As America Is Losing Friends, China Is Courting Them
Just look at the contrast between NATO and BRICS.
WATCHING THE NATO SUMMIT IN ANKARA last week, I found that one question kept returning to me: What was China seeing? What were analysts inside the Chinese government and the People’s Liberation Army writing in their assessments? What conclusions were they drawing as they watched the leaders of the world’s most powerful military alliance gather?
Having spent much of a career reading intelligence assessments of other countries, it wasn’t difficult imagining the report circulating in Beijing. They would certainly acknowledge NATO’s extraordinary military power, increased European defense spending, and the growing capabilities of several allied militaries. But they might also have reached another conclusion: China does not need to defeat America’s alliances if the United States continues to weaken them.
In 2012, my final year in command of U.S. Army Europe, every morning started with the daily intelligence “black book.” All government officials and senior commanders receive some version of this collection of reports and analyses customized for their specific responsibilities. Mine contained reports from military intelligence organizations, American embassies, national intelligence agencies, and analysts studying events across Europe and the peripheral region. Reading it was often the most important part of the day because it was a look beyond the immediate demands of training, exercises, deployments, budgets, and meetings to the larger patterns shaping our security environment.
Russia naturally occupied much of my attention back in 2012. Vladimir Putin was increasingly emboldened: Russian military modernization was accelerating, their exercises were becoming larger and more sophisticated, and Moscow was increasingly using energy, political coercion, information operations, and military threats to influence neighboring states. Russian troops remained in Moldova’s breakaway region of Transnistria. Moscow had invaded Georgia in 2008 and recognized Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states, leaving Russian forces embedded in both territories. Ukraine faced continuing political pressure, energy coercion, and interference intended to keep Kyiv within Moscow’s sphere of influence. These were not isolated disputes, but instruments of Russian strategy, designed to limit the sovereignty of neighboring governments and prevent their closer integration with NATO and the European Union. While there were other Russian activities appearing in those intelligence books that remain classified and I still cannot discuss, the broad trend was clear well before Russia seized Crimea in 2014 and launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine eight years later. Moscow was attempting to reconstruct a sphere of influence, weaken neighboring governments, divide NATO, and challenge the international order that had emerged after the Cold War.
China, surprisingly, also appeared regularly in the European black book, though the reporting was very different. There were no Chinese armored formations near NATO borders or aircraft testing alliance air defenses. Instead, there were infrastructure projects in Africa, port investments in Southern Europe, telecommunications contracts in Eastern Europe, mining agreements across the developing world, and Chinese political and commercial delegations cultivating governments where American engagement was already present. While Russia was attempting to coerce countries into accepting its influence, China was trying to buy influence through trade aid.
At that time, the United States continued to pursue a strategy of engagement. We exercised constantly with NATO allies and partners, and our American diplomats maintained relationships across the continent. Foreign officers attended our military schools, trained at our installations, and served alongside American forces. USAID programs supported governance, economic development, healthcare, education, and civil society, while Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty provided independent information to populations targeted by authoritarian propaganda. All these things were happening because America’s greatest strategic advantage was never simply the size of its military or economy, but the network of relationships surrounding them. For more than seven decades, the United States had constructed something neither Russia nor China possessed—an interconnected system of alliances, partnerships, economic relationships, diplomatic institutions, military agreements, intelligence cooperation, educational exchanges, development programs, and information outlets that multiplied American power.
China understood that advantage, but rather than attempting to replicate the American alliance system, or copy the Russian approach, Beijing built something different. The Belt and Road Initiative became the most visible component of a strategy combining infrastructure investment, trade, financing, technology, access to natural resources, and persistent diplomatic engagement. Chinese companies acquired a controlling stake in the Port of Piraeus in Greece, financed transportation infrastructure in Africa, expanded telecommunications networks, and pursued mining, energy, and commercial relationships in Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Beijing seemed to be engaging everywhere, treating infrastructure, diplomacy, trade, and development assistance not as charity but as instruments of national power and investments in long-term influence.
THEN CAME BRICS. The organization began with a modest idea when Goldman Sachs economist Jim O’Neill coined the term “BRIC” in 2001 to describe four large emerging economies—Brazil, Russia, India, and China—that he believed would become increasingly important to the global economy. The countries eventually adopted the label themselves, began meeting as a political grouping, and added South Africa in 2010, creating BRICS.
For years, Americans understandably viewed the organization as little more than a collection of large developing economies with few common political interests. India and China were strategic competitors, Brazil’s priorities differed significantly from Russia’s, and South Africa possessed a fraction of the economic and military power of the larger members. BRICS had no mutual defense agreement, integrated command structure, common political ideology, or even a unified view of the international system. It was mostly a glorified photo op.
