US Competitive Statecraft Toward Russia And China In 2026 – Analysis – Eurasia Review

Key Takeaways:

Structural Dilemma of Primacy: The United States (US) must preserve global leadership amid narrowing power gaps with China and the persistence of Russia as a regional spoiler, balancing strategic leverage with the risk of overextension.

Cornering as Environmental Shaping: US strategy in 2026 emphasises constraining Russia’s warfighting capacity in Europe and slowing China’s technological and industrial dominance, focusing on systemic leverage rather than direct confrontation.

Persistent, Standing Tools: Sanctions, export controls, alliance coordination, and industrial policy have become permanent instruments of statecraft, allowing the US to ‘push’ strategically while avoiding episodic escalation.

Asymmetric Primacy Over Symmetric Victory: Success depends on maintaining decisive advantage in critical nodes—advanced technology, finance, alliances—while letting rivals adapt within constrained parameters, rather than seeking total economic or military dominance.

Risks and Constraints: Effectiveness hinges on coalition discipline, domestic fiscal-industrial capacity, and rival adaptation; mismanagement could accelerate alternative networks, partner divergence, and reduced US leverage over time.

Introduction

The United States (US) enters 2026 facing a structural dilemma that has defined every late-hegemon era: it faces the need to preserve primacy in a world where the distribution of power is shifting, while avoiding the overreach that accelerates decline. On the material ledger, the US still holds outsized advantages—scale of economy, alliance architecture, reserve-currency power, and technology depth—but the gap has narrowed enough that Washington increasingly treats time as the scarcest resource. The International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) October 2025 World Economic Outlook data places US nominal GDP around $31.82 trillion and China around $20.65 trillion (current dollars), underscoring that the contest is not about whether the US is large, but whether it can convert size into durable strategic leverage as China’s industrial base and military capabilities expand.

The core proposition behind ‘cornering’ Russia and China are not simply punitive. It is an attempt to reshape the strategic environment so that (1) Russia’s capacity to generate military danger in Europe is constrained and made financially unsustainable, and (2) China’s ability to dominate the commanding heights of twenty-first-century power—advanced compute, artificial intelligence (AI), undersea and space systems, precision strike, and global standard-setting—is slowed long enough for the US and its allies to rebuild industrial and technological advantages. Recent US strategy documents and budget signals point to a prioritisation of homeland defense, deterring China in the Indo-Pacific, and pushing allies to assume more of the burden elsewhere—an architecture designed to concentrate US effort against the ‘pacing challenge’ while preventing Russia from becoming a strategic spoiler that drains American attention. 

These dynamics are summarised in Table 1, highlighting the US approach to cornering Russia and China and the systemic levers at play in 2026.

Table 1. US Competitive Statecraft Toward Russia and China (2026)

Actor / TargetStrategic DriversStrategic ObjectiveKey ToolsRisks / ConstraintsLikely Outcome / NotesRussiaPersistent war in Ukraine; energy revenue dependence; risk of Russia enabling ChinaConstrain warfighting capacity; weaken financial and operational resilience; prevent force-multiplier effect for ChinaSanctions (energy, financial, service restrictions); coalition coordination; selective enforcementEvasion networks; allied divergence on enforcement; commodity price sensitivity; partial adaptationGradual weakening of Russia’s European and global influence; signaling to third countries; calibrated escalation rather than full confrontationChinaRapid technological and industrial expansion; global influence in supply chains; AI and advanced computing raceSlow dominance in critical technologies; preserve US and allied leverage over frontier compute and semiconductor capabilitiesExport controls; annual licensing for chip tools; allied fab coordination; industrial policy; technology denialDesign-around strategies; domestic substitution; parallel supply chains; Global South alignment with ChinaManaged constraint of China’s frontier capabilities; potential acceleration of self-reliance and localised production; increased competition in third regionsSystem / Shared ConsiderationsNarrowing US-China gap; Russia-China interactions; alliance burden-sharing; domestic industrial capacityMaintain asymmetric primacy; prevent rivals from exploiting gaps; sustain coalition disciplineForce posture; persistent sanctions and export controls; industrial policy alignment; alliance coordination; deterrence signalingCoalition fatigue; domestic fiscal limits; industrial bottlenecks; adaptation by rivalsStrategic environment shaped to US advantage; emphasis on structural leverage over episodic confrontation; ability to sustain primacy without overextension

Why 2026 is likely to see more pressure, not less

One driver is that the competition has moved from episodic crises to permanent statecraft: sanctions, export controls, force posture, and alliance coordination have become ‘standing tools,’ not temporary responses. The Defense Department’s FY2026 framing explicitly emphasises deterring China in the Indo-Pacific and strengthening homeland defense while enabling partners to handle other threats with ‘more limited’ US support. Whatever the rhetoric, this implies that Washington will push in 2026 to tighten the connective tissue of coalition power—technology rules, industrial policy alignment, and shared deterrence—because those instruments compound over time.

