China, the United States, and the Cold War: How Much Damage Can One Historical Analogy Do?

good morning everybody welcome to CSIS I'm surprised that so many people are interested in actually arguing about history that's a good sign it's refreshing my name is Seth Center I'm the director of the project on history and strategy here it is a naive novel and noble pursuit at a think tank it is novel because I think it's one of the few programs that anything tank actually dedicated purely to history it's naive for reasons that I don't need to spell out because it's almost Sisyphean in Washington right now to have anybody pay attention to history although yesterday there was some interest in Constitutional History and it's noble because even if we don't succeed that's the right thing to do to force people to look backwards before they look forwards and there's no more important subject to do that on than the Cold War right now because the Cold War analogy as it relates to China is a conceptual framework that's being deployed to look at what is currently the most important strategic challenge confronting the United States and possibly one of the most important geopolitical shifts that we're living through what's most interesting about this particular analogy is it is pervasive it is malleable and it is durable its pervasive in the sense that literally every week some luminary connects the Cold War in China in some way so two weeks ago it was Secretary of Defense Mark Esper saying we're not the ones who want a cold war with China last week it was Henry Kissinger saying we are now living through the foothills of a cold war with China and this week Neil Ferguson again has noted that we are entering a Cold War two phase and so what does all of this mean well as you look at how the Cold War has been utilized in public debate it's utilized by Cold War Hawks it's utilized by those who are skeptical that the United States and China should be in a strategic confrontation it's utilized in virtually any way by any person on any scatter plot of the us-china challenge it's quite it's quite remarkable so for those who believe the United States is hurtling and the administration is hurtling in an unthinking way towards a confrontation with China the cold war is seen through the lens of McCarthyism overreaction and domino theories for those who think the United States is not sufficiently galvanized to deal deal with China they invoke the Cold War to say we need the same sense of purpose and well that we had in the 1950s and you can go on and on in this in this sequence it's quite it's quite remarkable so well what Emma Bates and I thought we would do over the course of this fall is given this incredible flexibility of this analogy but it's its power as well is find real historians who spend their lives thinking about the Cold War on its own terms and have them tell us what is right and wrong about thinking about the China challenge through the lens of the Cold War and having lived through that experience we did several seminars private seminars we decided we should have a public debate and part of the reason we wanted to do that is we got to the end of our seminar series Arne West at another great historian of the Cold War presented his case and then we took a vote in the seminar there's about 25 of us who believed after hearing dr. West ed that the Cold War was a useful device in understanding the us-china challenge and who believed that the Cold War was a damaging analogy for thinking about the challenge and the room divided in half and more interesting than that the people who raised their hand and believed that the Cold War was a useful device all had policy experience or were involved in contemporary policy in some way and all the people who thought the Cold War was a bad and damaging analogy or my friends in the history world who had spent their lives study in the subject and so what this means I have no idea other than I think we may be doing more damage than good in bringing historians to talk to policymakers because we are not I'm not sure that we're bridging the divide although this was just one anecdote eleven piece of evidence I'm partially kidding and saying that I do believe that in allowing people who were involved in policy in contemporary events to here from scholars and historians and to have historians and scholars understand the questions that policymakers care about and are asking 10 provide some sort of synthesis I hope and so today we're gonna have a friendly debate about the subject with Mel Leffler who is one of the deans of Cold War Studies Frankie Gavin who has thought deeply about the relationship between history and strategy as the director of the Kissinger Center at sice and Jude Blanchette who has spent an enormous amount of time working and living in China and as the Freeman chair here at at CSIS the person tasked with ordering this debate in a civil way is a research associate emma bates who has done all of the heavy lifting and architectural work in designing their series and developing it over the course of the fall the sequence is historians get the first first take and then Jude will respond and then Emma will moderate and then we'll open it up for discussion this should be friendly and civilized Henry Kissinger said that academic debates were so vicious because the stakes were so small I think we will flip that around and say the debate will be so civilized because the stakes are so high and actually I think when one thinks about the power of the Cold War analogy and what it could do for how the United States approaches China and China approaches United States actually it is quite a powerful question so thank you all for joining us Emma good luck so speaking as the person on the stage for whom the Cold War is purely history and not a part of my memory at all maybe you could start us off now by helping us understand what was the Cold War and how do we think about it today compared to what it really was well my basic point is that we should realize the Cold War it does have the Cold War analogy does have certain advantages but my basic point is that its weaknesses far outweigh its strengths I think the Cold War analogy is basically misleading because circumstances today are so totally different than they were in the late 1940s 50s and 60s when the Cold War took shape I also think that the Cold War analogy is harmful as well as misleading because it's based on a thorough some view of international politics and therefore the analogy multiplies the chances of nurturing an escalatory cycle of distrust basically a rivalry like the one we do have today with China should not should not be imagined as a war rivals are not enemies one competes with rivals one does not try to destroy them or vanquish them as was the case during the Cold War so there are four basic reasons why I think the Cold War analogy is historically misleading first the context today is totally different for example the Cold War came the Cold War began after 30 years of global war great power conflicts and worldwide depression our present challenges the challenges today come after 30 years of great power peace and prosperity the Cold War came after 30 years of rising tariffs and closed economic bloc's contemporary challenges come after 30 years of globalization and growing economic interdependence the Cold War came after 30 years of Soviet economic isolation compared to 30 years the most recent 30 years of China's engagement and integration into the International economy so the historical context and it's just totally different the configuration of power today is totally different than it was after World War two the Cold War came when Europe and Asia were wastelands Germany and Japan had been defeated and they were occupied