But BRICS began to expand recently. Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates joined as full members in 2024, and Indonesia became a full member in 2025. The significance of BRICS was never its cohesion, but its vagueness; it offered diplomatic gravity to countries that did not necessarily want to align with China or Russia, but didn’t want to—or couldn’t—join Western institutions either. That organization now consists of ten countries across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe. What began as an investment opportunity in emerging markets became a growing group of countries seeking investment, trade, diplomatic influence, and alternatives to institutions that had long been dominated by the United States and Europe.
BRICS was not another NATO. Its members disagreed on fundamental strategic issues, competed economically and politically, and in some cases viewed one another as security threats. And some of the BRICS countries still value their relationships with the United States. They participate in American military exercises, send officers to American schools, trade with American companies, and seek American investment and security cooperation. But they can now do those things while accepting Chinese infrastructure financing, expanding trade with Beijing, participating in Chinese-led economic initiatives, or joining organizations in which Washington may not even want a seat at the table.
For decades, the United States could counter that approach with something more powerful: confidence in American constancy. America’s allies and partners believed Washington would remain engaged, that commitments would survive elections and changes of administration, and that relationships with the United States were strategic rather than transactional.
THAT CONFIDENCE HAS BEEN DAMAGED as the current administration has repeatedly treated alliances as financial arrangements rather than strategic assets. NATO partners have been publicly berated and threatened, tariffs and economic pressure have been directed against friends as well as competitors, development assistance has been dismantled, international broadcasting organizations have been weakened, and diplomatic relationships are increasingly judged according to their immediate political or financial return.
The administration’s national security and defense strategies have prioritized the Western Hemisphere, signaled reductions in overseas commitments, and required allies to assume greater responsibility for their security while often not sharing intelligence. Meanwhile, China continues expanding trade, infrastructure investment, telecommunications networks, port access, energy relationships, and diplomatic engagement around the globe.
Our allies have noticed the contradiction. In January, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney visited China, the first visit by a Canadian prime minister since 2017, meeting Xi Jinping and announcing a new strategic partnership and roadmap for greater economic cooperation. Later that month, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer visited China, the first visit by a British prime minister in eight years. European governments, including Germany and France, are pursuing diplomatic and economic engagement with Beijing even as they criticize Chinese trade practices, support for Russia, human rights abuses, intellectual property theft, and security threats.
One could conclude that governments are not abandoning the United States or choosing China over America. But they are hedging against uncertainty. That distinction is critical, because China does not need Canada, Britain, Germany, France, or the countries of Southeast Asia to become Chinese allies. It only needs them to conclude that relying too heavily on Washington is risky and that developing additional economic and diplomatic relationships is prudent.
Throughout the developing world, others are making the same calculation. African governments can exercise with American forces while accepting Chinese infrastructure investment. Middle Eastern countries can purchase American weapons while joining BRICS. Latin American nations can maintain close relations with Washington while making China their largest trading partner. Southeast Asian governments can welcome American security cooperation while participating in Chinese economic initiatives. Countries are not choosing between two competing blocs; they are assembling portfolios of relationships designed to maximize their security, prosperity, and political freedom of action.
The United States still possesses formidable sources of national power. Its military capabilities, economy, universities, financial markets, technological innovation, intelligence partnerships, and democratic institutions continue to exert influence, while NATO remains the most successful military alliance in modern history. But the value of those advantages has always depended on the relationships that multiply them, and those relationships depend on credibility, consistency, and trust. Any alliances damaged by public threats and economic coercion cannot be repaired with a communiqué. Development programs dismantled in months may take years to rebuild. Trust accumulated over generations can be lost far faster than it can be regained, and China has demonstrated its willingness to wait patiently for opportunities created by American inconsistency.
China does not need to destroy the American-led international system. It only needs to make the alternatives more attractive. The growth of BRICS suggests that a growing number of countries want those alternatives available.
More than two decades ago, those morning intelligence briefings offered glimpses of where this competition was heading. Russia was preparing to challenge the international order through coercion and force, while China was preparing to compete within that order and patiently construct alternatives to it. The United States retained alliances, partnerships, and sources of national power Beijing would very much like to possess, but we should not assume those advantages are permanent or that allies and partners will wait indefinitely for America to rediscover the value of the relationships it spent generations building.
Watching the NATO summit, it was difficult not to wonder whether China’s strategists understand that better than we do.
I am always smarter (and, selfishly, more validated in my thoughts and opinions) every time Gen. Hertling starts tapping the keyboard. Thank you for your service, Sir. During active duty... And now.
Decades from now historians will look at a much diminished USA and note that they did it to themselves.