Foreign Affairs - Trump, Xi, and the Specter of 1914 - How America and China Can Avoid the Blunders That Led to World War I - Odd Arne Westad - March 25, 2026

  Foreign  Affairs 

Trump, Xi, and the Specter of 1914

How America and China Can Avoid the Blunders That Led to World War I

Odd Arne Westad

March 25, 2026

U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Busan, South Korea, October 2025  

Evelyn Hockstein / Reuters

ODD ARNE WESTAD is Elihu Professor of History and Global Affairs at Yale University. This essay is adapted from his forthcoming book, The Coming Storm: Power, Conflict, and Warnings From History (Henry Holt, BBC Books). Copyright © 2026 by Odd Arne Westad.

In the early 1910s, British Foreign Secretary Edward Grey was surveying the world from his office in Whitehall. He saw many minor wars, but nothing that would pit the great powers at the time against one another. Even “in the early months of 1914 the international sky seemed clearer than it had been,” he later wrote in his memoirs.

World War I, of course, broke out just months later, and went on to kill 40 million people. Almost nobody saw it coming, but many, including Lord Grey, concluded afterward that it happened because the great powers did not manage to solve the many smaller conflicts that together fueled the conflagration of 1914.

The world today looks disconcertingly like the one of the early twentieth century, and not only because it is beset by regional wars, such as the ones in Iran and Ukraine. Today’s world is also one of many great powers, including China, Russia, and the United States, all of which jealously guard their positions. It is filled with nationalism, terrorism, economic and technological competition, and failing globalization—just like back then. Its leaders communicate, but without much understanding of one another. And there is a sense that they will run out of time to settle their differences, as their predecessors did a hundred years ago. “I foresee that very soon I shall be overwhelmed by the pressure brought upon me, and be forced to take extreme measures which will lead to war,” Russian Tsar Nicholas II wrote to his cousin Kaiser Wilhelm II as World War I got underway. Indeed, sometimes a sense of déjà vu rings loud.

This sense is loudest in U.S.-Chinese relations today. Whenever U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping meet for their long-promised summit in Beijing, the dangers of unbridled rivalry should be clear to both men. Out-of-control conflict between the world’s two leading powers could be disastrous for their countries and for the world at large. Both sides say they want to find ways of stemming the slide towards confrontation, yet neither leader seems to understand that temporary truces on trade and tariffs, or stated intentions on narcotics control, are not sufficient to turn U.S.-Chinese relations around.

Overall, there is little reason to believe that we are returning to Cold War-style relations between the United States and China. Instead, international affairs today are better understood in comparison with the rearrangements that took place in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with economic interdependence in question and many great powers jockeying for position. That world, as we know, ended in disaster in 1914. For China and the United States to avoid that fate today and to enter some kind of détente, positive cooperation will be necessary, including dealing with some of the underlying problems in the relationship.

SUPERPOWERS SLIPPING

Economic comparisons between the United States and China today raise some of the same issues that existed between Britain and Germany before World War I. As happened to Britain in the early twentieth century, the United States has moved from a position of economic predominance to one where it is one among several top powers. China has far surpassed the United States in terms of total manufacturing output. And the United States has a trade deficit with more than 100 countries, though the deficit with China is the biggest, at around $200 billion in 2025.

But like Britain in the early twentieth century, the story of U.S. decline is only true in relative terms. The United States today has some of the same advantages Britain had back then. It dominates global banking and finance. Its currency is the world currency. And it is a rule setter for much of what goes on in international society, from transport to computers to fashion. The United States today also has other factors working in its favor. It spends much more on research and development than Britain did prior to World War I, for instance. The United States today invests approximately 3.5 percent of its GDP on inventing new products and technologies, more than any other country. It also has a large domestic market, favorable demographics, and access to natural resources at home. All of these are advantages that Britain did not have in 1914.

Yet, the United States feels itself losing its preeminence because its relative position has changed so drastically in the past century. After World War II, the United States held around 40 percent of global GDP; even after the Cold War, it had more than 20 percent. But this standing was based on unique circumstances. Europe and Japan had been destroyed during World War II. China experienced a century of war, followed by a Communist revolution that—at least at first—delivered very little for its people.

