America’s Two Cold Wars: From Hegemony to Decline? [1st ed. 2022] 9789811695025, 9789811695032, 9811695024

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America’s Two Cold Wars From Hegemony to Decline? Alfredo Toro Hardy

America’s Two Cold Wars “Toro Hardy’s excellent book provides new insights into the emerging Cold War between the U.S. and China and its impact on the international system. His solid analysis on how the key pillars of power and influence are shifting is supported by an impressive review of scholarly literature”. —Francisco Villagrán de León, Professor of the George Washington University’s School of International Affairs and former Ambassador to the U.S. and the U.N. (New York and Geneva).

Alfredo Toro Hardy

America’s Two Cold Wars From Hegemony to Decline?

Alfredo Toro Hardy Retired Venezuelan Ambassador Montreal, QC, Canada

ISBN 978-981-16-9502-5 ISBN 978-981-16-9503-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-9503-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

To Gaby, with much love and gratitude. To Enzo, my endearing grandson.

Foreword

Alfredo Toro Hardy’s analysis of the evolution and future of US foreign policy and America’s place in the world could not come at a more propitious moment. The world is at an inflexion point as its transits from America’s brief moment of unipolarity in the wake of the demise of the Soviet Union to a world in which not only China, Europe, Russia, and eventually India but also middle powers such as Turkey, Iran, Brazil, Mexico, Nigeria, South Africa, Australia, and Japan will be more prominent. Of the group, though, China is not only focalizing America’s largest degree of attention but unleashing within its ranks a rivalry that reproduces much of the animosity that characterized Washington’s confrontation with Moscow during the Cold War years. Toro Hardy’s book, focused on big power relations, frames the understanding of tectonic shifts marking transition toward a new world order. This serves as an invaluable backgrounder for a debate that is fueled by the emergence of the presidency of Joe Biden, the end to America’s forever wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in response to the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington in 2001, and mixed results of two decades of the US war on terror. The contours of a Biden doctrine are emerging from the debate. Toro Hardy’s analysis provides thus the building blocks of this crucial debate. The debate is informed by multiple factors: Rival schools of thought about the appropriate drivers of US foreign policy, clashing views of what the country’s national interests are, and how they can best be defended.

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The debate erupted just months after Biden introduced a more multilateral approach that broke with Trump’s isolationist, “America First” strategy. It has been fuelled by the arrival in Washington of the latest kid on the block, the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, founded in 2019 to challenge the notion that the United States should serve as a global policeman and that a failure to do so as in Afghanistan is a sign of weakness and decline. The institute was named after John Quincy Adams, an early nineteenth-century American president and secretary of state, who was a critic of American ideological nationalism and foreign adventurism. The institute seeks to break the current, seemingly militarized mould of US foreign policy. Funded by libertarian businessman Charles Koch and liberal philanthropist George Soros, the institute, headed by Andrew J. Bacevich, a conservative Catholic historian who served in the US Army and the 1991 Gulf war, the institute promotes a “foreign policy that emphasises military restraint and diplomatic engagement and cooperation with other nations (that) will serve American interests and values better than policies that prioritise the maintenance of US global dominance through force.”1 Prominent international relations scholars Daniel Deudney and G. John Ikenberry described the institute in a critical essay as an “odd alliance of domestic (US) libertarians, balance-of-power-realists and the antiimperialist left,”2 schools of thought that have been adversaries for much of their history. They nonetheless acknowledge the institute’s impact on the policy debate in the Biden era. “Given its abundant resources in people, ideas and money, and the salience of its pledge to avoid another Iraq war, the Quincy coalition has appeared well-positioned to help shape US foreign policy and, by extension, the world order,” the scholars wrote. They added, however, that the Quincy approach was “fatally flawed” because “its foreign-policy agenda is profoundly outmoded… A critique of the Iraq blunder during the post-Cold War unipolar moment provides little guidance for conducting American foreign policy in response to

1 Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, About QI. https://quincyinst.org/ about/. 2 Daniel Deudney & G. John Ikenberry, (2021). Misplaced restraint: The quincy coali-

tion versus liberal internationalism. Survival, 63(4). https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/ full/10.1080/00396338.2021.1956187.

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cascading global interdependence, democratic backsliding, and a historic strategic challenge from an illiberal great power.”3 In what threatened to become an acrimonious debate, prominent journalist-turned-scholar and Qunicy researcher Anatol Lieven charged that Deudney and Ikenberry were in step with the neoconservatives’ international agenda. Lieven framed the foreign policy debate and the place of the Quincy Institute in it in terms of a school of restraint vs a school of liberal internationalism. He said the two schools had “very different understandings of what kind of internationalism best contributes to international peace, development and cooperation in pursuit of essential human goals. A large part of this disagreement also lies in our differing attitudes towards the course of US and allied foreign and security policy over the past generation.” Lieven went on to assert that “liberal internationalism as envisaged by Deudney and Ikenberry is intrinsically linked to US hegemony and one form of American ideological nationalism. They share responsibility for the disasters that these have caused, and for the growing confrontation with China that threatens to wreck prospects for a peaceful and consensual global order,” Lieven asserted.4 In what could be part of a gradual paradigm shift in US policy, Middle East defense and security analyst Bilal Y. Saab argued that the Biden administration will have to revamp the security aspects of its foreign policy if it wants to truly repair the damage done to relations with US allies by the Trump administration’s unilateralism. “Washington needs to overhaul how it conducts security cooperation. For too long, this enterprise, run mainly by the US Department of Defense since 9/11, has lacked vision, leadership and organization. It is too narrowly focused on US military sales and tactical and operational support to partners, and insufficiently attentive to the defence governance and institutional enabling mechanisms that allow for the proper employment and sustainment of US military assistance,” Saab said.5 In his mind, the US should focus on long-term rather than short term goals.

3 Ibid. Deudney and Ikenberry. 4 Anatol Lieven, Vindicating Realist Internationalism, Survival, (September 16, 2021).

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00396338.2021.1978746. 5 Bilal Y. Saab, (July 2021). Enabling US security cooperation. Survival, (63)4, pp. 89–

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However, the notion of America’s unilateralism coupled with the concern of the reliability of the United States as an ally was highlighted by the way the United States negotiated with the Taliban and the chaos of the subsequent withdrawal that allowed the militants to retake control of Afghanistan. The negotiations focused on getting the United States out of a two-decade-long forever war with little or no consideration of the consequences for Afghan forces and other US allies in Afghanistan as well as in the Central Asian country’s neighborhood.6 The withdrawal from Afghanistan, on its part, reinforced the doubts on America’s reliability. This was felt far beyond the Middle East, particularly in Asia where various nations have territorial disputes with China and were likely to question the value of their security cooperation with the United States. The withdrawal and collapse of the Afghan government called into question the meaning of Biden’s assertion that the United States is back as a leader of the Western world after four years of rejection of multilateralism, isolationism, and a foreign policy driven in part by narcissism during the Trump administration. The withdrawal or at least the way it was executed fed the Chinese portrayal of the United States as a decaying power that cannot be relied upon, thus strengthening its assertive foreign policy in its own region. Defending the withdrawal, Biden laid out elements of a US military strategy that would shun ground wars with large troop deployments. Instead, the United States would focus on great power competition while countering extremists with military technology that allowed for strikes against specific targets rather than wars like Afghanistan.7 Hence, the message that Biden wanted to convey to China was the opposite to what its leadership seemed to be reading: Washington aims at focusing the bulk of its attention where its main rivalry lies, not getting distracted by secondary scenarios. A long-standing proponent of a more cohesive US policy, Senator Chris Murphy, the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee 6 Vivian Salama, Nancy A. Youssef and Gordon Lubold, (August 11, 2021). Speed of taliban advance surprises biden administration, sismays U.S. Allies. The Wall Street Journal,. https://www.wsj.com/articles/speed-of-taliban-advance-surprises-bidenadministration-dismays-u-s-allies-11628708393. 7 The White House, Remarks by President Biden on the End of the War in Afghanistan,

(August 31, 2021). https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/ 2021/08/31/remarks-by-president-biden-on-the-end-of-the-war-in-afghanistan/.

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on the Near East, South Asia, Central Asia, and Counterterrorism, has laid out elements of a policy that would stroke with the thinking of the Quincy Institute thinking and Democratic progressives but raise ire among some of America’s traditional allies. The senator has argued that a revamp of US foreign policy was needed because competition with China in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world was on economics rather than security. “We should learn from the success the Chinese have had, and we should empower (US) agencies…with the kind of economic assets that can be comparable to the Chinese, which right now we can’t even imagine as a government. That’s in part because no one was ever competing with us on that playing field… It’s not good enough to just offer some ships or some guns. You have to actually be able to offer real development in a way that we can’t today,” Murphy said. Ben Rhodes, an Obama era national security advisor, has warned though that the achievement of Biden’s agenda, including defeating the pandemic, fighting climate change, revitalizing democracy, and preparing the United States and its allies for an enduring competition with an assertive China was severely hampered by the legacy of a militarized policy and policy apparatus. “The vast infrastructure of the war on terror remains in place, and its prerogatives continue to influence the organization of the US government, the deployment of the US military... those realities constrain the United States’ ability to move decisively past the post-9/11 era, lead a global revitalization of democracy, and buttress a rules-based international order. A true pivot will require more dramatic steps: reconfiguring or dismantling aspects of the US post-9/11 enterprise and changing a securitized mindset that has encouraged authoritarianism at home and abroad. The US government cannot end forever wars if it is designed to fight them; it cannot revitalize democracy if democracy consistently winds up on the losing end of national security tradeoffs,” Rhodes said.8 Rhodes’ criticism implicitly points at another problematic underpinning of US foreign policy: it is often shaped by the narrow lens of a demonized “enemy” or adversary. “We remain a ‘friends versus enemies’ society, which is perhaps the most important reason that we have never

8 Ben Rhodes, (September/October 2021). Them and us: How America lets its enemies

hijack its foreign policy, foreign affairs. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-sta tes/2021-08-24/foreign-policy-them-and-us.

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done balance of power well,” says former State Department official and ex-US ambassador to NATO Robert E. Hunter.9 Lieven, the journalist-turned-Quincy Institute researcher, draws three lessons from the last two decades of US policy. “The first is not to become so obsessed with the enemy of the particular moment that this drowns out other important interests. Second, the United States should be careful not to allow a belief in the absolute evil of the enemy to justify its own evil actions and support for evil regimes. Third, it is absolutely essential not to lump a range of very different countries and forces in the world into one allegedly homogenous enemy camp,” he said. He identified the 2003 invasion of Iraq, even though it had nothing to do with 9/11, as an example of the pitfalls of US inclinations. In other words, Lieven was arguing that the problem with the “friends versus enemies” approach is that it encourages policies that are based on a distorted picture of reality. That was evident in conservative criticism of Biden’s troop withdrawal from Afghanistan that was rooted in a perception of the Taliban as immutable. Alfredo Toro Hardy’s excellent book portraits an emerging Cold War with China where the narrow lens of a demonised adversary could end up prevailing, and where the possibility of a foreign policy that emphasizes military restraint and diplomatic engagement and cooperation run the risk of being frustrated. He admonishes, though, that such outcome would be highly detrimental to America’s interests as China is not the Soviet Union nor the United States of today is what it used to be when confronting the Soviets. Moreover, in his view, the same configuration of factors that played in Washington’s favor during its Cold War with Moscow, could now benefit Beijing. Engaging in a zero-sum confrontation with China would only serve to accelerate America’s decline. That is why Toro Hardy advises, in tune with the Quincy Institute line of though, that the United States should explore the possibility of a constructive cohabitation with China, where shared global responsibilities and a mutually beneficial interdependence prevail over the intent of trying to maintain global dominance through force. Although he recognises that you need two to tango, he emphasizes that Cold War with China is a choice and not a necessity. 9 Email to the author, 2 August 2021, Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, 19

July 2021. https://quincyinst.org/report/no-clean-hands-the-interventions-of-middle-eas tern-powers/.

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Readers will find Toro Hardy’s historical and conceptual grasp of big power geopolitics the perfect guide to provide context to a shifting US foreign policy whose contours are still in the making. In that sense, his book not only becomes an important addition to the ongoing debate on what the future of such foreign policy should be, but, even more significantly, a guide to decode its complexities and need of choices. All I can say is that I was enriched and enlightened by this book and am sure that so will you. Montreal, Canada

James M. Dorsey

James M. Dorsey Senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies of the Nanyang Technological University and of the Middle East Institute of the National University of Singapore. Co-director of the University of Wuerzburg’s Institute of Fan Culture, syndicated columnist and author of several books, including China and the Middle East: Venturing into the Maelstrom (Palgrave, 2016).

Acknowledgments

I would like to express my upmost gratitude to the very special group of people that honored me by reading the manuscript of this book and writing its foreword and blurbs. Syndicated columnist, award winning journalist, academic and author James M. Dorsey wrote a very thoughtful foreword, while distinguished ambassadors and scholars Kishore Mahbubani, Nestor Osorio, T.V. Paul and Fancisco Villagrán de León wrote generous back cover comments. Doctor Gloria Carnevali-Hawthorn, a Cambridge based philosopher and author, thoroughly read the manuscript of this book and corrected my English deficiencies while providing me with several insightful ideas. My gratitude for her continuous support is priceless. I would like to thank, as well, Ms. Mary Forero, who helped me in organizing and checking the bibliographical references. My distinct gratitude goes to Palgrave Macmillan for harboring a work of mine under its prestigious editorial label, with very special reference to Mr. Vishal Daryanomel and Ms. Redhu Ruthroyoni.

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1

Introduction References

2

The Brief History of the End of History What Had Happened? The Reform that Triggered the Implosion The Landmark year of 1989 Divisions Within the Communist Party The Coup and the Dissolution of the Soviet Union The End of History Global Hegemony References

5 5 8 9 11 13 14 15 18

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From Hiding Strengths to Assertive Showcasing A Fruitful and Resilient Agreement Reform and Opening Up Succession and Implications Inflection Point A New Boldness Paradoxically Xi Jinping Hard-Liner America’s Reasons Collision Course

21 22 23 24 26 28 30 31 33 35 36

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The New Cold War References

38 40

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From Ideology to Efficiency America’s Mythology A Crusading Foreign Policy Ideological Confrontation A New Ideological Contest? The Populist Irruption Trump’s Arrival Eroding Democracy The New Republicans The Road to Nowhere Efficiency as the Catchword Can America Compete? Unbridled Problems Covid and the Reagan’s Revolution in Reverse References

45 45 46 47 49 51 53 54 56 58 59 62 63 65 68

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From Hegemony to the Squandering of Alliances America’s Led International Architecture Soviet Bloc and Non-Alignment America’s Alliance System The Erosion of America’s Hegemony Neoconservatives Obama’s Failed Attempt Trump’s “Dog Eat Dog” Foreign Policy Money, Money, Money More Than What America’s Allies Can Handle Beijing-Moscow: Strategic Partnership or Axis? Why Did Russia Approach China? Ukraine and Crimea China’s Revisionist Multilateral Building Cooperative Multilateralism Belt and Road Other Initiatives Reputational Problems A Big Magnet References

73 73 74 76 77 79 81 82 84 85 88 89 91 92 94 95 96 98 99 100

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From Strategic Consistency to Zigzagging Rules of the Game Conceptual Bases The Marshall Plan Containment Johnson, Vietnam, and the Foreign Policy Crisis America’s Divides A Fractured Society Between Dispersion and Bashing A Focused China Xi’s Autocracy References

105 105 107 108 109 110 112 113 115 116 118 121

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From Economic High Ground to Economic Lowland A Vulnerable and Hyper Militarized Society Lagging Technology and Escalating Compromises Moscow’s Nightmare A Different Game Altogether Middle Classes and Innovation Outspending, Outsmarting America’s Complacency Concentrating Versus Diffusing References

125 125 126 128 129 131 134 136 139 140

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From Reasonable Containment to Unattainable Containment Containment Moving to the Third World Anomalies Kennedy and the Vietnam Floodgates Spectacular Triumph Replicating Containment Distorting but Not Abandoning Following Suit Gone Are the Days The Lack of Geopolitical Feasibility Taiwan References

145 146 148 149 151 152 154 156 159 161 162 165 167

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Conclusion References

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Bibliography

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Index

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About the Author

Alfredo Toro Hardy is a Venezuelan retired diplomat, scholar, and public intellectual. He has a Ph.D. from the Geneva School of Diplomacy and International Relations; master’s degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and the Central University of Venezuela and a postgraduate degree from the Ecole Nationale d’Ádministration, ENA. He has attestations for special courses from the University of Paris II and Harvard University and a Bachelor of Law degree from the Central University of Venezuela. Before resigning from the Venezuelan Foreign Service in protest for events in his country, he was one of its most senior career diplomats, having served as Ambassador to the United States, the United Kingdom, Spain, Brazil, Singapore, Chile, and Ireland. As a scholar, he was Director of the Diplomatic Academy of the Venezuelan Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Associate Professor of the Simón Bolívar University in Caracas, where he served as Director of the Center for North American Studies and Co-ordinator of the Institute for Higher Latin American Studies. He was elected as “Simon Bolivar Chair Professor for Latin American Studies” by the Council of Faculties of the University of Cambridge, but had to decline election due to diplomatic constraints. A Visiting Professor at Princeton University, he also taught at the universities of Brasilia and Barcelona, while lecturing extensively at universities and think tanks from the Americas, Europe, and Asia. He is an Honorary Research Fellow of the Geneva School of

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Diplomacy and International Relations and has been a member of the Advising Committee on diplomatic studies of the University of Westminster, a Fulbright Scholar and a two times Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Resident Scholar. He has also been a member of the Bellagio Center Nominations Committee. Author of twenty-one books and co-author of thirteen more on international affairs and history. He received twice the “Latino Book Award” (best book by an author whose original language is in Spanish or Portuguese) at the ExpoBook America fairs celebrated in Chicago and Los Angeles in 2003 and 2008, respectively. His book The World Turned Upside Down: The Complex Partnership between China and Latin America (New Jersey: World Scientific, 2013) was chosen by the online cataloguing LibraryThing as one of the nine basic readings on South America. He has also published more than thirty peer-reviewed papers on international affairs in journals from different continents, while being a member of the editorial boards of the arbitrated journals on international relations Alexis Journal of International Affairs (Alexis Foundation, India) and Cuadernos de China (University of the Andes, Venezuela). A regular columnist in several publications, including the Observatory on Chinese Policies (Spain), he also frequently contributes with the webinars of the Global Diplomatic Forum (UK) and La Palabra de Clío (Mexico). He is a board member of the Alexis Foundation, the Association of Chinese Studies of the University of the Andes and of the Global Strategic Research Center. He is or has been a member of the Iberian-American Network of Sinologists, Global Labour Organization, Chatham House, Canning House and Windsor Energy Group, amid other think tanks. His biographical data has been included in Who’s Who (A&C Black) and World Who’s Who (Routledge).

