the military. However, China’s military budget has expanded dramatically over the last three decades, from roughly 25 billion dollars in 1995 to more than 200 billion officially today, with some estimates placing the real figure much higher when purchasing power and hidden spending are considered.
Most of this investment serves a clear purpose:
pushing US forces away from China’s shores and establishing Chinese control over its surrounding seas.
China’s navy is already the world’s largest by number of ships and continues to grow fast. Between 2014 and 2018, it launched more vessels than Germany, India, Spain and Britain combined. At the same time, Beijing has expanded and upgraded:
- Its air force, including long-range bombers such as the expected H-20 with an estimated range of 8,500 km.
- Its missile forces, including advanced hypersonic systems like the Dong Feng series, designed to threaten US bases and carrier groups in the Western Pacific.
Chinese strategy aims to build a powerful “anti access/area denial” zone, initially across the First Island Chain from Indonesia through the Philippines to Japan. Within this zone, Chinese forces would operate freely while foreign navies, especially the US Navy, would find their freedom of movement sharply restricted.
Some analysts believe that by around 2030, China could achieve a very strong position inside this area, turning it into a space where any US intervention in a crisis over Taiwan or the South China Sea becomes highly risky.
Notably, no US aircraft carrier has sailed close to Taiwan’s shores since 2008, which already hints at how much the risk calculation has changed.
Is a US China War Inevitable?
From Mearsheimer’s perspective, the logic points to one conclusion: a rising China will try to push the United States out of Asia, and the United States will resist. That clash of interests, he argues, makes a serious confrontation highly likely, perhaps even inevitable if both sides continue on their current course.
The sequence he envisions looks like this:
- China secures dominance in its regional “backyard” and pushes US forces further away.
- Once comfortable at home, Beijing begins projecting power more widely, just as the US did after consolidating North America.
- Eventually, China challenges US influence in other parts of the world, including areas Washington considers vital.
In this scenario, the world drifts toward a potentially devastating great power war that could reshape or even destroy the international order as we know it.
The Case Against Mearsheimer’s “Prophecy”
Not all scholars accept this dark forecast.
Critics of offensive realism argue that Mearsheimer:
- Overestimates the weight of military power, especially conventional forces.
- Underestimates the role of economic interdependence, sanctions, technological competition and other non-military tools.
- Does not fully consider the restraining effect of nuclear deterrence, as both the US and China are nuclear powers capable of inflicting catastrophic damage on one another.
Some suggest that China might try to outflank the US gradually, avoiding direct military confrontation, while expanding its influence through trade, technology and institutions. Others point to the complexity of China’s region, which includes other major players such as India, Japan and Indonesia, all with their own interests that could complicate Beijing’s path to regional hegemony.
If China chooses a more cautious course and succeeds in building power without provoking a direct clash, the result might be a new bipolar system, somewhat like the US Soviet rivalry but with far higher levels of economic integration. Such a world would still be tense and competitive, but perhaps more stable than a system dominated by one frustrated hegemon and one impatient challenger.
Between Prophecy and Choice
At its core, Mearsheimer’s warning is not a mystical prophecy but a stark application of realist logic:
in a world without a global authority, great powers fear each other, and power shifts are dangerous.
If his reading is correct, the structural forces pushing the United States and China toward confrontation are strong. Trade disputes, technology bans, arms races and alliance politics all look like early symptoms of a deeper struggle.
Yet history is not a straight line. Nuclear weapons, economic interdependence, domestic pressures and global public opinion all introduce new variables that did not exist in Thucydides’s time.
The fate of Mearsheimer’s “prophecy” will ultimately depend on decisions taken in Washington and Beijing over the coming years: whether leaders feed the spiral of fear or accept painful compromises to manage rivalry without sliding into war.
