Thread by @nfergus

My former student @stephenwertheim complains that I misrepresented his 2020 Foreign Affairs piece “Why America Shouldn’t Dominate the World” in my @TheTLS review article here: the-tls.co.uk/articles/the-r… Let’s see. 1/12

Wertheim wrote: “The rise of a near-peer competitor does not necessarily pose a grave danger to the United States … China has yet to undertake a costly bid for military dominance in East Asia, let alone the world.” 2/12

And: “China is not poised to dominate East Asia by force” but “remains focused on local issues: defending the Chinese mainland, winning disputes over small border areas and islands, and prevailing in what China sees as its unresolved civil war with the government in Taiwan.” 3/12

Wait, "local issues"? The U.S., Wertheim continued, should “cease freedom-of-navigation operations and surveillance near disputed islands” in the South China Sea because “it is not worth antagonizing China over such issues.” 4/12

Also in order not to “provoke China,” the U.S. should "provide its allies with ... improved surveillance and missile systems, which would severely impede any Chinese attack without signaling an offensive posture. It could then retract its offensive weaponry.” 5/12

Anybody who thinks this would deter, as opposed to encourage, a Chinese attack on Taiwan is (to put it mildly) optimistic. The claim that the U.S. “would still have ample time to mobilize and deploy its forces if China were to turn bellicose” is even more so. 6/12

There’s more. In addition to urging the U.S. to withdraw all its forces from Afghanistan and Iraq, Wertheim urged Washington to “abandon the fantasy that the regime of Kim Jong Un will fully denuclearize as a result of external pressure.” 7/12

Instead, the U.S. “should seek to normalize relations with North Korea … [to] lift sanctions and offer development assistance in return for North Korea’s … capping its nuclear arsenal.” 8/12

Wertheim also called for the U.S. not only to “end its grudge match with the Islamic Republic [of Iran] by lifting sanctions” but also to “close nearly all its military bases in the region … [r]etaining one or two for air and naval forces, perhaps in Bahrain and Qatar.” 9/12

Finally, he wrote, “the United States should assuage Russian concerns by ending NATO expansion and rejecting Ukraine’s existing bid for membership in the alliance. It should then … begin a ten-year drawdown of U.S. forces stationed in Europe.” 10/12

True, Wertheim did not use the phrase “grand bargain.” I agree that this would not be a bargain, grand or otherwise, as all he would ask of China in return for all these diminutions of American power would be “cooperation on core objectives, especially climate change.” 11/12

As I wrote, ideas like these are “not well liked in the White House.” I just hope it stays that way. Judging by Xi Jinping’s latest belligerent speech, the policy of appeasement Wertheim proposes would be seized on by the CCP as conclusive evidence of American weakness. 12/12