>> the confrontative position of the first Trump administration and afterwards the Biden administration significantly helped the "by force" faction

This is the argument that you hit your wife because someone on the telephone made you angry.

This is about international relations. You won't get any insight into it if you reduce any point you don't like to argumentative metaphors.

Even within the framework of (structural) realism so popular in contemporary US politics there's this well-known problem that the buildup of defense capabilities of party A looks like aggression to party B - and vice versa. See the seminal work Perception and Misperception in International Politics. Or the relations of Britain and Germany before WW1 and WW2.

The FP article I mentioned, "Trump’s Trade War May Make Elite Young Chinese More Nationalistic" [1], illustrates the argument. You have actual empirical data, changing over time, after exposure to the "treatment". So at least a hint of causality.

[1] https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/05/21/trump-tariffs-china-tra...