Now, after generations of peace and relative stability, it is no surprise that other industrial powers are catching up to the United States. In 1990, for instance, Japan was the nearest competitor to the United States, with an economy that made up 10 percent of global GDP. China had only 4 percent at the time but has since catapulted to 19 percent. Given the almost unavoidable rise of the others, the U.S. position today, at about 15 percent of GDP, shouldn’t seem all that bad. The perceived decline, however, has fueled resentment.

Today’s world is one of many great powers, all of which jealously guard their positions.

Americans also remain suspicious that the methods China used to propel its growth have not been fair. Before World War I, similar accusations were leveled against Germany. Like China today, Germany had a comprehensive state-led system of industrial espionage that targeted both military and civilian expertise. And it used subsidies, nontariff barriers, and forced technology transfers to privilege its own companies, as China does now. Although many countries, including the United States, have used combinations of such methods to facilitate their own growth, the Chinese effort today seems to be on a scale that dwarfs anything seen before.

Yet, as with Britain prior to World War I, some of the United States’ economic suspicions are mainly projections of its own domestic troubles. Between 70 and 80 percent of Americans believe that a significant number of jobs in the United States have been lost to other countries, first and foremost China. This is not surprising, given that at least five million manufacturing jobs have disappeared since 2000. Like Britain before it, the United States has not invested enough in skills training for its workers or in their transition to new kinds of jobs. The result is a deep dissatisfaction among many citizens who are struggling with stagnant wages and a lack of access to proper health insurance, paid sick leave, and retirement plans. It is easier to blame their financial vulnerability on foreign powers than to deal with the root causes at home.

Another glaring weakness in the U.S. position today is the rise in domestic inequality. Britain faced exactly the same problem in the early twentieth century, and there is no doubt that it contributed to a sense of vulnerability in the country’s overall position. In 1910, the top 5 percent of Britain’s citizens owned almost 90 percent of the country’s wealth. In the United States today, the top 5 percent owns around two-thirds of the country’s wealth, and the share is rising.

Although the United States is not the only country facing increasing inequality, the social and political consequences are worse there because of the better position that many American workers are used to. It is not surprising that many citizens believe that domestic elites are conspiring with foreign powers to line their own pockets and prop up an international economic system that is unfair to American workers.

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE CHINESE MIRACLE

Much of this economic resentment is directed toward China, both because of its phenomenal growth and because of the methods it has used to achieve that growth. It is also easier to direct criticism at a foreign country that has a very different political system. But while much of the blame is exaggerated, China’s control of global supply chains is a real threat to the United States. This dynamic parallels British and French beliefs about Germany before 1914, even though those two countries had vast overseas empires to fall back on for supplies, especially raw materials. The United States today, by contrast, is much more dependent on international markets, and China has far greater productive capacity (28 percent of global share) than Germany did in 1913 (15 percent of global share).

In terms of its economic position, China is a strong challenger to the rest of the world, comparable only to Britain during its rise in the nineteenth century and the United States in the twentieth. But China today has its own economic problems, just as Germany did before World War I. Some of these problems may turn out to be at least as challenging as those facing the United States.

First, China’s period of hypergrowth is over. This had to happen at some point, but China’s transition has been abrupt and accentuated by the global pandemic. The last year China had more than ten percent growth per year was in 2010. By 2019 it was 6 percent. In 2024, according to some estimates, it was between 2 and 3 percent. The quick transition to more average growth rates has meant that youth unemployment and unfulfilled expectations have skyrocketed. The Chinese economy is also struggling with high levels of debt. This is not surprising after a period of rapid growth. But mainly for political reasons, the government is finding it hard to come up with new forms of debt relief, which has fueled uncertainty.

Attempts to stifle China’s growth are bound to fail and will create lasting resentments.

There are also two challenges to the Chinese economy that are specific to that country. One is China’s exceptional demographic profile. The one-child policy that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) enforced for more than a generation has been a disaster: China is the first country in the world that is going to be old before it is rich. 2023 was the first year that China’s population declined, by about 2.5 million people. By 2050 the country will have lost at least 200 million people, if not more, and more than 40 percent of those who remain will be over 60. (The United States, for comparison, is projected to have 30 percent of its population over 60 by 2050, and India, only 20 percent.) Many of China’s citizens, in other words, will be in bad health and in need of care. China’s demographics are a ticking economic time bomb for the country.

