Sleep Walking Towards War
Will America and China Heed the Warnings of The Twentieth Century
The article is basically a reproduction of one written by Odd Arne Westadt. In his article he has warned America and China of sleep walking towards a war of annihilation of humanity. He urges both countries and the world to be aware of the danger lurking in the corner. Giving a historical perspective Odd Arne Westaad writes of The Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, 1860–1914and as the British historian Paul Kennedy explained how two traditionally friendly peoples ended up in a downward spiral of mutual hostility that led to World War I. Major structural forces drove the competition between Germany and Britain: economic imperatives, geography, and ideology. Germany’s rapid economic rise shifted the balance of power and enabled Berlin to expand its strategic reach. Some of this expansion—especially at sea—took place in areas in which Britain had profound and established strategic interests. The two powers increasingly viewed each other as ideological opposites, wildly exaggerating their differences. The two countries appeared to be on a collision course, destined for war.
But it wasn’t structural pressures, important as they were, that sparked World War I. War broke out thanks to the contingent decisions of individuals and a profound lack of imagination on both sides. To be sure, war was always likely. But it was unavoidable only if one subscribes to the deeply ahistorical view that compromise between Germany and Britain was impossible. The war might not have come to pass had Germany’s leaders after Chancellor Otto von Bismarck not been so brazen about altering the naval balance of power. Germany celebrated its dominance in Europe and insisted on its rights as a great power, dismissing concerns about rules and norms of international behavior. That posture alarmed other countries, not just Britain which brought forth a new, more just and inclusive world order. A similar tunnel vision prevailed on the other side. Winston Churchill, then British naval chief, concluded in 1913 that Britain’s preeminent global position “often seems less reasonable to others than to us.”
PRESENT US-CHINA RELATIONS
In the decisions that leaders make such generosity or perspicacity United the States is also sorely missing today that can prevent a war. Like Germany and Britain before World War I, China and the United States seem to be locked in a downward spiral, one that may end in disaster for both countries and for the world at large in a similar to the situation a century ago. Economic competition, geopolitical fears, and deep mistrust work to make conflict more likely. But structure is not destiny. The decisions that leaders make can prevent war and better manage the tensions that invariably rise from great-power competition. As with Germany and Britain, structural forces may push events to a head, but it takes human avarice and ineptitude on a colossal scale for disaster to ensue. Likewise, sound judgment and competence can prevent the worst-case scenarios.
CHINA-US HOSTILITY REFLECT GERMAN-BRITISH ANTAGONISM OF THE PAST
Much like the hostility between Germany and Britain over a century ago, the antagonism between China and the United States has deep structural roots. It can be traced to the end of the Cold War. In the latter stages of that great conflict, Beijing and Washington had been allies of sorts, since both feared the power of the Soviet Union more than they feared each other. But the collapse of the Soviet state, their common enemy, almost immediately meant that policymakers fixated more on what separated Beijing and Washington than what united them.
The United States increasingly deplored China’s repressive government. China resented the United States’ meddlesome global hegemony. But this sharpening of views did not lead to an immediate decline in U.S.-Chinese relations. In the decade and a half that followed the end of the Cold War, successive U.S. administrations believed they had a lot to gain from facilitating China’s moderation and economic growth. Much like the British, who had initially embraced the unification of Germany in 1870 and German economic expansion after that, the Americans were motivated by self-interest to abet Beijing’s rise.
China was an enormous market for U.S. goods and capital, and, moreover, it seemed intent on doing business the American way, importing American consumer habits and ideas about how markets should function as readily as it embraced American styles and brands. Germany and Britain were on a collision course—but World War I was not inevitable. At the level of geopolitics, however, China was considerably warier of the United States. The collapse of the Soviet Union shocked China’s leaders, and the U.S. military success in the 1991 Gulf War brought home to them that China now existed in a unipolar world in which the United States could deploy its power almost at will. Much like Germany and Britain in the 1880s and 1890s, China and the United States began to view each other with greater hostility even as their economic exchanges expanded.
