China and the Thucydides Trap

 

U.S.-China_conflictGraham Allison is probably best known to you as the author of Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis. I’ve always held him in high regard: He’s the old-fashioned, careful kind of political scientist (this as opposed to the new-fangled, addled-by-idiot-theory kind).

I just finished reading his very thoughtful and provocative article in The Atlantic, The Thucydides Trap: Are the U.S. and China Headed for War?

It’s very worth reading in full, but this is the gravamen:

The Greek historian’s metaphor reminds us of the attendant dangers when a rising power rivals a ruling power—as Athens challenged Sparta in ancient Greece, or as Germany did Britain a century ago. Most such contests have ended badly, often for both nations, a team of mine at the Harvard Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs has concluded after analyzing the historical record. In 12 of 16 cases over the past 500 years, the result was war. When the parties avoided war, it required huge, painful adjustments in attitudes and actions on the part not just of the challenger but also the challenged.

Based on the current trajectory, he argues, “war between the United States and China in the decades ahead is not just possible, but much more likely than recognized at the moment. Indeed … war is more likely than not.”

The methodology his team uses is about as rigorous as you can get in such analyses, which is to say not rigorous at all, but you can’t reasonably expect historical analysis to be rigorous in the manner of the hard sciences. (This is a point he’s careful fully to concede, to his credit.)

They’ve taken 16 case studies from the past 500 years, and they’ve used the words “rise” and “rule” according to their “conventional definitions,” which is to say, “generally emphasizing rapid shifts in relative GDP and military strength.” In 12 of these 16 cases, he notes, the result was war. (I would quibble with the word “result” — it suggests causation where in fact what we’ve established is correlation — but that’s a quibble.)

Here’s the graph:

d7883b7db

So I’m trying to figure out why he’s wrong, because clearly, I don’t relish the idea of war with China. First thing I noticed — this jumped out at me at first glance — is that the analysis is predicated on the idea that the nuclear era is relevantly similar to the pre-nuclear era. As you can see, it’s only before the mid-20th century that the inevitable outcome of such a power shift — with one notable exception — was “war.” (I might even make the argument that the UK and the United States were, for all intents and purposes, the same power, so we could almost go with “without exception,” but maybe that’s stretching it.) Following the development of the atomic bomb, however, 100 percent of these power shifts end in “no war.”

Of course, when your data set comprises a mere three examples, “100 percent” isn’t as reassuring as you’d like, but still, that’s reassuring — isn’t it? Sort of?

The more complex question I’d ask about this data set is whether it makes sense to choose these case studies. For example, you could credibly argue that by the 16th century, the Ottoman Empire was already on the decline and the Hapsburgs were the rising power, if we’re going by the “conventional definitions” of relative economic and military strength. What’s more, the “conventional definition” is retrospectively imposed. The definition at the time was proven — by the outcome — to be wrong. (After all, the Hapsburgs won. By this point, we’re well into Ottoman corruption and decline; or at the very least, we’re well into lousy drill, inferior order, inefficient supply lines, lower-quality weapons, and comparatively undeveloped finance, bureaucracy, and scientific patronage — not to mention constant hassle from the Safavids and the Mamluks — so frankly, they never stood a chance; but the only way to know that is in retrospect. They certainly seemed terrifying at the time.)

That said, though I can see a few methodological problems with his analysis, he’s making too many good points for me to write it off. So I’m not inclined to shrug. And as he points out, neither are many other people who’ve exhibited a certain amount of geopolitical common sense over the years:

The preeminent geostrategic challenge of this era is not violent Islamic extremists or a resurgent Russia. It is the impact that China’s ascendance will have on the U.S.-led international order, which has provided unprecedented great-power peace and prosperity for the past 70 years. As Singapore’s late leader, Lee Kuan Yew, observed, “the size of China’s displacement of the world balance is such that the world must find a new balance. It is not possible to pretend that this is just another big player. This is the biggest player in the history of the world.” Everyone knows about the rise of China. Few of us realize its magnitude. Never before in history has a nation risen so far, so fast, on so many dimensions of power. To paraphrase former Czech President Vaclav Havel, all this has happened so rapidly that we have not yet had time to be astonished.