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Having won its Cold War with the Soviet Union, the United States emerged as the sole superpower in 1991. It had been a more than four decades long contest, at the end of which the USSR had exhausted its viability. It could not survive without changes, nor could it undertake them without perishing. It was a doomed regime. For the better part of the following two decades, Washington enjoyed an undisputed global hegemony. A unipolar moment had been attained, and with it, the liberal values proclaimed by the United States became truly universal (Krauthammer, 1990/1991). By 2008, however, China began developing an assertive foreign policy which, after 2013, expanded into a wider and direct challenge to America’s primacy. Under Xi Jinping, China aims at its “resurrection”. This translates into converging strategies like the “China Dream of National Rejuvenation”, “Made in China 2025” or the Belt and Road Initiative. The first strategy pursues a powerful and prosperous China, and the expansion of the country’s geopolitical footprint. “Made in China 2025” aims at transforming China into the world’s leader in science, technology, and innovation by mid-twenty-first century. The Belt and Road targets at positioning China as the epicenter of global interconnection. Meanwhile, Beijing’s actions in the South China Sea, within the so-called First Island Chain, in relation to its neighbors, and vis-à-vis Taiwan, have become increasingly bold, defiant, and aggressive (Toro Hardy, 2020). © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 A. T. Hardy, America’s Two Cold Wars, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-9503-2_1

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Chinese deeds, words, and proclaimed strategies present this country as a revisionist power. One that overtly challenges the status quo of its region, and the leadership of the United States within it and overall. Several arguments have been offered as reasons for Xi’s sense of urgency in challenging the prevailing international order. The first holds that his initiatives are aimed at remaking the global order in terms favorable to the Chinese regime. The second, conversely, maintains that his actions are the expression of a Leninist political system struggling to keep its grip on power. The third argues that Xi sees a narrow window of opportunity of ten to fifteen years during which his country can take advantage of a set of important technological and geopolitical transformations that he describes as “profound changes unseen in a century”, and which demand daring and immediate actions (Blanchette, 2021). Whatever the underlying reasons of Xi’s strategies and actions may be, the United States feels threatened by them, with 73 percent of Americans polled by Pew Research Center holding a negative view on China. As a result, Washington is aggrievedly and forcefully reacting against what it perceives as an existential contention. This, in turn, has increased Beijing’s apprehensions of being constrained in its ascendancy by a country driven by envy. Moreover, having undergone the painful experience of a century of humiliations unleashed by the Western powers and Japan, China perceives America’s actions as the last effort by a Western power to keep the country down, preventing it from occupying its rightful place in the world (Mahbubani, 2020). So, while the United States feels threatened, China considers that it is being unfairly contained in its emergence. An emergence that would simply reposition China in the leading role that it held during most of recorded human history (Wang, 2021). A structural and increasingly zero-sum rivalry has taken shape between both behemoths. This new contest reproduces much of the animosity that characterized the decades long confrontation between Washington and Moscow. While the plausibility of a war looms in the air, a new Cold War between the United States and China is clearly taking shape. To ascertain how well prepared the United States is to wage this second Cold War, by comparison to its successful first one against the Soviet Union, is a subject of paramount importance. This entails not only analyzing how different a contender China is from the Soviet Union but also how different the current United States is in relation to its former

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self when it confronted the USSR. This book aims at answering both questions and, by extension, comparing both cold wars.

References Blanchette, J. (2021, July/August). Xi’s gamble: The race to consolidate power and stave off disaster. Foreign Affairs. Krauthammer, C. (1990/1991). The unipolar moment. Foreign Affairs, Council on Foreign Relations, 70(1), 23–33. Mahbubani, K. (2020, July 1). Can America lose to China? The National Interest. Toro Hardy, A. (2020). China versus the US: Who will prevail? World Scientific. Wang, J. (2021, July/August). The plot against China? How Beijing sees the new Washington consensus. Foreign Affairs.

CHAPTER 2

The Brief History of the End of History

Mikhail Gorbachev, who, upon arrival in 1985 to the top of the political hierarchy of the Soviet Union, yielded the power of an earthly god over a superpower of 300 million people and the world’s second largest military force, presided on December 25, 1991 over virtual surrender in the Cold War. On that day, indeed, the Soviet hammer and sickle flag lowered for the last time over the Kremlin and was replaced thereafter by the Russian tricolor. A few hours earlier, Gorbachev had resigned his post as President of the Soviet Union, which subsequently dissolved as Boris Yeltsin assumed the presidency of the newly independent Russian Republic (Harvey, 2003 [1, p. 385]).

What Had Happened? What had happened? Whatever happened had been in the making since the beginning of the 1980s, a decade in which the Soviet Union began confronting a truly grim situation. Economically, socially, politically, and in its international relations, a feeling of crisis loomed inescapable. In the economic sphere, chaos prevailed. The central planning production system, indifferent to profitability, efficiency, market prices, and consumer demand, had exhausted its potential. An excess of bureaucratic planning concentrated upon heavy industry, was unable to respond to the need of consumers. The workers’ lack of motivation had turned into © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 A. T. Hardy, America’s Two Cold Wars, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-9503-2_2

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generalized apathy. Embarrassingly low levels of productivity and manufactures’ quality were mixed with a rampant waste in the use of resources, particularly energy and steel. Science and technology development had stalled, and so had the capability to modernize the economy. Reluctant workers, bad products, and supply scarcity were the main characteristics of its economic system. The actual origin of this outcome went back to the 1960s, to what was called “the long stagnation”, in which the Soviet Union had been marred with little or no economic growth. On top of that, since the early 1970s the country needed to import millions of yearly tons of wheat and corn—its agricultural productivity being of about one-seventh of American farming. As Paul Kennedy remarked, given the emphasis of Marxist philosophy on the material basis of existence, it was highly ironic that the chief difficulties of the USSR were located in the economic sphere (Glasser, 2019; Kennedy, 1989 [1, pp. 632, 634, 636–637]; Kroenig, 2020, [1 p. 145]). In the social sphere, the impact of a faltering economy was intensively felt. There was a constant shortage of basic products and merchandise in general, while housing availability was notoriously undersupplied. Long lines and long waits were the trademarks of the model. Medical assistance was also dearth, with the life expectancy of the Soviet man having been reduced to about sixty years, six years less than in the mid-1960s. Only the powerful members of the “nomenklatura” seemed to escape the prevailing inadequacies of the system. Party officials and bureaucrats, depending on their rank, enjoyed of an extensive array of privileges that cushioned them from the hardship of everyday life. For the average citizen, though, this just added insult to injury (Kennedy, 1989 [2, pp. 641, 643]). In the political sphere, the influence of the social crisis was evident. The great majority of the population remained indifferent to the regime and its leadership. Political stability was based on two main pillars: the generalized apathy of the population who escape daily hardship through endemic alcoholism, and the harsh repression of protest and dissidence. The ensuing result could be none other than a lack of civic spirit and political participation, and the complete divorce between the rulers and the ruled. Within this vicious circle, international affairs and domestic affairs influenced each other in a nefarious way. The Soviet Union confronted what seemed to be a dead end, with up to half of its GDP (according to Eduard Shevardnadze’s assessment) being dedicated to defense expending. Moreover, the armed forces siphoned off vast stocks of trained

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manpower, scientists, and machinery that could have been devoted to the civilian economy. The irrationality of that situation not only implied a tremendous burden on its civilian economy but imposed great sacrifices on the standard of living of its population. Subsidies to the rest of the members of the Soviet bloc increased this huge bill. Its Central and Eastern European empire represented an annual disbursement of US$40 billion in subsidies, while its satellites in the Third World soaked up an additional US$15 billion (Harvey, 2003 [2, p. 385); Kennedy, 1989 [3, p. 644]; Toro Hardy, 1993 [1, p. 35]). Such situation was hardly sustainable. Specially so as the prices of oil, the main Soviet export product, showed a strong decline in the second half of the 1980s. Moreover, the reescalation of the Cold War undertaken by Jimmy Carter, and particularly by Ronald Reagan, put in motion a military buildup that Moscow purely and simply could not match. Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative would have compelled the Soviets into huge investments in advanced technologies such as lasers, optics, supercomputers, or guidance systems, all areas where they were lagging far behind the United States. Moreover, Reagan’s policy repudiated détente and reasserted the moral absolutes of the Cold War, while unleashing verbal cannons at the Soviet Union. Going beyond mere containment, he used all the means at his disposal to corner the Soviet Union and inflict upon its system costs susceptible of breaking it. This policy was not painless for the United States—it changed its status as the world’s largest international creditor into that of the world’s largest debtor nation. How could the Soviet Union follow suit to this kind of military expenditure without imploding? (Gaddis, 2005 [1, pp. 192– 194]; Herring, 2008 [1, Chapter 19]; Kennedy, 1989 [4, p. 648]). As Paul Kennedy argued in 1988, the Soviet Union needed to make a choice in the allocation of its resources between three options: (1) the requirements of the military; (2) the increasing desire of the Soviet population for consumer goods, better living and working conditions and improved social services; and (3) the needs of both industry and agriculture for fresh capital investments. The traditional obsession by Moscow with military security, meant that the first of those options had prevailed for a long time. However, this no longer seemed possible as the escalating requirements of military expenditures were drowning options two and three (Kennedy, 1989 [5, p. 645]).

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The Reform that Triggered the Implosion To avoid implosion, Moscow triggered a reform process that backfired and accelerated it instead. Since the final days of Leonid Brezhnev, a consensus existed among important sectors of the Kremlin about the need to undertake ambitious modernization reforms. Upon Brezhnev’s passing in 1982, this consensus eased the coming into power of Yuri Andropov. Labeled as a modernizer, Andropov agglutinated the reformists behind him. However, his mandate was plagued by ill health and he was barely capable of designating his favorite disciple as his successor: Mikhail Gorbachev. As it happened, this generational relay did not take place because the conservative old guard of the Kremlin, in a last outcry of power, was able to impose Brezhnev’s closest ally—Konstantin Chernenko. But he, as well, died soon enough. Reagan’s derisive comment that he had no interlocutor on the other side, as Soviet leaders kept dying on him was therefore hardly surprising. This last demise finally opened the door to the reformist sector. In 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev reached unopposed the commanding heights of the Soviet Union. And with him came perestroika. What was and what aimed perestroika at? This new political concept could be interpreted as a process of restructuring, and as a movement for reformation and modernization. In Gorbachev’s terms, the acceleration of the country’s socioeconomic development was the key to solve all of its problems. Hence, initial aspirations mainly targeted at the modification of the central planning of the economy. However, the meaning of the term evolved over time, acquiring more encompassing connotations as soon as economic modernization began to be associated with social and political behaviors as well (Brown, 2009 [1, p. 491]; Kennedy, 1989 [4, p. 643]). Other concepts such as glasnost, democratization, and new thinking became intertwined with that of perestroika. Glasnost was taken to mean increased openness and transparency in government institutions and activities, permitting the public scrutiny of official actions. Democratization, in turn, promoted citizen participation, so that pressure from below translated into higher levels of efficiency both within the country’s productive means and the political leadership. New thinking implied abandoning the concept of class struggle, increasing international interdependence, and redefining the concept of security. Security, as a result, was not to be based on the number of nuclear missiles but on the search for international

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distension, which in turn would allow for the redirection of resources into domestic needs. Gorbachev opened the pressure cooker hoping to control the release of the force therein. However, once liberated, the force swept away everything on its path. First came the European satellites, then Gorbachev’s power base and finally, the Soviet Union itself. The conundrum between promoting necessary changes and not assimilating them, showed the world that the Soviet system had exhausted its capacity for survival and that it was, in simple terms, doomed (Herring, 2008 [2, p. 914]).

The Landmark year of 1989 But before the Soviet Union had exhausted its survival capacity, came the loss of its empire in Central and Eastern Europe. This happened in the landmark year of 1989. Two main reasons may explain why, like a domino row, one after another, those countries deserted Communism that year. Their populations’ lack of support for that model was one of them; the second was the reformist example coming from Moscow (Brzezinski, 1990). At the end of the 1980s, the divorce between the citizenry and the prevailing ideology within the Soviet bloc was evident. No wonder: this bloc had always been held together by coercion rather than attraction, with Communist regimes been deemed as a foreign imposition by their populations. Military intimidation by their Soviet overlords, as expressed by the Brezhnev Doctrine that proclaimed Moscow’s right to militarily intervene in dissenting satellites, had been the mean to keep its members in check. But before Brezhnev’s time, Soviet authorities built the Berlin Wall in 1961 to trap East Berliners within its orbit, in the same manner in which East Germany’s protests had been violently suppressed in 1953 by the Soviet forces or Warsaw Pact forces had invaded Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 to crush dissidence against its rule (Brown, [2, p. 574]; Kroenig, 2020 [2, p. 144]). Understandably, the sentiment of the people toward their socialist regimes was one of frustration and anger. While Communism was seen as responsible for the shortcomings of their standard of living, the perception of something better on the other side of the Iron Curtain became a tangible magnetic force. This was exemplified by the two million East Germans that slipped into West Berlin and thence to the Federal Republic of Germany, before the construction of the Berlin Wall, or by the many

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that kept risking their lives to escape afterward. The conditions for an open rejection of Moscow and Marxism had existed for a long time. All that was needed was a catalyst (Reynolds, 2001 [1, p. 291]). This came by way of Gorbachev’s reforms, demands, and rhetoric. The example of the changes he was implementing in the Soviet Union had a profound emotional impact on the population of these countries. Moreover, unable to maintain the subsidies to their regimes, and impatient with their orthodoxy, Gorbachev kept pressing for reforms to be applied there as well, while criticizing the lack of them. A good example of the latter was his open critic of East Germany’s Honecker, in the crucial year of 1989. Meanwhile, his speeches and public statements stirred the imagination of the people and gave flight to their cravings for freedom. His close aid Genadi Gerasimov was particularly graphic in his rhetoric. When asked what was the difference between Dubcek’s Prague Spring and Gorbachev, his reply was: Nineteen years. In the same manner, and amid the beginning of 1989 Eastern bloc turmoil, he stated that the Brezhnev Doctrine had been supplanted by the Sinatra Doctrine: I did it my way. Thus, the combined effect of the actions and words coming from Moscow had a deeply corrosive effect on the political floor of the Communist regimes of Central and Eastern Europe, making them look ossified, out of touch with a new era, and politically disconnected from the center of power in Moscow (Herring, 2008 [3, p. 904]; Reynolds, 2001 [2, pp. 299, 300]). The stage was set for a chain reaction. It was like a domino row in which all that was missing was the fall of the first piece. For obvious reasons, Poland was the first to fall. Not only because of its fervent nationalism, profoundly rooted Catholicism, and historical resentment against the Russians, but also because of some key additional elements. Firstly, during the 1970s détente, the Polish regime massively imported industrial equipment from the West, resulting in the largest foreign debt in Eastern Europe: A debt that could only be serviced through rising domestic prices and squeezing living standards. Secondly, the existence of a powerful union movement, Solidarity, which in 1980s put in motion a series of defiant strikes against the government. More than a simple labor movement, though, Solidarity became a coalition of workers, professionals, scholars, intellectuals, Roman Catholic Church’s elements, and secular groups. During the sixteen months that it was legal, ten million people joined its ranks. Thirdly, the presence of an exceptionally charismatic leader at the head of Solidarity: Lech Walesa. Fourthly, the convening religious and anti-communist power of an equally charismatic Polish

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figure: John Paul II (Gaddis, 2005 [2, p. 188]; Snyder, 2017, pp. 84–85; Reynolds, 2001 [3, p. 297]). Under pressure from massive waves of workers’ strikes and Gorbachev’s insistence in the liberalization of the political floodgates, President Wojciech Jaruzelski summoned in 1989 a partially free parliamentary election, triggering the regional chain reaction. Polish Communists and their allies were allocated sixty-five percent of the seats, with the rest being submitted to the ballots. When Solidarity obtained all but one of the seats open to electoral competition in the Lower House and the Senate, the regime found itself cornered. The irrepressible striving of public opinion was compounded by the unexpected and sudden support given to Solidarity by two parties traditionally allied to the Communists. As a result, Jaruzelski had no other option than to allow the formation of a government controlled by Solidarity. It was the first time that a non-communist government had attained power within the European Soviet bloc (Gaddis, 2005 [3, p. 207]; Toro Hardy, 1993 [2, pp. 39–40).

Divisions Within the Communist Party Meanwhile, in the Soviet Union itself, as early as 1988 the Communist Party had been giving undeniable signs of dissension. Even though there was a generalized agreement on the need for reforms, there was contention regarding what their extent and celerity should be. The Right wing of the party believed that only limited changes, duly controlled from above, were necessary. On the Left, pressure existed for more speed and comprehensiveness in the changes. This implied full democracy and market economy reforms. The Center was represented by those who wanted transformations from below, but at a pace both moderate and controlled. On the Right, the so-called Marxist Platform of the Communist Party took shape. On the Left, under Boris Yeltsin’s leadership, the Democratic Platform of the Communist Party emerged. Gorbachev commanded the Center, which in its initial stages represented the majority of the party. Subsequently however, he managed to alienate both extremes as the Right accused him of failing to maintain socialism, while the Left criticized him for not going far enough (Frayne, 2012 [1]; Toro Hardy, 1993 [3, p.60]). Gorbachev’s dealing with the extremes was based on a sort of controlled chaos formula, which involved a premeditated political destabilization of the party. The nagging question is: what interest might

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Gorbachev have had in promoting unrest in his own background? The answer is simple. He wanted to frighten the Right with threat of the Left and the Left with the threat of the Right. He hoped that by buoying up the extremes, both sides would accept his middle ground positions. By 1990, however, the Center had shrunk into a minority. His controlled chaos grossly backfired with a polarization within which clear-cut positions attracted more attention than an indecisive middle (Toro Hardy, 1993, [4, pp. 61–62]). Moreover, while the Right took control of the party, the Left began to abandon it. While the former became the expression of Moscow’s centralism, the latter began to identify itself with the autonomous ambitions of several of the Soviet republics, which were at the time presenting a centrifugal threat to Moscow. As a matter of fact, in 1990, Boris Yeltsin was elected President of the most important of them: The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (Brown, 2009, [3, Chapter 27]; Gaddis, 2005 [4, p. 218]; Toro Hardy, 1993 [5, p. 61]). Fortunately for Gorbachev, in March 1990 he had been elected President of the Soviet Union by the Congress of People’s Deputies for a period of five years. This was a new post that responded to the Constitutional reform process that he had put in motion in 1988 and that had included, as well, the creation of the Congress of People’s Deputies itself. As a result of these changes, a strong State apparatus that conferred real authority on the President had been put in place. Accordingly, while Gorbachev’s control of the party apparatus weakened, his power over the State apparatus allowed him to keep playing a fundamental institutional role (Brovkin, 1990; Remington, 2001, Chapter 2). To contain the centrifugal pressures coming from several of the Soviet Republics, and avert the end of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev negotiated the New Union Treaty with them. This implied the transition from a centralized form of government to a federative one, based on voluntary membership. Henceforward, the acronym USSR was not to mean Union of Soviet Socialist Republics but Union of Soviet Sovereign Republics. The treaty as such never came to light because a day before it was signed, the Right of the party still in control of it launched a coup d’état (Brown, 2009 [4, Chapter 27]; Frayne, 2012 [2]).