China was immersed in a civil war huge vacuums of power surrounded the Soviet Union and an era of revolutionary nationalism an era of decolonization was just beginning to take place in the third world present challenges the challenges today come when China is surrounded by a proud and wealthy Japan a robust and nationalistic India a revanchist Russia and a rich competitive South Korea the configuration of power is totally different the audiological dimension is totally different the Cold War came when capitalism was in great disrepute often blamed for two world wars and a Great Depression the Cold War came when socio-economic ferment was pervasive throughout Europe and Asia after the Second World War the Cold War came when communist parties were extremely popular in France and Italy for example they were on the cusp communists were on the cusp of winning power in free elections the Cold War came when Marxist Leninist ideas and the principles of central planning resonated with a newly emerging generation of revolutionary nationalist leaders in Asia and Africa the Cold War came in other words when socialism had vast appeal as illuminated in the election in June 1945 just as World War Two was ending when the Labour Party in England was voted into power the Labour Party a Socialist Party calling for the nationalization of key industries and banks and advocating a huge social welfare program in short the Cold War came when the USSR when the Soviet Union had vast ideological appeal based on a Universalist major message however specious based on a Universalist message of justice and equality China today offers no such Universalist message it conveys a nationalist ethos quote socialism with Chinese characteristics or socialism with the Chinese face forth the big contrast to the onset of the Cold War is that the geostrategic threat today is totally different keep in mind the key lesson of world war ii the key lesson that shaped the entire Cold War the key strategic lesson of world war ii for American policymakers was the following the United States must not allow an adversary or a coalition of adversaries to gain preponderant power in Europe and Asia the great lesson of World War two was that when Nazi Germany and militarist Japan had gained such preponderance they were able to assimilate the resources and industrial infrastructure and human labour of all of Europe and Asia to wage a protracted war against the United States after World War two the Soviet Union appeared to have the ability to gain such preponderance the Soviet Union appeared to have the ability to capitalize on its ideological appeal on the vacuums of power on its own military presence in Eastern Europe on the likelihood of the United States withdrawing from Germany and Japan China's geostrategic threat today is nowhere comparable to what the geostrategic threat of the Soviet Union was in the late 1940s and 50s we need to get a grip on reality China's creation of makeshift islands in the South China Sea is not comparable to the likelihood of the Soviet Union taking over Poland and Romania the contest between China and Vietnam over the Spratly Islands is not like the contest of the United States and Britain and the Soviet Union over the future of Germany we need to get real and realize that the China's geostrategic threat is nowhere comparable today to what the threat of the Soviet Union was at the beginning of the Cold War Cold War containment made sense when there was a perceived enemy who wanted to destroy our way of life and who could see huge opportunities to do so Cold War containment justifiably led to risk-taking and spiraling distress that was okay when the geostrategic balance of power in Europe and Asia really did seem to be at risk China is not such an enemy today nor does it have the same type of opportunities so in conclusion let me underscore two of the most fundamental axioms of the Cold War containment world are not present today are not applicable today it was believed that with the Soviet Union there could be no permanent coexistence the Soviet communists were believed to want to destroy our way of life and we believed they wanted to promote worldwide revolution and they believed we wanted to destroy their way of life Cold War containment was also based on another fundamental axiom that George can emphasize time and again the Cold War presupposed that the Soviet Union actually was fundamentally weak and would back down in contrast China today is not seeking to destroy our way of life nor is it weak and vulnerable as was the Soviet Union so to sum up basically the Cold War analogy obfuscates far more than it illuminates it should be rejected of course it may we may in fact turn a rival into a real enemy thank you so you've just given us what we so often overlook in historical comparisons which is how does the thing we're talking about fit into its own context and does the context today fit that so Frank could you help us understand how the Cold War played out and what elements of it we might actually be getting wrong as we think about the past sure first of all Thank You Emma and Seth this is a terrific program you run I'm really honored to be up here especially up here with Nell was a hero mine and Jude terrific scholars I think you know I thought about the task ahead of me on this and there's a lot of ways of going about it I you know delay my cards on the table not only don't find find this historical analogy at all helpful I find historical analogies often reflect very lazy thinking about both the past and the present and there are really two questions I think you want to ask when you think about the us-china relations or any issue you want to ask yourself is today's world like the past I think mal did a brilliant job of explaining that and I actually don't tell my historian friends but I think one thing that often happens if you if you rely too much on history it can blind you to what is new and different and I think Mel just brilliantly laid out the fact that there's much more that's different how we think about power what the circumstances of the Internet system is what China is as on all these categories and I could go through my thoughts and them but I thought what might be more interesting is that when you make an analogy you usually think the thing you're comparing to you understand and there's sort of a stable definition and what I'd like to suggest is that in fact this cold war that people think they understand in fact in the world that Mel and I live in is arguments about this are quite contentious there's certainly very little consensus and instead of that being an annoying thing that historians do the very fact that you wrestle with the past actually I'm gonna suggest helps you understand the present better and as I was thinking about this because I think about the people who walk and make this analogy they have a very set idea of what the Cold War is they have this idea of this simplistic struggle begins in 1945 ends in 1991 they have images Stalin's victory speech the Berlin Blockade and the airlift Reagan saying tear down this wall and they have this kind of notion in their head of what it is and I want to sort of lay out four interpretive debates or questions as historians go through all the time that show or reveal that in fact when people talk about the Cold War someone like Nell and I who know a lot about this subject where we can't even definitively say that the question of what what the Cold War is is is settled even give you these four questions first on chronology we all think we know the chronology of the Cold War when does a Cold War start I'm gonna begin at the end of the Second World War did it begin in 1946 with the Polish Iranian and Turkish straits crisis does it begin in 1948 with