He notes that his students are consistently flabbergasted when he asks them this question: “In what year could China overtake the United States to become, say, the largest economy in the world, or primary engine of global growth, or biggest market for luxury goods?” He then gives them this quiz:

  • Manufacturer:
  • Exporter:
  • Trading nation:
  • Saver:
  • Holder of U.S. debt:
  • Foreign-direct-investment destination:
  • Energy consumer:
  • Oil importer:
  • Carbon emitter:
  • Steel producer:
  • Auto market:
  • Smartphone market:
  • E-commerce market:
  • Luxury-goods market:
  • Internet user:
  • Fastest supercomputer:
  • Holder of foreign reserves:
  • Source of initial public offerings:
  • Primary engine of global growth:
  • Economy:

(Pause for a moment and take it yourself, to see how you do. Then keep scrolling.)

 

 

 

 

Answer: China’s already surpassed the US on all of them. (By the way, how did you do? I got 16 out of 20. I thought I was right and he was wrong about the four I missed, but I looked them up, and nope — he’s right. Bonus: Who’s number two on FDI? Did anyone here get that right without looking?)

Take twenty minutes and read the whole article. He makes some very sobering points, and I can’t really find a way to argue with most of them, except to say, “Yes, but that was before the nuclear era.”

He concludes:

What strategists need most at the moment is not a new strategy, but a long pause for reflection. If the tectonic shift caused by China’s rise poses a challenge of genuinely Thucydidean proportions, declarations about “rebalancing,” or revitalizing “engage and hedge,” or presidential hopefuls’ calls for more “muscular” or “robust” variants of the same, amount to little more than aspirin treating cancer. Future historians will compare such assertions to the reveries of British, German, and Russian leaders as they sleepwalked into 1914.

The rise of a 5,000-year-old civilization with 1.3 billion people is not a problem to be fixed. It is a condition—a chronic condition that will have to be managed over a generation. Success will require not just a new slogan, more frequent summits of presidents, and additional meetings of departmental working groups. Managing this relationship without war will demand sustained attention, week by week, at the highest level in both countries. It will entail a depth of mutual understanding not seen since the Henry Kissinger-Zhou Enlai conversations in the 1970s. Most significantly, it will mean more radical changes in attitudes and actions, by leaders and publics alike, than anyone has yet imagined.

He doesn’t specify what kind of radical change or action, unfortunately. So here are the questions I’m left with:

1) Do you think he’s wrong? If so, why?

2) Are the case studies he’s choosing really relevantly similar?

3) If he’s right, what on earth should we do?

 

 

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  1. St. Salieri Member
    St. Salieri
    @

    I’ve not read the article yet, but two thing strike me just from the chart.

    1. All of the major powers of World War II knew the devastation a major conflict would wreck and none were willing to take on another major industrial power again, even aside from nuclear weapons.  However, China was a participant in that war and knew its attendant horrors better than anyone else, so is that a mitigating circumstance?  I sadly don’t think so.

    2. In the cases shown, it is interesting to see that a flag disappears once it has acted as a challenger that leads to war in the rising column.  The exception being Japan, an Asian nation, or Germany, but under a very different regime (although with some of the same strategic goals).  The fact the only Chinese only appear as the decrepit late Qing isn’t very comforting either.

    Without having read the article, I had a similar feeling way back in the late 1990s when I read Adrian Goldsworthy on The Punic Wars.  I had no nothing to back it up just a gut, that Rome and Carthage was going to be us and China, I just hope it doesn’t take three wars to settle their hash.

    Nuclear arms do make a difference, don’t they?

    What about China’s demographic and economic woes?

    Also your link doesn’t seem to go anywhere.

    Now to go read the article, thanks for the interesting post.

    • #1
  2. The King Prawn Inactive
    The King Prawn
    @TheKingPrawn

    The nuclear thing does change matters a bit. First, we have an overwhelming force in nuclear and delivery methods. China (as far as I know) lacks both. They can threaten local rivals, but not one situated across the Pacific. Second, even though they have (or could have) an overwhelmingly large ground military, what they lack is a blue water navy to get them anywhere. Again, this reduces China to the level of regional threat. They’re working on this problem, and it’s one to keep a close eye on it.

    All that said, however, they can take the same line of attack we took against the Soviet Union. They can bankrupt us to the point that we cannot deploy our strategic nuclear forces or our “Global Force for Good.” The answer lies in reviving our domestic strength, i.e. capitalism, against their numerical strength. To do this we have to reform (or outright eliminate) our entitlements.

    • #2
  3. Claire Berlinski, Ed. Member
    Claire Berlinski, Ed.
    @Claire

    St. Salieri: Also your link doesn’t seem to go anywhere.

    Fixed it, thanks for letting me know.

