105Received 25.08.2023. Revised 29.08.2023. Accepted 04.09.2023.
Acknowledgments. The article was prepared within the project “Post-Crisis World Order: Challenges and Technologies, Competition and Cooperation” supported by the grant from Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation program for research projects in priority areas of scientific and technological development (Agreement ¹ 075-15-2020-783).
Abstract. In 2011, Andrew Liveris, a former CEO and chairman of The Dow Chemical Company, one of the three largest chemical producers in the world, published the book “Make in America. Re-invention solved”. During the 2016 presidential campaign, he was one of D. Trump’s top donors. In 2017, the President appointed him to lead his American Manufacturing Council. The slogan “make in America” became the second key ideological element of Donald Trump’s presidency, along with the popular “make America great again”. The strategy of restoring American industry has become the basis of D. Trump’s economic policy and is continued by J. Biden. It also in many ways strengthened and accelerated the confrontational vector in the U.S. policy towards China. This is a vivid example of how ideas can get into American political discourse, become official concepts that determine not only the country’s internal development, but also foreign policy strategies. In American politics, there is a well-established mechanism for such transition of ideas into political concepts and big strategies. Through this mechanism, the authors are striving to track the dynamics of the U.S. – China confrontation. This article explores the evolution of the “China Threat” concept in American policy from “think tanks” analytical papers to Senate hearings and annual reports towards, finally, the National Security Strategies of the last three administrations. This research shows the gradual change in narratives from the “U.S. – China partnership” to the “U.S. – China confrontation”. The principles of systems analysis allowed us to consider the process of formulating current foreign policy approaches to China through the interaction of the main elements of the U.S. foreign policy strategic conceptualization. In this systemic process, there are three interrelated actors – research centers, Congress and the President. The research period is limited to the term of the last three presidents, with a view to trace, if possible, the point of transition from the declared “well-being” in bilateral relations to the declared confrontation. The authors came to the conclusion that the escalation of the “China Threat” in political discourse starts from the period of B. Obama’s defense budget reduction and was highly promoted by the U.S. Department of Defense and military-industrial complex interest groups through conceptualization of the threat by think tanks.
Keywords: China, USA, strategic competition, cooperation logic, confrontation logic, think tanks, U. S. Senate, RAND Corporation, The Brookings Institution, The Heritage Foundation, The National Security Strategy, China Threat
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