the Berlin crisis does it begin between 1949 and 1950 late 1950 when you have a series of crises the fall of China the detonation of a Soviet atomic weapon the North Korean invasion of South Korea and finally China's intervention in the war in late 1950 when does it begin I learned from the guy next to me the Cold War might have begun in 1917 the guest you had earlier this semester arne West said has just written a book that said the Cold War began in the late 19th century right so we couldn't even stand up here until you actually when it began another chronological issue was a continuous and this is important because one of the challenges with historical thinking is retrospective bias right we all think this Cold War thing was a thing as we look back on it but while people were living it it looked quite different I could make a case you that the Cold War had these discrete periods of intense crisis in between which no one was really solid the same way so between 1949 and 1953 in 1958 1962 those are the periods you know for years on both sides where there was a true risk of global of global war right but in other periods between 53 to 58 the period we associated with McCarthyism and the cultural Cold War it's actually a relaxation of tensions or from 1963 to the end of the 1970s right where there was extraordinary amounts of cooperation particularly in the field I work in on the nuclear side where you could make the case that there was this thing called the Cold War but it wasn't dominating the way people thought I only bring this up to say that even the basic idea of when the Cold War began is open to dispute a second interpretive question what are the sources for the Cold War and relatedly who's the blame for the Cold War could it have been avoided you know mal has been involved in these arguments or decades and I've learned a ton from him and I think one of the great things about his most recent book is he acknowledges that as he's wrestled with it he's changed his mind about some of these things was it ideology was it by definition these two systems had such different ideologies that it would inevitable that they would clash was it economics was it an arms race was it geopolitics and relatedly who was the playing all right there's a whole big unsettled debate about this you know back in the day in the beginning it was Stalin's a bad man it was his fault then of course in historical scholarship you're also gonna push back and in the late 50s but particularly is the Vietnam War raged people started argue no in fact that the United States and its seeking of ideological supremacy geopolitical dominance but particularly economic markets and resources they were to blame then there was a pushback something called post revisionism where this whole notion that nobody was to blame it was the structure of the international system that created it and I would I would say to you that you know I could argue any of those cases Mel could argue any of those cases but deep down we know a lot about this stuff and I don't know they for debate sake we could act certain but I think the uncertainty is actually what's interesting and in fact one of the things I've learned as I've started doing this more is are these even thoug right questions to ask right you know one of the questions that I think that all the time why did the Cold War last so long you could make a case that many of the basic issues geopolitical issues were resolved by 1960 to 1963 yet it continues how was war avoided right if this was such a bad clash why wasn't there a world war three did it have to be so bad alright and so that's a third question and this is perhaps the most interesting one to me and I think it's one that we think about particular in terms of China imagine you were asked to write a textbook about international politics from 1945 to 1990 and you had to update the edition every ten years and the first edition was 1990 next 2000 2010 and they needed to do in 2020 you only had 300 pages well we all know as historians that volume would look different every ten years that 1990 volume would have maybe two pages on China right the one in 2020 might have a hundred the one in 2040 might have in Washington DC's 163 degrees might all be about climate change the point is that the global forces that drive world politics often look different in retrospect than they're doing in real in real time so if you were to say what mattered after 1945 well cold war that's what we're talking about today what about the forces of European integration the great historian Toni jut wrote a terrific book called post-war all about what he considered the most important thing that happened after 1945 and that is there was resolution of entry European tensions and the creation of the European project and the Cold War's hardly mentioned at all what about decolonization if you live in Africa or India South Asia or East Asia the Cold War to a certain extent is a sideshow to the real great struggle of decolonization and the great creation of new States how does that fit into the narrative nuclear weapons in my own field I've written quite a bit about this the history of the nuclear age is not the same thing as a history of the Cold War how do those two histories come together the history of globalization I think one of the things that we're going to say the textbook that's done in 2030 that edition globalization and its forces which really began in the late 60s and explode in the middle of the 70s and interacts with the story of the rise of China may turn out to look more important than the Cold War strain certainly is more important in understanding China today how do all these different historical threats fit into this Cold War narrative final question Turpin a question what caused the Cold War to end right was it arms races that drove the Soviet Union into bankruptcy kind of a cold war too late Carter plus Reagan SDI and all that good stuff or was it the internal contradictions of the Soviet system anyway I'm just laying out there and we could go you know Mel and I were out having a couple beers it's probably little too for that but and started talking about these things we could come up with 10 or 20 more questions the point is not to be annoying historians about this and say we could debate this endlessly it's to say actually wrestling with the past in this way with these historical interpretations actually gives you far more purchase on the contemporary and future challenges we face then simply relying on I think Mel had it exactly right inappropriate not particularly political for analogies and engaging in what is really lazy thinking engaging in historical analogies thanks Frank so turning to dude who's our China expert you know I often ask myself are people in China having this debate do they see this as a new Cold War yeah you read pronouncements of oh the United States is starting to make this a new Cold War but give us a little context about what this is looking like in China right now and what their memory of the Cold War might actually be to inform that debate yeah sure if I may I may first just give a few sort of thoughts as after hearing the comments here and you know I certainly always feel like I don't belong on a stage it's certainly the case today talking about the Cold War with with Mel and Frank because I don't even pretend to play a Cold War historian on TV this is really just thoughts that I have of someone who's wrestling with us-china relations the trajectory of China and trying to think of appropriate frameworks to guide policy and as I you've been thinking about this and I read Mel's great piece this week and also several pieces you know Mel Ferguson's piece that Seth mentioned Arnie West stats piece three weeks ago or so I would have said