    • #3
  4. Manfred Arcane Inactive
    Manfred Arcane
    @ManfredArcane

    Suggestions:

    1) Our military has to be more “purpose-built” to maintain correlation of forces in our favor and deter military adventurism.  Just as we developed assault breaker technologies to defeat the Soviet advantage in tanks, we need to counterbalance China’s strengths.  Super quiet diesel submarines designed primarily to be used in the S. China Sea and neighboring litorals.  Cheap Aircraft carriers – cheaper because designed primarily to proliferate landing platforms in just this theater.  Lot’s and lots of surface-to-surface anti-ship missiles located in Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan…  And we need to put at least one substantial base here (protected by the mountains from missile fire from mainland China) ->

    philippine islands

    2) Impose a tariff on Chinese imports to fund military upgrades of the sort just indicated.  Steer our vast consumer markets more towards countries that meet Western standards of liberty (Philippines, India, Mexico – even Egypt if its government continues to make progress) (meaning also tariff on Saudi Arabian oil).  It would be wise to couple these with tariff relaxations towards the rest of the world to avoid recessionary effects.

    3) Sell Taiwan much better armament

    4) Induce Taiwan to deploy hundreds of inexpensive, shorter range ballistic missiles to aim at China in response to the >1,300 missiles it fields currently to intimidate that island nation.

    5) Consider diverting money from buying F-35s to reopening the F-22 line and buy beaucoup of the latter

    6) Purpose-build beaucoup  air refueling capability (our Achille’s heel in that theater)

    • #4
  5. Manfred Arcane Inactive
    Manfred Arcane
    @ManfredArcane

    PS. Ms. Berlinski, you are on a roll here with excellent threads.  Much appreciated.

    • #5
  6. David Knights Member
    David Knights
    @DavidKnights

    The China bugaboo reminds me very much of the “Japan will take over the world” hysteria of the 80s.  I suspect that China will end up the same way, though for slightly different reasons.

    None of the numbers coming out of China are real.  Just like GDP numbers in the Soviet Union, the numbers are completely inventions of the government with no basis in fact.  Manufacturing, for manufacturing’s sake adds nothing to an economy.  The Chinese economy is in a death spiral.  Actually, this might make war more, rather than less likely.  I think it was Mao who said that China was the only country who could survive a nuclear war.  If they lost 500 million people, they’d still have 800 million left.

    • #6
  7. David Knights Member
    David Knights
    @DavidKnights

    For a great explanation of China’s problem, see this.

    • #7
  8. Tommy De Seno Member
    Tommy De Seno
    @TommyDeSeno

    I hold that Imperialism, particularly the desire to conquer and colonize, was the driving factor in most historical wars.

    In that graph, how many wars involved at least one belligerent who had exercised the act of conquering other lands? How many wars are left without that variable?

    • #8
  9. Claire Berlinski, Ed. Member
    Claire Berlinski, Ed.
    @Claire

    If you’re curious about their methodology, by the way, here’s the link to the methodology section of the case file. And here are cases that are “currently under review,” but they haven’t yet decided whether they truly indicate the dynamic:

    25atgd2

    It might be tempting to conclude from this that nuclear weapons are a great blessing to humanity and that we should encourage their proliferation, isn’t it? Somehow I’m sure that can’t be right … yet what do all the “no war” examples have in common?

    • #9
  10. Manfred Arcane Inactive
    Manfred Arcane
    @ManfredArcane

    David Knights:For a great explanation of China’s problem, see this.

    Looks like a great read, Thanks.

    Here is a Ricochet link to a similar thread sharing some of Peter Zeihan’s equally pessimistic prognosis for China:

    http://ricochet.com/china-is-in-big-big-trouble/

    • #10
  11. Zafar Member
    Zafar
    @Zafar

    According to this source the proportion of world GDP dependent on imports and exports is over 50% – higher than it’s ever been.  Prosperity across the world is increasingly dependent on trade – wars which disrupt this will be less and less feasible because the cost will be too high.   Maybe global capitalism really will bring us world peace – or at least peace between the superpowers?

    By the same token, economic interdependency will increasingly constrain how countries can realistically resolve differences and/or influence each other.

    Perhaps the big change in attitude will be that war really is more or less off the table when resolving issues with China because the US is dependent on China for its own prosperity? (And the other way round too.)

    • #11
  12. Manfred Arcane Inactive
    Manfred Arcane
    @ManfredArcane

    Zafar: Perhaps the big change in attitude will be that war really is more or less off the table when resolving issues with China because the US is dependent on China for its own prosperity? (And the other way round too.)

