This
excellent book has got to be one of the best I’ve read in a while. It is an
extremely detailed and thorough look at the likelihood of war between China and
the United States and its analysis of possible conflict between the two
countries is very clear. Maybe it’s because I’ve been reading Churchill
biographies, but modern China keeps reminding me of Germany in the 1930’s.
There are the feats of engineering. China produced and used more cement between
2011 and 2013 than the United States did in the entire 20th century.
China built the equivalent of all the housing in Europe in just 15 years. The list
goes on and on. There is also the repression of minority groups, as China
attempts to wipe Muslim Uyghurs off the map. One criticism of the book and the
Thucydides’s Trap project is that it is very Eurocentric. I think that the
fundamental idea of a rising power and an established power fighting does not
just have to be applied to the most powerful of states but could also be applied
to any number of conflicts. They chose to only cover the last 500 years, which
is a choice that will favor Europe. I am also not sure that the list is so
comprehensive since it doesn’t explain the decline of some powers. For example,
Spain and Portugal have the first conflict of their “big 16,” and they come to
an understanding, yet there is no explanation of Spain’s later decline.
Allison
has lots of good lessons for policymakers. For example, he writes that, “when
states repeatedly fail to act in what appears to be their true national
interest, it is often because their policies reflect necessary compromises
among parties within their government rather than a single coherent vision.”
This reflects the fundamental truth that a state is a body of people who often
disagree. The overwhelming interest of 90% of the people can definitely be
stopped by a powerful or motivated 10%. This happens often in domestic policy as
the wealthy, special interest groups, and lobbying organizations exert outsized
policymaking. In the international sphere it can threaten the very existence of
the state.
Allison
is extremely clear in his discussion of Chinese goals and motivations. I found
his explanation of Xi Jinping’s views on Gorbachev even more clear than Kerry
Brown’s or Francois Bougon’s. Allison boils down Xi’s thoughts to this: “Gorbachev
made three fatal errors. He relaxed political control of society before he had
reformed his country’s economy. He and his predecessors allowed the Communist
Party to become corrupt, and ultimately hollow. And he ‘nationalized’ the
Soviet military, requiring commanders to swear allegiance to the nation, not
the Party and its leader.” In terms of maintaining control over the country, I
think that these three errors would just about sum it up.
In a
conflict between the two countries, China will not have the naval strength to
strike at the United States’ mainland. Even hitting Hawaii would be very
difficult. It will be almost as difficult for the Americans to hit China.
Allison writes that, “Today, China’s arsenal of more than one thousand antiship
missiles based on the mainland and its coastal fleet make it impossible for any
US warship to operate safely within a thousand miles of China’s coast.
Sixty-two submarines patrol adjacent waters armed with torpedoes and missiles
that can attack surface ships. An array of antisatellite weapons gives China
the capacity to jam or even destroy US intelligence, surveillance, and
communication satellites over this area.” He says that the US would have to
keep carriers behind the first major East Asian island chain and, according to
the Pentagon doctrine of “Air-Sea Battle,” would send long-range bombers to
destroy Chinese anti-ship missiles based on the mainland to allow carriers to
safely move closer.
One of
the most shocking things about the book is how closely two predictions of
potential war causes mirror real-life events in 2019, two years after Allison
wrote the book. One is the situation in Hong Kong. Allison posits that severe
repression in Hong Kong could trigger a movement for international recognition
of Taiwan’s independence. The United States is obligated to defend Hong Kong
and that defense could cause war, as almost happened in 1996. Another is the escalation
of a trade war into a shooting war; a trade war has of course begun under the
Trump administration.
One of the
most important ideas of the book is that “There is no ‘solution’ for the
dramatic resurgence of a 5,000-year-old civilization with 1.4 billion people.
It is a condition, a chronic condition that must be managed over a generation.
Constructing a strategy proportionate to this challenge will require a
multiyear, multiminded effort.” There are many paths to take, and US
policymakers must balance the fact that Chinese supremacy in Asia will cause
harm to the United States, yet most Americans are probably not willing to sacrifice
their family members’ lives for naval supremacy in the western Pacific. Unless
the US pays the blood price for it, that region will have to pass out of US
hegemony. My thoughts as I finished the book are that the USA should avoid war
with China. We have to acknowledge that we are entering a bipolar century and
bide our time. We have to have faith that our system of liberty and democracy
is better than Communism and tyranny. Ideally, US policymakers will bide their
time and slowly withdraw from East Asia, especially on land. However, in the cyber
and economic arenas, the United States will continue to undermine the CCP and
try to develop fissures to crack China. The US must keep Taiwan separate and
try to get the Chinese out of Xinjiang and Tibet. However, the real prize is
the division of the Chinese heartland itself. The United States cannot remain a
world power when a single country has over four times the USA’s population. While
the British failed to protect the CSA in the American Civil War and divide the
nation that would eventually displace them, the USA should not fail to miss
this opportunity, as it will not likely come more than once if it comes at all.
Until then, the United States should focus on its own prosperity. In sports and
in war the best victories are not planned perfectly in advance but go to the
side that can capitalize on its rival’s errors. We should not seek to
positively go on the offensive against China; instead we should convert on all
the turnovers they give us and keep control of the air and seas. On any map it
is clear that the United States has the advantage and that China, with land
powers on three sides and Japan and the United States at sea, is at a long-term
disadvantage.
Miscellaneous Stuff:
-
Each chapter starts with a quote from Thucydides and then a quote or two by
other people. One chapter starts with two quotes. Churchill said in 1914 that, “They
build navies so as to play a part in the world’s affairs. It is sport to them.
It is life and death to us.” He must not have realized that German Admiral
Alfred Tirpitz said to Kaiser Wilhelm II that, “Since Germany is particularly
backward in sea power, it is a life-and-death question for her, as a World
Power and great cultural state, to make up the lost ground.”