absolutely this Cold War analogy is is rubbish but to be honest as I've wrestled with the the articles coming out telling me why it's not a Cold War seeds of doubt began to creep in and I think I'm now at the point where my heart says we should abandon this analogy but my head says gosh there's something there that we haven't quite fully dispelled and it seems to me and again hearing the great presentations you know today we're basically saying that it's different right that that this is totally different circumstances we're dealing with a fundamentally different actor in in Communist Party of China than we were with the Soviet Union xi Jinping it's not Stalin and I think the only answer to that is absolutely of course that's absolutely right but this is where I think I don't know anyone who's wrestling with this analogy at least in the practitioner side who is saying what we need to do is have a repeat of the capital C capital double w Cold War and I think when when people discuss at least in policy world even an idea of a new Cold War I think it's the new which is where a lot of the interesting debate is happening right that's really where the hard stuff is and all of the you know in males article he mentions you know and I think very appropriately levels of economic interdependence that exists between US and China which are extraordinarily different than what we were facing in the 20th century between the Soviet Union is satellite states in the United States absolutely you're right that's why this is different in many many ways their ID pack that into the new part of it and I've written about with my colleague Scott Kennedy an idea of how do we get more managed interdependence with China that addresses some of these national security concerns but yet maintaining robust economic linkages that to me can absolutely subsist within a narrative of a of a new Cold War the the point being no one's calling for a repeat of the past when Mel and his article said that that quote Cold War era policies are quote unnecessary I think absolutely and I don't know anyone who's calling for cold war-era policies what we're talking about is recognizing what's sticky about the analogy right what's helpful at least for practitioners of don't have much by way of recent experience in the United States where we've been engaged in long-term strategic and security competition with a political power of the size and ideological differences that we experience with the Communist Party of China not China but the Communist Party of China I won't I mean maybe later on the discussion on I'd like to enumerate ways in which I think we should not dismiss the ideological component of this in some ways you know when I read these critiques of the Cold War analogy I'm absolutely an agreement with the authors until the point they start talking about China and then I feel like I'm hearing about a China of 1995 or 2005 not the China of 2019 it's certainly not the China since the 19th Party Congress and not even the party or the China under the Communist Party as of you know last week so maybe you can talk about this later I don't want to bore people with that now but instead of a debate really what I'd like to sort of make a plea that I feel like there's a lot of synergies possible here we're in and this is my request instead of telling us why the Cold War of the 20th century was different than today because obviously the the deck is stacked and you know a lot more about this and of course for from from even your remarks today I think you're right you're right you're right you're right what can we learn from the Cold War history because it seems to me when I think about China's political trajectory and when I think about how I understand China will be perfectly honest I spend more time reading about Stalin and about the the machinations and the system under Stalin and how the Communist Party evolved then then I do about let's say the literature on you know post communism and reforming political systems and how they're moving forward towards democratization that's meaningful to me that that I'm that I in my own and before this debate even broke out was looking at reading Soviet ologists to understand where China's political system would emerge and how I should understand bureaucratic politics how should understand how does a political system operate when you have increasing top-down ideological dominance and control coming from coming from the Politburo and the Standing Committee those map on very nicely to what we're dealing with today with China so I'll insert those remarks there but just to say this is not so much a debate really as I think there's there's some really fruitful opportunity to have you know Frank and Mel spend more time telling me what a better framework is that fully bakes in and packs in the fact that well I hope to think well-intentioned folks like myself aren't trying to engage in lazy thinking although if those who know me think that's oftentimes the case but it's really not that it's we're struggling to find a framework to deal with this power that is China which is run by a Leninist one party called the Communist Party of China and which I'm very sorry fundamentally believes in a version of communism we can debate on what that is it has global aspirations and I recommend anyone here who doubts that simply read the nineteenth Party Congress full work report which Egypt being delivered my colleague Gabriel I won't point him out he's somewhere here but just spent did the omens work by translating and doing a full exegesis of Xi Jinping's recently released speech which was given last year but just released in November on Marxism the title of it by the way is studying the basic theories of Marxism is a compulsory course for every communist party member in it he talked about that the function of the struggle of Marxist political parties leading the people is to armed seizure of political power the strengthening of political power after this after its seizure by Marxist political parties and especially the constructing of a ruling party this piece also talks about the proletariat must completely liberate all mankind and call for the proletarians of the world to unite this provides a scientific and theoretical foundation for Marxist political parties to have the world in mind to benefit mankind and for the joint creation of a better world this was released three weeks ago you can we can debate on if you think that's pure mumbo-jumbo I do wonder why see Jim Payne who's a busy guy feels the necessity to gather together his his fellow senior leaders and and to give this speech if it's all just nonsense and so I think we've not fully wrestled with that I didn't really answer his question but for the sake of time I don't want to give another doesn't want to drone on timber man so maybe I can come back to that it lends itself to that later on so in the interest of of addressing the point that Frank brought up which is you know do we have a grasp on what the Cold War really was we could debate whether the Chinese Communist Party today is motivated by ideology but I'm curious about how much ideology infused the Cold War we like we think of it as a purely ideological struggle but of course Russia still had imperial ambitions the United States did a lot of things in the third world that were not in accordance with our ideology so what are we mistaken about the dichotomy that we sometimes made between the ideological Cold War and the non-ideological just authoritarian China yes we're totally misled by that dichotomy the Cold War integrated geopolitical audiological and economic issues they were totally interdependent in part the great threat of Soviet you of the Soviet Union the great threat of its geopolitical predominance related