The Rise and the Fall of the GOP China Hawks

Is This Where They Were Always Going to End Up?

A week and a half ago, I wrote a piece titled, “The Final Evolution of the GOP China Hawk Frauds.”¹ Unsurprisingly, I got a lot of public and private pushback (which I expected), so I thought it was worth expanding on that piece. In the interest of full disclosure, I pulled that piece together in a day, a practice I usually avoid because writing on that kind of compressed timeline makes it far too easy to overlook key points, leave gaps in framing, or miss opportunities for sharper argumentation. Usually, I prefer to give ideas time to breathe, to let the structure settle, and to review the text and sources with a more critical eye before sending them out. But in this case, the urgency of the topic outweighed the luxury of refinement, so the result was more raw than polished. I thought it was worth extrapolating a longer timeline of the rise and the fall of the GOP China Hawks.

For those unfamiliar with how Washington operates, there is a predictable pattern to how major strategy documents, like the National Defense Strategy, or significant pieces of legislation or policy, are rolled out. Drafts or sections of these documents are often deliberately leaked in advance with background or direct quotes to the press, not by accident but as part of a coordinated effort to “shape the narrative,” as I would call it. These controlled disclosures essentially serve as trial balloons signaling to stakeholders, the public, and foreign governments what the administration wants to highlight as the central thrust of the policy or policies in question. It amounts to saying, “here is what we’re really focusing on, here is the message we want to land,” long before the final text is formally released. In that sense, the Politico story serves as a strong indicator of the strategy’s framing, enough, in my view, to mark it as the obvious signal of where the emphasis will ultimately fall.

In this case, it’s worth pointing out that the Politico article is one interpretation of a few pages of a strategy document that will be hundreds of pages.² As some have pointed out, the NDS will likely mirror the interim NDS, which touched a lot of the usual China Hawk rhetoric. It is not as though the Marine Corps is about to reverse course on Force Design 2030, or the Army will abandon its push for long-range fires and unmanned systems, or the Navy will suddenly halt its drive to expand the fleet. These institutional priorities are entrenched, reinforced by bureaucratic momentum, sunk costs, and the internal logic of service identity. In a way, there is a certain comfort for the services in doubling down on these programs. They allow the military to keep the conversation squarely on external threats and modernization initiatives, rather than confronting more politically sensitive questions raised in the NDS, such as the use of their own institutions in the domestic sphere.

George Marshall and Chiang Kai-shek meeting.

There has been a long tradition of China hawkery within the Republican Party, one that can be traced back to the fierce domestic debate over “Who Lost China” in the late 1940s and early 1950s, following the Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War. For many Republicans, the fall of Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalists was not just a foreign policy setback but a symbol of Democratic weakness and naïveté, a failure that demanded a more confrontational stance toward Beijing. The “Who Lost China” debate helped entrench anti-Communist sentiment as a central plank of Republican foreign policy, creating a political culture in which toughness on China became both a litmus test of credibility and a convenient partisan cudgel against President Harry Truman.³ This legacy has shaped successive generations of GOP politicians and policymakers, ensuring that China hawkery remained a recurring theme in Republican rhetoric and strategy even as the geopolitical context shifted dramatically over the decades.

That tradition of Republican China hawkery did not fade with the end of the “Who Lost China” debates. It persisted through the Cold War, even as U.S. policy grew more complex and ambivalent. When Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger established diplomatic relations with Beijing in the early 1970s, many Republicans viewed it less as a strategic realignment than as a temporary and pragmatic alliance designed to counterbalance the Soviet Union. Skepticism remained widespread within the party, particularly among conservatives who viewed Communist China as an untrustworthy and ideologically hostile power. After the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, that skepticism hardened into outright hostility once again, with congressional Republicans pressing for sanctions and tighter restrictions even as parts of the U.S. business community pushed for deeper economic integration.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, Republican hawkery evolved but did not disappear. The Clinton administration’s push for granting China Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) and supporting its accession to the World Trade Organization faced loud opposition from GOP figures who argued that economic engagement would not liberalize Beijing but instead empower an authoritarian competitor. Figures like Jesse Helms, Newt Gingrich, and, later, a young George W. Bush struck hawkish notes, framing China as a potential peer competitor despite the “responsible stakeholder” language that dominated policy circles. The 2001 EP-3 spy plane incident off Hainan Island only reinforced these anxieties, serving as a reminder that Beijing was not a partner but a challenger.

