Professor Neil DeVotta Dissects ‘US-China rivalry’ at RCSS Strategic Dialogue

Professor Neil DeVotta has said the recently announced US National Security Strategy 2025 downplays the hitherto supposed threat from China, needlessly disparages Europe, and unduly emphasizes the Western Hemisphere while aping Russian talking points and disregarding U.S. soft power. He said President Trump, even more so than his first term, has had a destabilizing effect on US politics and foreign relations in his current term, which has created new security imperatives to the Global South, specifically countries of the Indo-Pacific. Cautioning that strategic documents often get derailed by unanticipated events and bureaucratic mischief, he noted that President Trump’s ever shifting focus may also undermine what his administration claims it wants to achieve.

Professor DeVotta, a Sri Lanka born scholar who teaches at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, made these observations when he addressed the ‘RCSS Strategic Dialogue – 2’ on the theme “The U.S.-China Rivalry and Implications for the Indo-Pacific”, on 9 December 2025 at the Board Room of the RCSS in Colombo. Moderated by the Executive Director of the RCSS Amb. (Retd.) Ravinatha Aryasinha, it brought together serving and retired senior public servants, diplomats, military officials, academics, heads of research institutes and civil society representatives. Opening the session Amb. Aryasinha noted that in the spirit of the ‘RCSS Strategic Dialogue’ initiated in November 2025, it would be best to evaluate US and China relations by analyzing the ‘big picture’ as opposed to focusing on the relationship  through a Sri Lankan or South Asian prism, so that scholars and policy makers could factor domestic and regional particularities into the debate during the session and beyond.

Professor DeVotta, who opened his remarks by drawing attention to Paul Kennedy’s 1987 publication  The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers that centered on the consequences of “imperial overreach”, observed that this is not the first time the US has perceived a threat to its global dominance since especially 1945. A similar threat was perceived of the Japanese thirty-five years ago, but this threat was diluted due to the unanticipated events that derailed the Japanese economy. However, the present rivalry with China challenges US dominance over the past 80 years  and has led to an apparent ‘security dilemma’ with the US viewing China at different times as a competitor, adversary and threat and China being fully convinced that the US seeks to prevent it becoming a superpower. Professor DeVotta, echoing others who have suggested the US should help facilitate  the  peaceful rise of China so as to avoid the so-called ‘Thucydides trap’, said that any war between the two countries would be disastrous for them as well as the global economy

As for China, he said that while it developed within the US-led post-WWII international order, it now wants to write the rules governing international relations.  Being ahead or on par with the US when it comes to renewables, Artificial Intelligence (AI), telecommunications and high-voltage transmission lines and enjoying a near monopoly on critical minerals, China understandably feels it has a right to be a leader as opposed to a follower of rules dictated by western powers.

However, China’s burgeoning technological prowess masks numerous challenges facing the country. This is evident by the large amounts of people and money moving out of China even as the country, overall, seems stuck in a ‘Middle Income Trap’ that prevents its per capita GDP rising to developed country levels. The country’s apparent neo-totalitarian trajectory, epitomized by the Great Fire Wall and the widespread use of facial recognition technology to control citizens’ activities, has made China more authoritarian than it was fifteen or twenty years ago.  Some scholars have suggested that China has reached peak power and would therefore try to act aggressively, especially against Taiwan, before its relative power wanes.  Professor DeVotta noted that smaller and weaker states could choose  balancing, band wagoning or hedging when dealing with great powers, and that they can do one or the other simultaneously depending on the issue at hand.

He also noted that while US soft power outranks that of most other states, the most recent US national security strategy de-emphasis values and alliances and embraces a a more transactional approach. It mainly promotes a foreign policy rooted in restraint, as opposed to primacy, and seems to advocate for a multipolar system, which is what India, Russia, and most other states have long clamored for. Thanks to suggesting that the US it should not overly focus on global events unless they are related to its core interests, the Trump Administration may embolden the bigger powers to act in destabilizing ways.

Professor DeVotta did not see much prospect for the BRICS at this stage, noting that the larger the grouping gets the more unwieldy it is going to be, which will suit the US. He said non-alignment was extinct and that even when states like India claimed to be non-aligned they were hardly so. He said, “depending on who you’re dealing with, the smartest thing for a country like Sri Lanka may be to hedge its relations when dealing with the big powers’.

During the near 3-hour session, participants raised questions on the domestic resistance to President Trump’s approach in the US itself – with concerns on the rising costs of living due to increased tariffs, potentially catastrophic costs of the escalation of an arms race with China and a Taiwan conflict, and on immigration policy. Aspects of external resistance discussed centered on the effect on economies due to increased tariffs and the tension between self-restraint and the exercise of power. The issue of historicity was also raised, with questions about what alternatives exist for countries affected by US economic and security policies. There was also push back on dismissing entities like BRICS, arguing that hedging strategies and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) framework deserve re-consideration rather than rejection, particularly as countries search for alternatives in the current geopolitical flux. A critical observation was made that the behavior of both China and the US cannot be viewed in isolation, and it was pointed out that we have moved beyond the end of ideology into new terrain – where each fed on the other. Trump’s approach was said to have profound destabilizing effects on Europe and the broader global order, suggesting that current disruptions represent not just individual policy choices but a fundamental systemic crisis in the American system itself, pushing the world toward uncharted territory.