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The Coup and the Dissolution of the Soviet Union On August 19, 1991, Gorbachev was arrested in Crimea. Meanwhile, a State Committee on the State of Emergency was formed in Moscow to run the country. Some of the top dignitaries of the Soviet Union were among the members of said Committee, including the Vice President, the Prime Minister, the Head of the KGB, and the Ministers of Defense and Interior. What seemed to have been an all-powerful array of forces, however, was unable to prevail. Four days later, their coup collapsed as suddenly as it had begun (Brown, 2009 [5, Chapter 27]). With extraordinary courage, Yeltsin confronted the coup plotters from the top of a tank stationed in the Russian Parliament building—the White House. Condemning their actions as anti-constitutional, he urged the military not to take part in the coup. Shortly after, 25,000 citizens had gathered around the White House, hardly a force to be reckoned with in comparison to the one controlled by the Committee on the State of Emergency. However, it was enough to expose the limitations and contradictions that plagued the coup. The military high command behind the actions could not be sure whether the troops would obey if ordered to shoot against unarmed citizens. Would they rebel if a slaughter of civilians ensued? And what about the KGB members? The elite unit of the KGB—the Alfa Group—did not obey when ordered to storm the White House. More doubts arose: if a massacre occurred, what would the international reaction be? Could the USSR withstand a forceful international response at such a high point of frailty in its internal situation? The strength of the coup resided solely in its appearance of strength. Nothing else. When courageously confronted, it revealed its true weakness. The failure of the coup meant the end of the Communist Party and with it came the countdown of the Soviet Union’s existence as well. It could not be otherwise. For seven decades both party and Union had been closely interwoven and neither of them could survive without the other. Yeltsin and the leaders of other republics became conscious of how close things had come to reversal to an extremely authoritarian regime, that would have imposed a pre-perestroika order, and decided that a leap forward was necessary. Gorbachev tried to follow suit with the Union Treaty, but it was too late for that. The Baltic states and Armenia were the first to declare their independence in September. Gorbachev’s increasing impotence to influence events finally reached its apex when, on December

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8 of 1991, the presidents of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus (which represented eighty percent of the territory of USSR and seventy percent of its population) declared that the Soviet Union no longer existed and announced in its place the creation of a voluntary Commonwealth of Independent States. This meant that Gorbachev was moving from being the head of State of a massive country into becoming the President of nothing. It took him a few days to accept the inevitable and agree to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. On December 25 he finally resigned and, a day after, a formal vote of the upper house of the Supreme Soviet declared the USSR out of existence (Brown, 2009 [6, p. 571]; Gaddis, 2005 [5, p. 219–220]; Sarotte, 2021; Toro Hardy, 1993 [6, p. 70]).

The End of History According to David Reynolds, like France’s ancient régime would-be reformers, Gorbachev had sown the wind and reaped whirlwind. Without a single shot being fired, the United States had effectively won the Cold War as a vaporization of the Soviet threat materialized. The exuberant sentiment of triumph that exploded in the country was best encapsulated in the “end of history” thesis, which although it preceded the final collapse of the Soviet Union and had been formulated after the fall of the Berlin Wall, made sense of the exhilaration that prevailed in the West. This thesis proclaimed that by having defeated its rival ideology, liberalism had become the final point in the ideological evolution of humanity. That implied the final form of government and, by extension, the end of history (Dumbrell, 2018 [1, p. 97]; Fukuyama, 1989; Reynolds, 2001 [4, p. 301]). The situation of course was not so simple, because as the world was integrating itself under a single ideology, it was simultaneously undergoing a process of disintegration. The years that followed the collapse of the Berlin Wall were indeed marred by trauma and conflict. Uncertainty regarding this new world order was responsible for Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and the subsequent first Gulf War. Unleashed ethnic and nationalist aspirations and emotions gave rise to civil wars, ethnic and tribal conflicts, and to the dismembering or dissolution of several states, allowing for blood to flow extensively. Migrations from the East triggered intolerance in Europe. Terrorism made significant inroads, and the possibility of a nuclear black market became a true nightmare. Borderless

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threats began proliferating. Rearrangement after the collapse of Communism and the end of bipolarity was far from easy, and certainly not the end of the story (Dumbrell, 2018 [2, p. 98]; Herring, 2008 [4, pp. 917–920]). However, the idea that the world under a liberal order would gravitate toward homogenization, was in essence, correct. Among its reasons were the following. First, a group of multilateral institutions and alliance networks created by the United States shortly before or in the aftermath of World War II, allowed for a system of global governance. Second, the so-called Washington Consensus stipulated the conditions for a market economy recipe of universal application. Third, the seven largest economies that followed the United States were industrialized democracies firmly allied with it and supportive of its leadership, thus acting as force multipliers of America’s power projection. Fourth, globalization, acting as a belt of planetary transmission, spread a group of symbols, uses, traditions, and values that were none other than those of the leading power (Dumbrell, 2018 [3, p. 100]). The conjugation and feedback of the afore conformed a well-defined international environment in which America’s ideology—international liberalism and market economy—clearly prevailed. A new paradigm, sustained by the unquestionable primacy of the United States, thus took shape. This paradigm expressed itself in ideas such as the “unipolar moment” or the “single thinking”. According to the former, the world stage had been cleared of rival actors and become amenable to the uses and preferences of American power. According to the latter, the whole world had bowed to a single way of seeing things (Cooley & Nexon, 2020 [1, pp. 2, 5]; Krauthammer, 1990; Ramonet, 1995).

Global Hegemony Two concepts, those of hegemony and empire, will help clarify the meaning of the aforementioned. While both carry the idea of control by a powerful nation, they differ substantially. According to the classical definition by Antonio Gramsci, hegemony not only implies the acknowledgment by others of a position of preeminence, but also the capacity to define the agenda and the framework of the debate. In the case of the hegemony exercised by the United States, reference is made to international preeminence, agenda, and debate (Forgacs, 2001).

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Consent is the key word herein involved—the consent for a certain country to exert leadership based on the acquiescence of the international community. A consent based on ideological and cultural persuasion that brings with it a high degree of legitimacy. The notion of empire is something entirely different, as it requires neither consent nor legitimacy, and is sustained mainly by force. In that sense, the European Soviet bloc had been clearly an imperial orbit (Gamble, 2002; Toro Hardy, 2007). America’s global hegemony was implemented to a great extent through a network of multilateral institutions and mechanisms such as NATO, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, GATT, OECD, or the Inter-American Bank, to mention but a few. This implied a multilateral cooperative framework, where the whole recognized not only a clear leadership but also a single ideology. In tandem with cooperative multilateralism, the market economy recipe of universal application contained policies such as fiscal discipline, tax reform, trade liberalization, privatization, and deregulation. This recipe had been defined jointly by the U.S. Treasury Department and some of the institutions mentioned above, which were headquartered in Washington. Hence the name of Washington Consensus given to that set of policies. The fact that its economy was 40 percent larger than that of the second rank nation certainly help in this endeavor (Herring, 2008 [5, p. 920]). In addition to the above, there was a transnational network of allpowerful financial markets and media conglomerates further sustaining America’s global hegemony. This network was able to impose international patterns of credibility or ostracism depending on the acceptance or not of the prevailing liberal ideology (Cooley & Nexon, 2020 [2, p. 8]). And then, there were the cultural symbols of an interconnected world. They went from McDonald’s to Kentucky Fried Chicken; from jazz to rock; from CNN to ESPN; from Hollywood to Broadway; from Walt Disney to Pixar; from Nike to GAP; from Coca-Cola to ketchup Heinz; from Madonna to Michael Jackson; from NASA to Silicon Valley; from Apple to Microsoft; from Magic Johnson to Tiger Woods. And so on. The international appeal of its products and lifestyle gave standing to what Joseph Nye called “soft power”. It certainly helped to have in the United States, the epicenter of a technology boom based on personal computers and internet communication. In other words, a gigantic array of institutions, rules, values, and symbols converged and reinforced each other while strengthening and

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consolidating America’s undisputed leadership. Such was the power herein involved, that the hegemon had no need to act forcefully or even directly in pursuit of its interests. In subtle ways, for instance, the markets of the emergent world could be opened to its merchandise, investments, and services. Indeed, the International Monetary Fund became a sort of world bankruptcy receiver, and countries wanting to have access to international credit had to accept its set of conditions. The conditions to be met were none other than those prescribed by the Washington Consensus. Almost unnoticed, the United States could thus implement in its benefit the mechanisms of cooperative multilateralism and financial might (Yergin & Stanislaw, 1998, p. 132). As with a magnifying glass, the United States’ sweeping victory in the 1991 Gulf War at the forefront of a potent international coalition, had already underscored not only its international leadership but the might of its military technology. The gap between its military capabilities and those of second-tier powers was far too wide. No other country could remotely replicate the facility with which it had defeated Iraq. Not even the moribund Soviet Union, which at that late point in time had accepted America’s leadership, would have been able to. The U.S.-led military intervention in the Balkan Wars proved once again, not only its position at the top of the security hierarchy but also the power and sophistication of its armament. As a matter of fact, despite post-Cold War cutbacks, U.S. military expending in the second half of the 1990s amounted to around one-third of global military spending. This translated into being six times larger than that of the next six countries combined (Cooley & Nexon, 2020 [3, p. 7]; Dumbrell, 2018 [4, p. 100]; Herring, 2008 [6, p. 920]). In the last presidential inauguration of the twentieth century, Bill Clinton declared that at the dawn of the twenty-first century, America remained alone as the world’s “indispensable nation”. An assertion later repeated by his Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright. George W. Bush sounded even more grandly when saying that the United States had been chosen by God and commissioned by history to be the model for the world. Meanwhile, Paul Kennedy referred to the United States as the greatest superpower ever, adding that nothing had ever existed like this disparity of power (Brzezinski, 2013, p. 44; Kroenig, 2020 [2, p. 148]). The new millennium began with an all-powerful United States in a world that had been homogenized under its liberal credo. Had thus Fukuyama’s end of history thesis turned real? No, it hadn’t. As we shall see next, the history of the end of history proved to be a very brief one. In

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a few years, the global “Pax Americana” was sinking in a quagmire while a new rival, China, had emerged practically from nowhere. How did this happen?

References Brovkin, V. N. (1990). The politics of constitutional reform: The new power structure and the role of the party. Cornell International Law Journal, 23(2) Article 6, 324–339. Brown, A. (2009). The rise and fall of communism. HarperCollins Publishers. Brzezinski, Z. (1990). The grand failure: The birth and death of the communism in the twentieth century. Collier Books. Brzezinski, Z. (2013). Strategic vision: America and the crisis of global power. Basic Books. Cooley, A., & Nexon, D. (2020). Exit from hegemony: The unraveling of the American global order. Oxford University Press. Dumbrell, J. (2018). America in the 1990s: Searching for purpose. In M. Cox & D. Stokes (Eds.), US foreign policy. Oxford University Press. Forgacs, D. (2001). Antonio Gramsci reader. Lawrence and Wishart. Frayne, T. (2012, June 15). Did revolution or regime implosion end the Soviet Union? E-International Relations. https://www.e-ir.info/2012/06/ 15/did-revolution-or-regime-implosion-end-the-soviet-union/. Accessed July 1, 2021. Fukuyama, F. (1989). The end of history? The National Interest, 16, 3–18. Gaddis, J. L. (2005). The cod war: A new history. The Penguin Press. Gamble, A. (2002). Hegemony and decline: Britain and the United States. In P. C. O’Brien & A. Clesse (Eds.), Two hegemonies: Britain 1846–1914 and the United States 1941–2001. Ashgate. Glasser, S. B. (2019, September/October). Putin the Great: Russia’s imperial impostor. Foreign Affairs. Harvey, R. (2003). Comrades: The rise and fall of world communism. John Murray. Herring, G. C. (2008). From colony to superpower: U.S. foreign policy since 1776. Oxford University Press. Kennedy, P. (1989). The rise and fall of the great powers: Economic change and military conflict from 1500 to 2000. Fontana Press. Krauthammer, C. (1990/1991). The unipolar moment. Foreign Affairs, 70(1), 23–33. Kroenig, M. (2020). The return of great power rivalry: Democracy versus autocracy from the ancient. Oxford University Press. Ramonet, I. (1995). El Pensamiento Único, Mientras Tanto. Icaria Editorial, 61, 17–19.

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Remington, T. F. (2001). The Russian parliament: Institutional evolution in a transitional regime, 1989–1999. Yale University Press. Reynolds, D. (2001). Europe divided and reunited. In T. C. W. Blanning (Ed.), The Oxford illustrated history of modern Europe (pp. 1945–1995). Oxford University Press. Sarotte, M. E. (2021, November/December). Containment beyond the Cold War: How Washington lost the post-Soviet peace. Foreign Affairs. Snyder, T. (2017). On tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the twenty century. Tim Duggan Books. Toro Hardy, A. (1993). De Yalta a Sarajevo: De la Guerra Fría a la Paz Caliente. Editorial Panapo. Toro Hardy, A. (2007). Hegemonía e Imperio. Villegas Editores. Yergin, D., & Stanislaw, J. (1998). The commanding heights. Simon & Schuster.

CHAPTER 3

From Hiding Strengths to Assertive Showcasing

On February 21, 1972, America’s President Richard Nixon arrived in Beijing, putting an end to more than twenty years of acute hostility between the People’s Republic of China and the United States. This hostility had included almost two years of direct bloody confrontation during the Korean War. Both Nixon and China’s Chairman Mao Zedong had been publicly advocating for a rapprochement between their two countries. Each had his reasons for doing so. Nixon wanted to extricate his country from the Vietnam War without allowing China to exploit the situation. More than that, he needed Beijing to put pressure on Hanoi for them to engage in serious peace negotiations. He also surmised that approaching China would induce the Soviets to be more receptive to a détente with the United States, while increasing the interconnection between strategic arms limitations and issues such as the Middle East, Berlin and, particularly, Vietnam. In other words, opening China’s door might, by extension, open many other doors. Mao, on his side, needed the reconciliation with the United States for a much simpler reason: this would dissuade the Soviets from attacking his country. Indeed, since the summer of 1969, the skirmish around the Ussuri River had been multiplying. Soviet troops along Chinese borders had reached alarming numbers—forty-two divisions, that is, more than a million soldiers. A preemptive attack by Moscow was floating in the air. To approach the United States responded well to the ancient Chinese © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 A. T. Hardy, America’s Two Cold Wars, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-9503-2_3

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formula of negotiating with faraway barbarians, while confronting closer ones (Toro Hardy, 2020, p. 18). However, how could these two countries deal with their divergent convictions? How would they find common denominators amid utterly differing ideologies and values? Sheer pragmatism was the answer. This meant emphasizing the national interests of each and whenever those interests converged, making way for accord. Under those conditions, their approach could become reliable, calculable, and reciprocal. Moreover, this provided the basis for a long-term understanding. Even if international circumstances were to change, so would their national interests and the possibility of mutual convergence (Kissinger, 2012, p. 284).

A Fruitful and Resilient Agreement The nature of the agreement between both countries was straightforward. The United States would recognize the Chinese communist regime as the legitimate government in China. Conversely, China would not seek to constrain America’s power projection in Asia. In other words, it would not contest its leadership in the region. China also willingly accepted the alliance between Washington and Tokyo, recognizing it as instrumental in constraining Japan’s military resurgence (White, 2012 [1, pp. 19–20]). This agreement gave China, by extension, an economic opening to the West, which was the only one able to provide the capital, technology, and markets it needed. The real meaning of this would only become evident after Deng Xiaoping’s coming into power. The evolving nature of their national interests’ convergence explains the longevity of the agreement (White, 2012 [2, p. 20]). Although it was understood that on Nixon’s second term diplomatic relations between both countries would be formally established, Watergate and the brief term of his designated successor in the White House, Gerald Ford, delayed this undertaking. It would be the role of Jimmy Carter, a democratic President who succeeded the two Republican Administrations involved in the agreement, to finally formalize diplomatic relations. This was a testament to its continuity, which would withstand momentous changes and challenges. The agreement was able to survive a traumatic change of leadership in China, when Deng Xiaoping consolidated power after his return from a second domestic political exile. Much more relevant, it survived the collapse of the Soviet Union itself, which had been the reason

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why the Chinese had initially approached the Americans. It also pulled through several generational changes in the Chinese leadership, as well as successive U.S. administrations from opposite sides of the aisle. Overall, it was able to stand up to challenges that could have derailed it on several occasions. Among these were the international repercussions of the Tiananmen massacre in 1989; the controversy surrounding the Chinese dissident Fang Lizhi between 1989 and 1990; the crisis of the Taiwan Strait in 1996; the American bombardment of China’s Embassy in Belgrade in 1999 (claimed as accidental by the U.S.); and the aerial incident of Hainan Island in 2001 (Toro Hardy, 2020 [2, Chapter 1]).

Reform and Opening Up It was the economic involvement between both countries what gave their agreement sufficient standing for it to survive and thrive amid those changes and challenges. Deng Xiaoping’s accession to power made this happen because the main priorities of his ruling were the reasons for China’s economic take-off. Among them were the encouragement of individual initiative, talent, and creative thinking; the re-professionalization of the Chinese workforce; the relevance of professional competence over political correctness; the need to emphasize science and technology in the country’s economic development; and the loosening up of ideological constraints. In 1978, he formulated the slogan that would guide his subsequent policy endeavors: “Reform and Opening Up”. This magic catchword became responsible for China’s economic growth and social achievements—the most impressive ever attained in recorded history. Out went a centuries-old vision of economic self-sufficiency while foreign direct investments and technology flowed through open doors. For Deng, though, this process had to follow an endogenous course of action, something he called “socialism with Chinese characteristics”. It was a highly pragmatic model that allowed for trial and error. Although clearly defining a goal through strategic planning, it gave itself ample tactical room for maneuver. In Deng’s words, it was like “crossing the river by feeling the stones”. The management of its export and domestic production industries evidenced how gradual a process it was. While exports were channeled through special areas that subsequently expanded, domestic production was submitted to a process of diminishing levels of tariff protection (Toro Hardy, 2013, Chapter 1).