After 9/11, China largely receded from the forefront of Republican foreign policy debates as the War on Terror consumed the party’s attention, but the hawkish instinct never disappeared. By the late Obama years, as China expanded its presence in the South China Sea and cracked down on dissent at home, Republicans rediscovered their anti-China edge, criticizing engagement as a bipartisan delusion. By the time of the first Trump presidency, the hawkish tradition had fully reemerged, now framed not just in ideological terms but also in economic ones: tariffs, decoupling, and industrial policy had become the new vocabulary of confrontation largely in a bipartisan. Yet, as recent years have shown, the continuity of rhetoric has not translated into continuity of action, leaving the once-storied tradition of Republican China hawkery in a state of disarray.

But then there is theory and practice; nothing that has occurred over the last nine months would persuade me that the current administration or the GOP at large is serious about confronting or dealing with China. The opening salvo was President Trump's executive order banning the ban the bipartisan TikTok ban, which has direct ties to the CCP.⁴ The Department of Defense halted plans to stand up United States Forces Japan, a command explicitly aimed at managing operational capabilities against China.⁵ The DOD also shut down the Office of Net Assessment, one of the first institutions in the American government to seriously identify and grapple with the challenge of a modern PLA.⁶ In the midst of trade negotiations with Japan, Elbridge Colby, the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, randomly intervened at the last minute to try to force Japan to raise its defense spending to 3.5% of GDP, a meaningless metric, and bizarre because Japan has already overcome considerable domestic and international hurdles to increase its defense spending.⁷

Then, a few months in, activist Laura Loomer got several officials from the National Security Council, including the few China Hawks, ousted because they were ostensibly “neocons.”⁸ Mike Waltz, the national security advisor and one of the few China hawks in Trump’s orbit, was canned by being moved to be the ambassador to the UN (albeit for his alleged role in Signalgate, not for being a China hawk). Currently, there is hardly anyone actually staffing the National Security Council. The Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy, the department’s top public diplomacy official, has not only denied the abuse of Uyghurs in Xinjiang but has gone so far as to appear to applaud it.⁹ Even more startlingly, this same official has publicly suggested that the United States should sell out Taiwan to China in exchange for concessions in Antarctica.¹⁰ Kash Patel, the FBI director, was reported to hold $700,000 worth of stock from Shein, a PRC fashion company implicated in forced labor in Xinjiang, and which he has refused to divest, while the Department of Justice and FBI have reduced focus on PRC influence efforts in the US.¹¹

Trump has burned through a ton of political capital with Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India, trying to win a Nobel Peace Prize over the Pakistan-India skirmishes in April 2025.¹² Modi recently met with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, despite years of relationship-building efforts by multiple administrations.¹³ The United States burned through a quarter of high-end THAAD interceptors in 12 days to defend Israel, on top of using B-2s against Iranian nuclear sites.¹⁴ AUKUS, the trilateral agreement between the United Sates, Australia, and Great Britain to build nuclear submarines is under review to be sure that it is “aligned with the President’s America First agenda” and that allies “step up fully to do their part for collective defense.”¹⁵ The president declined Taiwan President Lai Ching-te's request to transit the U.S. on his way to Paraguay even after Lai had made multiple stops in the U.S. during the Biden administration.¹⁶ The administration followed that up by cancelling a meeting with Taiwan’s defense minister in June.¹⁷ The US skipped the Pacific Island Forum for the first time ever.¹⁸ The State Department cut its China policy staff after years of expanding and hiring China experts.¹⁹ The Administration has all but ceded the future of renewable energy, which is getting cheaper at an exponential rate, to China.²⁰

Gutting university research, much of which directly feeds into the technological progress of the U.S. military and the broader economy, is already creating a blast radius that extends far beyond academia.²¹ The damage is not confined to laboratories or lecture halls; it undermines the pipeline of innovation that sustains American competitiveness. Federal grants and university partnerships have historically driven breakthroughs in everything from semiconductors to aerospace, often serving as the foundation for later commercial and defense applications. By choking off that ecosystem, whether through shortsighted budget cuts, politicized scrutiny of researchers, or restrictions that drive talent abroad, the United States risks hollowing out its own capacity for long-term technological leadership. What begins as an attack on “elitist” or “woke” institutions or “foreign influence” in higher education has slowly cascaded into slower innovation, weakened defense capabilities, and a diminished ability to compete with adversaries like China.