to its audiological appeal and I say that not because I'm looking upon it retrospectively but that is exactly what American policymakers said in the late 1940s and in the night in the 1950s so in part I respond to Jews very very good comments about saying well to understand international politics or to us and threat perception you need to look at the intentions of the adversary but you also need to look at the opportunities and the key point one key point I am making is that the opportunities was so vastly different in the late 1940s and 1950s and into the 1960s the opportunities were so vastly different because basically the Soviet Union had tremendous geopolitical opportunities because of its ideological appeal so what I would say to this eye by rejecting the Cold War analogy it's not to embrace the idea that everything is sunny and this is fact if anything quite the contrary what I would suggest the way I sort of think about this and its relates to the ideological question is that from a big meta historical perspective say from the late 18th century until about the 1970s you had an international system that had a variety of things going on that was driven by things like imperialism that the doctor desire for conquest the major tumult of industrialization demographic explosion where the basic mindset was in a world where the population is quaint appealing and no one knows where the resources are going to do the same you live in a world of great insecurity and scarcity where the states are an unbelievable competition for each other and the thing they're competing over is land so you have imperialism we have great wars of conquest ideology is how a state mobilizes its population to win in that competition right and that's the world that's room about the French Revolution till about the sixties or seventies I would suggest that world doesn't exist anymore right and think about that in fact I like to call this the problems of Plenty so from the 1800's to the 1970s what were you worried about scarcity of security scarcity of land scarcity of resources scarcity of wealth what are you worried about now will climate change is a problem of plenty all right what we don't have a problem it's the analogy even though I don't like making analogies is that we have an obesity problem not a starvation problem the massive increases in flows of information of people of Finance generate a whole different set of challenges and the institutional arrangements we have now which were incredibly effective to deal with the world when great power Wars of competition and invasion were the scourge of humanity aren't necessarily so good to deal with the kind of problems that mark the us-china relationship now and that's not to say it's all good but I think a way to think about this just to think about how China's dealt with Hong Kong if it was 1950 it would just invade and take over Hong Kong what is China realized that if the day that it does that what happens goldman sachs leaves right so why do you want hong kong think about say 10 15 years ago and you're looking at a someone in the mid 30s who's an investment banker can work for goldman sachs HSBC there's three places you live London New York or Hong Kong 10 or 15 years ago you probably pick Hong Kong's better food right it's more interesting place the minute that 35 year old says I'm not buying a house and I'm not raising my kid there it's over for Hong Kong right because what is Hong Kong no one cares about the tiny territory of Hong Kong it's the generation of trillions of dollars as one of the three places in the world where you can actually go and raise capital and by the way when that goes away it's not going to Shanghai nor is it going to Singapore because anyone who knows economic history knows that it is very very very hard to build these kind of capital markets what does that mean that means that to understand what China is up to and what we should do we have to understand they could you just like they could take Taiwan anytime they probably really wanted to but bombing the hell out of Taiwan isn't what they want what they want is the wealth and the prosperity that exists there that's not the world of 1890 that's not the world of 1950 it's not the world of 1970 it's a different world and the intellectual laziness that causes us to say well it's the return of geopolitics you know let's get Metternich and dust him off that's not going to help us understand these sets of issues where the even IR theory this is where it is the world of Mearsheimer Waltz is so problematic it's all based on scarcity when you think about this doesn't mean that the us-china relationship is going to be good cooperative it means that the the institutional arrangements they have to deal with these problems are flailing just like ours are flailing and this is generating a set of problems so it requires new intellectual thinking about how do you think about climate change how do you think about this information how do you think about massive financial flows because the problems of great power wars of conquest which was the problem that really dominated human history for a really long time you know what we did a pretty good job on that and maybe that comes back but right now that's not the issue and the Cold War was about that and the current problems we face are not about that and that's why I think the analogy is talking so and that brings to mind another question that I had for I'll start with you Mel the the risk-taking element of this of the Cold War you know you look at the beginning of the Cold War and the the wisemen of the Truman years took in and Eisenhower used two enormous risks that enhanced American influence at the expense of Soviet interests and you know Frank was just describing the way that you know China would not want to take the giant red of advancing its interest in a way that it might lose something what what's different between now and then in terms of the risk calculus well there are two two major differences I mean the point you're making em is is extremely salient the Truman administration did take enormous risks when they started rebuilding the Western zones of Germany when they launched the Marshall Plan and proposed it for Eastern Europe as well as Western Europe George Marshall and George Kennan were explicitly aware that they were they would be perceived as in the Kremlin as threatening vital security interests of the Soviet Union nonetheless they went ahead because they had an atomic monopoly they were confident of their overall superiority and they believed as kenan said in his long telegram and especially in his x article a fundamental axiom of containment is for us to realize the Soviets are weaker and and therefore we can take risks and ICJ and at the same time we had nothing to lose by taking those risks because there were no economic interconnections there was no interdependence between the United States and this and the Soviet Union nowadays of course China is much stronger the risks of risk-taking are much greater in a nuclear war in a nuclear world and and furthermore and most importantly the economic ties that could be endangered by risk-taking are so intricate and extensive that they are not at all comparable to the 1940s and 50s or 60s or to really any time during the look the Cold War that's not to say once again you know I embrace the point that Frank is making in and the point the overall point that that Jude wants to to convey is that yeah we have a rivalry with China there's no doubt that we have a rivalry with with China but there is no point the problem of of employing the Cold War analogy is that it simplifies things far too much and it nurtures the possibility of turning a rivalry into a war and we don't want to take risks that might turn