The American rivalry with China continues to deepen, characterised on both sides by zero-sum expectations and paranoia. Tensions are rising over Taiwan and the South China Sea. There is an increasingly bitter contest for the commanding heights of science and technology, disputes over economic and cyber strategies, and much else. More concerning may be that neither side appears to have any vision of a world beyond their rivalry. America’s strategy seems predicated on relentless, unending competition; its definition of success is getting and staying ahead of China in a dozen areas. There is no concept, in other words, of how this rivalry might end.

Yet most rivalries do end. In 1805 the leaders of Britain and France could hardly have imagined that within a few decades they would transcend their age-old hostility to become geopolitical partners. Not every rivalry produces such comprehensive reversals, but even the most intractable stand-offs can evolve into something less volatile. In How Rivalries End, Karen Rasler, William Thompson, and Sumit Ganguly explain that, of all great power rivalries since 1816, only three endured for a century. On average, they lasted about 60 years. If we take the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 as the starting point, the current US-China contest has already lasted longer than that. Even using the more recent intensification of the rivalry of around 2010 as a starting point, we’re almost a quarter of the way through the average length.

It is a mistake, therefore, to approach this rivalry without any theory of how it might conclude. The case for competing vigorously to deny certain Chinese ambitions is self-evident, and the US-China relationship has distinct features – such as stark cultural differences – that will complicate any effort to transcend the rivalry. Adding a conception of an endgame would strengthen the US hand in the ongoing competition and help steer the contest in ways that prevent disaster.

American strategy today focuses on progressively outperforming China in a series of ongoing competitions: military, economic, technological and diplomatic. Endgames are left mostly unstated, out of a belief that too much focus on outcomes is pointless and may even be counterproductive.

Current National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell laid out a version of this approach in a 2019 essay in Foreign Affairs. ‘Rather than relying on assumptions about China’s trajectory’, they wrote, ‘American strategy should be durable whatever the future brings for the Chinese system. It should seek to achieve not a definitive end state akin to the Cold War’s ultimate conclusion but a steady state of clear-eyed coexistence on terms favorable to US interests and values.’

A steady state of clear-eyed coexistence – this is the long-term vision, an endless struggle for predominance with elements of self-interested cooperation mixed in. Coexistence, they concluded, ‘means accepting competition as a condition to be managed rather than a problem to be solved’.

The same concept has cropped up in multiple administration statements and speeches and arguments by outside analysts. Rush Doshi, until recently the senior China official at the National Security Council, explained that current policy embodies a rejection of the idea that ‘the contest with China can end as decisively and neatly as the Cold War did’. Rather than seeking to transform China, ‘the United States can compete intensely by blunting Chinese activities that undermine US interests and building a coalition of forces that will help the United States secure its priorities – all while managing the risks of escalation’. Analysts David Santoro and Brad Glosserman have argued that ‘for now, pursuing a specific endgame with China is pointless and problematic’. American strategy should aim to ‘keep the United States in and ahead of the game, i.e., in a competitive and dominant position vis-à-vis its strategic rival’.

Much of this view is clearly correct. There is no way to know how the rivalry will end or how China’s ideology or character will evolve. American actions can’t force ideological or behavioural change onto China, and talking up a future that assumes such change can imply existential threats to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). It might take decades for all this to play out; discussions about endgames today are mostly theoretical. It makes sense to focus on competing as a persistent challenge, adjust as the situation changes, and let the endgame define itself.

Yet a strategy of open-ended competition without a clear endgame has many downsides. For one thing, it magnifies the risk of getting caught in an endless cycle of competing for competition’s sake on almost every issue. The lack of a clear picture of a world beyond the rivalry leaves American officials at a loss to prioritise: because they can’t be sure what factors are likely to determine the favoured outcome, every square mile of the competitive landscape has to be contested.

A perfect example of this dynamic is the US campaign to deny China high-technology capabilities associated with computing and artificial intelligence. Washington originally billed export controls on such equipment as a ‘small yard, high fence’ approach – strict protection of a small number of militarily useful goods. Yet, as Beijing has figured workarounds to the export controls, the yard has expanded. China views the actions – and some US officials implicitly bill them – as an effort to kneecap China’s semiconductor and AI progress in general. Competitive coexistence ends up mandating comprehensive economic warfare, risking an increasingly unrestrained contest that spins out of control.

In this and other ways, broadcasting an endless horizon of confrontation will appear to China and others as a sweeping and permanent campaign to undermine its power. Such a vision is likely to feed the paranoias of hypernationalists on both sides and could produce a sense of fatalism that tempts one or both sides into extreme behaviour. Committing to endless confrontation also risks alienating other countries watching the rivalry from the outside: countries hoping to avoid being crushed by the US-China contest will benefit from some assurance that it need not last forever.

The problem with American strategy today is not that the United States should not compete. It is that persistent contestation alone is an incomplete recipe for success. Unmoored from any concept of an endgame, American competitive instincts can run out of control and guide US grand strategy rather than serving it.

