President Trump needs to study the Friend or Foe systems.
In times of war, aircraft identification systems are used by ground controllers to distinguish friend from foe, and it is obvious that the response would be very different in the two cases. President Trump needs to study such Friend or Foe systems, as his initial imposition of tariffs on Canada, Mexico and not just China, did not appear to make enough distinction between the first two and the third. Mexico and Canada are allies of the US, China an adversary. The additional tariffs levied only on China would not affect market confidence across the world in the way that tariffs on two friendly countries, Mexico and Canada had while they lasted. Unless carefully thought out beforehand, policy moves are at risk of causing what this column had warned about earlier, a Democratic sweep of House and Senate seats in the 2026 midterms. The US Senate has confirmed key choices of President Trump, each of whom in the national security side have strong and carefully thought out positions on issues. Positions which align with the overall views of the President.
A contingency such as a loss of the Republican majority in Congress would weaken the US President in the final stretch of his term in office. Were Trump to succeed in the transformative vision he has contemplated, he would rank in history among the great Presidents. It is undoubted that a carefully planned rate structure of tariffs comprises an important weapon of not just foreign trade, but security policies. Tariffs could be used, for example, to deepen the economic troubles confronting a known foe, and bring the country closer to the edge of bankruptcy as it seeks to protect its external markets through pumping in greater subsidies, usually concealed ones. President Clinton acted hastily in conferring Most Favoured Nation status on China in 1994 without sufficient safeguards, thereby opening the sluice gates to the takeover of much of US manufacturing capability by China, a process that has continued to date. Such a hollowing out of manufacturing has led to a weakening of US resilience in the event of a kinetic conflict.
Even a limited war such as the Russia-Ukraine war which began in 2022 has resulted in a potentially risky decline in US stockpiles of weapons as a consequence of the flood of military assistance that has gone to Ukraine since, and which is coming under control only after Donald Trump has been sworn in as the US President on January 20. President Trump understands the need for a ramping up of domestic production of items that would be essential in the winning of a kinetic conflict with the PRC on the issue of Taiwan. He has acted promptly to dismantle potential chokepoints that could be used by the Chinese in times of war, such as their now endangered control of the Panama Canal. Why such a countermeasure was not taken earlier, including when Biden was the President, remains unclear. The Biden administration and its predecessors had signed on to the Kishore Mahbubani doctrine that China would never go to kinetic war, even over Taiwan. His doctrine persists despite the CCP and President Xi himself publicly contradicting such confidence in the peaceful intentions of the PRC. Ignored by the proponents of the “peaceful rise” doctrine are multiple shows of force by the PLA, including with India and the Philippines. None such action seems to have deterred Mahbubani from repeating his assessment of PRC Intentions, a recent expression of which was in Bangalore. The Trump administration has not bought onto such a line, as witness the blunt warning to Panama to prise loose Chinese control of the canal or face possible kinetic action by the US. Other strategically significant fellow travellers on the Xi Jinping Belt and Road initiative are likely to be given similar treatment if they do not delink themselves from the BRI web. Prime Minister Modi from the start kept India away from the BRI, while Prime Minister Meloni of Italy far-sightedly announced in 2023 itself that Italy would no longer continue as a BRI partner.
War is never a palatable option, but in an era where hybrid wars proliferate, has become almost an inevitability. The way in which the PRC has been systematically building its influence, military presence and subsequently its control over key land and sea points across the world point to the reality of Xi preparing for a kinetic showdown with the US plus allies. Whether it be the Panama Canal, Gwadar, Djibouti, Taiwanese air and sea space or elsewhere, it is clear that preparations are being made for a kinetic conflict. It may be added that the PRC has in substance been at war with several democracies, not excluding the US and India, whether on the trade front by scooping out for itself their industrial capacity, or by using their print and online outlets of other countries to widen societal fault lines and exacerbate intra-country and inter-country tensions. Kinetic operations involving encroachments into the sea, air and land spaces of neighbouring countries have repeatedly taken place. President Trump was justified in levying fresh tariffs on all imports from China.
Where he was somewhat hasty was in not doing so only after the US had prepared alternative supply routes domestically or in friendly countries for critical raw materials and components that China was supplying. As a consequence, Xi Jinping was able to retaliate by imposing export restrictions on precisely such exports to the US. And rather than shut down USAID, it may be a better idea to use the agency to assist in funding friendly countries to build up their own capabilities so as to eliminate reliance for critical supplies on the PRC. Together with help from the US, such countries would be enabled by the US to build up their own capacities, so that the US develops secure supply chains for critical components and materials. India would be well positioned to take advantage of such an opportunity, including to reduce its substantial exposure to China in procuring several such items. Through the use of trade and tariffs as a weapon of war by the US, the PRC could be constrained to the needed level. USAID could emerge as a potent defence against PRC supply monopolies and the hybrid war carried out by the CCP. During the 1930s, it was said by many influential experts that Germany would never embark on a major conflict. In much the same way, several experts are these days parroting the fantasy that China would never embark on a fullscope war, including with Taiwan.
Were the responses of the Atlanticist powers to the rise of Germany in the 1930s to be repeated by the Indo-Pacific countries in the 2020s, what may follow has the potential of developing into a much larger tragedy than what took place in the 1930s until the surrender of Germany in 1945. Acceptable conduct on the part of the PRC can only be achieved by deterrence and not by appeasement. Diplomacy is effective when there is a strong stick reinforcing it, else it will remain fruitless. Donald Trump has been elected President of the US during the precise period when the world is in rising danger of slipping into the abyss of fullscope war. Such a reality needs always to be kept in mind by the billionaire President as he contemplates and subsequently makes major policy moves. Not only the US but all its actual and potential allies could suffer to the accompaniment of glee from Xi Jinping were the US President to do otherwise. Fortunately, the confirmation of the national security choices of the US President has equipped him with a team able to ensure that President Trump wins a new world war, should such an eventuality occur.