Destined For War

Kindle Highlights

War is a violent teacher.

History never repeats itself, but it does sometimes rhyme.

What does President Xi Jinping want? In one line: to “Make China Great Again.”

The attempt to deny a state imports it judges crucial for survival can provoke war.

“It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable

Because states can never be certain about each other’s intent, they focus instead on capabilities.

As a “nation of immigrants,” most Americans are proud of the fact that anyone can become an American.

Let China sleep; when she wakes, she will shake the world. —Napoleon, 1817 Shortly after he became director of

Thucydides identifies three primary drivers fueling this dynamic that lead to war: interests, fear, and honor.

According to the Rule of 72—divide 72 by the annual growth rate to determine when an economy or investment will double

Americans enjoy lecturing Chinese to be “more like us.” Perhaps they should be more careful what they wish for. Historically

The Cuban Missile Crisis presents the starkest counterfactuals of all—and the lessons most relevant for the current US-China dilemma.

(As Churchill quipped, if Hitler had invaded hell, he “would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.”42

Thucydides’s Trap refers to the natural, inevitable discombobulation that occurs when a rising power threatens to displace a ruling power.

In the oft-repeated quip of NATO’s first secretary general, its mission was “to keep the Soviets out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.”

Will they succeed? Ah, if we only knew. We do know, however, that Shakespeare was right: our destiny lies “not in our stars, but in ourselves.”

We should pray that we can avoid one day echoing Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg’s pathetic answer on the cause of Europe’s war: “Ah, if we only knew.”

Every high school student in China today learns to feel the shame of this “century of humiliation.” The lesson is unmistakable: Never forget—and never again!

some Chinese military officers still quote Mao’s audacious claim that even after losing 300 million citizens in a nuclear exchange, China would still survive.

Statesmen know that today’s arsenals include single nuclear bombs with more explosive power than all of the bombs that have been dropped in all the wars in history.

After a struggle of four decades, in 1989, the Berlin Wall came tumbling down; in 1990, the Warsaw Pact collapsed; and on Christmas Day 1991, the Evil Empire imploded.

Harvard Thucydides’s Trap Project has identified sixteen cases in which an ascending power challenged an established power.* Twelve of these rivalries resulted in war.1

Anglo-American relations remained tense after their acrimonious separation. In the War of 1812, the British burned the White House while Americans assaulted British Canada.

But while the US arguably had an opportunity to attack and defeat the Soviet Union immediately after World War II—and seriously considered the option—it declined to do so.49

Could a trade conflict escalate into a hot war that ends with nuclear weapons exploding on the territory of the adversary? Unlikely but not impossible: remember Pearl Harbor.

1866 left Europe’s preeminent power in what the historian Michael Howard calls “that most dangerous of all moods; that of a great power which sees itself declining to the second rank.”

As future prime minister Harold Macmillan put it during World War II, “These Americans represent the new Roman Empire and we Britons, like the Greeks of old, must teach them how to make it go.”40

“You know as well as we do that right is a question that only has meaning in relations between equals in power. In the real world, the strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must.”

Chinese leaders know this and have factored it into their planning. In offline conversations, some have been known to quip that they have several million surplus single males ready to die for their country.

The United States defeated Spain before the end of August and signed a peace treaty in December. For Spain, the terms were severe: Cuba gained its independence, and Spain ceded Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines to the US.

Over time, both competitors tacitly agreed to each other’s three no’s: no use of nuclear weapons, no direct overt killing of each other’s armed forces, and no military intervention in each other’s recognized sphere of influence.

More important than the sparks that lead to war, Thucydides teaches us, are the structural factors that lay its foundations: conditions in which otherwise manageable events can escalate with unforeseeable severity and produce unimaginable consequences.

If my history be judged useful by those who desire an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to understanding the future—which in the course of human affairs must resemble if it does not reflect it—I shall be content. —Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War

Like the Obama administration, Chinese officials in 2009 provided an unprecedented $586 billion fiscal stimulus. As a result, the Chinese can now travel on fast trains between their major cities. In contrast, they ask, what did the US get for its $983 billion infusion?

Beyond the skyscrapers, bridges, and fast trains lies the far more profound impact of China’s human development. A generation ago, 90 out of every 100 Chinese lived on less than $2 a day. Today fewer than 3 in 100 do.40 Average per capita income has risen from $193 in 1980 to over $8,100 today.

Today workers in China are one quarter as productive as their American counterparts. If over the next decade or two they become just half as productive as Americans, China’s economy will be twice the size of the US economy. If they equal American productivity, China will have an economy four times that of the US.