a rivalry into a war I think both the smartest American policymakers who you know policymakers not historians who are writing about this today I take the article but a few months ago by Jake Sullivan and Kurt Campbell's seriously and their major point was don't think about this as a cold war think about it as managing competitive coexistence and there recently was this summer a China an article in one of the key Chinese journals that summed up all the recent writings about of Chinese scholars and basically they said yes we have a real competition with the United States the United States is is a rival and we need to think of it the Chinese said as competitive coexistence and and I think that is the right way to think about it if you think about it that way then instead of invoking Cold War analogies the most important thing to think about is well given the rivalry what are our fundamental interests what are the things that we really need to pursue where are the conflicts in these fundamental interests and where can we find compatibility in our interests with the China with China and so I think Franken part is suggesting there are places where there are fundamentally overlapping interests we both have a tremendous interest in dealing with climate in dealing with pandemics in stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons we can focus on those things even while we engage in a rivalry the American foreign policy intelligentsia was thinking in terms of that in terms of the Sioux City's trap element of this and that was the model for China we don't want this to go you know downhill but it seems that the conversation has shifted its model from the Thucydides trap to the Cold War Jude how do you what do you think brought that on and do you think that that makes sense yeah this is again to return to my kind of soft defense of the small C small W you know analogy actually I want to tie together I think Frank's really really profound point which which we spend a lot of time thinking about now which is the inability of our existing institutional arrangement largely built in the 20th century to deal with 21st century problems one thing I like about the Cold War analogy is I have a I have a great fear that if we don't find a new way to think about the relationship that honestly indirectly deals with these core fundamental and enlarging challenges between our political systems and China's and create a kind of new Bretton Woods like agreement where we have a whole robust new set of institutions to deal with for example economic interdependence but looking at problems of technological or reformation and national security concerns right or inbound investment from China right we've kind of taken things like Cepheus you know put some duct tape on it you know we've welded some things to it but Cepheus wasn't designed to deal with this china I fear if if we don't find those new institutions the inevitable result and if we don't create a new better framework the inevitable result is a hot war and so one of the benefits I think so to speak of using a cold war framing for this is it says at the very beginning and again recognizing that when I say cold war I mean small see this is not a repeat when we frame this as a cold war we're intentionally saying at the very outset the desires to avoid hot conflict right we're gonna take these core challenges and we're gonna manage them recognizing that our political systems are very far apart and moving farther apart and but we're going to intentionally try to to avoid a conflict and that's a benefit so to speak that I can see of framing this as a cold war why has it moved on from this Thucydides trap this is partly because we're always looking for the new framing I I suspect we'll look back 16 months from now think this was a total waste of time that we were sitting there having this argument about the Cold War because some some person is gonna hopefully come up with a better framing device for this and I think everyone here on the stage is an agreement that Cold War's are is a crappy analogy the question is I think it's less crappy than they do and I'm using it as a stopgap because no framework which is what we have now is leading to what we have now which is relations between the two countries moving this way you know and just quickly to respond to Mel's point about Chinese scholars writing about writing about a third way here I have to say bluntly it doesn't matter what Chinese scholars are writing about because China's political system is calling all the shots and civil society including academia has almost no say in policymaking right now and that's part of the problem and that's where I think we have a very static picture of China in a lot of these discussions we're not looking about what to use a cold war analogy let's say it's 1947 right I think we need to be thinking where is China in 10 or 50 years given the political trajectory it's on now given the current political system it has now given the alittle ideological trajectories it's on now given the territorial ambitions which are which are enlarging year by year where's it going to be in 10 or 15 years and when and how should the United States respond to that what I feel so often is the time is we've got to take a snapshot of China today or a snapshot we've dusted off from you know 2011 and we say this isn't the Soviet Union and I think that that's probably problematic so this to me is entirely about avoiding conflict but we're only going to do that if we take squarely on the chin how far apart our systems are and how and how they're they're moving farther apart day by day so I would like to say Emma in response to your question this Susa cities gap has gained traction over the last 10 years partly because china has seemed to be to be gaining strength over the last 10 or 12 years and the American system Western system has been in many ways economically and politically system and political systems have been faltering and I would say from this observation we can learn a very important lesson from the Cold War here's the lesson that I think should be absorbed from the Cold War the Cold War was basically a competition of political and economic systems George Kennan when he wrote his ex telegram and when George Kennan I'm sorry when he wrote his long telegram when when he composed his x article in foreign affairs both concluded with the following observation the most important thing Kennon said was for the United States to make its system function effectively the United States to make its system function effectively many people at the time did not think that democratic capitalism could operate effectively over the long Cold War western states men not just the United States but Japan Western Europe and the United States demonstrated that they could make their system preserve intra capitalist peace and also tremendously ameliorate the lives of their citizens and ultimately people in the Eastern Bloc and most of the Communist world came to see that democratic capitalism can work the problem today and the lesson we should learn from the Cold War is that we really need to function to focus not on what the Chinese system is but we need to focus on the problems in our own system economically and politically if we can solve those problems we will make our way of life appealing once again not only to others but most importantly to ourselves broadly speaking in the Western world where we now today see so much frustration and alienation the key to the Cold War is making your own to winning the Cold War was making your own system work effectively to build on that I think one of the big questions that I have right now is I think Mel's absolutely right and you asked yourself what are the things that make your particular