The Great Decoupling: A Case Study of US Foreign Policy Toward China and the Paradox of Strategic Realignment (2020–2025)

Abstract

This research studies the strategic realignment in the U.S. and China from 2020 to 2025, pointing on the contradiction of the Great Decoupling between two of the most powerful states in the world. Through worldwide trade links, source chains, and assets runs, the United States and China remain to be intensely linked despite their progressively acute monetary decoupling, technical competition, and armed hostility. Both states and the greater worldwide power system expect severe problems as a consequence of this paradox, which syndicates geopolitical competition with monetary interdependence. The research employs a qualitative case study methodology, applying primary and secondary sources to assess how both powers' policies and strategies have altered in response to struggles in them. Significant suppositions demonstrate that the trade clash in the United States and China, technological disengagement in fields like 5G and artificial intelligence (AI), and the growing armed rivalry of the Indo-Pacific region have backed to the growing strains. There are still diplomatic ways advancing predominantly in fields like climate variation and worldwide health. The research discovers the tactical inconsistency where the two states, as they are rival in their domains which are significant to their world power, must cooperate in subjects of mutual interest. The outcomes designate that the worldwide monetary is still improbable to become fully decoupled because of the interconnection in the two monitories, but the existing tactical competition in the U.S. and China is redefining the upcoming of global power, as well as the method of global trade.