The Challenges And Opportunities Of Hegemony: How Primacy Has Shaped The United States’ Grand Strategic Perception Of China After The Cold War

This thesis examines the grand strategic outlook of the United States towards China following the end of the Cold War.This thesis will explain how the United States shifted from a grand strategy prioritizing containment of the Soviet Union to one of global primacy over the past 3 decades during the administrations of Clinton,G.W.Bush,Obama,and Trump.Furthermore,this thesis will argue that the role of the executive branch of the U.S.government in foreign policy making tends to be overemphasized,particularly in the case of Trump.In order to explain how and why the grand strategic perception of the United States towards China has changed,this thesis will use a text analysis approach using data from the United States annual Department of Defense military report on China from 2002-2020,and unclassified accounts of the foreign policy making procedure written by Washington insiders.Using this data,this thesis will argue that U.S.grand strategic outlook towards China has changed to view China as a strategic competitor,but is constrained by a wide range of complicating factors that make conflict more likely to occur in non-traditional sectors and non-military arenas.