system successful I think in a world where war was the great thread the state was a very effective instrument and in a world where you tried to manage a global economy as you did in the Bretton Woods system the state was very effective if the battle moves to something like AI into technology I think this is the billion dollar question you ask yourselves looking at China strategy over the next five or ten years so they say these are our goals to do this and you ask yourself whether or not in order to generate if that's what is the power that's going to matter if those are the things that are going to determine the outcome is organizing is the way China organizes its society and state and civil society going to actually produce the outcomes that allow them to prevail or and this is what I would contend in a world where power is diffuse we're frankly the state the state any state is far less relevant to these problems than you know the big one the big four does Google Amazon Facebook and Apple in a world where most of what we know about innovation despite the Manhattan Project is about diffusion and tolerance and not centralization could it be that if I you know and this is a question about China if I want to be China if that's my goal I actually want them to buy the cold war analogy and invest in a lot of command and control and focus on the state because that ain't the game anymore and if the game is in fact these other things and again I could be wrong about this but I don't know if five and ten-year plans for AI and new technology are actually going to win out compared to the way we organize things messy problematic incomplete as it is to me sometimes the analogy even though I don't like an allergy is it's more like late 19th century us where the state was very weak often quite irrelevant to outcomes it's a sense of great anxiety a sense of chaos but also a time of extraordinary economic and technological change and so it could very well be that if war which is what the state does really well and conquest aren't the game and these other things of the game then maybe I want China to take the Cold War analogy and maybe as messy as the way we do things aren't as problematic as they are and as challenged as the legitimate see and I think you're absolutely right about the sort of challenging the legitimacy of governing institutions right now maybe we're in better shape than we think I think we should extrapolate a different lesson here I actually disagree a little bit with Frank on this point I think the determining factor in the dynamics of the Cold War was that Western societies and governments learned how to integrate effectively the state and the market the state grew stronger during the Cold War using the exact analogy that Frank is talking about in the United States in the 1950s very few people know this but in the 1950s about 85 percent yes about 85 percent of basic Electronics research was financed by the federal government in the 1950s where did the money go it went to Sperry Rand it went to IBM it went to Burroughs it went to control data but it was basically government money supporting research and development the space program the creation of the Internet all of this was related to a huge multiplication I don't have the figures right Frank you probably know them better than I but you know basically at the beginning let's say at the onset of the Cold War in roughly 1948 the United States government was spending you know approximately 1 billion dollars on research and developed supporting research and development by the heyday of the Cold War in the mid 60s or of time a little after the Cuban Missile Crisis I believe the figure is something like 17 or 18 billion dollars a year the growth of the state was extraordinarily important it was even more important in terms of providing safety nets in terms of fiscal policy in terms of the government learning how to deal more effectively with monetary policy the state was critical to making the market work effectively it was state and markets that were essential to making Democratic capitalism work that's one extrapolation from I agree what the state obviously has a role but the story of Silicon Valley in the 1970s his engineers laid off by defense companies looking for something to do yeah anyone who knows Silicon Valley it was a bunch of people who defense because the government wasn't investing any money that's not it's not to say the state doesn't have a role what I'm suggesting is the idea of five-year plans where universities don't have where scholars don't have freedom I mean the relationship having spent a lot of time at MIT looking at the various lab systems looking at the Jet Propulsion lab in California there's the the u.s. did figure out very well about how to mix this private sector university government relationship and I think it actually still does it far better than anyone else the state has a role but I think it's a different type of role than the one that's envisioned centralizing it oh I certainly agree with that I'm not talking about a command economy it's the unique difference of the American system combining states markets private civil society in various ingenious ways just make sure we have some yeah I'm sorry yeah what happens you get to historians together it's argue with each other I'll ask one quick question and then other other historical analogies that you thought of they might be able to compete or at least share some of the burden with this one I know Frank's answer none no no I actually think there are some analogies I think we're in a period of where governing institutions and the legitimacy is challenged as you suggested quite well I spend a lot of time thinking about post-civil war the United States which was not always a happy place and where the state was quite ineffective and but lots of things were happening and I think we're in one of those weird periods now where the US government and governing institutions are flailing to deal with the issues that we face and so I think there is some parallel there as I as I wrote in my Atlantic article last week at the in one of the last paragraphs I think when one perceives the dynamism of China and its projection of power in its region it's not it's it's it's useful to recall the evolution of American power in the Western Hemisphere in the late 19th early 20th 20th century and the way the British saw the growth of American power so in the late 19th century rut right the United States forced the British to arbitrate over maritime rights the United States forced the British to sign a new treaty that gave the United States essentially unilateral rights to build a canal the United States orchestrated a revolution in Colombia in order to create the independence of Panama the United States claimed right the Roosevelt Corollary that the United States needed to intervene in the Caribbean and Central America in order to stop foreign intervention and therefore the United States intervene systematically both under Democrats and Republicans in Nicaragua in Cuba and places like that so when one thinks of you know growing Chinese power we should also recollect our own experience and think about how the world's hegemon at the time Britain was looking at the United States can I give just a final thought as I think and maybe the argue against everything I've said here today but that won't be surprising I think the the clear reality is that sometime around 2016 we entered into an entirely new epoch and were what we're struggling with now and why we're all flailing around with historical analogies is it's clear that there's something completely different now and that this to me will be looked back 10 or 15 years 2016 will be the start of an era which is similar to what post 99 Yule 1991 