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Deng’s formula was that of “one country, two systems”, which meant that while a socialist system would govern the nation, market forces would prevail in open regions and eventually in Hong Kong as well. Those open regions materialized through the so-called Special Economic Zones, which sparked off in 1979 and received abundant foreign investment and technology. All through this process, the United States was the indispensable partner, not only through investments and technology but also by supporting Beijing’s joining of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in 1980. To concentrate on the country’s economic development, Deng insisted that political considerations had to be downplayed. He left a guidance for future generations of Chinese leaders. This he decanted into a set of maxims and ideas that he delivered in his speeches during an iconic inspection tour through southern China. Amid his teachings were the following: “Observe carefully; secure our position; cope with affairs calmly; hide our capacities and bide our time; be good at maintaining a low profile; never claim leadership”.

Succession and Implications Deng’s legacy included the choice of his successor—Jiang Zemin. He represented the third generation of Chinese leadership since the foundation of the People’s Republic. Between 1993 and 2003, he undertook the orderly continuation of Deng Xiaoping’s policies. Jointly with Prime Minister Zhu Rongji, President Jiang Zemin was responsible for overseeing the peaceful return of Hong Kong, maintaining his country’s relations with the United States and the West in a good path, and firmly keeping the economic steering wheel under control. This last consideration included negotiating China’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO), which took place in 2001. As a result of its accession to the WTO, as early as 2006, the country’s tariffs had gone down to 6 percent, which meant a substantial additional opening of its economy. Their immediate successors, between 2003 and 2013, were President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao. Both had the advantage of an elite’s higher education. Representing the fourth generation within the CCP leadership, they came into office at a time when China was already an economic powerhouse. Indeed, according to the International Monetary Fund, China’s GDP had risen from US$309 billion in 1980 to US$1.2 trillion in 2000 (Naisbitt & Naisbitt, 2010, p. 60).

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While the main task of Jiang Zemin and Zhu Rongji had been to transform China into a strong and fast-growing economy, that of Hu and Wen was to preserve stability. They promoted a harmonious society within a harmonious world. Their “China’s peaceful rise” thesis aspired to symbolize a country whose emergence did not represent a threat to anyone. Within this context there was a clear priority—that of maintaining a good working relationship with the United States. Such was the complementarity reached between China and the United States that in 2007, the term “Chimerica” appeared. Niall Ferguson and Moritz Schularick, who were responsible for its coinage, talked about a symbiotic relation in which East-Chimericans were savers and WestChimericans spenders, where East-Chimericans did manufactures and West-Chimericans services, where East-Chimericans exported and WestChimericans imported, and where East-Chimericans piled up reserves and bought bonds that allowed West-Chimericans to run deficits. Total trade between China and the United States increased from almost US$150 billion in 2002 to nearly US$450 in 2008 (Karabell, 2009, pp. 163 and 256). In addition to the above, an immense outpouring of American scientific and technological expertise passed onto China through all those years, more particularly during the Carter and Reagan periods. The former signed Presidential Directive 43 in 1978, which established numerous programs to transfer American scientific and technological developments in the areas of education, energy, agriculture, space, geoscience, and public health. During Carter’s time in office, multiple delegations of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences visited China to initiate scientific exchanges. Reagan, on his side, inaugurated a military and civilian nuclear cooperation program with China through the National Security Decision Directive 12, while also aiding in the development of several technological fields that included automation, genetic engineering, biotechnology, and space technology. Moreover, Reagan willingly sold China advanced military technology, including air, ground, naval, and missile technology. To complement the measures above, during the decades in which the bilateral relation between both countries thrived, thousands of Chinese students, mainly in the physical sciences, studied in American universities. Not surprisingly, John J. Mearsheimer asserted that there is not comparable example in history of a great power actively promoting the rise of a competitor (Mearsheimer, 2021 [1]; Pillsbury, 2015 [1, Chapter 3]).

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The events of September 11, 2001, brought about a significant turnaround in this relationship, as America’s attention shifted toward the Middle East and the War on Terror. Although the United States did not change its policy toward China, particularly in trade and investment matters, this country went suddenly out of focus. Actually, China helped this process: The U.S.’ “illegal” invasion of Iraq prevented it from exporting Iraqi oil without an enabling UN Security Council Resolution, which thanks to China’s strong support materialized in 2003 through Resolution 1483. Hence, Beijing facilitated America’s rooting in Iraq. It comes as no surprise that China’s leadership merrily began to speak of a period of strategic opportunity when Washington was not paying attention to their actions. On its side, the United States unguardedly believed that it could turn its back on the Asia–Pacific region without fearing that China would question its leadership there (Levine, 2019; Mahbubani, 2013 [1, p. 149]). As mentioned before, notwithstanding the several difficulties encountered along the way, both the United States and China made a deliberate effort to overcome problems and remain within the road opened in 1972. Their agreement had proven to be resilient, flexible, and adaptable. Through seven American administrations and four generations of Chinese leaders, both sides seemed ready to honor their commitments. Of the two, however, one had acted strategically while the other based its actions in wishful thinking. Following Deng Xiaoping’ advise, China laid low while winning time which allowed it for the geopolitical miracle of emerging without alarming the Americans. Meanwhile, supremely confident in the superiority of its model and its strength, the United States assumed that a more prosperous China would naturally evolve toward a freer society and economy in accordance with its own (Mahbubani, 2013 [2, pp. 124–125]).

Inflection Point It would be the year 2008, the one to mark an inflexion point in this relationship. From that moment onwards, everything began to unwind. What made of this year such a momentous point in time? What propelled the reversal of what had been thirty-six years of constructive relations and willingness to overcome differences? The answer can be found in a notion familiar to the Chinese mentality but entirely remote to the Western world—the shi. This notion can

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be understood as an alignment of forces able to shape a new situation. More loosely, it encompasses notions such as momentum, strategic configuration of power, strategic advantage, or propensity for things to happen. The shi, as a concept, took form during the so-called Warring States Period and became common to the different Chinese philosophical schools of thought. The shi, according to Chinese strategic thinking, becomes the window of opportunity when the skilled strategist can mold a favorable environment (Pillsbury, 2015 [2, Chapter 2]; Thomas, 2011). Seen through the lens of the shi, what alignment of forces had redrawn the situation in 2008? The answer is clear, and manifold: The American financial excesses that produced the world’s worst financial crisis since 1929; China’s sweeping efficacy in overcoming the risk of contagion from this crisis; China’s ability to maintain its economic growth, which prevented a major global economic downturn; and finally, the boost to its self-esteem that the highly successful Beijing Olympic games had given the country. Concomitant to those events was the erosion of America’s hegemonic standing because of its inability to prevail in two peripheral Middle Eastern wars. Not only had the United States shown the limitations of its military might but through the arrogance and abrasiveness of its leadership had alienated a good part of the international community. In synthesis, the United States had proven not to be ten feet tall, while China appeared much taller than expected. This could only mean that the United States had passed its peak as a superpower and that the curves of Chinese ascension and America’s decline were about to cross. Deng’s guidance for future generations of leaders had emphasized the necessity of preserving a low profile, while waiting for the attainment of a position of strength. The events of 2008 seemed to prove that China was strong enough to start acting more boldly. The shi was in motion and the strategic advantage therein had to be exploited. While America’s attention was elsewhere, China had been able to strengthen its military capability unobserved. This was coupled now with a diminishing respect for that country’s standing. The time was thus ripe for a more assertive foreign policy, specially so in the South China Sea, where China maintained a maritime dispute with other countries of the region. The weaker status of the other contestants only emphasized China’s new emboldened attitude.

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A New Boldness In 2010, Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi labeled the South China Sea as a “core national interest” for his nation, while affirming that “China is a big country and other small countries are small countries. And that is just a fact”. Those two assertions were highly charged. The first classified the South China Sea on a par with Taiwan, Tibet, or Xinjiang as a Chinese “core national interest”, which by implication made it a nonnegotiable issue. The second was reminiscent of China’s tributary past, which meant that smaller countries within China’s orbit had no option but to acquiesce to its superior hierarchy. The Western world had followed a “Westphalian” order based on the sovereign equality among states (at least among Western countries themselves, as colonialism while in force clearly contradicted this principle), whereas China’s empire believed in hierarchy. The latter imposed on smaller states the need to trade aspects of sovereignty for practical concessions from the empire (Becker, 2010; Gries, 2020 [1, p. 72]; Westad, 2020, p. 30). China’s unilaterally designed Nine-Dash Line, which the country now seemed ready to exhibit, presented 90 percent of the South China Sea, and of the energy and fishery resources beneath it, as its own. As a result, most of the claims made by Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam, Taiwan, and The Philippines were swept aside. According to China’s assertion, its rights went back to immemorial times, making of the bulk of this sea a historic waterway. Little seemed to matter that this position was overtly contravening the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea, of which China is a signatory party. Indeed, claiming far off waters as a nation’s historic waterway is neither contemplated nor allowed in international law or by conventions governing the rights of the sea. Specially so when those waterways come right up to the very shores of modern-day states. China is adamant on this issue and while refusing to adhere to the U.N. Convention of the Law of the Sea, it also rejects the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice on the matter (French, 2017 [1, p. 70]). This defiant claim has been compounded by China’s declaration of an “air defense identification zone” over part of the East China Sea, as a means of enforcing its right over a portion of that sea. In 2012, Beijing redrew the map of China embossed on its passports, incorporating not only the above areas under dispute but also the ones in contention with India. As in the traditional tributary system, China would seem

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to consider itself the sole sovereign government of the world. It is not surprising then that a Middle Kingdom image has begun to be associated with the People’s Republic of China of our days (Economy, 2014; Kissinger, 2014, p. 213). China’s expansionist attitude has been compared to that of Japan a century earlier. A crucial difference is that Beijing is trying to accomplish its objectives without going to war. Paradoxically, this peaceful end would be attained through military power. With an overwhelming preponderance of military strength in place, China aims to dissuade the use of force by others, thus inducing them to bow before its demands. This could be equated to what Thomas C. Schelling labels as latent violence, that is, violence that can be withheld or inflicted depending on the other side’s behavior (French, 2017 [2, p. 66]; Schelling, 2008). Beyond the South China Sea issue, after 2008 the military strategists in China became vocal in relation to the control of the geographical space between its shores and the so-called first island chain (mainly integrated by the Kuril Island, the Japanese Archipelago, Ryukyu Islands, Taiwan, the northern Philippines, and Borneo). This is an extremely sensitive area, which according to such assertion needs to be kept off limits for American bases and aircraft-carrier groups. The implications of this line of thought would be to seal off the United States’ presence not only from the South China Sea but also the East China Sea as well. This is an area that, together with the Yellow Sea, conforms what China labels as Near Seas and that Michael R. Auslin has called as Asia’s Mediterranean. The latter because the integrated waters of the East and South China Seas and the Yellow Sea are as vital to the identity, history, and trade of Eastern Asia as the Mediterranean is to Europe. However, Chinese bluntness went even further, with its military strategists openly envisaging the control of what they called the second island chain, as well. Broader in scope and reaching farther into the western Pacific, China’s rationale for this power projection strategy seems much more tenuous and immensely harder to attain. With islands scattered amid open sea and the U.S.’ Mariana Islands that harbor the Guam base included within its range, the second island chain proposition looks as grossly adventurous and unnecessarily provocative (Auslin, 2020 [1, Chapter 1]; The Economist, 2012; Toro Hardy, 2020 [3, p. 162]). After the same fateful year, Beijing began to assert the need to build a blue-water navy with the capability to operate in faraway seas. In so doing, it would attain naval prestige and protect its sea trade routes in

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the Indian Ocean. The implications of this move are twofold. First, China would become a two-ocean power (Pacific and Indian). Second, it would expand the nature of its navy from the protection of its coastline to one operating at greater distances. The latter means evolving from being a “sea denial” navy into becoming a “sea control” navy. Concurrently, and with that objective, China began to build deep-water ports in Chittagong, Bangladesh; Kyaupuy, Myanmar; Hambantota, Sri Lanka; and Gwadar, Pakistan. According to analysts, these civil infrastructures could be transformed at a future date into Chinese naval bases. This has been labeled as the “string of pearls” strategy. The Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal thus became part of China’s strategic security plan. As a result, not unsurprisingly, China and India have entered a collision course over this area (Kaplan, 2014; Marshall, 2015; Metz, 2018).

Paradoxically Paradoxically, President Hu Jintao’s foreign policy, which after 2008 became so overtly assertive, had begun by emphasizing a very different attitude. In the spring of 2004, the regime invited several dozen Chinese scholars and intellectuals to meet in Hainan Island, with the aim of conceptualizing a China “brand”, a soft power strategy, that could be successfully fostered abroad. The concept of China’s “peaceful rise” was therein coined. This notion was an attempt to project a very different rising tract from the unsettling ones followed by Germany before World War I or Japan before World War II. China’s one was not only to be peaceful but to depend on reciprocity and the search for win–win relations with other countries. It was a bright marketing strategy directed at providing Beijing with international good-will dividends (Cooper Ramo, 2007). Other initiatives accompanied this soft power strategy, among them, China’s international image—building campaign. This was implemented through CCTV in English and CCTV America, as well as through the fresh emphasis on English coverage of China Radio International and Xinhua News Agency This went together with the creation of the Confucius Institutes in 2004, which would promptly proliferate around the world. The soft power strategy was particularly successful in Europe. The European Union came to see China as a partner in its search for a peaceful

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and multipolar world. Some European scholars attributed to China something akin to Europe’s twenty-first-century qualities, mentioning that while its leaders preached a doctrine of stability and social harmony, its military talked more about soft than hard power (Leonard, 2008, p. 109). At the end of Hu Jintao’s term, however, a very different international image of China prevailed. More was to come in 2013, with Xi Jinping’s arrival into the presidency. He would substantially intensify his predecessor’s muscular foreign policy and under his leadership, China has turned into a much more assertive, nationalistic, and even confrontational power. Guided by its pride in millennia of glorious history, its impressive recent achievements, its huge population, and sheer size, China seems eager to assume a leading role not only in Asia but in the world. As Xi Jinping explained at a speech delivered in October 2017, at the Nineteenth Communist Party Congress, his country is rooted in a land of more than 9.6 million square kilometers, nourished by a culture of more than 5000 years and by a historical heritage of unmatched depth. All of that, backed by the invincible force of more than 1.3 billion people. Consequently, China has an incomparable resolve to forge ahead (Xinhua, 2017).

Xi Jinping Xi champions fenfa youwei (seeking achievement). This calls for a larger footmark in China’s own region and a greater leadership in international affairs. His faith in China’s capabilities and a sense of entitlement regarding the country’s role in the world, have been brought into the limelight. China is ready to contend for global leadership. According to Xi’s calculations, the time to act has come: China is now powerful enough, its economy big enough, its neighbors dependent enough, and America’s military resolve uncertain enough. This perception is in tune with the fact that mainland Chinese have been socialized into a Darwinian view of the world, both hierarchical and competitive. China’s foreign policy thus complies with Hans Morgenthau idea that the motive for political action is of three basic types: To keep power, to increase power, or to demonstrate power (Buttler-Bowdon, 2015, p. 209; Gries, 2020 [2, p. 64]; White et al., 2015). China’s “resurrection” has become Xi Jinping’s central theme. Converging strategies such as the “China Dream of National Rejuvenation”, “Made in China 2025” or the “Belt and Road” initiative, fall

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under this umbrella. The China Dream seeks the attainment of an affluent and powerful country, which includes military power and military technology, the expansion of China’s geopolitical footmark, and the change of its strategic geography. Made in China 2025 pursues a China transformed into a world leader in science, technology, and innovation by the mid-twenty-first century. The Belt and Road aims at making China the epicenter of global interconnection. The Nineteenth Party Congress Report, which is the Chinese Communist Party’s most authoritative strategy document, conceptualized for the first time this ambition to contend for global leadership, and chose the year 2049, which marks the one hundredth anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, to fulfill this rendezvous with history (Allison, 2018, p. 109; Heath, 2017). Meanwhile, China’s military strength and strategic positioning in the South China Sea keeps growing within a salami slicing strategy that it is physically changing the balance of power in the region, while discarding international law and post-war norms. China has been using its maritime militia (basically a covert navy), coast guard, and other “gray zone” naval assets to bully weaker rivals. The maps of that sea currently printed by the Chinese show it as almost wholly owned. Since 2014, China has “reclaimed” from the sea more 3200 acres on seven Spratly Islands’ reefs. In total, China now has twenty outposts in the Paracel Islands and seven in the Spratly Islands. In them, it has built extensive military infrastructures. These include three Pearl-Harbor-size port facilities, runaways able of handling fighter jets and bombers, radar installations, anti-ship and anti-aircraft weapons, as well, as barracks and storage. Modern tactical fighters as well as massive numbers of intermediate-range missiles and other modern military equipment have, indeed, been deployed in those twenty-seven outposts. Those missiles include the DF21/CSS-5, which can hit aircraft carriers more than 1500 miles away. This antiaccess/area-denial synergy, in combination with the type of armament on the outposts, has generated an immense exclusion zone susceptible to be activated at any moment. Compounding the situation is the fact that, in clear violation of the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea, China claims that the waters up to twelve miles from its new constructed features are territorial waters. Not surprisingly, Admiral Harry Harris, Commander of the American forces in the Pacific, coined in 2015 the term “Great Wall of Sand” to describe the stopping power of China’s outpost in the South China Sea. Indeed, a modern China Wall

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has been built in the South China Sea (Auslin, 2020 [2, p. 188]; Fabey, 2018, pp. 228–231; Heath, 2017 [2]; Hendrix, 2018; Mahbubani, 2020, p. 103; Martina, 2019). Concurrently, since 2014, China has produced more submarines, warships, and other vessels than the total number of ships presently serving in the combined navies of Germany, India, Spain, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom. The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has already surpassed the U.S. Navy as the largest in the world. In total battle force vessels, China has approximately 400 vessels versus 288 for the United States, with expectations that this gap will grow wider. By 2030, the PLAN should have attained 530 armed vessels. While many of China’s ships are smaller, new and powerful cruisers and guided missile destroyers, like the Type 055, are being built at rapid pace. At the same time, the PLAN outclasses the U.S. Navy in advanced anti-ship missiles. Although the United States has eleven aircraft carriers and China merely two but expecting to reach five by 2030, those American carriers are on the verge of obsolescence because of the Chinese aircraft carrier killer missiles. Indeed, concurrently with its new naval might, China is involved in the world’s largest ballistic and cruise missile program. This includes longrange land attack and anti-ship cruise missiles, many of them capable of reaching supersonic speeds, and susceptible to be operated from ground, air, ship, and submarine platforms. At the same time, since 2000, China has increased the amount of its four-generation aircrafts from 50 to more than 500. Its J-20 stealth jets, equipped with China’s made WS10 engine, bid to rival America’s F-22, the world’s premier stealth fighter jet. In addition to this military buildup, China opened the road to overseas military bases when, in August 2017, the People’s Liberation Army Djibouti Support Base began its operations in the Horn of Africa. This base is equipped for the maintenance of four task groups (Auslin, 2020 [3, p. 34]; Kaplan [2, p. 38]; Mainardi, 2021; News.com.au, 2018; Reinl, 2018; State Council Information Office of the PRC, 2019).

