Over the past decade, American politics have been uprooted, spun in a circle and turned on their head every four years. The first Trump Administration disrupted the norms of establishment politics, altered the historical direction of American foreign policy strategy by challenging NATO and consolidated American decision-making power within the upper ranks of the executive branch. In 2021, the Biden Administration set out to realign America’s position on the domestic and world stage: it rejoined the Paris Climate Accord, ceased threats against NATO and emphasized cordial relations with both allies and adversaries. Then, President Trump returned to power and once again resisted America’s political and executive norms.
This is how things are done in America. Though the whiplash from a Biden or an Obama to a Trump is especially jarring, we are forced to undertake a redefining of our nation’s priorities after every change in party control, leaving our allies confused and our economy in flux. Meanwhile, in China, the Chinese Communist Party central leadership has created and publicly released five-year plans every five years since 1953, just four years after the People’s Republic of China’s founding. This stark contrast presents America with a problem: we do not plan effectively.
Per The Economist, President Trump’s approval rating currently sits at 38%, a sign of trouble for MAGA in the upcoming midterms and 2028 presidential race. If, as the numbers imply, President Trump is succeeded by a president outside the MAGA movement, that successor will once again begin the long process of building from scratch an entirely new policy strategy centered around entirely new values. They will likely completely reorient the Department of Homeland Security; re-staff post-DOGE government organizations; and change our rhetoric towards trading partners, such as Japan, China and EU member nations. It will be no easy feat, one that will require money, manpower and careful strategy.
For instance, America’s National Security Strategy, a sporadically released paper, is the closest thing America has to a recurring central planning document. The report is written like an editorial by the president, laden with domestic political messaging and election talking points masquerading as real foreign policy. They are also an apt case study of the volatility of our foreign affairs. As one might predict, former President Biden’s 2021 and President Trump’s 2025 NSS’s are wildly different, but both still center the executive’s personal policy agenda, foregrounding domestic policy and echoing each president’s respective stump speech. According to President Trump’s November 2025 NSS document, this means superimposing domestic missions such as “deploy[ing] the US military to stop the invasion of our country” and “[getting] radical gender ideology and woke lunacy out of our Armed Forces” over his real stated guiding principle: “the affairs of other countries are our concern only if their activities directly threaten our interests.”
Even former President Biden used the NSS as a means of electioneering. “Under the Biden-Harris Administration,” he writes, “America is back. Diplomacy is back. Alliances are back.” Biden is more discreet than Trump, but his foreign policy plans are still largely dedicated to undoing the previous administration’s policies and echoing Democratic talking points. In a 2021 White House NSS Guidance document, Biden explained he geared his foreign policy around “deep reforms to policing and our criminal justice system,” “combat[ing] voter suppression and institutional disenfranchisement,” and using carefully chosen verbs to emphasize his relation to the previous administration, such as “recommit to the rule of law,” “revitalize our democracy,” and “reclaim our place in international institutions.” These are a noble set of goals, yet they form inherently testy and political rhetoric.
Though I believe politicians should have the freedom to alter domestic policy based on the desires of the people, our inflammatory domestic politics need to leave foreign policy alone.
Though I believe politicians should have the freedom to alter domestic policy based on the desires of the people, our inflammatory domestic politics need to leave foreign policy alone. It is especially frustrating to watch our country implement policies that will surely be undone after the next election as someone who studies China’s five-year plan system. Planning begins close to two years before the deadline and supposedly recruits experts, politicians and public opinion. Aside from periods of dramatic upheaval, such as Deng Xiaoping’s administration in the late ‘70s and ‘80s, each five-year plan tends to build on its predecessors, with few, if any, reversals from previous plans.
Some plans have had catastrophic effects, such as the Great Leap Forward proposed in 1958, on which leadership became so insistent that it led to the death of millions as the government refused to backtrack on its plans. But the government is smarter now. They have carefully developed and modernized, resulting in a wealthy economy that is just beginning to rival that of the U.S., but is still firmly under the control of the Chinese Communist Party president. Thus, since the emergence of the modern, not-so-communist CCP, these plans have transitioned from a clumsy, restrictive tool of a planned economy into more flexible mission statements representing stability, rationality and consistency. Long-term, over-arching goals like expanding high-speed rail, building out China’s services sector and, more recently, investing heavily in tech and AI innovation, orient leadership and remind the people what their government is actively working toward.
Thus, since the emergence of the modern, not-so-communist CCP, these plans have transitioned from a clumsy, restrictive tool of a planned economy into more flexible mission statements representing stability, rationality and consistency.
Let me be clear: America should not become more autocratic to counter China. China’s persistent adherence to a unified strategy is only possible under conditions of autocracy, because the will of the people changes in ways that often don’t align with the government. In China, the regime’s control over every aspect of society highlights the advantage our political freedom affords us and our society as a whole. The Chinese populace is censored to the point of repression, which, as opposed to the American habit of continuously making our voices heard, leads to periodic, near-existential outbursts of political protest. We saw this in the ‘70s and ‘80s following the deaths of Zhou Enlai and Hu Yaobang, during COVID following an apartment fire in which ten deaths were caused by the government’s draconian lockdown laws, and we are observing it now in response to a slowing economy and hopeless job market for young Chinese people.
Still, we need to acknowledge the disadvantages our political system presents when put up against a country wholly dedicated to planning its future. In his “The Third Revolution” statement, President Xi Jinping has marked 2049, the 100th anniversary of the Communist Party’s victory in the Chinese Civil War, as the date China will become a “fully renewed nation,” christening this goal the “Chinese dream.” He has planned to double the economy by 2035 from its 2020 level, through means such as the Belt and Road initiative. This project is China’s attempt to displace America as the chief lender to the developing world, something President Xi’s government has been working at for 13 years.
America tends to be far more finicky. We maintain strong, albeit shrinking, economic and military advantages, but you simply do not see officials in China making the mistakes we make here in America. While we preoccupy ourselves with scoring political points, China is watching and planning. This concerns me, even scares me. We owe so much of our nation’s dominance and longevity to political freedom and the people’s ability to change the nation, but as our political poles grow further apart, it is important to understand what we are going against. When the MAGA movement eventually cedes control of the White House, Democrats will not simply be undoing President Trump’s foreign and domestic initiatives. They will be forced to try to make up for time lost. Even after the next administration, America will inevitably change its plans once again. All the while, President Xi Jinping has been working towards the same goals since 2013, and will surely continue to do so until his death. Even after, he has cultivated a group of supporters in Beijing that will carry his banner for much longer.
We need not, and should not, sacrifice the dynamism of our political system in pursuit of the kind of planning that is possible under CCP rule.
Still, American politics, as discordant as they can be, are not irreconcilable with a unified foreign policy agenda. We need not, and should not, sacrifice the dynamism of our political system in pursuit of the kind of planning that is possible under CCP rule. Instead, we should be doing everything we can to compartmentalize our foreign policy from our domestic. We need to stop rewarding inflammatory rhetoric in the primaries and call upon the expertise of the nation’s brightest minds to determine our foreign policy strategy. No more self-sabotage, no more demagoguery. And most of all, we need to understand that every ill-informed decision we make abroad is one that China is not making. International Relations is a zero-sum game, and we risk our hegemony every time we are swayed by rhetoric rather than evidence.
Ben Yarkin ‘28 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at b.c.yarkin@wustl.edu.