The growing conflict between the United States and China will define the coming decades. The new bloc confrontation has increased the danger of a world war and is currently fuelling an international arms race. China’s rise as a global hegemon would bring 500 years of Western domination to an end. American decline goes hand in hand with the “de-westernization” of the world. It is highly doubtful that this will occur peacefully. So far all U.S. strategies to stop China’s rise have failed. The first strategy, pursued under George W. Bush, was to control global energy reserves in the Middle East. The U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 was in part directed against China and its high dependence on imported fossil fuels at the time. The second U.S. strategy, launched under Barack Obama in 2011 as part of America’s “pivot to Asia”, was to block China’s sea routes in the South China Sea via the Strait of Malacca, in the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea and the Suez Canal.The U.S. economic war against China, propelled by the Trump and Biden administrations, was a reaction to the failure of the sea domination strategy. If the economic strategy to stop China does not produce the desired outcome, the military option will increasingly move to the fore.