Challenging Security: The United States and the Belt and Road Initiative

Abstract

Complex national and economic security imperatives drive American China policy. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) heightens the tension between national and economic security requirements and between different levels of economic security. This renders the established American policy approach, which centers around pursuing national and economic security as separate policy tracks, difficult to sustain. The threat posed by the Initiative to the national security of the United States encourages a focus on it in these terms. Such a focus is all the more likely under President Donald Trump, who is not predisposed to consider the BRI an economic security threat.