The other major challenge for the Chinese economy is the party’s deep suspicion of private enterprise, or at least of private enterprise that is successful and expanding. Over the past few years, the CCP has acted against top Chinese companies. In name these actions are linked to antitrust, data security, and consumer protection. But there is no doubt that the real purpose is to bring big private companies under party control. How far that urge goes under Xi is hard to tell. But the pressure from arrests and interrogations of leading business people has already led many of them to spend more time abroad.

In addition to such domestic economic problems, China faces the wrath of U.S. policymakers, who believe that the country has taken advantage of the United States to reach its current economic position. As a result, in addition to increasing tariffs, Beijing is encountering U.S. export controls, investment restrictions, and limits to China’s role in supply chains. The United States is also trying to convince its allies and friends to follow suit in putting pressure on China.

So far, these measures have achieved little besides enraging China’s leaders and a substantial portion of the Chinese public. The danger, however, is that they contribute to a sense of economic containment of China, similar to what Germany believed it faced before World War I—or, for that matter, Japan before World War II. If ordinary Chinese citizens become convinced that the U.S. goal is to prevent their economy from growing, the chances of spillover from resentment to some form of military action increase dramatically.

NOW OR NEVER?

China and the United States share some of the same economic challenges. China also has rising levels of social and economic inequality, which could contribute to significant social instability as citizens (not without reason) suspect that the vast fortunes some Chinese have amassed have come from theft and corruption. There is also the suspicion that China’s foreign economic ventures, such as the Belt and Road Initiative, have been undertaken more for purposes of national prestige than to help Chinese companies profitably expand overseas. Such criticism has to be voiced carefully in a dictatorship. But there is tension brewing over claims of waste, risk, corruption, poor work quality, and low return on investments in Belt and Road projects and other schemes that the Chinese government has promoted overseas.

These economic concerns in China, a bit like those in Germany prior to 1914, contribute to the argument among the country’s elite that the future might be less promising than they had believed and that now, or at least soon, China might be at its most powerful relative to other countries. Such ideas contributed to Germany’s willingness to risk war in 1914, and might incite China if a crisis arose in East Asia today. Not all CCP decision-makers think this way, but there is certainly talk in Beijing about China now being at the peak of its relative economic influence—and therefore of its opportunity to rearrange its region to its advantage.

For China, as for Germany, it is not a given that phenomenal economic success leads to increasing self-confidence about the future. Onboard the very comfortable and impressive high-speed train between Beijing and Shanghai, for instance, passengers are reminded of the many villages and small towns that have yet to see the degree of economic progress so obvious in the big cities. More ominously, a few of these places are, literally, overshadowed by unfinished high-rises that were under construction before the pandemic but left to decay when China’s property market stalled in 2021.

THE SUMMIT STAKES

At any Trump-Xi summit, then, the two leaders must begin imagining ways in which the aspirations of the Chinese and the needs of the United States are not necessarily in conflict. Although China and the United States are economic peers, China’s population is four times as large and its GDP per capita is only one-fifth of that of the United States. China must, in other words, still find room for economic growth to satisfy the aspirations of its people. Attempts by other countries to stifle that growth are not only bound to fail but will also create lasting resentments among the Chinese. The solution is stable trade regulations, open financial markets, and technological exchanges that are only restricted by clear and demonstrable national security needs. American and other foreign companies still have a great deal to offer in China if they are allowed to compete on equal terms.

The two sides must also find a way to see the other’s perspective on Taiwan, the greatest flashpoint in the relationship. The vast majority of Chinese believe that Taiwan is a part of China that the United States unfairly but determinedly keeps from its motherland. That this impression is created, at least in part, by relentless CCP propaganda does not really matter. Unless Chinese and U.S. leaders are able to agree that the status quo in the Taiwan Strait is the best that can be achieved for now and that neither independence nor takeover are possible options (short of great-power war), then the risk of confrontation over Taiwan’s future is very high.

As they take on these weighty issues, the leadership styles of Trump and Xi seem incompatible. Trump is impulsive and increasingly unsteady in terms of his overall aims. Xi, while a much better strategist and the most powerful Chinese leader since Deng Xiaoping, doesn’t diverge far from the script and seems incapable of the private, spontaneous appeals to arrangements that could be part of a reordering of U.S.-Chinese relations. If 1914 teaches anything, it is that great powers need at least a few clear reasons to step back from the brink. Finding those reasons will require more than either man has so far been willing to give.