Countering China as an economic power and alternate political and development model is a centerpiece of US national security policy. Countering China in the Middle East, however, has proven challenging due to inconsistencies within US policy and with the growing perception of China's attractiveness to the region. Framing the discussion of China's rise or role in the Middle East to a zero-sum game of choosing either US or Chinese patronage and partnership has served rhetorically only to increase China's stature among the region's political leadership. And relatedly, the US security strategy that explicitly mentions the importance of allies and shared values has failed to rely on those strengths in counterarguments to the Chinese "choice."

The United States has failed to make its own case in the Middle East, mostly because the current administration has undermined the importance of shared values and institutions that demonstrate its superior development model to China's and then failed to demonstrate empirically how it is better. The reality is there is no stark choice for the Gulf states or governments of the broader Middle East to decouple from either the United States or China. The plan to counter China has never been to do it alone. The Trump administration's failure to elevate and amplify its own strategy to rely on allies and shared institutions is an Achilles heel that China and adversaries like Russia see as an easy target.

China cannot compete with the present, consistent US security architecture in the Gulf, but it can needle the sense of US disengagement in the region. And China can alter the framing of how its own presence in the region is measured. China has moved the goal post. By focusing on state investments and publicizing them widely, China has made the US litmus test in the region about bilateral, state finance. In contrast, what the United States and its allies offer the region is a system of access to international capital, to institutions that reward governance, rule of law and ultimately local job creation, rather than the enrichment of state entities, contracts that boost state bank balance sheets, and volatile project flow that rarely creates lasting local growth or employment.

The United States may be a superpower, but it stands on the shoulders of other states, namely the other large economies of the world. The other G7 members are US allies and countries that separate the state from the market and reject state capitalism and authoritarianism. As Zack Cooper has neatly articulated in his examination of weaknesses of the United States' current strategic approach to China, "Many of America’s friends are frustrated that Trump has not united US allies and partners in pursuit of a common goal."