Thread by @balajis

Important piece, worth reading.

However, Mearsheimer is realist about everything…other than US capabilities. Rather than fighting an unwinnable war, or surrendering to illiberalism, the right approach is to build an admirable society.

Win by example. 🧵foreignaffairs.com/articles/china…

First, why is conflict arising?

There was a strain in Western culture that wanted to be the best, and a strain in Chinese culture that wanted to copy the West. The conflict is arising because the Chinese no longer want to copy, as the West is no longer obviously the best.

Indeed, the West is no longer building the City on a Hill. It is about equality rather than excellence, and freedom over cooperation.

There is a tension between checking your privilege & checking China's rise. Or assuming the US is the best & all the rest are sh*thole countries.

The US is much weaker domestically, economically, diplomatically, militarily than Mearsheimer assumes it to be.

It cannot win a military conflict with China over Taiwan and should not get into one. But liberalism shouldn't surrender either. What then?

https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1416913771562344450?lang=en

The right model is to build a society that embraces liberal values, has a strong defense, and peacefully outcompetes China for its top talent and mindshare — reforming it without conflict.

Build something actually admirable, rebuild soft power, save hard power for defense only.

It's unlikely that the vehicle for this is the US as we know it. It might be states within, or without.

But our interest should be in defending universal values — freedom of speech, free markets, protection from search & seizure, etc — as distinct from American supremacy per se.

Now, to Mearsheimer's article.

First, it's only the US patina of "democracy" that justifies its 800 military bases worldwide. The more explicit it is about wanting to keep poor countries poor, as advocated in the piece, the more this illusion fades.

Idealism constrains realism.

An open assertion of US supremacy — an admission that its foreign policy is really zero-sum, that its main goal is to prevent another's rise — is a sacrifice of soft power. And it necessitates the use of more hard power, at a time when both soft power & hard power are in decline.

Second, why *didn't* the US contain China, if that was the goal? For the same reason MS didn't contain GOOG, or the UK didn't contain the US long ago.

Bluntly: Chinese leadership just out-executed US leadership in key ways. Mearsheimer doesn't address this, but it underpins all.

The entire article is framed as if addressed to some foreign policy chess master who just made a wrong move back in 1991, and could mitigate it given a pointer.

But these are the same guys who did Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. Competent leadership is not there.

https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1444234460984053762

Third, the piece actually commits the same error he charges the establishment with making in 1991: he overestimates US strength.

Because there is another unmentioned thing that could change the underlying dynamic: namely, a major crisis that threatens *America's* position!

That is, it's not just liberal triumphalism in 1991 to be concerned about, but inaccurate assessment of US strengths in 2021.

Iraq, financial crisis, bailouts, techlash, Trump, COVID, riots, Afghanistan, polarization, inflation — shouldn't that be factored into realist thinking?

More can be said.

For one, something much like engagement did work with Taiwan & South Korea, as they transitioned to democracy.

And arguably the US prosperity of 90s-00s was based *in part* on China doing grueling hard work while America watched Friends. It wasn't a gimme.

The general tone of the piece reminds me of a funhouse mirror image of the NGO mentality.

Nonprofits assume group X is weak because of Americans, while this piece assumes China is strong mainly because of what the US did.

Both deny agency to others, and thus underestimate them.

Just to be clear, I'm glad Mearsheimer wrote the piece, because it's thought provoking and important. It is far closer to reality than wishful thinking around Chinese collapse, for example.

My disagreement is with the ideas only.

So, that summarizes my issues with the piece.

It doesn't give sufficient credit to the Chinese for execution. It overestimates US strength. It presupposes today's US is even capable of coherent foreign policy. And what it proposes is zero-sum.

A better way: win by example.