Should US Confront Chinese Belligerence With Force or Diplomacy?

America and the West must come to terms with Chinese belligerence and confront its spread through a grand, Cold War-style strategy, former government officials and China experts said last Friday at the Richard Nixon Foundation's Global Strategy Summit in Washington, D.C., – but despite the agreement on what must be done, there was little consensus of exactly how to do it.

Should China's belligerence be met with force or with conciliation? That was the question noted China experts aimed to tackle at a potentially perilous moment for America. In March 2021, Adm. Phil Davidson, who was then-head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, warned Congress that "our conventional deterrent is eroding" in regards to China.