ABSTRACT
If, as British Prime Minister Harold Wilson quipped, “a week is a long time in politics”, then 20 years is a long time in international politics. The past two decades of American foreign policy – spanning the Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and the beginning of the Joe Biden administrations – prove the point. After a single term in office, Trump’s “America First” foreign policy – at least rhetorically – broke commitments to alliances, multilateralism, and international institutions that had been the guiding principle of American foreign policy since 1945. In the nineteenth century, internal decay and Western imperialism combined to knock China out of the Great Power ranks. But with the economic policies instituted by Deng Xiaoping in 1978, the “reform and opening up” process jump-started China’s economic growth and modernisation. In the years immediately following the Great Recession 0f 2007–2008, the fruits of these reforms became evident.
