A thread on the path to World War I. Parallels between UK–Germany conflict then and US–China conflict today—and the obliviousness of elites conducting it—make it urgent to learn this now largely forgotten history. Excerpts from J. Joll, The Origins of the First World War, 2nd ed.
This arms race dynamic should be familiar: imagining that intensifying the threat you pose to your rival will lead to safe subordination of the other (“deterrence”) rather than unleashing an explosive spiral of insecurity and nationalism:
It’s important to keep in mind the larger context that encouraged the arms race dynamic to spin out of control. First, intense anxiety that the other country posed an intolerable threat to future growth:
Second, the feeling on both sides that the other was trying to sabotage their own existence as a great power:
Third, the growth of organic collectivist forms of nationalism:
Fourth, the sense of zero-sum strategic competition cultivated by all of the above:
Finally, the ideological claim on both sides that securing their own hegemony was required to secure the general good of the world:
Not all of these elements are fully developed in the US–China conflict, but things are rapidly moving in that direction. And the stakes are much higher now given the threat to human life itself posed by today’s weapons and climate change.
And in contrast to the 1910s, today there are clear alternatives that would resolve the conflict without entirely overthrowing the global system. I discussed some ideas here: foreignaffairs.com/articles/unite…
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The single best report I’ve read on the US chips blockade against China—a strong overview of the issue but more important, it cuts through technical issues to show the true significance.
The US is telling China to accept defeat or go to war.
From @EmilyKilcrease1: “We said there are key tech areas that China should not advance in. And those happen to be the areas that will power future economic growth and development.”
From @Gregory_C_Allen: “The new policy embodied in Oct. 7 is: Not only are we not going to allow China to progress any further technologically, we are going to actively reverse their current state of the art.”
I found a lot to like in Sullivan’s speech on the global economy (though much depends on the administration actually doing some key things he discussed that we haven’t seen so far).
1. Despite his protestations, the goal is to exclude China from global growth, or at least force China to choose between growth and development. That will cause destabilizing conflict, undermining 2/
many of Sullivan’s praiseworthy aims both by militarizing US politics/culture—strengthening nationalist currents that will sideline economic inclusion as both a domestic and foreign policy goal—and by turning China into an enemy seeking to sabotage the project. 3/
According to the Biden admin, the world is divided not between democracies and autocracies but between countries that support the existing international order and the two autocracies (you know who) seeking to reshape it.
Biden’s 2022 National Security: whitehouse.gov/wp-content/upl… 2/
This sounds profound to liberals who haven’t thought much about history and are grasping to understand why their abstract universalism isn’t working in practice. To a historian, it’s simply malpractice. Essentializing a nation isn’t explanation but the refusal to explain. 1/
That is clearly illustrated here. If this is what Russia “is”, then it cries out for historical explanation—how did it come to be like this? Might not subordination within an international hierarchy have contributed to this supposed civilizational personality? 2/
Instead, the description of what Russia “is” becomes, by pure tautology, the explanation for why it’s like that. That it has been like this in the past then proves this is its essence. 3/
What is China’s position on Ukraine? Anxiety.
This is Party mouthpiece Renmin ribao during the daylight hours in China following the start of Putin’s aggression—no mention of Ukraine on the entire front page, a single oblique reference to the crisis buried far down (pic 3). 1/
(The Foreign Ministry’s bland statement of abstract principles has since been added but nothing else.)
It should be clear that the Chinese leadership just wants this to go away but they seem stuck. 2/
On the one hand, the Biden admin seeks to reorganize the world into competing power blocs to suppress China. (NB the failed outreach to Russia last year meant to isolate China.) So China can’t repudiate Russia, its only potential partner of any stature in such a conflict. 3/
The article opens by positioning as objective truth the nationalist conceptual framework that motivated the racist China Initiative in the first place. 2/
It then establishes Chris Wray as an authoritative voice explaining the necessity of the vendetta against China—rather than as a central perpetrator of the racist China Initiative and one of the key figures in the nationalist reconceptualization of science and technology. 3/