At it’s core fundamentalist Islam is a much bigger threat to China than to the US. There are no really significant Muslim population in the americas. american entanglement with fundamentalist islam ultimately grew out of the importance of middle east oil, its impact on oil commodity price, the impact of that price directly to american economy and indirectly to the economies of American trading partners, and the American alliance system to offset Soviet interest during the Cold War, and direct military intervention tosecure american interest in Saudi Arabia, the gulf region and in the Levante since the Cold War.
With the declining importance of middle eastern oil, and the departure of US forces from Afghanistan, the number of places where America is really entangled with fundamentalist Islam has declined to really just american support for Israel. Gradually fundamentalist Islam will become primarily a problem for Russia, Europe and China, with american remaining a enemy in memory to Islam, bUt increasingly less in direct conflict of core interest.
Undoubtedly with departure from Afghanistan and with it effectively the last direct American occupation of Dal Al-Islam, there is a window of opportunity for America to more proactively enlist fundamental Islam in its competition with China. If one thinks islamophobia makes that unlikely, one needs to think back on the modern America proverb “only Nixon can go to China”. America also formed a de facto alliance with global militant Islamic fundamentalism once before, to hobble Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
So preventing a de facto alliance between global aim of militant Islamic fundamentalism and american antagonism with China needs to be one of china’s premier long term national policy goals.