Hard-Liner Under Xi Jinping, China “gray zone” naval bulling scrap along the disputed sending well-armed coast

has been a disquieting hard-liner. Besides its in the South China Sea, it provoked a bloody Sino-Indian border in 2020, while regularly guard ships into the East China Sea’s waters

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surrounding the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands in dispute with Japan. Meanwhile, it has repeatedly and increasingly showed a coercive behavior toward Taiwan, sending a high number of military planes into its Air Defense Identification Zone. All of it, while it maintains an aggressive anti-American rhetoric. Using a language reminiscent of the Cold War, Chinese officials keep voicing conspiracy theories against the United States and state-run newspapers have taken to blame “hostile foreign forces” for any major disturbance in China. Xi Jinping himself has openly called on other nations to push back against the United States on specific issues. Moreover, the Chinese government overtly challenges the military presence of the United States in Asia, making explicit its desire to oust it from the Indo-Pacific and calling into question America’s footing in relation to Taiwan and the South China and East China seas. Meanwhile, wolf-warrior Chinese diplomats attack the United States in overtones reminiscent of Cold War rhetorical language. Chinese battleships have navigated through American waters off the coast of Alaska, claiming “innocent passage” but undoubtedly as a show of force and retaliation. Moreover, once and again, Xi has been talking of preparing for war and combat, while calling for a “new long march”—an echo of the Communist Struggle against their Nationalists foe in the 1930s—against a hostile United States (Beckley & Brands, 2021a [1]; Brands, 2021; Reinl, 2018; Wong, 2014; Yi-Zheng, 2019). In June 2021, before 70,000 people gathered in Tiananmen Square to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping said that China would no longer be “bullied, oppressed, or subjugated” by foreign countries. Defiantly, he warned that those who dared do so, “will find their heads bashed bloody against a great wall of steel, forged by over 1.4 billion Chinese”. In an equally pugnacious tone, he added that his country would “never accept insufferably arrogant lecturing from those master teachers”. Emphasizing that “nobody should underestimate the staunch determination, firm will and powerful capacity of the Chinese people to defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity”, he made a call to “accelerate the modernization of national defense and the armed forces”. Although not directly addressing the United States in those remarks, analysts found an unmistakable inference in them. Xi, indeed, is not masking his ambitions, having declared that China seeks a “future where we will win the initiative and have the dominant position” (Beckley & Brands, 2021b; Buckley & Bradsher, 2021; Westcott & Jiang, 2021).

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Brookings summarized China’s ambition and audacity by saying that while it was likely inevitable that its economic growth gave it global interests, the shift in tone under Xi Jinping has been notorious, aggressive, and perhaps even reckless. Although it recognizes that the basis for this was laid under Hu, it clearly blames Xi for accelerating the timeline and honing the tone. In doing so, it stated, Xi ended any remaining hope of China’s “peaceful rise”. The Economist, on its side, refers that China under Xi has become a strange mixture of confidence, hubris, and paranoia (Jones, 2019; The Economist, 2021).

America’s Reasons The United States certainly takes the above as a direct threat to its leadership. Washington not only overtly rejects and challenges China’s muscular South China Sea policy and its “air defense identification zone” over part of the East China Sea, but also its island chains strategic objectives. Historical reasons, reputational motives, and the defense of the maritime free passage principle, propel its standing. Since 1854, the United States has uninterruptedly been an Asia Pacific power. It could be that for a millennia-old nation like China, a major U.S. presence in the region that dates merely to the mid-1800s means very little. However, for more than half of its independent history, the United States has shown consistency of purpose in this regard. From its controlling of the Philippines in the sunset of the nineteenth century to confronting Japan in WWII, or from Korea to Vietnam, countless American lives have been lost in four major Pacific wars. Equally, from the Convention of Kanagawa of 1854 that opened Japan to the West, to the Open-Door Policy of 1899–1900, which called for the preservation of the territorial integrity of China and equal rights for all countries trading with China, or the Treaty of Portsmouth of 1905, that put an end to the Russo-Japanese War, the United States has been deeply involved in the affairs of the region. Chinese aspirations of putting an end to that presence run counter to what Washington considers to be a historical entitlement. In the eyes of the Pentagon, if the military access of its forces is not guaranteed, there is no guaranty of maintaining civilian access either. This is consistent with its 2012 “Joint Operational Access Concept”, according to which as a world power with global interests, the United States must maintain the credible capability to send military force to any region in support of those interests (Hayton, 2014, p. 215).

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For the United States, its international reputation is also at stake. Abdicating the leadership in East Asia would put in motion a snowball effect that would shatter its superpower status world-wide. This would imply not only emboldening Russia and other antagonists but eroding U.S.’ alliances and triggering geostrategic rearrangements everywhere. For Washington, unless prepared to retreat into an isolationist move, there is no other option than forcefully to reject Beijing’s pressures for its withdrawal. There is the maritime free passage principle as well, which the United States claims for itself and for others in the South China Sea. American naval patrolling in this area is presented as a protection of a global public good: Freedom of navigation in the high seas. This would be in serious risk if China’s control over 90 percent of that sea materializes. Seventy thousand ships per year cross this vital trade artery, through which passes nearly 70 percent of global trade, representing around $5 trillion a year. Moreover, it represents the lifeblood for Southeast Asia’s 620 million people. Consequently, guarantying supply chain lines becomes as existentially important for other countries of the region as it does for China itself. Moreover, these are also vital supply chain lines for America itself. Accordingly, the U.S.’ patrolling presence in the area aims at countering the abuse of a dominant position by China by playing a balancing role, while it protects a vital trade route (Auslin, 2020 [4, p. 13]; Hawksley, 2018, p. 355; Mahbubani, 2020 [1, p. 102]; Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2020, p. 49). More generally, Washington is convinced that it cannot stand idly by while Beijing asserts that it will be the leading technological superpower of the mid-twenty-first century or declares its objective of attaining naval preponderance in the Indo Pacific region. The United States and China find themselves on an unavoidable collision course. Three main reasons make this crosscurrent particularly sensitive and dangerous.

Collision Course First, the rules: China’s “resurrection” comes together with the compulsion to revise not only the regional status quo but multiple aspects of the international liberal order as well. Not having participated in the forging of the rules of the game that constrains its emergence, China feels entitled to defy them. Conversely, as the sole superpower of the last three decades, the United States holds to be the main custodian of the

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prevailing rules of the game. Having emerged victorious from its competition with the Soviet Union, the Americans feel validated in their own vision of the world and of their commanding presence within it (Kissinger, 2012, p. 543). Second, the myths: Both the United States and China are prisoners of their history and of their national myths. Neither can look at the future without the subjective lenses of their perceived sense of mission and superiority. The United States considers itself not only unique and “exceptional” but endowed with the moral obligation to project its liberal values around the world. Meanwhile, as a Civilization-State with millennia of glorious past and a commanding presence through history, China believes to be entitled to lead. While the Americans feel thus contested in their self-perceived providential role, the Chinese sense that despite being the oldest continuous civilization on Earth, they are being forced into a subordinate role. Third, the ideas: While China sees itself as the maximum expression of human civilization with no lessons to be learnt from anyone, the Americans’ self-assured stance makes them believe in the superiority of their ideas and values. The Americans assumed therefore that by helping China’s economic success, they were promoting a freer society and economy in accordance with their own. China, however, with other ideas in mind, followed its own path and forged its own strategy. Moreover, China sees America’s attitude as a strategy to westernize (xihua) and split up (fenhua) the country and prevent it from becoming a great power. As a result, the United States feels betrayed and aggrieved, and China feels affronted by the assumption that America aims at keeping it weak and dependant (Wang, 2021). To accommodate two behemoths who feel entitled to leadership is no easy situation. Specially so when one of them feels under threat, and the other, constrained. The possibility of a war ensuing under those circumstances is not negligible. As their natural frictions escalate, the risk of a major conflict cannot be underestimated. To make matters worse, unlike the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, Washington and Beijing do not have in place a strong crisis-management mechanism to control potential escalation. In addition to an accidental war, two other premeditated options are plausible: A Thucydides’ Trap situation and a Power Transition Theory type of conflict. While in the former the leading

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power triggers war before the emerging one becomes too powerful, in the latter it is the dissatisfied emergent power the one prone to initiate hostilities (Allison, 2018 [2]; Lemke, 2002; Organsky, 1968; Shambaugh, 2020, p. 353).

The New Cold War However, if war is a plausibility, a Cold War is already a fact, with 73 percent of Americans reporting to hold a negative view on China, according to Pew Research Center. General Joseph Dunford, Chairman of America’s Joint Chief of Staff stated that by about 2025 China will pose the greatest threat to his country; FBI’s Director Christopher Wray said that China’s threat will require not only of a governmental response by the United States but of a whole-of-society’s one; Undersecretary of Defense John C. Rood asserted that China is the greatest long-term threat to the U.S. way of life and the greatest challenge to America’s Defense Department; Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan told his Department to remember three things: China, China, China; CIA’s Director William J. Burns stated that the main geopolitical threat that his country faces in the twenty-first century is an increasingly adversarial Chinese government. Both countries are, indeed, engaged in an ongoing Cold War. One in which one of the parties pushes away the confines that curtail its ambitions, while the other tries to enforce those confines. A systematic, continuous, and presumably long-term wrestle has taken shape between them. A multifaceted wrestle in which geopolitics, technology, trade, finances, alliances, and warfare capabilities are all involved. George Orwell who in October 1945 coined the term Cold War, before the American-Soviet conflict took shape, referred to it as a peace that is not peace, as a state of hostility short of an armed conflict. This would define well the current state of affairs between China and the United States. Hal Brands and John Lewis Gaddis (the foremost living expert on the U.S.-USSR Cold War) recognized as much when asserting that the existence of a Cold War between China and the United States is no longer debatable. In their assessment, Xi Jinping’s China declared it and Washington accepted the challenge. John Mearsheimer too, harbors no doubt that China and the United States are locked in what can only be called as a new Cold War, one which in his view is more likely to turn hot than the

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previous one. The same goes for Michael Beckley, for whom the question is no longer if a Cold War exists but when it will turn hot (Beckley & Brands, 2021b [2]; Brands & Gaddis, 2021; Heer, 2021; Mahbubani, 2020 [2, pp. vi, 90, 91]; Mearsheimer, 2021 [2]; Sanger, 2021; Wang, 2021) Although shared or converging interests still exist between both countries, their remaining ties are being cut by the day. What separates them now exceeds what keeps them together. If in the past their economic interdependence shielded them from geopolitical dissonances, the opposite happens nowadays, as a whole array of zero-sum geopolitical controversies curtail economic links. Moreover, supply chains are losing ground because of a trade war and an intense technological competition. Areas where both parties could join efforts for the common good of humanity such as the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, have become additional fields for contention. The latter is particularly striking when considering that at the height of its Cold War in the 1950s, the United States and the USSR cooperated in the global fight against smallpox. It would seem logical to assume that by openly setting forward their ambitions, accelerating times, bragging about their capabilities, and hardening their geopolitical and military positions, the Chinese have made their aims more difficult to achieve. They relinquished the low profile that had served them so well and have created for themselves countless unnecessary obstacles. The only way to understand this line of action is that in their perception, the United States has passed its peak as a global power and initiated a downward spiral course. This is tantamount to saying that, in their view, a period of strategic opportunity to assert leadership has been opened to China. There is also another reason, played in the domestic sphere. By openly challenging the United States, China can strengthen the nationalistic resolve of its population while providing a clear sense of direction to its strategies. After assessing costs and benefits, the Chinese leadership may have concluded that the benefits of acting overtly and decisively outweighed the costs of a direct challenge to the United States. It is important therefore to assess whether China’s leaders may be right or not.

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References Allison, G. (2018). Destined for war: Can America and China escape Thucydides’ trap? Mariner Books. Auslin, M. R. (2020). Asia’s new geopolitics: Essays on reshaping the Indo-Pacific. Hoover Institution Press. Becker, A. (2010, October 25). China: Middle kingdom syndrome touches puts neighbours on edge. Global Issues. https://www.globalissues.org/news/ 2010/10/25/7385. Accessed 22 Jan 2021. Beckley, M., & Brands, H. (2021a, November 4). What will drive China to war? The Atlantic. Beckley, M., & Brands, H. (2021b, October 1). The end of China’s rise: Beijing is running out of time to remake the world. Foreign Affairs. Brands, H. (2021, October 27). China has started making the same mistakes as the Soviets. Bloomberg Opinion. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/art icles/2021-10-27/china-missile-beijing-is-make-the-same-mistakes-as-the-sov iets. Accessed 4 Nov 2021. Brands, H., & Gaddis, J. L. (2021, November/December). America, China and the echoes of history. Foreign Affairs. Buckley, C., & Bradsher, K. (2021, July 1). Making party’s centennial, Xi warms that China will not be bullied. The New York Times. Buttler-Bowdon, T. (2015). 50 Politics classics. Nicholas Brealey Publishing. Cooper, Ramo. J. (2007, February). Brand China. The Foreign Policy Centre. Economy, E. (2014, November/December). China’s imperial president: Xi Jinping tightens his grip. Foreign Affairs. Fabey, M. (2018). Crashback: The power clash between the U.S. and China in the Pacific. Scribner. French, H. W. (2017). Everything under heaven: How the past helps shape China’s push for global power. Alfred A. Knopf. Gries, P. (2020). Nationalism, social influences, and Chinese foreign policy. In D. Shambaugh (Ed.), China and the world. Oxford University Press. Hawksley, H. (2018). Asian waters: The struggle over the South China Sea & the strategy of Chinese expansion. The Overlook Press. Hayton, B. (2014). The South China Sea: The struggle for power in Asia. Yale University Press. Heath, T. R. (2017, December 26). Trump’s national security strategy ratchets UP U.S. competition with China. WPR. World Politics Review. https://www. worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/23889/trump-s-national-security-strategyratchets-up-u-s-competition-with-china. Accessed 12 Nov 2020. Heer, P. (2021, October 3). There will be a U.S.-China Cold War. The National Interest. https://nationalinterest.org/feature/there-will-be-uschina-cold-war-194791. Accessed 18 Oct 2021.

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Hendrix, J. (2018, September 10). Filling the seams in U.S. long-range penetrating strike. Center for a New American Security (CNAS). https://www. cnas.org/publications/reports/filling-the-seams-in-u-s-long-range-penetr ating-strike. Accessed 10 Sep 2020. Jones, B. (2019, January 7). The era of U.S.-China cooperation is drawing to a close—What comes next? Brookings.edu.com. https://www.brookings.edu/ blog/order-from-chaos/2019/01/07/the-era-of-u-s-china-cooperation-isdrawing-to-a-close-what-comes-next/. Accessed 22 May 2020. Kaplan, R. D. (2014). Asia’s cauldron: The South China Sea and the end of a stable Pacific. Random House. Karabell, Z. (2009). Superfusion: How China and America became one economy and why the world’s economy depends on it. Simon & Schuster. Kissinger, H. (2012). On China. Penguin Books. Kissinger, H. (2014). World order. Penguin Press. Lemke, D. (2002). Regions of war and peace. Cambridge University Press. Leonard, M. (2008). What does China think? Harper Collins. Levine, N. (2019, May 29). China will be the true winner of a U.S.-Iran War. The National Interest. https://nationalinterest.org/feature/china-willbe-true-winner-us-iran-war-60052. Accessed 1 June 2020. Mahbubani, K. (2013). The great convergence: Asia, the West, and the logic of one world. Public Affairs. Mahbubani, K. (2020). Has China won? The Chinese challenge to American primacy. Public Affairs. Mainardi, B. (2021, April 7). Yes, China has the world’s largest navy. The Diplomat. https://thediplomat.com/2021/04/YES-CHINA-HASTHE-WORLDS-LARGEST-NAVY-THAT-MATTERS-LESS-THAN-YOUMIGHT-THINK/. Accessed 12 May 2021. Marshall, T. (2015). Prisoners of geography: The maps that tell you everything you need to know about global politics. Elliot and Thompson. Martina, M. (2019, August 5). China warns of countermeasures if U.S. puts missiles on its ‘doorstep’. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-chinausa-defence/china-warns-of-%20countermeasures-if-u-s-puts-missiles-on-itsdoorstep-idUSKCN1UW044. Accessed 6 Aug 2020. Mearsheimer, J. (2021, November/December). The inevitable rivalry: America, China, and the tragedy of great-power politics. Foreign Affairs. Metz, S. (2018, March). How to know when China is pulling even with the United States. World Politics Review. https://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/ articles/24282/how-to-know-when-china-is-pulling-even-with-the-unitedstates. Accessed 25 Sep 2020. Naisbitt, J., & Naisbitt, D. (2010). China’s megatrends. Harper Business. News.com.au. (2018, March 7). Pentagon official warns China is an even bigger threat than we thought. News.com.au.