Just a week ago, a Hyundai factory being built in Georgia was raided based in part on a local GOP congressional candidate tipping off ICE. Following the raid, LG Energy Solution, based in South Korea, suspended most business travel to the United States and ordered employees already there to return home immediately. The move comes less than two months after South Korea pledged $350 billion in U.S. investments, including a $26 billion Hyundai steel mill in Louisiana. Unsurprisingly, the South Korean government and public are furious and now questioning why they should spend money in the United States.²² Kim Younghoon, a former rail union boss and close ally of President Lee Jae Myung stated, “The way it was done, it felt like . . . not even prisoners of war would be treated like that. That was the shock that many of our people felt and I felt the same way.”²³ Now the administration is attempting to backtrack, but judging by the editorials and press coverage in the country, the damage incurred might last for a generation.

This is all to say that the administration, in its current state, is fundamentally unserious about competing with or deterring China. Of course, this is the administration's prerogative. President Trump was duly elected, but all the rhetoric about China Hawkery is full of bluster about strength, but the actual policies convey the opposite. Instead of a coherent strategy, we see impulsive reversals, personnel purges driven by ideology rather than competence, and diplomatic choices that alienate allies rather than strengthen coalitions. Critical resources are squandered in secondary theaters, while key initiatives like AUKUS and Taiwan relations are either stalled or outright downgraded. Even economic partnerships, once a cornerstone of long-term competition with Beijing, are being undermined by performative domestic politics, as the Hyundai raid and its fallout demonstrate. Taken together, this is not the behavior of a government serious about great-power rivalry. It is the behavior of a government consumed by spectacle and partisan maneuvering, unable to match words with deeds, and unwilling to grapple with the real demands of long-term strategic competition.

It is not as if there were never any “serious” GOP China hawks. Figures like former congressman Mike Gallagher, former deputy national security advisor Matt Pottinger, a host of elected GOP officials, and the professionals who served on their staffs, some of whom I know personally and respect, have put considerable effort into shaping a more coherent approach to the China challenge. These were not unserious people. They had a grasp of the issues, an eye for detail, and in many cases genuine conviction. But where are they now? Are they staffing the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the National Security Council, or the policy planning staff at the Department of State? No. Most have left politics altogether or transitioned into the private sector, their influence largely diffused.²⁴

In retrospect, describing them as “frauds” may have been too harsh. Many of them were earnest, and they did meaningful work. However, at the same time, they fought indirectly and directly against the Biden administration, tooth and nail, even when they were implementing the policies they had advocated for, while paying no attention to the direction their party was heading. As the GOP veered toward spectacle, grievance, and short-term theatrics, the GOP China hawks did not build a constituency within the party capable of sustaining their agenda. They neither cultivated the political base to support a long-term strategy nor mounted a serious effort to steer the conversation away from domestic cultural battles back toward external challenges.

The result is a paradox. The individuals most qualified to articulate a Republican vision on China are now sidelined, while the party apparatus defaults to slogans that lack policy depth. The failure was not one of intellect but of political positioning—an inability or unwillingness to reconcile their strategic priorities with the internal dynamics of their own party. Right now, folks like Gallagher and Pottinger are far closer in policy to Dem China hawks like Rush Doshi, Kurt Campbell, and Ely Ratner than anyone currently in the administration.²⁵ Pottinger complained in The Free Press in January that, “Isolationists masquerading as 'restrainers' are being maneuvered into mid-level positions at the Department of Defense—some of them critical of Trump’s policies that kept the peace.”²⁶ Well, I regret to inform the former deputy national security adviser that not only are the “Isolationists masquerading as ‘restrainers’” staffing the DOD, but essentially every single bureaucracy that touches foreign and defense policy.²⁷ He followed this up again in August, criticizing the administration for lifting the export ban on American-made chips to China, a policy implemented under, spoiler alert, the Biden administration.²⁸

The great irony of the GOP China hawk criticism from 2021-2025 is that the Biden administration largely continued, and in many ways expanded on, the policies of the first Trump administration, a point that Pottinger conceded as a “bright spot.”²⁹ The second trump administration has gone in the opposite direction at full speed. But because partisanship precludes analysis, you end up with quotes such as, “As the Biden team frets about admitting that the United States is now in a cold war, Beijing is leading it into the foothills of a hot one.”³⁰ This invariably leads to one of the enduring myths of American foreign policy: that it represents the last refuge of true “bipartisanship” and earnest debate. In reality, most practitioners are every bit as hackish and partisan as the average campaign operative.

The question now is where the GOP’s displaced China hawks go from here. Having lost their institutional foothold within the party and ceded the terrain to partisanship and theatrics, their options are few and diminishing. They can linger in think tanks and op-ed pages, but that amounts to shouting into the void. They can align with Democrats, but that risks erasing their partisan identity and further marginalizing them within their own camp. Or they can retreat to the private sector, monetizing expertise that no longer carries political weight. None of these paths restores real influence. The truth is bleaker: without a base, without institutions, and without a party willing to carry their agenda, the GOP’s China hawks are not waiting for a comeback; they are already finished.