On the other hand, being more explicit about a future in which the United States and China have transcended a zero-sum rivalry to a new kind of relationship would have several benefits. It could empower those in China who want to argue for moderated ambitions. It would make clear that the United States does not envision a version of success that demands surrender, or humiliation, or the collapse of the CCP. It would allow Washington to portray American competitive actions as a hopefully temporary measure, designed to protect against risks during a transitional period when an aggressive regime in Beijing seems likely to use such technological or geopolitical power for coercive or threatening purposes. And it would signal to third parties that the United States understands the need to live with China and wants to transcend the rivalry – under the right conditions.

In the hunt for such a vision of an endgame, two proposed options can be quickly discarded: accommodation and regime change. Neither offers a persuasive alternative.

A handful of observers envision an end to the rivalry by accepting that China – today’s China, Xi’s China – is a leading power and accommodating many of its core demands. This suggestion perhaps made sense with the China of 1995 or 2005, but the ambitions of Xi’s China have become too elaborate, its tactics too aggressive and unfair, and its conceptions of inter-state relations too brutally hierarchical to be accommodated in their current form. As Paul Heer and others have pointed out, these ambitions commonly get blown out of proportion. But Beijing is today undertaking a series of actions – from intimidating claimants in the South China Sea, to threatening ethnic Chinese citizens of other countries, to widespread intellectual property theft – that cannot be reconciled with long-term American interests.

Yet neither would a push for regime change support the United States’ goals. The most powerful recent call for political change in Beijing came from former Congressman Mike Gallagher and Trump NSC Asia director Matt Pottinger. They argue that the United States should stop prioritising stability with the CCP ‘at the expense of a long-term victory over their malevolent strategy’. Perhaps because they recognise how inflammatory regime change is as a goal, they remain vague about their true intent (and in a subsequent comment, deny that regime change is their objective at all). Their vision of a Chinese populace embracing ‘new models of development and governance’ is a clear if thinly veiled invitation to a change in governance. They say straight out that the CCP ‘will never be a reliable partner’, implying that forcing it from power is the only way to end the rivalry.

The main flaw in this proposal is its causal mechanism. Gallagher and Pottinger believe that sterner and more uncompromising pressure is the best way to bring about a less dangerous Chinese regime. Referring to the Cold War, they insist that it is a reliable trait of Marxist-Leninist dictatorships that ‘the more comfortable they are, the more aggressive they become’ – and the more desperate they feel, the more they will consider reform and mellowing.

This is a dangerous prescription for a standoff with another great power, Marxist-Leninist or not. Such pressure campaigns are filled with peril. In 1940-41, the United States succeeded in coercing Japan into a choice between abandoning its ambitions and embarking on a suicidal war – and like some other nationalist ideologues, it preferred self-immolation to surrender. More recently, Vladimir Putin has responded to escalating coercion with a nationalistic and paranoia-fuelled lashing out.

Even the Cold War doesn’t support the case for maximum pressure. The Soviet decision to reform grew out of decades of falling confidence in their economic system. US pressure was a secondary factor – and one that generated profound risks. The Cold War historian Vladislav M. Zubok explains that Ronald Reagan’s belligerence had an effect that was ‘exactly the opposite from the one intended by Washington. It strengthened those in the Politburo, the Central Committee, and the security apparatus who had been pressing for a mirror-image of Reagan’s own policy’. The result was a geopolitical tinderbox, which produced some of the most dangerous moments in the Cold War.

The United States also confronts a markedly different adversary in China than it did in the Soviet Union. While the USSR was a patchwork empire held together by ideology and force, today’s China has economic might, technological prowess, and cultural and historical cohesion, which render it far less susceptible to external pressure. The strategies of isolation and pressure that hastened the USSR’s demise are unlikely to yield similar results against China.

If neither accommodation nor regime change offer practical visions of an endgame for the rivalry, what other options might there be?

A recent RAND Corporation study identified seven ways in which rivalries transitioned into better relationships among great powers. They are conquest and occupation (as in the Second World War); losing a major war without being occupied (Germany in the First World War); political transformation, revolution or instability (the USSR); the fragmentation of the political entity (the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires after the First World War); acceptance of secondary or middle power status by one or both rivals (as the one-time hegemon Netherlands ultimately did); one side exiting the rivalry to focus on different threats (Britain and France aligning against a rising Germany); and, finally, one or both sides easing out of a rivalry as a better route to achieving national interests (as in Britain’s late 19^th- and early 20^th-century embracing of a rising United States).

Several of these options don’t offer a practical outcome for the US-China relationship. War of any kind would be a disaster. Occupation is not in the cards. China and the United States are too large and powerful, and have national identities too expansive, to accept secondary status.

We are left to assemble the recipe for an endgame from elements of the remaining three types. These provide a rich array of ingredients: some form of political or leadership change in one or both sides that shifts views on the rivalry; an emerging conviction that transcending a zero-sum competition would maximise national security and power; and a growing conviction that other threats – not geopolitical, perhaps, but environmental, social, and technological – pose a greater risk than the rival. Some mixture of these factors could lead both sides to look past a zero-sum rivalry to some new kind of relationship.

