Description
"The election campaign of the current American President Donald J. Trump was characterised by the message of “Make America Great Again.” A reactionary foreign policy based on the belief that the United States has been unduly treated by its allies and competitors alike, most particularly in matters of free-riding on the US’ security provision (Brodie 2019). Meanwhile, the Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Dream of Great Rejuvenation sees the country becoming a socialist great power under the aegis of the Chinese Communist Party by 2049. China’s confidence in this vision saw the country branded as a great-power competitor in the strategy documents of respectively the White House (Trump 2017) and the US Department of Defense (DoD 2018). This paper aims to move beyond the great-power binary of the US-China competition to consider the influence on middle powers that find themselves at the confluence of these two visions for the future. For Britain, and particularly in the isolated position that the country might find itself in a post-Brexit scenario, this question urgently needs answered. Its opposite, a Global Britain, asks similar question, which are essentially a reflection of the country’s economic and security interests."