A second driver is the accelerating military balance in Asia. The Pentagon’s 2025 report to Congress on China describes a ‘massive’ buildup measured against the US, including continued nuclear expansion and a trajectory toward over 1,000 warheads by 2030. Whether one accepts every inference in that assessment, the direction is clear: US planners will treat the Indo-Pacific as the main theater where deterrence failure would be catastrophic. In that context, ‘cornering’ China often means cornering capability pathways—compute access, manufacturing equipment, and the global networks that translate economic weight into military advantage.

A third driver is that Europe’s rearmament creates a window for the US to demand more allied capacity while it reallocates marginal effort to Asia. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) estimates global military spending reached $2.718 trillion in 2024, with the US at $997 billion (about 37% of global spending), China at $314 billion, and Russia at $149 billion—numbers that both demonstrate US scale and highlight the strategic logic of burden-shifting: Washington wants partners to spend more so US resources can be concentrated on the China problem.

The Russia track: tightening the vise without owning the war

In 2026, the most plausible US ‘cornering’ approach toward Russia is not a single dramatic escalation but a denser lattice of financial and energy constraints aimed at reducing Moscow’s war-funding capacity and limiting access to enabling services. One example of this approach is the US Treasury’s determination under Executive Order (EO) 14071 prohibiting certain petroleum services, paired with authorities that enable sanctions on actors operating in Russia’s energy sector. These tools matter because Russia’s strategic resilience is heavily tied to energy revenue and the service ecosystems—shipping, insurance, financing, and technical services—that move hydrocarbons to market.

Yet the Russia file is also where US strategy can become self-contradictory. A credible ‘corner’ would require consistent enforcement and coalition discipline, but real-world constraints—energy price sensitivity, divergent allied risk tolerance, and the secondary effects on major swing states and trading partners—often blunt US willingness to impose maximal pressure. Even within Western coalitions, debates over the oil price cap’s calibration and enforcement illustrate the limits of economic coercion when it collides with inflation politics and market stability concerns. The likely 2026 pattern, therefore, is selective escalation: tougher actions against evasion networks and high-impact nodes, while avoiding moves that could trigger broad commodity shocks.

The strategic purpose of this calibrated approach is not only to weaken Russia, but also to prevent Russia from serving as China’s force multiplier. Washington’s ideal end state is a Russia that is constrained in Europe and increasingly dependent on China in asymmetric ways—selling discounted commodities, importing dual-use components through gray channels, and accepting junior-partner status. But that path also risks hardening the Sino-Russian alignment and pushing more trade into opaque networks. Cornering, here, can produce the very alternative infrastructures (payments, logistics, sanctions-evasion supply chains) that reduce US leverage over time. This is why many US measures in 2026 are likely to be designed not just to punish Russia, but to gesture to third countries that the cost of enabling Russia (or enabling China’s military-tech rise) will rise steadily.

The China track: ‘deny, degrade, and divert’ in technology and supply chains

If Russia is primarily a problem of containment and attrition, China is a problem of systems competition. The US toolkit is increasingly organised around limiting China’s access to advanced semiconductor capabilities and the compute needed for frontier AI, while simultaneously accelerating allied production capacity outside China. Congressional Research Service (CRS) reporting and Commerce Department releases document the steady expansion and tightening of export controls since 2022, including restrictions on advanced chips, semiconductor manufacturing equipment, and related pathways such as high-bandwidth memory and advanced packaging tools. The logic is explicit: slow China’s ability to produce or acquire the most militarily relevant compute and manufacturing technology.

The first key development for 2026 is that controls are becoming more granular and leverage-based rather than purely prohibitive. A striking example is the shift to annual licensing for shipments of US-controlled chipmaking tools to the China-based fabs of key allied firms. Reports that the US granted Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) an annual license for tool imports into its Nanjing facility, with similar approvals for Samsung and SK hynix—replacing a more permissive waiver-style regime that expired at the end of 2025. This is not ‘decoupling’; it is managed interdependence where the US retains recurring veto power, and where compliance can be used as a bargaining instrument as geopolitical conditions change.