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Office of the Secretary of Defense. (2020). Annual report to Congress: Military and security developments involving the People’s Republic of China 2018. https://www.hsdl.org/?abstract&did=814130. Accessed 15 Mar 2020. Organsky, A. F. K. (1968). World politics. Random House. Pillsbury, M. (2015). The hundred year marathon: China’s secret strategy to replace America as the global superpower. Henry Holt and Company. Reinl, J. (2018, October 30). Is a US-China war in Asia inevitable? Aljazeera. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/10/30/is-a-us-china-war-in-asia-ine vitable/. Accessed 18 May 2021. Sanger, D. E. (2021, October 17) Washington hears echoes of the 50s and worries: Is this a Cold War with China? The New York Times. Schelling, T. C. (2008). Arms and influence. Yale University Press. Shambaugh, D. (2020). China and the world: Future changes. In D. Shambaugh (Ed.), China and the world. Oxford University Press. State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China. (2019, July). China’s national defense in the new era. http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/ 2019-07/24/c_138253389.htm. Accessed 10 Aug 2020. The Economist. (2012, April 7). China’s military rise: The dragon’s new teeth. The Economist. (2021, November 21). The crowning of Emperor Xi. The World Ahead 2022. Thomas, T. L. (2011). Geothinking like the Chinese: A potential explanation of China’s geostrategy. https://community.apan.org/wg/tradoc-g2/fmso/m/ fmso-monographs/238743. Accessed 18 May 2020. Toro Hardy, A. (2013). The world turned upside down: The complex relationship between China and Latin America. World Scientific. Toro Hardy, A. (2020). China versus the US: Who will prevail? World Scientific. Wang, J. (2021, July/August). The plot against China? How Beijing sees the new Washington consensus. Foreign Affairs. Westad, O. A. (2020). Legacies of the past. In D. Shambaugh (Ed.), China and the world. Oxford University Press. Westcott, B., & Jiang, S. (2021, July 1). Foreign countries that ‘bully’ China will meet a ‘great wall pf steel’, says Xi during Communist Party centenary. CNN. White, H. (2012). The China choice: Why we should share power. Oxford University Press. White, H., Magistad, M. K., & Zha, D. (2015, June 8). It is time for America to consider accommodation with China. Foreign Policy. https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/06/08/CHINA-US-POLICY-RIV ALRY-TENSION-GREAT-POWERS-ACCOMMODATION/. Accessed 17 May 2021. Wong, E. (2014, November 11). In new China ‘hostile’ West is still derided. The New York Times.

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Xinhua. (2017, November 3). Full text of Xi Jinping’s report at the 19th National Congress. http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/special/2017-11/03/c_1367 25942.htm. Accessed 11 July 2020. Yi-Zheng, L. (2019, May 7). Xi Jinping wanted global dominance: He overshot. The New York Times.

CHAPTER 4

From Ideology to Efficiency

Multifaceted though it was, the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union had ideology as its core underpinning element. This gave America a crucial advantage. As the birthplace of liberal democracy and its most fervent supporter, America was particularly well suited for a contest of ideologies. Specially so, after Woodrow Wilson endowed its foreign policy with a missionary impulse to place democracy at the pinnacle of the international system. It was easy for Washington to claim the mantle of leader of the “Free World”.

America’s Mythology The French diplomat Alexis de Tocqueville was the first intellectual to call the United States an exceptional nation, thus fostering the notion of this country’s exceptionalism. This line of thought appeared in his 1835 book Democracy in America in which he stated that American democracy constituted a particular form of Christianity, a sort of republican religion, whereby politics and religion merged in an indissoluble alliance. Americans have always believed to be unique, as if entrusted by Providence to bring about a special task on Earth. The U.S.’ nineteenth-century philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that being American represented a religious experience. In the same vein, also in the nineteenth century, Herman Melville referred to his fellow citizens as the chosen © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 A. T. Hardy, America’s Two Cold Wars, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-9503-2_4

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people, as the Israel of their time, entrusted with the Arch of Liberty of the world (Ferguson, 2004, p. 60; Harrison, 2013, p. 127; Toro Hardy, 2007, p. 165). Two facts may shed some light as to why Americans believe to be a force of good for humankind. Firstly, because the cradle of American society was formed by English dissident protestants who felt to be in intimate contact with God. The idea of a covenant between them and God was a central theme in their religious and social organization, which beyond religion had a bearing on all aspects of life, including economics and governance. Theirs was a theocracy that attempted to build a utopia from scratch. Unlike the Spanish Crown, which forbade their religious heterodox to travel to the colonies for fear their ideas might contaminate them, the English Crown thought the heterodox were better exported, and so they sailed to North America. Secondly, the main culture of the United States was and has remained that of the colonists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries who gave birth to the American society. In that sense, America’s colonial legacy profoundly impregnated the country’s way of thinking (Huntington, 2004, p. 65; Manseau, 2016 [1, pp. 60–61]; Maurois, 1972, p. 33). Its national mythology allows Americans see themselves as a society with a particular sense of purpose, as the bearers of a sort of secular religion. As the Colonist James Winthrop said in his famous seventeenth−century “city upon a hill” sermon: “For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us…we shall be made a story and a byword through the world”. This secular religion is embraced with the same kind of intensity as their Christianity (Manseau, 2016 [2, p. 61]).

A Crusading Foreign Policy If Americans believe they possess a superior form of society and their presence in the annals of human history is exceptional, it follows that their foreign policy should take the shape of a crusade to spread the model around the world. Thomas Jefferson clearly stated that the country’s foreign policy was to rest on the moral values rooted in their civil religion, “democracy”, which had to serve as an example to humanity. With the noticeable exception of Theodore Roosevelt, a political realist for whom American foreign policy must be based on notions such as national interest or balance of power, American leaders always insisted that

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the country’s foreign policy was called to fulfill a superior purpose. Consequently, it would not be Roosevelt but Woodrow Wilson, who a few years later and in tune with Thomas Jefferson’s vision, provided the fundamental guidelines for America’s foreign policy in the twentieth century. Perfectly embodying the belief in his country’s exceptionalism, Wilson put that tradition at the service of a crusading ideology: America’s special mission was to become a beacon of liberty for the rest of humanity and to promote democracy as the cornerstone of its foreign policy. In that sense, he maintained the need for his country’s foreign policy to reflect the same moral standards as personal ethics, insisting that the State had no right to claim a separate morality for itself (Kissinger, 1994, pp. 39, 44–46). Little did it matter the inconsistency with which reality and myth followed the same road within America’s foreign policy. What matters is that in their own eyes, the Americans believed that the mission of their country’s foreign policy was to spread the blessings of their democratic convictions and their Bill of Rights among non-Americans. For many people abroad, the United States would indeed embody the values of freedom—freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, economic freedom, and the right to petition government. Human rights were naturally attached to these freedoms.

Ideological Confrontation These beliefs, and the leverage that they carried served the United States exceedingly well in its contest with the Soviet Union. The following six points may explain why it was so. In the first place, pristine ideological convictions were needed to confront the Soviet’s Marxist-Leninist ideological juggernaut. Although both the American and the Soviet ideologies were born out of revolution and aimed to be spread around the world, the emphasis of their contents differed widely. While the Soviet system claimed to represent not only a historical imperative but also the virtues of social equality, full employment, and universal access to medical care, America’s ideology upheld the embodiment of freedom. The latter was an arrow directed at the Achilles heel of Communism—a totalitarian system where the lack of liberties poisoned all the rest. According to Hannah Arendt, within the totalitarian Soviet system, individual life meant little and became dispensable when compared to the inevitable forces of history. The greatest strength of totalitarian regimes was erasing the difference between private and public

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life. Citizens, thus, had not only to fear the Police State but also their own neighbors, as no one could have a private life that could survive exposure amid hostile surveillance (Buttler-Bowdon, 2015, pp. 48–53; Snyder, 2017, p. 88). In the second place, the strength of those beliefs guaranteed the sense of purpose that allowed the United States to follow the same basic grand strategy for decades, since the end of WWII. Without it, the country might have wavered in its resolve, which would have been tantamount to yielding to the superior convictions of the other side. In the third place, America’s focus on liberal order translated into an international liberal order. This, in turn, led to the need of building an international architecture in accordance with these principles. A network of institutions that strengthened and supported America’s own objectives, would thus follow. In the fourth place, America’s economic freedom contrasted advantageously with the Soviet’s centralized planning economic model, disconnected from profitability and efficiency. While forced industrialization in the latter was able to generate high rates of economic growth in the short term, in the long run it could not provide the kind of advantages derived from market competition. Moreover, the Soviet model lacked the incentives that induced individuals to be efficient, strive for quality labor, and create better products, all of which led to a stagnant economy. Consequently, a significant gap with the United States’ GDP appeared in the 1960s, and by the 1980s it had grown immensely. In the fifth place, American democracy distributed the power to process information and make decisions among a plurality of people and institutions, whereas the Soviet system centralized that power. America’s free press, public debate, think tanks, and lobbies, allowed for the information to flow and be handled at different levels. Meanwhile, its division of the decision-making process among different branches of government facilitated the adequate management of huge amounts of information. Concentration of both information and of the decision-making process in the Soviet Union translated into an overflow of too much information into too few hands, which hampered perspective and adequate handling. In the sixth place, the soft power from the U.S.’ open system was much more potent than that of the Soviet Union. From jeans to jazz, from Marilyn to Elvis, from the Gettysburg Address to the Statue of Liberty, America’s symbols of freedom had a profound international impact. Moreover, they proved to be powerful tools of propaganda when

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sneaked into the cracks of the Communist’s world, particularly in Eastern and Central Europe. The United States’ jazz radio transmissions into that sphere gave flight to the imagination of their constrained populations. The Soviet collapse, unsurprisingly, was to be hailed as the success of one ideology over another. It should be pointed out, however, that America’s trumpeted freedom showed two major inconsistencies during the Cold War, one domestic and one international. Domestically, the segregationist policies run counter to their human rights demands on the Soviets. Until the famous 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Supreme Court ruling, the doctrine of “separate but equal” had prevailed in America, thus making race segregation legal. Despite the ruling, for several more years the Southern States refused to abide by it, and kept segregationist policies up and running. In a 1963 televised speech, President Kennedy recognized the contradiction between preaching freedom around the world and being “the land of the free except for the Negroes”. The Civil Rights Movement on its part, highlighted the violence committed against those promoting equality among the races, shocking the world and embarrassing Washington. In the international sphere, America’s support and promotion of Third World’s authoritarian regimes, shamefully contradicted their rhetorical standard bearing of a “free world”. An authentic collection of thugs, distributed around Asia, Latin America, and Africa, became the visible faces of “freedom” in the fight against Communism. During Nixon’s time in office, many of these thugs’ regimes were empowered to act as proxy states of an overstretched United States in their respective regions, thus enforcing an American policy agenda at second hand. However, for Americans, it was the high ground of their ideals what had toppled the Iron Curtain. As so many times throughout American history, ideals were not required to walk the talk (Dailey, 2018, pp. 231–240, 250–259; Dodge, 2018, p. 183).

A New Ideological Contest? Nothing would be more useful for the United States, in its fresh confrontation with China, than a new ideological rivalry. As it happened in its first Cold War, this could provide a strong sense of purpose and much needed coherence in its actions. President Joe Biden has become an ardent proponent of an ideological contest between democracy and authoritarianism, aiming at a fundamental debate between those who

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believe that autocracy is the best way forward, and those for whom democracy will and must prevail. He has approached America’s traditional allies spurned by Trump, with the intention of repairing those relations as shields in a sort of global democratic phalanx—a democratic coalition ready to counter authoritarian regimes. Although Russia plays a role within this big debate, it is essentially toward China that Biden points its ideological cannons, as shown during his June summit meetings in Europe. His objective seems to be none other than to provide a guiding ideological drive to the Cold War with Beijing (Brands, 2021). As things stand, nonetheless, an ideological contest does not seem to fit within the dynamics of this emerging Cold War. Two reasons would counter the feasibility of such an option. On the one hand, the liberal order itself is being contested in its two birthplaces, the United States and the United Kingdom, while some of the main Western societies are also challenging it. The liberal order has, indeed, been invaded by the cancer of populism, which threatens to undermine its basic norms. This is particularly true in America, where the Trump phenomenon continues ravaging democratic principles. As evidenced by the polls, America’s liberal order has become an ideological nonstarter. At this junction, should the United States want to exhibit its credentials as a liberal nation, it would be handicapped from the beginning. A Spring 2021 Pew Research Center poll, taken in sixteen countries traditionally close to the United States, shows that only 17 percent of those surveyed believe that America’s democracy is a good example for others to follow. Soon after, in May 2021, the Alliance of Democracies Foundation made another poll in fifty−three countries, in which 44 percent of the responders agreed that the United States threatens democracy in their societies. In contrast, a lesser number of respondents, 38 percent, considered negative the Chinese influence in their countries (Wike et al., 2021; Wintour, 2021). On the other hand, China is not trying to sell the virtues of Communism to anyone, not even to its own population. As Deng Xiaoping stated during his reform and opening−up process, it didn’t matter what the color of the cat was as long as it caught the mouse. This pragmatism has continued to be a fundamental principle for the Chinese regime, where results are all that matter. Reviewing the emergence of the populist irruption in the United States and the consolidation of a pragmatic techno−utilitarian system in China,

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becomes thus necessary to provide context to the core underpinning element of their current rivalry: Efficiency. A crisis of governability and of democratic principles has beset the Western world with the emergence of populism. This is directly related to a globalization process that went wrong for the developed economies, producing a widening gap between what electorates expected from their governments and what those governments delivered. Globalization, indeed, was assumed to have played to the advantage of liberal societies, which presumably were the best suited to capitalize on the fast and fluid global marketplace. However, for the last three decades, middle-class wages in the leading democracies of the world have been stagnant, while economic inequality has risen sharply (Kupchan, 2011).

The Populist Irruption The difficult predicament in which the American middle class find itself today, is primarily the consequence of the integration into global markets of billions of low-wage workers from developing economies. By fostering the inclusion into the global labor equation of 1.3 billion Chinese or 1.2 billion Indians, in a race to the bottom of production costs, the Western societies created immense economic and social problems for themselves and became beset citadels. Moreover, as if offshoring jobs had not been enough to shake their societies to the core, their corporations also transferred much of their technology to emerging economies. This was done in different ways, with the common denominator of providing them with an easy access to Western technology. When confronted to the competition of good-quality-lower-priced products, an obvious result from the combination of jobs offshoring and technology transfer, Western economies responded by implementing job-killing technologies at home. It came as no surprise, then, when a well-known Oxford University report predicted that close to half of the existing jobs in the United States could disappear within the next one to two decades because of such technologies. However, while big corporations have been suppressing jobs in the United States, they have simultaneously been arguing against tax increases. Not only they have managed to massively evade taxes but have aggressively lobbied for tax benefits. Not surprisingly, in 2011 American corporate profits reached their highest levels, as a percentage of GDP, in more than 85 years. Meanwhile wages and salaries for American workers reached one of their lower

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points in more than 60 years. This, of course, was much helped by the rules of the game that the Reagan revolution brought with it, which in addition to significant tax reduction for the rich implied social divestment and the decreasing power of the unions (Frey & Osborne, 2013; Luce, 2011; Toro Hardy, 2019 [1, pp. 87 and 95]). Polarization and income inequality became thus the defining traits of America’s economy. The country’s median income, meaning the amount of money received by the household right in the middle of the income scale, was almost US$1400 less in 2016 than what it was in 1999, after adjusted for inflation. Over the past decade, 80 percent of American households saw “flat” or “failing” incomes. Meanwhile, between 2002 and 2007, the 1 percent at the top accumulated two-thirds of the gains from the economic growth of those years, with the richest 00.1% obtaining two-thirds of what that 1 percent obtained. Billionaires in America grew tenfold between 2000 and 2015. Indeed, while in 2000 the country had fifty-one billionaires with a combined net worth of US$480 billion, in 2015 it had 540 billionaires with a combined net worth of US$2.4 trillion. Actually, just three men—Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and Jeff Bezos—have more wealth that the entire bottom half of America’s population combined. Every hour Jeff Bezos earns US$149,353, which is more than what the typical U.S. worker earns in three years. As a result, the country has become the most unequal major developed economy in the world, with income inequality in the United States having soared to levels not seen since 1929. Not surprisingly, a CIA report quoted by Martin Ford referred that income inequality in the United States is in par with that of the Philippines and significantly higher than that of Egypt, Yemen and Tunisia (Brynjolfsson & McAffe, 2014, pp. 131, 149; Brzezinski, 2013 [1, p. 49]; Ford, 2015, p. 46; Osnos, 2021 [1]; Sanders, 2017 [1, pp. 207–211]). Only two types of jobs have increased in numbers within this economic polarization. Firstly, Wall Street financiers, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, corporate directors, doctoral engineers, physicists, and the like. Secondly, low end services undertaken by auto repair workers, nurses, food preparers, nutritionists, domestic aides, janitors, or similar. In between those extremes there is a gap that has been labeled as the missing middle. A middle that in 2011 already encompassed more than 100 million people who were falling in a downward spiral close to or below the poverty line (Cohen, 2011; Toro Hardy, 2019 [2, p. 93]).

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But jointly with the economic polarization and closely interacting with it, a regional divide emerged between large coastal cities and inland United States. Structural changes in the economy favored industries that employed highly educated workers. These industries are located in the coastal urban areas where those educated workers live. Meanwhile, left-behind inland areas began showing alarming signs of decay. This translated into differences in life expectancy as well. People living in wealthy cities as New York, Boston, Los Angeles, or San Francisco could live significantly longer than those in poorer inland regions. A gap of around 15 years of life span exists between inhabitants of New York, Washington or Seattle or their suburban areas, and those of the Midwest Rust Belt. A single example speaks by itself: Male life expectancy in McDowell, West Virginia, sunk to 64 years, on par with Iraq, whereas in neighboring Virginia, men in Fairfax County could expect to live 18 years longer. Directly linked to this phenomenon are the so-called deaths by despair. These have risen among white people without college education, in a range age between forty-five and fifty-four years, a result of drug overdose, particularly opioids, drink-induced liver disease, and suicide (Hochschild, 2020; Osnos, 2021 [2]; Reuell, 2016).

Trump’s Arrival All the necessary conditions for a populist candidate like Donald Trump to win the White House in 2016 were thus in place. Trust in the American government by its citizen had plummeted to 18 percent in 2014, whereas in 1964 it had reached 77 percent. This plummeting was even bigger in relation to a specific branch of government: The legislative power. Trust in Congress did indeed dropped from 42 percent in 1973 to just 8 percent in 2015. Moreover, according to a Pew Research Center poll, 81 percent of those who voted for Trump thought that life for people like them had gotten worse. Moreover, Trump supporters were deeply pessimistic about the future with 68 percent of them believing that the lives of the next generation would only worsen. In addition to that, of the twenty poorest states by median household income, eighteen went over to Trump, while conversely, of the ten richest states, nine voted for Hillary Clinton. Districts represented by Democrats were responsible for two-thirds of the country’s GDP, while those that voted Republican accounted for the rest (King, 2017, pp. 21 and 241; Osnos, 2021 [3]; Westover & Goldberg, 2021, pp. 39–40).