1. The Final Evolution of the GOP China Hawk Frauds.

2. Lara Seligman, “Pentagon Plan Prioritizes Homeland Over China Threat,” Politico, September 5, 2025.

3. Daniel Kurtz-Phelan, “The Marshall Plan That Failed,” The Atlantic, July 30, 2018.

4. Bobby Allyn “Trump signs executive order to pause TikTok ban, provide immunity to tech firms,” NPR, January 20, 2025.

5. Courtney Kube and Gordon Lubold, “Trump admin considers giving up NATO command that has been exclusively American since Eisenhower,” NBC News, March 18, 2025.

6. Greg Jaffe, “Hegseth Closes Pentagon Office Focused on Future Wars,” The New York Times, March 14, 2025.

7. Demetri Sevastopulo, Leo Lewis, and Henry Foy, “Japan scraps US meeting after Washington demands more defence spending,” Financial Times, June 20, 2025.

8. Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan and Ken Bensinger, “Trump Fires 6 N.S.C. Officials After Oval Office Meeting With Laura Loomer,” The New York Times, April 3, 2025.

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11. Ja'han Jones, “Kash Patel's financial ties to Chinese fast-fashion brand Shein raise alarms,” MSNBC, February 7, 2025.

12. Mujib Mashal, Tyler Pager and Anupreeta Das, “The Nobel Prize and a Testy Phone Call: How the Trump-Modi Relationship Unraveled,” The New York Times, August 30, 2025.

13. Kurt Campbell and Jake Sullivan, “The Case for a U.S. Alliance With India,” Foreign Affairs, September 4, 2025.

14. Glanluca Mezzoirfoire, Tamara Qlblawl, and Madalena Arajuo, “U.S. Uses Over 100 THAAD Interceptors Worth More Than $1.2 B in 12 Days to Defend Israel, Leaving U.S. Stockpiles at Risk,” CNN Newsroom, July 28, 2025.

15. Cate Cadell, “Pentagon review rattles submarine deal amid fears of China’s naval edge,” The Washington Post, June 16, 2025.

16. Didi Tang and Matthew Lee, “As US grapples with China relations, Taiwan’s president scraps stop on American soil,” Associated Press, July 29, 2025.

17. Demetri Sevastopulo and Kathrin Hille, “US cancelled military talks with Taiwan,” Financial Times, July 30, 2025.

18. Alastir Gale, “US military chiefs skip UK-led security forum for first time,” Bloomberg, August 29, 2025.

19. Hannah Natanson, Ellen Nakashima and Cate Cadell, “State Department cuts China policy staff amid major overhaul,” The Washington Post, July 14, 2025.

20. Maxine Joselow, Lisa Friedman and Brad Plumer, “White House Orders Agencies to Escalate Fight Against Offshore Wind,” The New York Times, September 3, 2025.

21. Howard French, “Trump’s Real Motives in Attacking U.S. Universities,” Foreign Policy, April 3, 2023.

22. Rebecca Schneid, “How a Massive ICE Raid Caused a Diplomatic Incident With a Key U.S. Ally,” Time, September 6, 2025.

23. Christian Davies and Song Jung-a, “South Korea denounces ‘shocking’ US treatment of detained workers,” Financial Times, September 12, 2025.

24. Tony Stark, Where Did All the China Hawks Go?

25. Kurt Campbell and Rush Doshi, “Underestimating China: Why America Needs a New Strategy of Allied Scale to Offset Beijing’s Enduring Advantages,” Foreign Affairs, April 10, 2025.

26. Matt Pottinger, “Memo to Trump: Beware the ‘Reverse Teddy’,” The Free Press, January 28, 2025.

27. Eli Lake, “The Fight to Define ‘America First’ Foreign Policy,” The Free Press, January 26, 2025.

28. Matt Pottinger and Liza Tobin, “Trump Just Handed China the Tools to Beat America in AI,” The Free Press, August 10, 2025.

29. Matt Pottinger and Mike Gallagher, “No Substitute for Victory,” Foreign Affairs, April 10, 2024.

30. Rush Doshi; Jessica Chen Weiss and James B. Steinberg; Paul Heer; Matt Pottinger and Mike Gallagher, “What Does America Want From China?,” Foreign Affairs, May 30, 2025.