The Arms Race America Doesn’t Need: Diplomacy and the Big Question Ahead

The Trade War: Is America’s Crisis Rational or Irrational? 

The United States (thinks it )has positioned itself as the sensible guardian of the international system throughout the majority of the last century. It had a thriving economy, decisive diplomacy, and overwhelming military might. However, the world now observes an America that appears divided between irrational response and logical plan, unable to discern between short-term politics and long-term foresight, in a VUCA world! Do you know this?

The United States is now dealing with multiple crises. Inequality at home, a decline in competitiveness elsewhere, global climate change, and a political system influenced by oligarchic influence rather than social need are some of the colliding storms it faces. Together, these dynamics suggest that America is not only stumbling but may be experiencing a deeper crisis of competence and direction.

Is it missing its Core Competence? Does the unexpected-unknown-unknown fear it?

More than Forty Years of a Pseudo System! 

Inequality has been a quiet crisis in the US for forty years. The political system disregarded social divisions as it became more reliant on wealthy donors and lobbying organisations. As a result, the economy was created more for the oligarch class than for the general public, and their negotiating power influenced globalisation, taxation, and deregulation to their advantage.

The result was an extractive economy, where industry and material production were subordinated to financialisation and speculation. Communities throughout the Midwest and South witnessed the collapse of industries, the automation of jobs, and the disintegration of social systems while wealth increased at the top. Instead of a true safety net, what was left was a fictitious social structure that was sufficient to quell insurrection but not enough to bring about regeneration. We all know this!

The Chinese Convergence vs. U.S. Drift 

There is no more stark contrast than China. China adopted a progressive, deliberate, and convergent policy over the course of four decades. In order to establish competitive dominance in important industries—most notably in electric vehicles (EVs), batteries, and renewable energy—it coordinated industrial strategy, infrastructural investment, and technology roadmaps.

In contrast, the U.S. had a reactive approach and an arbitrary focus. It automated for the benefit of shareholders, not for the sake of social cohesion. It put cost-cutting ahead of national security when it offshored. Furthermore, it used bluster and tariffs rather than sustained reinvestment in real sectors as it faced China. Is US administration vortexed in imbroglio?

Thus, what appears now as a sudden “threat” from China is not a black swan—it is the predictable outcome of decades of divergence. America became too self-centric, assuming its dominance was permanent, while China played the long game.

Arms Race or Diplomacy? 

Washington’s reflexive militarism is another example of insanity. The United States continues to spend trillions of dollars on defence and maintain hundreds of military bases overseas, frequently in areas where diplomacy would be less expensive and peace would last longer. Another arms race is not necessary for the planet. It requires diplomacy, which is significantly more efficient at establishing stability and far less expensive. America would be strengthened rather than weakened by closing unnecessary bases and redirecting those funds to infrastructure, education, and climate resiliency. Why is it pushing too hard the arms race?

Yet the entrenched political-military-industrial complex resists. War budgets create profits, and the oligarchic system ensures those profits sustain political loyalty. In this sense, U.S. strategy looks less like rational statecraft and more like an extractive cycle—where taxpayers fund perpetual wars that enrich a few but erode national competence.

Arbitrary Power vs. Tangible Economy 

Financial, sanctioned, and coercive power is by its very nature arbitrary. It can generate compliance, but it does not generate trust. Tariffs, threats, or base deployments are not sustainable forms of bargaining power. On the other hand, power derived from the physical economy—actual industrial capabilities, robust supply chains, and innovative ecosystems—produces long-lasting impact. China’s ascent is significant for this very reason: whereas America relied on financial domination and debt-driven consumption, China has been developing a tangible economy. Although the United States has resisted it, the world economy is coming to terms with the fact that true competitiveness comes from producing rather than extracting.

Rational, Irrational, or Arbitrary? The Rational Threat Ignored 

The repercussions of America’s failure here will outweigh any trade conflict or military competition. The bigger tragedy is ecological collapse, which no military base, no tariff wall, no campaign donor can defend against.

The world watches an America torn between rational capabilities and irrational impulses:

• Rational in its technological innovation, irrational in its politics of inequality.
• Rational in its scientific talent, arbitrary in how policy undermines it.
• Rational in recognizing global competition, irrational in believing tariffs can substitute for long-term strategy.

In this, the U.S. risks becoming its own black swan—a superpower undone not by external enemies but by internal contradictions, by refusing to converge its policies with the reality of a changed global order.

The Compelling Big Question 

For decades, America’s strength was not just its GDP or its military—it was its capacity to adapt, to reinvent, to turn crises into opportunities. But that adaptability has eroded. Oligarchic capture, short-termism, and denial have replaced foresight, investment, and diplomacy.

Can the United States (POTUS, the US President, Donald Trump ) abandon arbitrary power, end its extractive cycles, and reclaim a rational path rooted in equality and tangible competitiveness, or will it remain trapped in irrational strategies until its leadership dissolves? That is the choice the U.S. must make, and the world cannot wait forever.

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