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However, it was not Trump who brought populism into the Republican party. Populism had been promoted for several years before his arrival by a wealthy donor class, dedicated to the aim of slashing taxes and slimming government. Supreme Court’s “Citizen United” 2010 ruling, opened the door for the so-called “independent expenditures”. This allowed for the unlimited expending of large sum of monies by corporations and the wealthy class on behalf of their preferred candidates. As a result, powerful donors of the GOP, such as the Koch brothers and their group of akin billionaires, virtually took control of the party by overflowing it with its campaign contributions. Curiously enough, this translated into unleashing wild political obstructionism, flirtation with bigotry, demonization of political institutions, and racially sharp sentiments. Big donors motivation was none other than to conquer the foot soldiers they needed to win elections and put in place policies favorable to their patrimonial interests. It was a form of pluto-populism: The marriage of plutocracy with right-wing populism. This seemed to make reality the prediction of late Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, according to which America might have democracy or it could have money concentrated in the hands of a few, but it could not have both (Meyer, 2016; Osnos, 2021 [4]; Toro Hardy, 2019 [3, pp. 95–96]; Wolf, 2016). Donald Trump not only gave voice to the resentment of America’s squeezed middle but profited from the conditions that the Koch brothers and their kind had already put in place. Being an expert of reality shows, he torched the most explosive issues turning them into existential showdowns, while showing his contempt for the norms and culture of traditional politics. He was thus able to project to maximum decibels the language of anger which the plutocrats had been feeding for several years. His became, as a result, a hostile takeover of the Republican party from the powerful class of donors.

Eroding Democracy Once in power, Trump would take all the necessary steps to transform the plutocrats’ foot soldiers into his own unconditional army of vassals. Flirting with white supremacism and sizzling theories like the whiteextinction conspiracy or its akin great replacement; legitimizing or giving flight to all kinds of crazy conspiracy theories such as QAnon, Deep State, Biden-Ukraine, Obamagate, Osama bin Laden death conspiracy, global warming conspiracy, Trump Tower wire-tapping, and the like; promoting

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white identity politics at the expense of a broad American identity; fueling a growing partisan information divide on everything from the contagiousness of the coronavirus to the reliability of the media. And so on. In 2017 Trump averaged six lies a day, in 2018, sixteen, in 2019, twenty-two, and in 2020 it averaged twenty-seven lies a day. His, became a fictional counter world. In synthesis, he not only created a parallel virtual universe but stimulated hatred, social anomie, and psychological derangement (Snyder, 2017, p. 66). Then, after months of discrediting mail votes and voting that way himself, came the Presidential election of December 2020. An election that he lost fair and square to Joe Biden, obtaining 232 electoral votes and 74.2 million popular votes, versus 306 electoral votes and 81.2 million popular votes by his contender. His subsequent actions, worthy of Belarus’ Lukashenko or Egypt’s Al-Sisi, were a travesty of America’s democratic traditions. He insisted on baseless claims of fraud during the election, ignoring the statements and investigations to the contrary from the U.S. Attorney General Office and the FBI; he actively tried to stop the Republicancontrolled electoral authorities from certifying Biden’s victory; he accused the Republican members of the Electoral College of going against the mandate given to them by the voters; he insisted that the Republicancontrolled Legislative Assemblies should designate his supporters instead of the elected members of the Electoral College; he urged the Republican governors of several states to convene special sessions in their legislatures to overturn Biden’s certified victory; he repeatedly pressured the Justice Department and tried to install a loyalist at its head for it to pursue unfounded reports of fraud; he allegedly talked about the possibility of a military seizing of voting machines; he asked the members of the House of Representatives to disregard the Electoral College and directly appoint the winner; he ignored and disqualified the rulings of the Supreme Court and other courts that went against the sixty-three legal actions filed by his campaign or his allies; he pressured the Vice President so that he would reject the certified results. And so on. All along the way, Trump mobilized his supporters against the different authorities that had rejected his fraudulent claims and, finally, he convened a rally on the day that Congress was called to certify the results. On that occasion, he encouraged his supporters to march to the Capitol building, which ended with their storming of the Capitol, and several fatal victims as a result.

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The New Republicans But more than a single individual’s endeavors, what really matters are the underpinning of Trump’s actions by the Republican party. This includes, among others, the following facts: Until the Electoral College vote, no more than a couple of dozens Senators or Representatives had recognized Biden’s triumph; the December 30, 2020, statement of intent presented by Republican members of the House and the Senate, to object to the congressional certification of the Electoral College results; the January 6 session when, after Republican Senators had raised objections to Biden’s victory, a majority of House Republicans including its leader voted to support an objection to Biden’s success; the rejection by the overwhelming majority of the House Republicans to hold an impeachment trial of Donald Trump for the incitement of insurrection, and the subsequent vote against the impeachment itself by the majority of the Senate Republicans; the audit of the election by Arizona Senate Republicans; the defenestration of Liz Cheney from her position of leadership at the House of Representatives for voting in favor of Trump’s impeachment; the rejection by a majority of House Republicans to create a bipartisan Commission to investigate the Capitol riot of January 6 followed by the blocking of the established Commission by the Senate Republicans; the passing by multiple Republican-controlled legislative assemblies of voting restriction laws, under the excuse of avoiding new electoral frauds. And so on. But even more alarming than the behavior of the Republican party leadership, is the fact that the Republican base is becoming increasingly disgruntled, fearful, and out of touch with reality. A good percentage of it embodies a toxic combination of nativism, racism, white supremacy, misogyny, anti-Semitism, and conspiracy theorizing. According to former Republican Representative Denver Riggleman, a substantial number of GOP voters have completely lost themselves in the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories, disinformation, and grievance politics. Republican Representative Peter Meijer, on his side, believes that the party can destroy itself from within due to baseless conspiracy theories. More than six in ten Republicans, do indeed believe that the 2020 election was stolen from them, while 53 percent insist that Donald Trump is the “true” President of the United States. Even more worrisome is the fact that almost a quarter of GOP voters are QAnon believers, convinced that the levers of power in the United States are controlled by a cabal of Satan-worshiping

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pedophiles, who should be violently deposed by American patriots. Meanwhile, 53 percent of Republicans disagree “mostly” but not entirely with QAnon theories. The New York Times quotes polling indicating that 30 percent of Republicans believe that they may have to resort to violence to “save” the country, while violent threats and violent speech are becoming commonplace among a significant part of the party. According to the newspaper, the Republican Party is mainstreaming menace as a political tool (Cillizza, 2021; Foran, 2021; Lerer & Herndon, 2021; Nagle, 2021, p. 91; Russonello, 2021). Through history, the Grand Old Party characterized itself by its bold visions. Under Abraham Lincoln it was responsible of preserving the Union and abolishing slavery; under Theodore Roosevelt it fought monopolies and wild capitalism, projected the country as a world power and gave rise to environmentalism; under Eisenhower it bequeathed the nation with modern infrastructures and, under Reagan, it defeated Soviet Communism. Sadly, this venerable institution has not only lost all vision, but has become a selfish and exclusionary tribal tent, deprived of programs and ideals and, even, of a democratic spirit. Moreover, it has transformed itself into a political movement whose sole function seems to be guarantying its political space by playing into the rage, the fears, and the estrangement from reality of a shrinking and economically embattled white working population. To that end, they have proved to be ready to suppress the vote of emerging minorities and to trump the electoral process itself. The Republican party has become, indeed, a major threat to America’s democracy, and the biggest challenge to the nation’s stability since its Civil War. When in a bipartisan system one of the two parties forfeits democratic principles, the system itself is the loser. In this case, it is the liberal credentials of that system what has been lost. As mentioned before, even in traditionally friendly countries to America, an important majority of those surveyed thought that its democracy was not a good example for others to follow. Under those circumstances, how can the United States confront China as the embodiment of liberal democracy? And how can it ask other countries to follow its lead on that pursuit? An ideological contest is thus out of question, even if one of the two American parties still retains and professes such ideals (Wike, 2021).

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The Road to Nowhere The Chinese regime, on the other hand, has not shown the slightest interest either in promoting or weighing an ideological contest. In China, this is a road to nowhere. Since Deng Xiaoping’s days, as said, results are all that matters. The Chinese regime is understandably uninterested in promoting the virtues of Communism. They are not even selling them to its own population. If anything, China has become a hyper capitalistic society where getting rich, as Deng stated, “is glorious”. A highly competitive society where what has been described as a Coliseum type of capitalism of kill or being killed prevails, and where legions of cutthroat and profit-hungry entrepreneurs look for business opportunities everywhere. One, where in the intensive knowledge area a “996” culture prevails: 9 a.m.–9 p.m., six days a week. This is in tune with the fact that the Chinese are socialized into a Darwinian view of the world where only the fittest survive, and where the national goal of achieving “wealth and power” has become a potent narrative (Gries, 2020 [1, pp. 65, 67, 76]; Lee, 2018 [1]; Qiqing & Zhong, 2019). On the other hand, in China, authoritarianism cannot be equated to a form of ideology. It is simply a political culture that dates to the country’s unification in 221 B.C., with the establishment of the Qin dynasty. As such, the Communist Party exists on a continuum with China’s long dynastic history. Within it lies a Confucian political culture in which the ruler is compared to an authoritarian parent presiding over a family. With a brief parenthesis opened in 1911 at the end of the imperial rule, China’s authoritarian tradition has endured for more than two thousand years. It is a tradition that will not vanish easily, specially the end of the Chinese imperial order brought with it social catastrophes such as the warlords’ strife, the ineptitude and corruption of the new republican leaders, and civil wars. Moreover, as Communism lost the ideological refulgence of Mao’s days, it had to be compensated by greater doses of “Chineseness”, which put Confucianism back in the center of the new nationalistic discourse (Fu, 1993; Gries, 2020 [2, p. 74]; Mandelbaum, 2003, p. 254; Westad, 2020, pp. 30–32). A straightforward social contract exists between the Communist Party and the Chinese people since Deng’s time: We’ll make you better off and you will follow our orders. That bargain can endure if the economy keeps growing. Its source harks back to China’s imperial past as “The Mandate of the Heavens”, according to which, the presence of prosperity, order,

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and peace showed that the gods were protecting the rulers. Conversely, anarchy and social anomie meant that the rulers had lost their protection. If the sort of techno-utilitarian authoritarianism that has prevailed since Deng’s days, and which through sustained economic growth has taken 700 millions of Chinese out of poverty, legitimacy admits no doubt. Actually, as Kishore Mahbubani asserts, since 1979 the Chinese Communist Party has delivered the best governance China has ever enjoyed in its entire history, which includes the greatest improvement in the standard of living of its citizens ever experienced. Less than 5 percent of the Chinese population lives in extreme poverty today, versus over 50 percent when Deng Xiaoping launched its economic reform programs. Not surprisingly, 84 percent of China’s citizens, according to a 2018 Edelman Trust Barometer report, trust its government: The highest rank worldwide, followed by Singapore with 70 percent of trust level. Similarly, a 2015 Pew Research Center survey showed that 88 percent of Chinese believe that when their children grow up, they will be financially better off than their fathers, which compares to just 32 percent in the United States. Were this virtuous cycle stop or reverse, though, the social contract between government and citizenry would be off. Delivering results, hence, is essential to the nature of the system (Mahbubani, 2020 [1, pp. 140, 152, 154, 155, 157]; Marshall, 2015, p. 51; Toro Hardy, 2020, pp. 68–69).

Efficiency as the Catchword If results are all that matters, the regime’s techno-utilitarian approach to development has been a resounding success. This is based in the Chinese Communist Party policy of recruiting for its ranks the best and the brightest university graduates. Following the example of Singapore, meritocracy has become the road that leads to good governance. More than 2 million people, indeed, registered to take the 2022 National Civil Service Exam, competing for just 31,200 vacancies—meaning that 68 people were vying for one spot. China’s infrastructure developments, which has grown at a world historic pace since the last century, is also a good example of its quest for results. Within it, the pace at which government has provided high-speed rail interconnection to the country, exemplifies well its capacity to deliver. In just ten years, between 2007 and 2017, China went from having zero high-speed rail lines to having more operational miles than the rest of the world put together. Something similar

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can be said of the 230,000 miles of roads built in 2009, or the announcement made that same year to have ninety-seven new airports built by 2020 (Huffington, 2010 [1, p. 96]; Lee, 2018 [2, p. 99]; Mahbubani, 2020 [2, p. 168]; Meanwhile in China Newsletter, 2021). Accordingly, an acute pragmatism impregnates the actions of both the ruled and the rulers in China. Efficiency is the catchword, the magic word. Chinese accomplishments during the last four decades, which have no precedent in recorded history, are testament to it. The regime not only lifted hundreds million of its citizens out of poverty but, coming from way back in the world’s economic ranking, was able to position the country in the anteroom of economic supremacy. Nowadays, China’s global number two economy is larger than economies number three, four, five, and six put together. Exactly the same could be said about China’s number two military position, which again is larger than number three, four, five, and six joint together. In just twenty years, from 1997 to 2017, China’s exports multiplied tenfold passing from US$211 billion to US$2.2 trillion, thus becoming the world’s largest export economy. Currently, China sits firmly at the center of the globalized economy, being the largest, second largest, or third largest trading partner of almost every nation on earth. Meanwhile, in a short span China has gone from stealing and copying foreign technology to becoming an innovation superpower in direct competition with the United States (Auslin, 2020, pp. 26 and 39; Zakaria, 2021). Indeed, China is closing the technological gap with the United States, and even though it may not match that country’s capabilities across the board, it may soon surpass it in key technologies such as artificial intelligence, robotics, energy storage, fifth-generation cellular networks (5G), quantum information systems, and biotechnology. According to Nicolas Chaillan, former Pentagon’s chief software officer, China is likely to dominate within a decade many of the key emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence, synthetic biology, and genetics. Going even further, L. Rafael Reif, President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT, affirmed that China is likely to become the world’s most advanced technological nation and the source of the most cuttingedge technological products in not much more than a decade. Currently, China exhibits nine of the world’s twenty biggest high-tech companies: Alibaba, Tencent, Ant Financial, Bytendance, Baidu, Didi Chuxing, Xiaomi, Meituan Dianping, and J.D.com. The remaining 11 companies

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are American ones, with no other country making it into the list (Hvistendahl, 2019; Mahbubani, 2020 [3, p. 130]; Manyika & McRaven, 2019; Reuters Staff, 2021). Closely related to China’s technological development we find its educational advancements. The country’s tradition in emphasizing education has been crucially important, as shown by the results of the PISA (Program for International Evaluation Student Assessment) test, made public in December 2019. They placed China as number one in the world in the three tested categories: Mathematics, science, and reading. The test, that evaluates 15-years-old students from the 35 OECD member countries, has been expanded to include students from 79 countries. Consequently, China’s students were in a better position than those of the most privileged economies of the world, including small countries intensely focused on education such as Singapore or Finland. On the other hand, from 1990 to 2010 Chinese enrolment in higher education rose eightfold, and the number of university graduates in the country passed from 300,000 to nearly 3,000,000 per year. In 2017, that amount had jumped to 8,000,000 university graduates. Even for its best universities tuition costs emphasize affordability, being about US$2000 a year with similarly reasonable boarding fees. This translates in the fact than more than 60 percent of Chinese high school graduates go on to attend college, which compares to 20 percent in 1980 (Anderson & Shendruk, 2019; Balingit & Van Dam, 2019; French, 2021; Gruber & Johnson, 2019). University outcomes have not only been quantitative but qualitative as well, as shown by Chinese elite universities. In 2017 Tsinghua University, known as China’s MIT, awarded 1385 Science and Technology doctorates compared with 645 conferred by MIT itself. At the same time, Tsinghua produced more of the top 1 percent of the most highly cited papers in mathematics and computing, and more of 10 percent of the most highly cited papers in science, technology, and engineering (STEM), thus surpassing any other university in the world. Even if MIT retains still the number one position in STEM papers, Tsinghua is well on track to becoming number one in the next five years or less. Meanwhile, Chinese percentage of STEM papers cited in Scopus, the largest catalogue of abstracts and citations in the world, increased from 4 percent in 2000 to 19 percent in 2016, outdoing America’s contributions (Appelbaum et al., 2018, p. 23; Li, 2018).

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The Chinese management of the COVID 19 crisis also comes to mind when referring to efficiency. Notwithstanding China’s initial lack of transparency, which was responsible for turning a local infection into a global pandemic, the fact remains that with almost 1.4 billion inhabitants, its domestic containment of the coronavirus has been on a par with that of Singapore, which has a population of just six million citizens. Moreover, in mid-June 2021, it had already vaccinated more than one billion people. The doses therein administered represented almost 40 percent of the 2.5 billion shots that had been given globally at that time (Pinghui, 2021; Xiong et al., 2021). The centralization of data processing capability was the key element that allowed China to manage its COVID crisis so efficiently. Specially so as privacy is not an issue. The diffusion of power to process information and make decisions, which worked so well during the twentieth century, is now being outmatched by what at the time was a clear weakness—the centralization of data. Thanks to Artificial Intelligence, the pendulum has moved in the opposite direction. Not only because A.I. allows to process countless amounts of information at astronomical speed but because the machine learning process improves when fed larger amounts of data. As a result, what was considered a strength of the United States during its first Cold War, is nowadays a shortcoming. Conversely, China’s concentration of data processing for decision-making purposes, has turned into a portentously efficient tool. This could become a decisive comparative advantage for China (Harari, pp. 93–95). Succinctly, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has written that what has happened in China, since Deng’s times, is the equivalent to the English Industrial Revolution and the global information revolution combusting simultaneously, but compressed in 30 years instead 300 (Rudd, 2012).

Can America Compete? The competition comes on disparate terms, having on one side of the discourse the United States unable to invoke superior values in an ideological contest, and on the other, an immensely efficacious China that eschews ideology in favor of results. That being the case, America will have to exhibit results as well if it wants to remain competitive. In other words, although multifaceted, the core element of this new Cold War

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will be efficiency. This may well become a competition between democracy and authoritarianism as Biden wishes, although not one presented in ideological terms but in purely pragmatic and utilitarian ones. This means that the winning system will be the one able to outmatch the opponent’s results. Competing in efficiency terms, however, is something the United States is very badly prepared for, as the country fares poorly in numerous areas in relation to other developed nations. For a long period, a huge array of deficiencies has been left unchecked. This is the result of an investment deficit that has ignored many of a modern’s economy longterm needs. Three converging reasons can explain why this has happened. First, the War on Terror swallowed immense amounts, estimated in the trillions of dollars, which had to be diverted from the attention to domestic needs. Second, the everlasting influence in American politics of the Reagan Revolution, which discredited government and its capability to solve problems. In this view, big governments and their attempts at social reform are in themselves the problem, not the solution. Third, America’s increasingly gridlocked and highly partisan political system which has proven ineffective in tackling countless domestic problems (Reuters, 2007; Stiglitz & Bilmes, 2008).