CHINA’S ECONOMIC SUCCESS
What really changed the dynamic between the two countries was China’s unrivaled economic success. These are not the only figures that reflect a country’s economic importance, but they give a sense of a country’s heft in the world and indicate where the capacity to make things, including military hardware, resides. At the geopolitical level, China’s view of the United States began to darken in 2003 with the invasion and occupation of Iraq. China opposed the U.S.-led attack, even if Beijing cared little for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s regime. More than the United States’ devastating military capabilities, what really shocked leaders in Beijing was the ease with which Washington could dismiss matters of sovereignty and nonintervention, notions that were staples of the very international order the Americans had coaxed China to join.
Chinese policymakers worried that if the United States could so readily flout the same norms it expected others to uphold, little would constrain its future behavior. Beijing also launched programs to better train its military, improve its efficiency, and invest in new technology. It revolutionized its naval and missile forces. Sometime between 2015 and 2020, the number of ships in the Chinese navy surpassed that in the U.S. Navy. Some argue that China would have dramatically expanded its military capabilities no matter what the United States did two decades ago.
After all, that is what major rising powers do as their economic clout increases. That may be true, but the specific timing of Beijing’s expansion was clearly linked to its fear that the global hegemon had both the will and the capacity to contain China’s rise if it so chose. Iraq’s yesterday could be China’s tomorrow, as one Chinese military planner put it, somewhat melodramatically, in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion. Just as Germany began fearing that it would be hemmed in both economically and strategically in the 1890s and the early 1900s—exactly when Germany’s economy was growing at its fastest clip—China began fearing it would be contained by the United States just as its own economy was soaring.
CHINA TODAY SHOWS SIMILAR SIGNS VIS-À-VIS THE USA
China today shows many of the same signs of hubris and fear that Germany exhibited after the 1890s. Leaders of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) took immense pride in navigating their country through the 2008 global financial crisis and its aftermath more adeptly than did their Western counterparts. Many Chinese officials saw the global recession of that era not only as a calamity made in the United States but also as a symbol of the transition of the world economy from American to Chinese leadership. Chinese leaders, including those in the business sector, spent a great deal of time explaining to others that China’s inexorable rise had become the defining trend in international affairs.
CHINA’S ASSERTIVE BEHAVIOUR TOWARDS HER NEIGHBORS
In its regional policies, China started behaving more assertively toward its neighbors. It also crushed movements for self-determination in Tibet and Xinjiang and undermined Hong Kong’s autonomy. And in recent years, it has more frequently insisted on its right to take over Taiwan, by force if necessary, and has begun to intensify its preparations for such a conquest. Together, growing Chinese hubris and rising nationalism in the United States helped hand the presidency to Donald Trump in 2016, after he appealed to voters by conjuring China as a malign force on the international stage.
In office, Trump began a military buildup directed against China and launched a trade war to reinforce U.S. commercial supremacy, marking a clear break from the less hostile policies pursued by his predecessor, Barack Obama. When Joe Biden replaced Trump in 2021, he maintained many of Trump’s policies that targeted China—buoyed by a bipartisan consensus that sees China as a major threat to U.S. interests—and has since imposed further trade restrictions intended to make it more difficult for Chinese firms to acquire sophisticated technology. Beijing has responded to this hard-liner shift in Washington by showing as much ambition as insecurity in its dealings with others.
SOME COMPLAINTS AGAINST USA ARE SIMILAR TO THOSE AGAINST BRITAIN IN EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY
Some of its complaints about American behavior are strikingly similar to those that Germany lodged against Britain in the early twentieth century. Beijing has accused Washington of trying to maintain a world order that is inherently unjust—the same accusation Berlin leveled at London. “What the United States has constantly vowed to preserve is a so-called international order designed to serve the United States’ own interests and perpetuate its hegemony,” a white paper published by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs declared in June 2022. “The United States itself is the largest source of disruption to the actual world order.”
