Smart-power strategic vacuum of sun Tzu and of Carl Clausewitz on us-china diplomacy: case studies of china policy by trump 1.0 and Biden and prospects by trump 2.0 and Harris

The ultimate purpose of this analytical article primarily seeks to theoretically evaluate the complex, multilayered and unpredictable formula and paradigm of the US-China strategic diplomatic ties within some quintessential foreign policy both in the Trump Era (20January, 2017-19January, 2020) and in the Biden Era (20January, 2021 - 19January, 2025) with the strategic, philosophical frameworks of Sun Tzu and Carl Clausewitz and afterwards theoretically present an embryonic, qualitative prediction that the China Policies under probably either a Trump 2.0 or a Harris presidency in the post-Biden Era might become more unpredictable, complicated, confrontational, competitive in some divergent domains but also traceable, well-regulated and collaborative in the convergent ones over the course of the US-China ties, whose bilateral relations not merely are shaping the US-China mutual, bilateral diplomatic ties themselves but reshaping the international realms and arenas at a multilateral echelon associated with these two largest economic juggernauts in the 21st century. This analytical manuscript has tried to bridge a conceptual, theoretical amalgamation between classical oriental Chinese strategic philosophy initially promoted by Sun Tzu, a classical Chinese military strategist, and classical Occidental strategic philosophy comparably initiated by Carl Clausewitz, a Prussian military general and strategist. Afterwards, this academic, analytical manuscript has intended to make an quantitative and qualitative amalgamation between core strategic dispositions and perceptions of those comparable, paralleled strategic philosophy and mainstream international relations theoretical frameworks, which are followed by experimental case studies of US-China diplomatic complexity and multidimensional characteristics and cyclical scenarios of competition and antagonism, cooperation and rapprochement. This analytical article chiefly argues that for the sake of restoring, preserving and even aggrandising US-led hegemonic status within the institutional, politicoeconomic, and even cultural dimensions, and neoliberal rules and norms in the complex, variable and unpredictable international arena in an era of a peaceful rise of China as the second largest economic power and the largest producer and exporter of manufacturing and electric vehicles, both Donald Trump more as a unilateralist and Joe Biden more as a neoliberal multilateralist--within the discourse and register of international relations and foreign policy rather than US domestic bureaucratic systems--to a large degree failed to utilise a comprehensive, forward-looking smart-power strategic diplomatic implicitly initiated by Sun Tzu and Carl Clausewitz, which inadvertently thwarts US chronic economic and strategic interests and sustainability index as well as China’s core interest of raison d’etat, i.e. national sovereignty, territorial integrity and regional self-defense of economic power and influence and so forth. This analytical essay might unveil recommendable formulas and paradigms of how policy decision makers should have learned meticulously from the counterparts from the imperatives of smart-power strategic diplomacy, which might be of great value in formulating a successive US-China paradigm in a fresh era of either Trump 2.0 or a Harris presidency, hypothetically. Meanwhile, without teleological, utilitarian or assertoric intention, this analytical manuscript initially theoretically predicts that whilst the costs of Trump 2.0 without smart-power strategic diplomacy might accentuate the orientation of undesirable decoupling of the US-China ties in terms of global supply chains and the like and also refragmentation and anarchy of international powers, the opportunity costs of ramifications of a Harris diplomacy of how to strategically manage benign competition and irreplaceable collaboration and coordination and assuage a confrontation orientation immutably encompass high unpredictability as her US-China diplomatic record seems minimum thus far and the probability of Harris’ general ideational inheritance of diplomacy from Biden’s China policy remains theoretically heightened. In a nutshell, irrespective of ultimate US presidential election result in November, 2024, there might be a precious chance, though the magnitude of that varies and development may be, and even has been, non-linear, uneven and spiral, of both China and the US playing a magnanimous, viscoelastic, rational and predictable role in convergently and collectively resuming, redressing, reconstructing and re-formulating the US-China bilateral strategic diplomatic metrics for the US-China diplomatic pattern arguably is the most indispensable, consequential bilateral relationship in the 21st century probably deterministic of considerable recombination, reintegration and refragmentation of powers and international actors.