    Except there is a famous ‘counterexample (sort of) in 1914:

    “The Great Illusion is a book by Norman Angell, first published in the United Kingdom in 1909 under the title Europe’s Optical Illusion and republished in 1910 and subsequently in various enlarged and revised editions under the title The Great Illusion.”

    From Wikipedia:

    “Angell argued that war between industrial countries was futile because conquest did not pay. J.D.B. Miller writes: “The ‘Great Illusion’ was that nations gained by armed confrontation, militarism, war, or conquest.”[1] The economic interdependence between industrial countries meant that war would be economically harmful to all the countries involved. Moreover, if a conquering power confiscated property in the territory it seized, “the incentive to produce [of the local population] would be sapped and the conquered area be rendered worthless. Thus, the conquering power had to leave property in the hands of the local population while incurring the costs of conquest and occupation.”[1]”

    Angell’s accent is on ‘conquest’, not just war, as he was thinking of Europe with its contiguous countries, cheek-by-jowl with each other.

    • #12
  13. Manfred Arcane Inactive
    Manfred Arcane
    @ManfredArcane

    David Knight has it right that we should dive into the details of China’s forthcoming crash to read the future better.  What will this signify?

    • #13
  14. John Penfold Member
    John Penfold
    @IWalton

     I’m anxious to hear from the Historians and China hands and others who bring specific knowledge and insights to the important questions in your excellent post.  Of course he’s right, but we don’t know the probabilities or how those will be affected by events and forces we can’t know.  Yet we can also knowingly reduce some risks because some things are foreseeable.    There are other differences beyond nuclear weapons. An essential difference is that we are no longer engaged in imperial struggles as in Monarchy’s need to control territory which was the basis of power and wealth.   Even WWII was politically psychologically inertial.  Japan had missed out on the age of imperialism and didn’t realize that it had died in WWI.  Hitler was also a  product of that disaster.   Water and oil need not be like land, but are.  A world of trade and adjustment and blisteringly rapid technological change is different from a land based feudal, post feudal or mercantilist one.   This makes an open trading system more important than ever and systems that can adjust vital.  Unfortunately we’re moving toward greater rigidity rather than finding ways to roll with adjustment, prepare for it and educate for it.    The rigidity fostered by the administrative state also makes us less competitive, eroding our commitment to openness.  This, it seems to me, is the first order of business.  Be competitive, dismantle the administrative state and make allies to an open trading system we protect.

     

    • #14
  15. skipsul Inactive
    skipsul
    @skipsul

    Claire Berlinski, Ed.: yet what do all the “no war” examples have in common?

    Well, one of the “no war” lines – Early 18th Century Britain v. Russia – is actually wrong on two scores.  First, they were not really direct rivals in the early 1700s (Russia barely had a navy at the time), and secondly they sure as heck went to war in the mid 19th century (Crimea), when Russia really was ascendant.

    And I would not classify Spain v. US in the late 19th century as such a major conflict.  Spain was a positively doddering 2nd rate power at the time, and that was obvious to many.

    But to address your question: What is lacking in the “no war” scenarios?  Bellicosity on the part of one or both parties.  The author could have added many more near misses between rival power (say Russia v. Britain again in the late 19th or early 20th centuries, or US v. Britain in the mid 19th century).  In the “no war” situations, one or both parties did not actually want a military conflict (despite whatever blustering they may have been doing).  Despite much heated rhetoric, for instance, around the Cuban Missile Crisis, Khrushchev knew from the beginning that he would be wiped out in a hot war (and was really making a stupid gamble to try to reopen the Berlin question), and so backed down when given the chance.

    To return to China – does China’s leadership really want a war?  No idea.

    • #15
  16. Manfred Arcane Inactive
    Manfred Arcane
    @ManfredArcane

    Oh, I might add my pet solution to just about all geopolitical problems is for the US to become THE fuel producer to the world.  Put a tariff on SA oil imports, expand offshore drilling and refining and make it legal to sell our products outside the US.  Let us supply the EU and China.  In that framework, if China gets aggressive, we could realistically counter by threatening to blow up Saudi and Iranian oil terminals – with US able to step in and supply the world (with Canada’s help through Keystone pipeline, etc.)

    In the process we can help pay off our national debt, even pay for more renewable energy use – in a grand bargain with the Dems.  It all works holistically together – as God has given us one more chance to redeem ourselves with His ‘gift’ of shale gas and oil.