The second likely 2026 dynamic is China’s counter-mobilisation. China is pushing requirements for higher domestic equipment content in new chipmaking capacity, and described major state-backed funding efforts to build indigenous toolchains. This matters because US cornering works best when it exploits enduring dependencies; it works worse when the target rapidly substitutes. Even if Chinese substitutes remain behind at the frontier, forced localisation can erode Western market share, reduce transparency, and accelerate an innovation ecosystem that eventually narrows the gap. In other words, US pressure can produce Chinese self-reliance faster than US planners would prefer.

The third dynamic is geographic expansion of the contest. China’s ability to offset US pressure depends partly on access to markets, raw materials, and political influence across the Global South. Recent reporting highlights Beijing’s determination to deepen its position in regions like Latin America, explicitly framing itself as a counterweight to US ‘bullying,’ while leveraging trade and infrastructure ties. For Washington, cornering China therefore becomes a competition over third-country alignments: export-control harmonisation, investment screening, rare-earth and battery supply chains, port and telecom infrastructure, and the diplomatic costs imposed on states that move into China’s security orbit.

The strategic theory: preserving status through ‘asymmetric primacy’

At root, the US does not need to ‘beat’ China and Russia symmetrically across all measures of power; it needs to preserve primacy in the nodes that determine military outcomes and global rule-making. That means keeping the dollar/financial system central, maintaining a decisive edge in advanced compute and software ecosystems, dominating high-end alliance interoperability, and sustaining credible deterrence across the Indo-Pacific and Europe.

The 2025 US National Security Strategy (NSS) frames strength itself as a form of deterrence and places economic vitality and industrial capacity closer to the core of national security than in many post–Cold War strategies. Taken seriously, this perspective reframes ‘cornering’ not as episodic, high-visibility confrontation, but as the sustained shaping of structural conditions in which competitors face accumulating and mutually reinforcing constraints. Rather than coercion through shocks, deterrence operates through the gradual narrowing of strategic options, raising the long-term costs of competition and limiting rivals’ capacity to translate ambition into power.

The FY2026 defense framing reinforces this. Prioritising the homeland, deterring China, and pushing allies to do more is a blueprint for asymmetric primacy: the US preserves leadership by ensuring it is never forced to fight alone, never deprived of the critical technologies that generate modern combat power, and never economically hollowed out in the sectors that sustain long wars. That is why industrial policy, export controls, and alliance procurement coordination increasingly look like national security tools rather than ‘economic policy.’

Where the strategy could fail or backfire in 2026

Cornering rivals is easier to announce than to execute because coercion generates adaptation. On Russia, tighter sanctions can accelerate the creation of evasion ecosystems and deepen dependencies on non-Western networks. On China, export controls can encourage design-around strategies, domestic substitution, and the growth of parallel standards and supply chains. The very move to annual licensing for allied fabs in China illustrates this tension: it preserves US leverage but also motivates companies and states to reduce future exposure to US regulatory power, potentially shifting investment toward jurisdictions and toolchains that are less controllable.

A second risk is coalition fatigue and divergence. US cornering strategies rely heavily on allied buy-in, yet allies have different exposure profiles: Europe is more immediately threatened by Russia; Indo-Pacific partners are more exposed to China; many middle powers are exposed to both while remaining economically enmeshed with Beijing. SIPRI’s data show rising European and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) spending, but higher spending does not automatically translate into political unity on trade-offs like China market access, export-control enforcement, or secondary sanctions. Cornering can fail if partners quietly arbitrage the strategy while publicly endorsing it.

A third risk is domestic political economy. The US strategy assumes that America can sustain the fiscal and industrial commitments required for long-term competition. But defense-industrial constraints, supply bottlenecks, and political battles over budgets can slow the very rearmament and reshoring that make cornering credible. Even well-designed grand strategy collapses if it cannot be resourced predictably year after year, especially when rivals can mobilise state capacity in more centralised ways.

What ‘more push in 2026’ most likely looks like 

Washington is likely to intensify pressure through persistent, structural measures rather than headline escalations. This will mean a denser regime of technology denial and licensing leverage aimed at China’s compute and advanced manufacturing pathways; tighter coordination with allies on export controls, industrial capacity, and procurement; continued efforts to constrain Russia’s energy-enabled war financing; and expanded competition in third regions where Beijing is deepening its political and economic influence.

The success of this approach will depend less on the severity of any single action than on whether the US can sustain coalition discipline, maintain domestic industrial momentum, and prevent rival adaptation from eroding Western leverage faster than it can be rebuilt. Failure in 2026 would not look like strategic defeat or open conflict, but like a gradual hollowing out of US influence as alternative networks, technologies, and alignments reduce Washington’s ability to shape the strategic environment on favorable terms.