Over the past five hundred years, in sixteen cases a major rising power has threatened to displace a ruling power. In twelve of those, the result was war. The four cases that avoided this outcome did so only because of huge, painful adjustments in attitudes and actions on the part of challenger and challenged alike.

In his book Civilization, Niall Ferguson identifies six “killer apps”—ideas and institutions that drove the extraordinary divergence in prosperity between the West and the rest of the world after 1500. These are competition, the scientific revolution, property rights, modern medicine, consumer society, and work ethic.8 While

Thucydides’s Trap Project calls “transitional friction.” In this dynamic, rising powers typically believe institutions are not changing fast enough, and see delay as evidence that the established state is determined to contain it. Ruling powers believe the rising state is overreaching in demanding more rapid adjustments than are either merited or safe.

Intentions aside, when a rising power threatens to displace a ruling power, the resulting structural stress makes a violent clash the rule, not the exception. It happened between Athens and Sparta in the fifth century BCE, between Germany and Britain a century ago, and almost led to war between the Soviet Union and the United States in the 1950s and 1960s.

Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events. —Winston Churchill

Both the American and Chinese militaries acknowledge that the US has lost, or at least failed to win, four of the five major wars it has entered since World War II.21 (Korea was at best a draw, Vietnam a loss, and Iraq and Afghanistan unlikely to turn out well. Only President George H. W. Bush’s war in 1991 to force Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to retreat from Kuwait counts as a clear win.)

In the three and a half decades since Ronald Reagan became president, by the best measurement of economic performance, China has soared from 10 percent the size of the US to 60 percent in 2007, 100 percent in 2014, and 115 percent today. If the current trend continues, China’s economy will be a full 50 percent larger than that of the US by 2023. By 2040 it could be nearly three times as large.

In 1936, Hitler violated the Treaty of Versailles and threatened Europe by remilitarizing the Rhineland. Had Britain and France sent a division of troops to enforce the treaty—as Churchill advocated vigorously at the time—German troops would have retreated, the German generals (who had strongly opposed Hitler’s reckless move) could have overthrown him, and World War II might never have happened.

According to Thucydides, the fundamental explanation lies in the depth of the structural stress between a rising and a ruling power. As this rivalry led Athens and Sparta into successive standoffs, the most passionate voices in each political system grew louder, their sense of pride stronger, their claims about threats posed by the adversary more pointed, and their challenge to leaders who sought to keep the peace more severe.

On the one hand, Americans aspire to an international rule of law that is essentially American domestic rule of law writ large. On the other, they recognize the realities of power in the global Hobbesian jungle, where it is better to be the lion than the lamb. Washington often tries to reconcile this tension by depicting a world in which the United States is the “benevolent hegemon,” acting as lawmaker, policeman, judge, and jury.

In sum, as long as developments in the South China Sea are generally moving in China’s favor, it appears unlikely to use military force. But if trends in the correlation of forces should shift against it, particularly at a moment of domestic political instability, China could initiate a limited military conflict, even against a larger, more powerful state like the US. How such a conflict might occur is the focus of the next chapter.

Chinese leaders are also deeply suspicious of American efforts to convert them. As the grandfather of China’s economic liberalization, Deng Xiaoping, warned fellow members of China’s Communist Party, “Their talk about human rights, freedom and democracy is designed only to safeguard the interests of the strong, rich countries, which take advantage of their strength to bully weak countries, and which pursue hegemony and practice power politics.”

Readers who wonder whether a trade conflict could escalate into nuclear war should pay careful attention to the curious path that led Japan and the United States to Pearl Harbor. If the thought of a nation provoking its adversary into war to advance its own domestic agenda seems implausible, remember Bismarck. For insights into the ways in which naval rivalries can propel national governments to bloody war, the interplay between England and the Dutch Republic is instructive.

Despite American aggressiveness, London succeeded in avoiding war with a rising US, healing old wounds and laying the ground for a future close relationship. It would be foolhardy, however, to trust that the unusual constellation of factors producing that fortunate outcome will repeat itself. Misplaced optimism and business as usual in both Washington and Beijing are likely to result in a dynamic more closely resembling Britain and Germany’s encounter than Britain and America’s “great rapprochement.”

projected battle space in the North Sea.97 Fisher noted with an eagle eye the milestones on the path to conflict.98 In 1911, he predicted that war with Germany would come when the widening of the Kiel Canal was finished. Indeed, he foresaw a German surprise attack, probably on a three-day holiday weekend. His predicted date for the “Battle of Armageddon”? October 21, 1914. (In fact, the Great War began two months earlier—in August 1914, on a holiday weekend, a month after the canal had been completed.)