    • #16
  17. Claire Berlinski, Ed. Member
    Claire Berlinski, Ed.
    @Claire

    Tommy De Seno: In that graph, how many wars involved at least one belligerent who had exercised the act of conquering other lands? How many wars are left without that that variable?

    Good question. And one that strikes me as particularly hard to answer because until fairly recently, we’ve had no definition of a “state.” Or for that matter, “war.”

    An interesting scholar to think about in this context is Lewis Frye Richardson, who wrote a book called Statistics of Deadly Quarrels. He was a pioneer of modern mathematical techniques of weather forecasting, and the first person to try to apply similar techniques in mathematical modeling to studying the causes of war.  

    He looked at a data set of 315 conflicts, and concluded that there was no statistically significant relationship between the outbreak of war and any of the variables you might expect, save for very small increased likelihood of war in cases of a difference in religious sect among the warring parties, with Christians being the most apt to go to war. (Variables he tried plugging in included multiple economic ones, language, the rate of a nation’s arms buildup, the length of the borders between the warring parties … he really tried everything.) To simplify his conclusions grotesquely, the only thing he was able to conclude is that the outbreak of war conforms to a Poisson distribution. 

    He seems to have been unable (by his own admission) to extract reliable data from the historical record, or even to come up with a stable definition of war. And obviously, there’s war and then there’s war — should civil wars or minor border skirmishes be studied the way we’d study the seven megadeth conflicts? I would presume not.

    These are not easy problems for historians.

    • #17
  18. David Knights Member
    David Knights
    @DavidKnights

    Manfred Arcane:Oh, I might add my pet solution to just about all geopolitical problems is for the US to become THE fuel producer to the world. Put a tariff on SA oil imports, expand offshore drilling and refining and make it legal to sell our products outside the US. Let us supply the EU and China. In that framework, if China gets aggressive, we could realistically counter by threatening to blow up Saudi and Iranian oil terminals – with US able to step in and supply the world (with Canada’s help through Keystone pipeline, etc.)

    In the process we can help pay off our national debt, even pay for more renewable energy use – in a grand bargain with the Dems. It all works holistically together – as God has given us one more chance to redeem ourselves with his ‘gift’ of shale gas and oil.

    Speaking of fuel problems, China is blessed with little but dirty coal.  No real oil or natural gas to speak of.  This will present real challenges for them if their economy actually expands.

    My fun prediction is that China will have no foreign monetary reserves within 5 years, all of it having been spent to prop up their economy.

    • #18
  19. skipsul Inactive
    skipsul
    @skipsul

    John Penfold: An essential difference is that we are no longer engaged in imperial struggles as in Monarchy’s need to control territory which was the basis of power and wealth.

    Tell that to China, who is busy colonizing Africa.

    • #19
  20. skipsul Inactive
    skipsul
    @skipsul

    Manfred Arcane:  Let us supply the EU and China.  In that framework, if China gets aggressive, we could realistically counter by threatening to blow up Saudi and Iranian oil terminals – with US able to step in and supply the world (with Canada’s help through Keystone pipeline, etc.)

    Except that we tried that leverage with Japan prior to WWII.  They responded by gambling on war to seize the very assets we tried to cut off.

    • #20
  21. David Knights Member
    David Knights
    @DavidKnights

    skipsul:

    John Penfold: An essential difference is that we are no longer engaged in imperial struggles as in Monarchy’s need to control territory which was the basis of power and wealth.

    Tell that to China, who is busy colonizing Africa.

    Let them do so.  Africa is a money pit that helped break the major European powers.

    • #21
  22. skipsul Inactive
    skipsul
    @skipsul

    David Knights:

    skipsul:

    John Penfold: An essential difference is that we are no longer engaged in imperial struggles as in Monarchy’s need to control territory which was the basis of power and wealth.

    Tell that to China, who is busy colonizing Africa.

    Let them do so. Africa is a money pit that helped break the major European powers.

    Not till near the end of colonization, prior to that it provided valuable resources.  But how Britain colonized India is a good model for how China is colonizing Africa.  Lots of strategic trading outposts, small military forces, and bribery of local officials.  China doesn’t want to rule Africa, it just wants African resources, just as Britain (initially) wanted Indian resources.

    • #22
  23. Israel P. Inactive
    Israel P.
    @IsraelP

    Claire Berlinski, Ed.:3) If he’s right, what on earth should we do?

    Disarm? That’s the Obama strategy.