US TRYING A DETERRENCE POLICY TOWARDS CHINA
The United States, meanwhile, has been trying to develop a China policy that combines deterrence with limited cooperation, similar to what Britain did when developing policy toward Germany in the early twentieth century. According to the Biden administration’s October 2022 National Security Strategy, “The People’s Republic of China harbors the intention and, increasingly, the capacity to reshape the international order in favor of one that tilts the global playing field to its benefit.” Although opposed to such a reshaping, the administration stressed that it will “always be willing to work with the PRC where our interests align.”
KEY ISSUES MUST NOT BE LOST IN DEEPENING POLITICAL MISTRUST
To reinforce the point, the US administration declared, “We can’t let the disagreements that divide us stop us from moving forward on the priorities that demand that we work together.” The problem now is—as it was in the years before 1914—that any opening for cooperation, even on key issues, gets lost in mutual recriminations, petty irritations, and deepening strategic mistrust. In the British-German relationship, three main conditions led from rising antagonism to war. The first was that the Germans became increasingly convinced that Britain would not allow Germany to rise under any circumstances. At the same time, German leaders seemed incapable of defining to the British or anyone else how, in concrete terms, their country’s rise would or would not remake the world. The second was that both sides feared a weakening of their future positions. This view, ironically, encouraged some leaders to believe that they should fight a war sooner rather than later. The third was an almost total lack of strategic communication.
MANY IN WEST HOPE CHINA WILL PLAY A CONSTRUCTIVE ROLE
Many in the Western camp hope that China could play a constructive role in such negotiations, since Beijing has stressed “respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries.” China should remember that one of Germany’s major mistakes before World War I was to stand by as Austria-Hungary harassed its neighbors in the Balkans even as German leaders appealed to the high principles of international justice. This hypocrisy helped produce war in 1914. Right now, China is repeating that mistake with its treatment of Russia. Although the war in Ukraine is now causing the most tension, it is Taiwan that could be the Balkans of the 2020s. Both China and the United States seem to be sleepwalking toward a cross-strait confrontation at some point within the next decade. An increasing number of China’s foreign policy experts now think that war over Taiwan is more likely than not, and U.S. policymakers are preoccupied with the question of how best to support the island. What is remarkable about the Taiwan situation is that it is clear to all involved—except, perhaps, to the Taiwanese most fixed on achieving formal independence—that only one possible compromise can likely help avoid disaster.
THERE IS DESPERATE NEED FOR ARMS CONTROL FOR DEALING WITH CONFLICTS IN MANY PARTS OF THE WORLD
There is a desperate need for arms control initiatives and for dealing with other conflicts, such as that between the Israelis and the Palestinians. There is a demand for signs of mutual respect. When, in 1972, Soviet and U.S. leaders agreed to a set of “Basic Principles of Relations Between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,” the joint declaration achieved almost nothing concrete. But it built a modicum of trust between both sides and helped convince Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev that the Americans were not out to get him.
CONCLUSION
If Xi-Jinping intends to remain leader for life, that is an investment worth making. The rise of great-power tensions also creates the need to maintain believable deterrence. There is a persistent myth that alliance systems led to war in 1914 and that a web of mutual defense treaties ensnared governments in a conflict that became impossible to contain. In fact, what made war almost a certainty after the European powers started mobilizing against one another in July 1914 was Germany’s ill-considered hope that Britain might not, after all, come to the assistance of its friends and allies. For the United States, it is essential not to provide any cause for such mistakes in the decade ahead. It should concentrate its military power in the Indo-Pacific, making that force an effective deterrent against Chinese aggression. And it should reinvigorate NATO, with Europe carrying a much greater share of the burden of its own defense. Leaders can learn from the past in both positive and negative ways, about what to do and what not to do. But they have to learn the big lessons first, and the most important of all is how to avoid horrendous wars that reduce generations of achievements to rubble.
ODD ARNE WESTAD is Elihu Professor of History and Global Affairs at Yale University and a co-author, with Chen Jian, of the forthcoming book The Great Transformation: China’s Road from Revolution to Reform.