One Belt, One Road (OBOR)—China is constructing a network of highways, fast railroads, airports, ports, pipelines, power transmission lines, and fiber-optic cables across Eurasia. These modern physical links along what were once ancient Chinese trade routes will foster new diplomatic, trade, and financial ties. At this point, OBOR includes 900 projects at a cost exceeding $1.4 trillion. Even after adjusting for inflation, this amounts to 12 Marshall Plans, according to the investor and former IMF economist Stephen Jen.

Reflecting its civilization’s centripetal orientation, Chinese foreign policy traditionally sought to maintain international hierarchy, not to expand its borders through military conquest. As Kissinger wrote after leaving office, China’s sense that it should “tower over its geographical sphere . . . did not necessarily imply an adversarial relationship with neighboring peoples.” And while, “like the United States, China thought of itself as playing a special role,” it “never espoused the American notion of universalism to spread its values around the world.”

Liu He—whom I have known for two decades, since he was a student at Harvard Kennedy School—keeps a list of more than two dozen problems, among them: demographics (will China become old before it can become rich?); the challenges of fostering innovation; maintaining social stability while downsizing inefficient state-owned enterprises; and meeting energy demands without making the environment unlivable. He has analyzed each with deeper insight and more nuance than any Western observer I have read. Aware of the risks, Xi and the Party continue to double down on all fronts.

Better than bilateral bargaining, of course, are international institutions that give the designer the advantage. The United States led the way down this road in the aftermath of World War II when creating the Bretton Woods institutions: the IMF (to coordinate international finance), the World Bank (to provide below-market-rate loans to developing countries), and the GATT and its successor, the World Trade Organization (to promote trade). In both the IMF and the World Bank, one—and only one—country has a veto over any changes in governance of the institutions: the United States.

In 1964, two days after North Vietnamese ships attacked the intelligence-gathering destroyer USS Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin, US intelligence reported a second attack on the ship. Provoked by this North Vietnamese audacity, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara led the campaign that persuaded Congress to pass the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, essentially declaring war on North Vietnam. Only decades later did McNamara learn that the report about the attack was incorrect. As McNamara wrote, “Ultimately, President Johnson authorized bombing in response to what he thought had been a second attack that hadn’t occurred.” A false alarm played a key role in putting the United States on the path to failure in Vietnam.

Bismarck provides a textbook example of exploitation of the ruling power syndrome: taking advantage of exaggerated fears, insecurities, and dread of changes in the status quo to provoke a reckless response. Modern behavioral scientists have explained this at the basic psychological level, noting that people’s fears of loss (or intimations of “decline”) trump our hopes of gain—driving us to take often unreasonable risks to protect what is ours. Especially in cases of “imperial overstretch” in which a great power’s “global interests and obligations [are] . . . far larger than the country’s power to defend them all simultaneously,”25 states may foolishly double down in their attempt to maintain the status quo.

US policymakers reacted in shock over what they denounced as Japan’s unprovoked attack. For being so starkly surprised, however, they had no one to blame but themselves.7 Had they taken an afternoon to read Thucydides and think about the consequences of Athens’s Megarian Decree, or reflect on Britain’s efforts to contain the rise of Germany in the decade before 1914 (an episode that will be explored in full in the next chapter), they could have better anticipated Japan’s initiative. Privately, some did. As sanctions tightened in 1941, American ambassador to Tokyo Joseph Grew insightfully noted in his diary, “The vicious circle of reprisals and counter reprisals is on . . . The obvious conclusion is eventual war.”

At the core of these national goals is a civilizational creed that sees China as the center of the universe. In the Chinese language, the word for China, zhong guo (中国), means “Middle Kingdom.” “Middle” refers not to the space between other, rival kingdoms, but to all that lies between heaven and earth. As Lee summarized the world view shared by hundreds of Chinese officials who sought his advice (including every leader since Deng Xiaoping), they “recall a world in which China was dominant and other states related to them as supplicants to a superior, as vassals came to Beijing bearing tribute.”8 In this narrative, the rise of the West in recent centuries is a historical anomaly, reflecting China’s technological and military weakness when it faced dominant imperial powers. Xi Jinping has promised his fellow citizens: no more. THE WORLD ACCORDING

