Reflection on Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? By Graham Allison

               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 20^th 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.”