The resulting post-rivalry relationship could take many forms. Any of them will surely involve continuing suspicion and differing interests but the basic idea is that the two no longer view each other as an imminent threat and stop preparing for conflict with one another as a major focus of their security policy. They see improved ties as essential to addressing critical issues, and each is willing to play by certain rules in the relationship in order to dampen hostility. The resulting dynamic could look like Britain and France in the early decades of its relationship reset after the Napoleonic Wars. It could have elements of Britain’s view of Germany during (and even after) the Cold War. It could include components of the US-Japan relationship of the 1970s and 1980s, mixing powerful competition in some areas with partnership in others.

A vision for such a future would align well with the best US strategy for long-term competitive advantage – a focus on domestic strengths. According to a series of recent RAND studies, great powers succeed in rivalries by cultivating key societal characteristics, such as national ambition and unity, shared opportunity, a learning and adaptive mindset, and effective institutions of governance. A future United States will be stronger, safer, and enjoy more competitive advantage as a product of its inherent national qualities – a recipe for strength and dynamism that will remain relevant past the endpoint of the rivalry with China.

It is not implausible to imagine the United States getting to such a point. The bigger question is today’s China, whose power and ambitions are only growing, and which seems nowhere close to losing its appetite for the rivalry or its suspicions of American intentions. Current US strategy, in fact, seems to assume that a post-rivalry China is an impossibility.

Any persuasive endgame must therefore conjure a vision of a more satisfied, less paranoid and belligerent China: easing off on the urgent pursuit of status and power, accepting compromises in territorial claims, ending unfair competitive practices that benefit its economy, and deciding to prosper and remain secure by achieving widespread legitimacy.

This future China could retain powerful goals and view itself as a natural leader of world politics but it would have to accept playing by a few major rules such as non-coercion and non-aggression, eschewing theft of intellectual property, trading fairly, constraining cyberattacks and espionage. It could be inspired by older conceptions of Confucian principles, deciding that long-term influence demands non-coercive approaches to influence and leading in global solutions to shared problems. It would be a China that welcomes a reciprocal process of tension reduction with a humbler United States. It could be a China pushed to these conclusions in part by the immediate danger posed by other threats – social, environmental and technological.

A moderated Chinese approach to its current goals could fit comfortably into classical Chinese self-conceptions. Feng Zhang has made the case for ‘ethical relationalism’ in traditional Chinese foreign policy – claiming the mantle of leadership by treating others with respect. Zhang worries that strongly self-interested, realist approaches to foreign policy can be ‘debilitating for its moral appeal… Today’s China is unclear as to its international purpose and unable to clarify what it stands for’. He urges a rising China to ‘strive to build a peaceful and harmonious world and provide a new ideal for the common development and security of all countries in the world’. These ‘relational principles’ can be ‘derived from the historically evolving Confucian tradition’.

As stark as such a transformation may seem, it would not be unusual in historical terms. Revolutionary and expansionist France became a status quo power in the 19^th century. The imperialist Japan of the 1930s became the peaceful trading Japan of the 1970s. Modern China has already made the leap from radical revolutionary adventurism to globalisation-fuelled, get-rich-quick industrialisation. Compared to that, the makeover suggested here is not especially radical.

The United States won’t be able to conjure this tempered China into being through either coercion or persuasion. It will have to emerge organically from Beijing’s own thinking, and its views of the approaches that will best serve its interests. It does not appear imminent in Xi Jinping’s China, and so Washington will have to hedge against threatening Chinese behaviour – competing persistently in many ways that current US strategy suggests. It cannot yet take many of the actions that would be appropriate if China were moving toward a favourable endgame.

Adding a clear and compelling vision of an endgame would have many benefits, in the signals it would send to Beijing and others, the prioritising discipline it could offer American policy, and perhaps the calming influence it might have on American conceptions of the rivalry. US strategy would more consciously describe two phases: a transitional period in which Washington has to push back vigorously against Chinese ambitions, and a post-rivalry period of continuing but regulated competition between two countries that no longer view themselves as locked in a zero-sum clash. The vast majority of countries, including US allies, are likely to view such a vision as a signal of strength rather than weakness.

Such an approach would suggest several changes to the approach the United States takes to the current, transitional period. It would argue for less rhetorical emphasis on China as an enemy, and a more explicit invitation to a potential new relationship if Beijing moderates its behaviour. It would call for less fatalism about conflict and endless confrontation. It would urge more emphasis on creating trade space where possible and on promoting societal connections to keep the threads alive for the post-rivalry relationship. And it would call for a more explicit identification of issues on which the United States can safely invite more Chinese influence and involvement, even in the transitional phase, as a preview of the more relaxed US approach to Chinese power that would become the norm in the post-rivalry era.

The United States can’t know precisely when or why the rivalry will mellow, but it can have a strong sense of how it will happen: a mutual decision that both countries’ interests are best served by winding down the confrontation. Such a development isn’t likely soon – but history suggests that it is inevitable at some point. Managing the trajectory to that point is the great challenge for America’s China strategy – and embracing the idea of an endgame would inject new energy into the American approach to its most potent competitor.