to 2008 or 2016 whenever you want to date it or post 1945 it's really across all the major drivers of global growth and all the major supporters of the global order I think there's been a fundamental shift and that's why I think there's just this big debate right now about how the heck do we conceptualize this and the real interesting work will be done creating that new name for whatever this new era is that pulls together with in defense of lazy thinking you know return of great power competition but crucially the the sort of national security as the new overarching framework by which things like globalization cross-border M&A talent acquisition all those are now looked at by sovereigns through the lens of national security in a way that ten years ago it was economic efficiencies which drove the way that governments were looking at those and I think until we can tie together all these threads and and name this thing like Baltimore will be forever having these these iterations of is it the new French and Indian War is it the new you know whatever it is next week Oh David Abramson State Department a very practical question if the Cold War analogy is not so apps but you're talking about compete managing competitive coexistence how do you manage that without resorting to a panic that behind every academic scientific local state business deal with China is a plot by China to steal exert leverage control and ultimately unravel a lot of our values I'm not saying I believe in that but there's a kind of slippery slope that that is a major practical question that is going on right now and that's I mean there seem similarities with the Cold War but you know I welcome your ideas about how to think differently about those dealing with those issues I just I just don't think invoking the Cold War analogy is very helpful at all in address in addressing those issues I think it it simplifies the complexities of those issues and obfuscates what's really it's at stake the nitty-gritty matters that that are engaged by those very questions you're addressing I just do you know this is one of the points that I think Frank was trying to make at the very beginning that that clutching at the cloak Cold War to try to address issues that really the Cold War analogy does not address is not very helpful yeah there's there's a recent story about somebody was telling me about concern about Chinese researchers at MD Anderson the premier Cancer Research Institute perhaps in the world and about the idea that we they had to kick out Chinese researchers because perhaps they would bring their technology back to China which the implication is do we not want Chinese people figuring out how to cure cancer but I highly get so and where where is actually the threat and there's actually even examples in the Cold War one of our colleagues areas Manila has written a brilliant article about how the Soviets and the Americans cooperated at a very low medium bureaucratic level in the World Health Organization to eradicate smallpox right 1965 two million people a year died of smallpox 1975 zero died twice as many people died in the 20th century of smallpox then of all the wars combined and this was directly attributable to us Soviet Cooperation field I study nuclear proliferation does not happen without us so V cooperation that begins really during the Cuban Missile Crisis at the height of this geopolitical struggle and so the analogy is not just bad because it's misunderstood that there was actually important cooperation on issues of shared interest in common goods and so if we take this wrong analogy misunderstood with the idea that we're going to say well we need to kick out Chinese post-doc cancer researchers because god forbid they might take home cancer cures to China and again there's a bit of exaggeration and this is not underestimate the rivalry and not to underestimate the threat or not underestimate the incredibly unsettling behavior in nature of the Chinese regime right now it's only to say let's think more smartly about how to understand this and so I think your point about you know I keep people say great power rivalry when I think we're Indians or the word geopolitics again to me even that word geo land is are we worried that China is going to be like the Soviet Union which was like Russia which was seeking territorial expansion maybe and if so we respond that way are they going to suit and so that gets to your point that this is where kind of thinking about what is it what what matters in the world what defines power what is it we want to prevent what is it that we want to have happen and then go from there I think we are almost out of time but let's take maybe two more questions at the same time to ask the panel thank you my name is Jimmy with it in scholar from George Washington University I have a question for dr. Lafleur so how do you how do you evaluate the Chinese ideology appear to the world now within the writing with the writing of China Thank You Adam Kaplan with USAID's office of transition initiatives the the conversation is fascinating and I think it's relevant when you walk out 10 15 20 years into the future where are we gonna be but curiously there's a third power in the mix right now that's operating in a deeply disruptive global space as you project out whether or not these analogies are valid what is our ability to respond what is our ability to shift our frame of thinking when Russia is actively seeking to undermine and seeking its own best interests in this space right now just on the on the ideology question and I know this is for dr. Leffler but I can't help it because I just say that the the big difference is I don't think we're worried as much that the ideology promulgated by the the CCP and recei Jinping will have this widespread global appeal and that we'll see study Xi Jinping thought camps you know pop up in India and Latin America I think that's not really the concern the concern is is the Communist Party increasingly motivated by an ideology which will take it an increasingly autocratic illiberal and expansionist direction and on that I think the clear answer for those watching this closely and up-to-date is is yes well I responding to Jude if if the real threat is of Chinese ideology is how it is basically reshaping the configuration of politics inside China but that it does not as you just admitted have significant resonance worldwide then I don't think it's an issue of great national security importance to the United to it's to the to the United States itself so that's one basic thing I'd say but in response I don't know if you're going to give us a chance to to say one last thing but the last thing I want to say is that we have reconfigured national security policy in the last two or three years in terms once again of thinking about great power politics and rather than the global war on terrorism and I think there's some legitimacy to that but it's a small part of legitimacy I think that the preoccupation with China will be seen 25 years from now as a secondary issue to the issue of dealing with the ramifications of climate and I think to the extent that we are so preoccupied with this we are often diverting ourselves from thinking seriously and allocating money accordingly to what will become the greatest security threat in a generation from now not now but in a generation from now and a security threat in which the Chinese and the Americans will definitely have some overlapping and shared interests on that thank you thank you very much no Frank dude and thank you guys for joining us you [Applause] you

Channel: Center for Strategic & International Studies

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Length: 79min 12sec (4752 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 05 2019