In the 2026 elections and beyond, Democrats campaign on resetting the Trump Administration’s volatile foreign policy. Trump’s administration started Middle East Wars, sank ships in the Caribbean and imprisoned political dissenters using immigration enforcement. Liberal internationalists have some ideas planned for that Democrat-led reset. In a piece at Liberal Currents, Adam Gurri argues for a return to hawkishness towards China as a crucial part of that future, and a central pillar of any effective campaign.
It’s easy to see why liberals like the idea. China, for its part, has remained relatively unchanged in terms of human rights violations, aims of economic hegemony and other ambitions. In contrast to more fraught international issues like foreign aid or joining the international criminal court, opposing China is an easy bipartisan cause: commissions already exist on security, human rights, and a miscellany of Chinese Communist Party issues.
Gurri writes: “A new Cold War is upon us, whether we want it or not. We can either retreat from it, and allow China to consolidate its international influence unopposed, or we can pursue a genuine reconstruction of the international system, one that creates a gravity well of liberal democracy into which regimes may be drawn.”
This mindset draws from liberal practices of foreign policy that characterized the Obama and Biden administrations. Also-ran candidates Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris pitched variations of this system, where hawkishness was complemented by bolstering a rules-based international order of alliances and influence. The electoral track record for smarter, more liberal hawkishness remains, at best, deeply mixed. At worst, liberal hawks enable damage that Trumpian foreign policy enacts while resolving none of the recovery efforts that foreign policy requires.
Setting aside the vague fearmongering related to China’s rapid rise at the center of his piece, Gurri’s arguments fall apart based on one crucial factor: the significantly fallen ideological and geopolitical clout of the United States. In a weakened Washington and in New York’s United Nations, America shed many of the tools needed to construct the infrastructure Gurri’s idea requires. Reconstruction of those tools is required before the US can attempt to execute any foreign policy competently, much less one that demands the world follow America’s lead as moral arbiter while overlooking repeated Trump administrations.
The damage that needs repair is deep. As eyewitness accounts from former USAID staff and other career victims of DOGE emerge, the toothlessness of American bureaucracy only becomes more and more overt. Whatever was left of the foreign policy infrastructure built up since the last Cold War was dismantled. Under the guidance of Elon Musk and his lieutenants, they were, in Musk’s words, “fed into the woodchipper.”
The capacity to rebuild is under threat, too. Scholarships promoting equity in foreign policy such as the Boren and Pickering Fellowships have been suspended, delayed, reduced in scale or canceled. Whatever destruction wasn’t modified or changed by DOGE was simply picked up by an equally eager leadership team led by Marco Rubio.
A more equitable and effective platform on China should examine what was broken or dismantled and begin a rebuilding process with swiftness and efficiency. If Democrats want a diplomatic corps that bases decisions on knowledge and research, they must give that corps the resources to learn and utilize said knowledge and research. Without an accounting of what was lost in the Trump administration, the United States cannot construct anything resembling an international order worth pursuing.
The rebuilding process should also center individuals and communities at the epicenter of both Chinese state harassment and American persecution, of which there are many. Guan Heng, an asylum seeker who photographed prison camps in Xinjiang, spent months in immigration detention before he was finally granted asylum. Even so, he was questioned if his intention in filming the detention facilities and then releasing the video a few days before arriving in the US was to give him grounds to apply for asylum.” Chinese scholars are still reeling from the last Trump Administration’s China initiatives. In the tragic case of Jane Wu, a principal investigator at Northwestern University, institutional harassment pressured her into taking her own life.
The crass logic of clumsily and brutally pursuing Chinese nationals as a means to an end has become the norm of Marco Rubio’s State Department. Even when Rubio himself departs, bureaucrats that he elevated and promoted will still be embedded within Foggy Bottom. If the Secretary of State himself is any indication, the causes he previously championed in Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and Taiwan are afterthoughts at best. These communities have not remained isolated from bigotry and mistreatment during the Trump Administration. Without specific attention to their concerns, a new Democratic White House would lose their vital voices in conversations on how to best protect family members and associates still in China.
Finally, there is the question of whether or not hawkishness produces desired results for the United States. Hawkish competition by the United States has seldom yielded a meeker, more compliant China. Xi’s strongman persona thrives under hardline conditions and allows him to further cement his grip on power and staff up on America-hawks and ideologues. A Democratic President cannot undo the experiences of Guan Heng and Jane Wu, nor can it make amends to minorities targeted by both American immigration police and Chinese authorities. The very least it can do, however, is to audit and assess how to minimize harm to the Chinese diaspora community that calls the United States home.
A more sensible solution for potential Democratic candidates would be to begin by repairing and refurbishing the pieces of diplomacy, cultural inclusivity and the American academy. Top foreign policy programs get cut from program funding, with the resources redirected towards Christian and Mormon institutions. The State Department itself requires an overhaul, and safety to consular staff and mistreated contractors and locals are a top priority. They cannot risk a second wave of stranded diplomats and a police-shuttered USIP office building.
While these maintenance tasks aren’t the most rewarding electorally, they are essential to the survival of effective Asia policy and sound decision-making. Instead of satisfying hawkishness for its own sake, proactive recovery and the building of diplomatic institutions must come first.
Rui Zhong is a writer and researcher living in the Washington D.C. metro area. She studies China, censorship, and technology’s role in nationalism and foreign policy.