    • #23
  24. Claire Berlinski, Ed. Member
    Claire Berlinski, Ed.
    @Claire

    David Knights: I think it was Mao who said that China was the only country who could survive a nuclear war.  If they lost 500 million people, they’d still have 800 million left.

    India would survive one, too. (This occurred to me when I was last in India — I actually ran the morbid numbers in my head: “Okay, say you take out Delhi, Bombay, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Pune, Surat, Calcutta, Jaipur, and Lucknow — well, you’re still left with about a billion people. India’s here forever.”)

    I don’t think it’s safe to assume that strategic planners in a country as populous as China would see a nuclear war as unwinnable. I can’t imagine they would conceive it as desirable, but I figure their perspective on it would be — reasonably — less risk-averse than ours.

    • #24
  25. Claire Berlinski, Ed. Member
    Claire Berlinski, Ed.
    @Claire

    Zafar: Maybe global capitalism really will bring us world peace – or at least peace between the superpowers?

    Manfred beat me to saying it, but … Norman Angell.

    • #25
  26. Capt. Aubrey Inactive
    Capt. Aubrey
    @CaptAubrey

    I got he quiz right but haven’t read the article. With regard to the quiz I think the really important stat he leaves out is GDP per capita. I don’t think they can get there without significant liberalization -in the classical sense of course- and improvement of institutions especially the legal system. Doing that -I hope- makes them less of a threat. Otherwise I think we will see greater demogoguery, xenophobia, militarism… Will we have the spine to counter that if it happens? One can only hope.

    • #26
  27. Sabrdance Member
    Sabrdance
    @Sabrdance

    In 1950 a British Foreign Service officer retired.  At his party, a young colleague asked him what it was like to have served as an FSO during both of the great general wars.

    “Son,” he replied.  “Wars are hardly ever the problem.  In my 40 years of service, every year someone warned that a general war was just around the corner, and every year I said that peace would maintain.  I was only wrong twice.”

    • #27
  28. Manfred Arcane Inactive
    Manfred Arcane
    @ManfredArcane

    skipsul:

    Manfred Arcane: Let us supply the EU and China. In that framework, if China gets aggressive, we could realistically counter by threatening to blow up Saudi and Iranian oil terminals – with US able to step in and supply the world (with Canada’s help through Keystone pipeline, etc.)

    Except that we tried that leverage with Japan prior to WWII. They responded by gambling on war to seize the very assets we tried to cut off.

    I had that in the back of my mind, but I think Japan could find the oil in the near abroad at outset of WWII, within its limited “Co-Prosperity” sphere.  Even if China allied with Gulf States to protect supply depots there, their ships would have to transit half the world, through Straits of Hormuz, Strait of Malacca, etc..  The vulnerability we now experience would then shift entirely to China.  One of those wonderful, delicious historical ironies (if it ever comes to pass).  Our strategic weakness would get transmitted whole-hog to China (and Japan and SK to some degree, as Peter Zeihan’s estimate is that we could not ourselves meet those two countries’ needs – not unless we start drilling everywhere – which, of course, we should).  This is all grist for  Zeihan’s mill as he sorts through different futures, BTW.

    • #28
  29. Titus Techera Contributor
    Titus Techera
    @TitusTechera

    Entitlements aren’t going away, nor is America turning into a more warlike regime. I think there are givens. What are the corresponding givens for China? I believe, both its domestic political problems and its relation to America will tend to make the army powerful. The only way i see to avoid war is for China to be caught managing its extraordinary problems, but manage them successfully, With or without holding empire in Southeast Asia.
    I do not see serious changes in America’s foreign policy coming. The parties and the electorate have enough problems and not much attention to spare. After Mr. W Bush failed in his almost Wilsonian attempt to identify the nation with a kind of foreign policy, I do not believe a presidential hopeful is going to even attempt it.

    • #29
  30. Manfred Arcane Inactive
    Manfred Arcane
    @ManfredArcane

    Capt. Aubrey:I got he quiz right but haven’t read the article. With regard to the quiz I think the really important stat he leaves out is GDP per capita. I don’t think they can get there without significant liberalization -in the classical sense of course- and improvement of institutions especially the legal system. Doing that -I hope- makes them less of a threat. Otherwise I think we will see greater demogoguery, xenophobia, militarism… Will we have the spine to counter that if it happens? One can only hope.

    That’s why (IMO) we need the ‘tyranny’ tariff, and soon.  Liberalization due to trade has reaped all the benefit it can in China by itself.  We now have to deny some of our markets until it begins to pick up again.

    • #30
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