After leaving office, TR told a friend: “If I must choose between a policy of blood and iron and one of milk and water, I am for the policy of blood and iron. It is better not only for the nation but in the long run for the world.”77 Yet the impact of TR’s “civilizing mission” and “police power” rankled many in the hemisphere.78 In 1913, the Argentine political leader Manuel Ugarte spoke plainly to the newly elected Woodrow Wilson, noting that many Latin American countries “have become open season for the vilest of instincts that in the United States itself are not condoned since they violate notions of public responsibility and opinion . . . As a result of such behavior the United States has gradually become the most unpopular nation among us.” Díaz had famously captured this sentiment with his lament, “Poor Mexico! So far from God and so close to the United States.”

Although the United States was just emerging on the world stage, Roosevelt knew in his bones that the hundred years ahead should be an American era, and he was committed to do everything in his power to make it so. Believing determination to be the handmaid of destiny, TR seized, and on occasion even manufactured, every opportunity to define that century on his own terms. In the decade that followed his arrival in Washington, the US declared war on Spain, expelling it from the Western Hemisphere and acquiring Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines; threatened Germany and Britain with war unless they agreed to settle disputes on American terms; supported an insurrection in Colombia to create a new country, Panama, in order to build a canal; and declared itself the policeman of the Western Hemisphere, asserting the right to intervene whenever and wherever it judged necessary—a right it exercised nine times in the seven years of TR’s presidency alone.

Among the spoils from the Spanish-American War of 1898, the United States acquired its first major colony, the Philippines, as well as Guam. The next year, Secretary of State John Hay announced what he called the Open Door order, declaring that the United States would not permit any foreign power to colonize or monopolize trade with China. Instead, China would be “open” to all commercial interests (especially those of the US) on an equal basis. To an industrializing, rapidly growing Japan, declarations by distant great powers that grandfathered their own colonies but prohibited the “land of the rising sun” from realizing its destiny seemed grossly unfair. Britain ruled India, as well as much of the rest of the world. The Netherlands had captured Indonesia. Russia had absorbed Siberia and seized Sakhalin Island, bringing it directly to Japan’s border. European powers had also forced Japan to withdraw from the territories it had won in defeating the Chinese in 1894–95. And at this point the Americans proposed to declare game over? Not if Japan had anything to say about it. After careful preparation, Japan went to war with Russia in 1904, defeating it handily and taking control of the Liaodong Peninsula, Port Arthur, the South Manchuria Railway, and half of Sakhalin. By then, it had already pushed China out of the island of Taiwan and occupied Korea. In 1931, Tokyo invaded the Chinese mainland, driving five hundred miles into the interior, leaving Japan

Ah, if we only knew.” That was the best the German chancellor could offer. Even when a colleague pressed Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, he could not explain how his choices, and those of other European statesmen, had led to the most devastating war the world had seen to that point. By the time the slaughter of the Great War finally ended in 1918, the key players had lost all they fought for: the Austro-Hungarian Empire dissolved, the German kaiser ousted, the Russian tsar overthrown, France bled for a generation, and England shorn of its treasure and youth. And for what? If we only knew. Bethmann Hollweg’s phrase haunted the president of the United States nearly half a century later. In 1962, John F. Kennedy was forty-five years old and in his second year in office, but still struggling to get his mind around his responsibilities as commander in chief. He knew that his finger was on the button of a nuclear arsenal that could kill hundreds of millions of human beings in a matter of minutes. But for what? A slogan at the time declared, “Better dead than red.” Kennedy rejected that dichotomy as not just facile, but false. “Our goal,” as he put it, had to be “not peace at the expense of freedom, but both peace and freedom.” The question was how he and his administration could achieve both. As he vacationed at the family compound on Cape Cod in the summer of 1962, Kennedy found himself reading The Guns of August, Barbara Tuchman’s compelling account of the outbreak of war in 1914. Tuchman traced the thoughts and actions of Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm and his chancellor Bethmann Hollweg, Britain’s King George and his foreign secretary Edward Grey, Tsar Nicholas, Austro-Hungarian emperor Franz Joseph, and others as they sleepwalked into the abyss. Tuchman argued that none of these men understood the danger they faced. None wanted the war they got. Given the opportunity for a do-over, none would repeat the choices he made. Reflecting on his own responsibilities, Kennedy pledged that if he ever found himself facing choices that could make the difference between catastrophic war and peace, he would be able to give history a better answer than Bethmann Hollweg’s.