To Counter China's Scale, the U.S. Must Build Allied Scale, Reasons Rush Doshi
The United States cannot match China's scale alone and pretending otherwise is a strategic mistake. That was the central message Rush Doshi delivered as keynote speaker at the Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions' 2026 annual China Conference, where he called on the U.S. to reimagine its alliance system as a platform for building shared capacity across military, economic, and technological domains.
Rush Doshi, the C.V. Starr Senior Fellow for Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and an assistant professor at Georgetown's Walsh School of Foreign Service, previously served as Deputy Senior Director for China and Taiwan on the National Security Council (2021-24), where, for a portion of his tenure, he was the U.S. government’s lead action officer coordinating the negotiations that launched AUKUS, a trilateral security partnership for the Indo-Pacific region between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. He is also the author of The Long Game: China's Grand Strategy to Displace American Order (Oxford University Press, 2021).
Doshi grounded his address in a historical argument: scale, which Doshi defined as “the ability to generate efficiency and productivity and thereby outcompete rivals,” has been the decisive factor in the rise and fall of great powers. Great Britain's eclipse by larger industrializing rivals in the late nineteenth century, he argued, offers a cautionary parallel for the U.S. today. "Today, that sense of daunting scale belongs to China," Doshi said, "and the United States appears to be in the position that Great Britain was in a century ago."
China's Scale Is Not Abstract
China's economy, measured in purchasing power, is now roughly 30 percent larger than that of the United States, and its share of global manufacturing quintupled in the two decades after joining the WTO, while the U.S. share fell by half. China has two to three times U.S. industrial capacity, 13 times U.S. steel production, and roughly 500 times U.S. shipbuilding capacity. It produces two-thirds of the world's electric vehicles, three-quarters of its batteries, and 90 percent of its solar panels and refined rare earths, and is at the leading edge of six of the ten industries expected to define the next industrial revolution.
That industrial strength is now translating into direct geopolitical leverage. Doshi pointed to China's weaponization of its rare earths dominance in 2025, which effectively forced the U.S. to walk back elements of its own trade and export control policies. "That marked the first time that an export control was used to force open market access," he said. "That's a massive moment in the history of trade.
The Case for Allied Scale
The answer, Doshi argued, is not to retreat into fortress America, a sphere-of-influence arrangement, or a China-led order, but to build what he calls "allied scale." A coalition of the U.S. and its key allies and partners would represent three times China's nominal GDP, twice its defense spending, and one and a half times its share of global manufacturing.
"That advantage is entirely theoretical," Doshi conceded. "Unlocking its potential, though, is the central task of American statecraft in this century." In practice, that might mean Japan and South Korea investing in American shipbuilding; Taiwan building semiconductor plants in the U.S.; allies co-producing advanced weapons systems; and all parties maintaining a shared tariff or regulatory wall against China's excess industrial capacity. On the economic side, Doshi called for common investment screening, coordinated industrial policy, and an "economic Article 5" ensuring that when China uses economic coercion against one ally, all respond together.
Addressing the Skeptics
Doshi acknowledged "the new pessimism," the view that Trump-era damage to U.S. alliances has made allied scale impossible. The strain is real, he said, but not terminal, for three reasons:
- The alternatives are worse. Spheres of influence, unrestrained multipolarity, and a China-led order all leave the U.S. and its partners poorer and less secure.
- Alliances have absorbed serious shocks before and survived. For example, France's withdrawal from NATO's unified command, Nixon's opening to China, the Plaza Accord.
- The underlying logic of interdependence persists. Allied economies are growing more dependent on U.S. markets as China buys less from them, allies are purchasing record numbers of American weapons, and even the Trump administration has not escaped the pull of allied scale, with Vice President Vance publicly calling for a trading bloc among allies to break China's chokehold on critical minerals.
Eight Principles to Achieve Allied Scale
Doshi closed with a practical blueprint — eight principles for building allied scale.
Turn the page on the Trump era. Persuade allies that the most damaging recent policies were products of individual leadership rather than durable features of the American political system.
Begin with humility. Start with small, achievable projects: a joint shipbuilding effort, a critical minerals offtake agreement, a co-production line. Build from there.
Build mutually beneficial bargains. Allies invest in America; America invests in allies. All extend each other more preferential terms than they do to non-market economies like China.
Pay attention to domestic politics. “The danger of the ‘Trump Approach’ is alienation and polarization of allied politics that makes diplomacy impossible.” Any allied scale strategy must be first grounded in domestic politics.
Build ad hoc coalitions. Allied scale does not mean doing everything with everyone. It means assembling the right groupings for specific challenges and opportunities.
Bolster credibility through congressional legislation. Executive orders are too easily reversed. Durable commitments to allies require legislative backing that is harder to undo with a change in administration.
Build on existing platforms. Frameworks like the Quad, AUKUS, the U.S.-Japan-South Korea trilateral, and the G7 already exist. Allied scale should strengthen what works, not start from scratch.
Articulate an affirmative vision. "Allied scale can't just be about balancing China," Doshi said. "It has to be about building the kind of world that we want to see and live in."
“That work is hard,” Doshi concluded, but “it's not impossible. And the alternatives are far more concerning than the future that I’m outlining.” Doshi ended his address on a note of optimism: a call to action for the U.S. to reforge our alliances and rebalance the world order to create a better world for not just the U.S., but for nations across the globe.
A full recording of Dr. Rush Doshi’s talk is available on YouTube and below.
This article was supported by research using Claude. All outputs were reviewed by humans and the final expression was produced by the author.
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Rush Doshi, keynote speaker at the 2026 SCCEI China Conference, laid out an eight-point blueprint for transforming U.S. alliances into an engine of shared economic and industrial capacity.
