Lawfare Archive: Michael Beckley and Arne Westad on the U.S.-China Relationship

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4.7 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 2 November 2025

⏱️ 57 minutes

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Summary

From July 18, 2024: On today’s episode, Matt Gluck, Research Fellow at Lawfare, spoke with Michael Beckley, Associate Professor of Political Science at Tufts, and Arne Westad, the Elihu Professor of History at Yale.

They discussed Beckley’s and Westad’s articles in Foreign Affairs on the best path forward for the U.S.-China strategic relationship—in the economic and military contexts. Beckley argues that in the short term, the U.S. should focus on winning its security competition with China, rather than significant engagement, to prevent conflict. Westad compares the current moment to the period preceding World War I. He cautions that the U.S. and China should maintain strategic communication and avoid an overly narrow focus on competition to stave off large-scale conflict.

They broke down the authors’ arguments and where they agree and disagree. Does U.S. engagement lower the temperature in the relationship? Will entrenched economic interests move the countries closer to conflict? How can the U.S. credibly deter China from invading Taiwan without provoking Beijing?

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Isabella Royal, Internate Lawfare, with an episode from the Lawfare
0:13.0	for November 2, 2025.
0:16.0	On October 9th, China's Ministry of Commerce announced major new export controls on rare earth technologies.
0:22.2	The controls were the latest retaliatory move in the trade war between the U.S. and China,
0:26.2	which has also seen China meaningfully expand rare earth export controls in April,
0:30.3	shortly after President Trump announced Liberation Day tariffs.
0:33.5	In response to the October export control announcement,
0:35.9	President Trump pledged on Truth Social to set a 100% additional tariff on Chinese imports.
0:40.3	On October 26th, Treasury Secretary Scott Besant announced that China would delay implementing the October 9th export controls for a year,
0:48.3	and the 100% tariffs on Chinese goods would not go into effect.
0:52.3	Between 2020 and 2023, the US.S. relied on China for
0:56.7	70% of its rare earth imports, which are critical for defense, auto manufacturing, and chipmaking.
1:02.5	For today's archive, I chose an episode from July 18, 2004, in which Michael Beckley and
1:07.9	Arne Westad discussed how economic and military dimensions of the U.S.-China relationship compared to great power dynamics immediately prior to World War I, the merits of focusing on engagement versus security competition, credible deterrence over a Taiwan invasion, and more. I'm gonna P. P. Pfare podcast. I'm Matt Gluck, research fellow at Lawfare, with Michael Beckley,
1:40.5	Associate Professor of Political Science at Tufts, and Arnie Westad, the Elehu Professor of History at Yale.
1:47.5	The American president has said no less than four times that if China attacks Taiwan, the United States will respond militarily.
1:55.4	The Taiwan Relations Act makes it American law that the U.S. is supposed to help to fend off threats.
2:00.7	It doesn't say the U.S. has to directly respond, but it has to maintain the capacity to help
2:05.4	Taiwan resist any threat to its way of life.
2:09.6	Today, we're talking about coordination and competition in the U.S. China relationship.
2:15.4	Arnie, you explain in your foreign affairs piece that the U.S. is trying to maintain some
2:21.8	cooperation while it competes with China, but that the opportunity for cooperation has largely
	...

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