Unbridled Problems Amid the multiple unbridled problem areas that show high degree of inefficiency and consequently very poor results, two examples rapidly come to mind: Infrastructure and education. The relatively decrepit state of American infrastructure acts like a tax on America’s economy while slowing the movement of people and goods and reducing the quality of everyday life. In its 2009 quadrennial report card of the country’s infrastructure, the American Society of Civil Engineers ranked the United States’ overall grade at an abysmal D. This included a D in aviation, a C in rail, a D in roads, and a D in energy. The Society concluded, in this 2009 report, that the country needed to spend US$450 billion a year, for the next five years, simply to maintain the infrastructure in its then current condition. In 2021, this situation hadn’t changed much. In that year’s quadrennial report card, the American Society of Engineers slightly upgraded the country’s infrastructure to a C-Minus, stating that if the country did not update its infrastructure, it would lose US$10 trillion by 2039. Indeed, America’s infrastructure

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ranks twenty-third in the world, as the country invests in it just 2.4 percent of its GDP versus 5 percent in Europe and 9 percent in China. The result is that the country’s bridges, roads, schools, electricity grid, waterways, rail system, air traffic network, and levees have dropped to Second World level. While China is number one worldwide in high-speed rail lines, the United States has none. Beijing and Shanghai airports are decades ahead in efficacy to their equivalents in Washington or New York. America’s high-tech infrastructure, on the other hand, does not fare much better—its broadband access in 2009 ranked fifteenth worldwide while its broadband download speed ranked nineteenth, with over one hundred million Americans lacking broadband in their homes. Since then, the situation has not changed significantly. In 2020, eighteen million Americans did not have access to the internet, while tens of millions either did not have access to or could not afford quality internet services (Brzezinski, 2013 [2, p. 51]; Huffington, 2010 [2, pp. 106, 112]; Luce, 2012 [1, pp. 133–134]; Schaper, 2021; Wheeler, 2020). The educational system is in a similar quagmire. Although the top American universities are among the global best, its overall educational system is in shambles. Moreover, according to a 2017 study of thirtyeight elite colleges, they had more students from the top 1 percent of the income ladder than from the bottom 60 percent. This not only made them inaccessible to most Americans but consolidated a virtual caste system. Universities, in general, have become far too expensive for the children of working-class families, and even of middle-class families, to afford them. Student-loan debts have become for the latter the unavoidable ticket for higher education, propitiating their grow at a staggering rhythm. With over US$1.6 trillion in outstanding student-loan debts, the future of tens of millions of middle-class Americans has been mortgaged (Farrington, 2020; Steward, 2021, p. 26). However, the real problem of education lies elsewhere. In just one generation, the United States has fallen from first to twelfth in the proportion of its young people with graduate degrees. More than a quarter of American students drop out of high school and a third drop out of college, while almost half fail to complete their college degree in the allotted time. The American Testing Program, which develops the ACT college admission tests, reports that fewer than one in five of those taking the tests meet the college readiness benchmark in four subjects: English, reading, math, and science. Within the OECD’s Program for International Evaluation Student Assessment (PISA) tests, American students

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have ranked twenty-fifth in math and twenty-first in science. Even the top 10 percent of U.S. students, meaning America’s best and brightest, ranked twenty-fifth in the world in math literacy. In a different category, more than a fifth of American adults have a reading age of fifth grade, which corresponds to that of an eleven-year-old. Not surprisingly then, in a 2010 poll, a small majority of Americans revealed that they had not realized that humans and dinosaurs never coexisted while, even more amazingly, another poll showed that almost half of Americans thought the sun revolved around the earth. Perhaps not in the same dimension of the two previous polls, but nonetheless highly relevant, were the facts that 49 percent of American adults believed that the President has the power to suspend the U.S. Constitution, that 30 percent could not name the two nations their country fought in WWII, or that one in three Americans would fail if presented with the Citizenship Test (Brzezinski, 2013 [3, p. 52]; Hanushek & Peterson, 2011; Huffington, 2010 [2, pp. 114–115]; Luce, 2012 [2, pp. 71–89]; Zakaria, 2021). These kinds of long unchecked problems, which are the most telling testimony to Americas’ falling efficiency, induce China and the closest friends of the United States to show diminishing respect for the country. The remarks of China’s top foreign affairs policymaker Yang Jiechi in Alaska in March 2021 are eloquent enough: “The United States does not have the qualification…to speak to China from a position of strength”. As for America’s friends, the most devastating comment came from the Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister), who shortly after Biden’s election said “America can’t lead. They can’t even get their arms around Covid”. Unsurprisingly, Francis Fukuyama argues that how influential the United States will keep being in the years ahead depends on its ability to fix its internal problems, rather than its foreign policy (Brooks, 2021; Friedman, 2021; Fukuyama, 2021).

Covid and the Reagan’s Revolution in Reverse The contrast between China’s sweeping dexterity in containing the coronavirus and America’s botched response to it has been breath taking. China, which has almost 18 percent of the world’s population had not reached five thousand confirmed deaths by May 24, 2021. On that date, the United States, with just 4 percent of the world’s population, had reached 25 percent of global deaths, attaining 600 thousand deaths by mid-2021. All of it, amid America’s shameful spectacle of social anarchy

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and gross disrespect for science. And although the U.S.’ situation got better when the Biden Administration took over the vaccination program, still 47 percent of Republicans and 29 percent of the overall population were resisting vaccination in July 2021. Moreover, rejection to vaccines had become an extension of rejection to masks within a cultural duel between Democrats and Republicans. In the mask duel, itself, the governors of top states such as Florida and Texas prohibited the imposition of mask mandates in schools amid the ravages of the Delta variant (Balz & Guskin, 2021; Statista, 2021a, 2021b). According to The Economist, successive crises -from the 2008 financial crash to the Covid pandemic- have left China’s leaders increasingly convinced about the superiority of their techno-authoritarian model when compared to the partisan squabbling, selfish individualistic, and shortterm oriented system that characterizes the democratic West. In their view, this expresses the latter’s decline (The Economist, 2021). Fortunately for the United States, President Biden seems to be aware that the main response to China’s challenge must come from home. Only if the country can unravel its accrued domestic tangles, it will be able to avoid decline and gross inadequacy. In other words, it may recover its capability to compete in terms of efficiency. By forcefully trying to move away from the Reagan Revolution, that linked government itself with national decline and that co-opted the Clinton administration and to some extent even Obama’s, Biden aims at reinstating government as the driving force of society. As such, his “Build Back Better” program embodies a Reagan Revolution in reverse that pursues upgrading the nation’s infrastructure, expand its social safety net and turn its economy greener. This process is not risk free. According to some analysts it could spark off an inflationary process, while it will increase the already massive federal budget deficit and may add to the 67.3 percent of America’s GDP currently being owed to the rest of the world, which translates into an important window of security vulnerability. Meanwhile, the US$1 trillion infrastructure bill passed by Congress in November 2021 might turned out to be insufficient to cover the country’s needs. This, not only due to the high costs of infrastructural building in the United States when compared to other rich nations, but because of what was reported in 2009 by the American Society of Civil Engineers—that the country needed to spend US$450 billion a year, during the following five years, simply to maintain the infrastructure in its then-current state. Not surprisingly,

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the bill doesn’t contemplate to build the hundreds of bridges that the New Deal did or the national highway system that Eisenhower built or of replicating China’s high-speed railroad system. On the contrary, much of its focus is directed at improving or expanding existing infrastructure. So much so, that it has been said that its results could become another example of what Suzane Mettler has called the submerged state: The tendency for modern American governments to do its work so quietly that citizens don’t even realize they are benefiting from it. Biden’s constrains to implement the rest of his ambitious program, on the other hand, remain huge and include factors like the Democrat’s slim majority in Congress; the entrenchment of filibustering; the dissimilar and querulous Democratic coalition on which he depends; the fact that two Democratic senators vote more frequently with Republicans than with their own party’s colleagues; and the risk of having his window of political opportunity shut in 2022, if Republicans win back Congress (Leonhardt, 2021; Luce, 2012 [3, p. 134]; Sharma & Zakaria, 2021). Losing Congress in 2022, which would derail Biden’s plans, looks increasingly possible. The voting restricting laws and the redistricting being passed and implemented by Republican-controlled state assemblies all around the country, as well as the announcement made by several House Democrats from competitive districts that they will not seek reelection in 1922, threaten their hold over the House of Representatives. Moreover, Democratic data guru David Shor asserted that the current 50–50 correlation in the Senate between both parties, might well be the high water mark of power that Democrats will see for the next decade. In 2022 and 2024, according to his modeling, Democrats will be hard pressed to match Republican seats in the Senate. Even winning 51 percent of the national vote they may end up with only 43 seats in the Senate. The Senate’s design, indeed, disadvantages Democrats as it overweighs rural states controlled by Republicans. Voters’ disappointment with the Democratic party squabbling and the excesses of its left wing are also in line, as shown by the 2021 gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey. The two digit points advantage obtained by Biden in those traditional blue states in the 2020 presidential elections, melted away allowing for a Democratic loss in Virginia and a very tight victory in New Jersey. On top of that, the inflation resulting from the supply chain and labor shortage disruptions inevitable when coming out of a pandemic, plus the Biden stimulus bill, is taking its toll on the President and his party. A November 2021 ABC News/Washington Post poll showed that

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Republican congressional candidates were holding their largest lead in midterm election preferences in 40 years: 51 percent versus 41 percent for Democrats. The legislative elections of 2022 could thus change the correlation of power in Congress, putting an end to Biden’s ambitious program and foreclosing what may be America’s last chance to regain competitiveness in terms of efficiency (Klein, 2021; Langer, 2021; The New York Times, p. 21).

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Farrington, R. (2020, August 20). Average student loan debt by year. The College Investor. https://thecollegeinvestor.com/32031/AVERAGESTUDENT-LOAN-DEBT-BY-YEAR/. Accessed 23 May 2021. Ferguson, N. (2004). Colossus: The rise and fall of the American empire. Penguin Books. Foran, C. (2021, April 10). An existential threat: The Republicans calling for their party to reject QAnon conspiracy theories. CNN . https://edition.cnn. com/2021/04/10/politics/qanon-republican-party-congress/index.html. Accessed 28 May 2021. Ford, M. (2015). Rise of the robots: Technology and the threat of a jobless future. Basic Books. French, H. W. (2021, November 3). The U.S. is competing with the wrong China. World Politic Review. Frey, B. C., & Osborne, M. E. (2013, September 17). The future of employment: How susceptible are jobs to computerization. Oxford University. https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/The_Future_ of_Employment.pdf. Accessed 25 July 2020. Friedman, T. L. (2021, March 23). China doesn’t respect us anymore—For good reason. The New York Times. Fu, Z. (1993). Autocratic tradition and Chinese politics. Cambridge University Press. Fukuyama, F. (2021, November 21). The end of American hegemony. The Economist: The World Ahead 2022. Gries, P. (2020). Nationalism, social influences, and Chinese foreign policy. In D. Shambaugh (Ed.), China and the world. Oxford University Press. Gruber, J., & Johnson, S. (2019, September/October). To counter China, outinvent it: Trump’s trade wars ignores the real threat from Beijing. Foreign Affairs. Hanushek, E., & Peterson, P. (2011, September 5). Why can’t American students compete with the rest of the world. Newsweek. Harari, Y. N. (2018). 21 Lecciones para el Siglo XXI. Madrid. Debate|Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial. Harrison, L. E. (2013). Jews, Confucians and Protestants: Cultural capital and the end of multiculturalism. Rowman & Littlefield Publisher Inc. Hochschild, A. R. (2020, March 17). How the white working class is being destroyed? The New York Times. Huffington, A. (2010). Third World America. Crown Publishers. Huntington, S. P. (2004). ¿Quiénes Somos? Los Desafíos de la Identidad Nacional Estadounidense. Paidós. Hvistendahl, M. (2019, January/February). Land of giants. MIT Technology Review (The China issue: Anniversary Issue).

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King, S. D. (2017). Grave new world: The end of globalization and the return to history. Yale University Press. Kissinger, H. (1994). Diplomacy. Simon & Shuster. Klein, E. (2021, October 8). David Shor is telling democrats what they don’t want to hear. The New York Times. Kupchan, C. A. (2011, December 19). Refunding good governance. The New York Times. Langer, G. (2021, November 13). Economic discontent, criticism of Biden lift GOP to record early advantage: POLL. ABC News. https://abcnews. go.com/Politics/economic-discontent-criticisms-biden-lift-gop-record-early/ story?id=81095146. Accessed 19 Nov 2021. Lee, K. (2018). AI superpowers: China, Silicon Valley and the new world order. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Leonhardt, D. (2021, November 10). The morning: Will the infrastructure bill show that government can still do big things. The New York Times. Lerer, L., & Herndon, A. W. (2021, November 12). Menace, as a political tool, enters Republican mainstream. The New York Times. Li, Y. (2018, August 3). Understanding China’s technological rise. The Diplomat. https://thediplomat.com/2018/08/understanding-chinas-techno logical-rise/. Accessed 20 Sept 2019. Luce, E. (2011, December 11). Is America working? Financial Times. Luce, E. (2012). Time to start thinking: America and the spectre of decline. Little, Brown. Mahbubani, K. (2020). Has China won? The Chinese challenge to American primacy. Public Affairs. Mandelbaum, M. (2003). The ideas that conquered the world: Peace, democracy, and free markets in the twenty first century. Public Affairs. Manseau, P. (2016). One nation, under gods: A new American history. Back Bay Books. Manyika, J., & McRaven, W. H. (2019, September). Innovation and National Security: Keeping Our Edge. Independent Task Force Report 77 . Council on Foreign Relations. Marshall, T. (2015). Prisoners of geography: The maps that tell you everything you need to know about global politic. Elliot and Thompson Limited. Maurois, A. (1972). Historia de los Estados Unidos. Círculo de Lectores. Meanwhile in China Newsletter. (2021, November 29). CNN . Meyer, J. (2016). Dark money: How a secretive group of billionaires is trying to buy political control in the US. Doubleday. Nagle, A. (2021). Brotherhood of losers. In J. Goldberg (Ed.), The American crisis: What went wrong. How we recover. Simon & Shuster. Osnos, E. (2021, October 20). Political spark that ignited firestorm across dry, divided land. The Harvard Gazette. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/

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story/2021/10/when-americans-lost-their-vision-for-the-common-good/. Accessed 24 Oct 2021. Pinghui, Z. (2021, June 26). Coronavirus: China hits goal of vaccinating 40 per cent of population before end of June. South China Morning Post. Qiqing, L., & Zhong, R. (2019, April 29). ‘996’ is China’s version of hustle culture: Tech workers are sick of it. The New York Times. Reuell, P. (2016, April). For life expectancy, money matters. The Harvard Gazette, 11. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2016/04/for-life-exp ectancy-money-matters/. Accessed 20 Oct 2021. Reuters Staff. (2007, October 24). U.S. CBO estimates $2.4 trillion long-term war costs. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iraq-usa-funding-idUSN2450 753720071024. Accessed 27 May 2021. Reuters Staff. (2021, October 11). China has won AI battle with U.S. Pentagon’s ex-software chief says. https://www.reuters.com/technology/united-sta tes-has-lost-ai-battle-china-pentagons-ex-software-chief-says-2021-10-11/. Accessed 15 Oct 2021. Rudd, K. (2012, July 11). The west isn’t ready for the rise of China. New Statesman. https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/international-pol itics/2012/07/kevin-rudd-west-isnt-ready-rise-china. Accessed 25 Oct 2020. Russonello, G. (2021, May 27). QAnon now as popular in U.S. as some major religions, poll suggests. The New York Times. Sanders, B. (2017). Our revolution: A future to believe in. Profile Books. Schaper, D. (2021, March 2). Potholes, grid failures, aging tunnels and bridges: Infrastructure gets a C-minus. MPR News. https://www.npr.org/2021/03/ 03/973054080/potholes-grid-failures-aging-tunnels-and-bridges-nations-inf rastructure-gets-a-c. Accessed 30 June 2021. Sharma, R., & Zakaria, F. (2021, July 4). GPS. CNN . Snyder, T. (2017). On tyranny: Twenty lessons from the twenty century. Tim Duggan Books. Statista. (2021a). Number of coronavirus Covid 19 cumulative and confirmed dead cases in China from January 20, 2020 to May 24, 2021. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1092918/china-wuhan-corona virus-2019ncov-confirmed-and-deceased-number/. Accessed 27 May 2021. Statista. (2021b). Total number of coronavirus (Covid-19) cases and deaths number in the United States as of May 25, 2021. https://www.statista.com/ statistics/1101932/coronavirus-covid19-cases-and-deaths-number-us-americ ans/. Accessed 27 May 2021. Steward, M. (2021). The birth of a new American aristocracy. In J. Goldberg (Ed.), The American crisis: What went wrong. How we recover. Simon & Shuster. Stiglitz, J., & Bilmes, L. (2008). The three trillion dollar war: The true cost of the Iraq conflict. W. W. Norton.

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The Economist. (2021, March 20). The way it’s going to be. The New York Times Editorial Board. (2021, November 4). Democrat deny political reality at their own peril. The New York Times. Toro Hardy, A. (2007). Hegemonía e Imperio. Villegas Editores. Toro Hardy, A. (2019). The crossroads of globalization: A Latin American view. World Scientific. Toro Hardy, A. (2020). China versus the US: Who will prevail? World Scientific. Westad, O. A. (2020). Legacies of the past. In D. Shambaugh (Ed.), China and the world. Oxford University Press. Westover, T., & Goldberg, J. (2021). Left behind. In J. Goldberg (Ed.), The American crisis: What went wrong. How we recover. Simon & Shuster. Wheeler, T. (2020, May 27). 5 steps to get the internet to all Americans. Brookings. https://www.brookings.edu/research/5-steps-to-get-the-internetto-all-americans/. Accessed 30 June 2021. Wike, R. (2021, June 10). The world hasn’t given up in America. Foreign Affairs. Wike, R., Poushter, J., Fetterolf, J., & Mordecai, M. (2021, June 10). America’s image abroad rebounds with transition from Trump to Biden. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2021/06/10/americasimage-abroad-rebounds-with-transition-from-trump-to-biden/. Accessed 20 June 2021. Wintour, P. (2021, May 5). US seen as bigger threat to democracy than Russia or China, global poll finds. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian. com/world/2021/may/05/us-threat-democracy-russia-china-global-poll. Accessed 10 June 2021. Wolf, M. (2016, March 1). Donald Trump embodies how great republics meet their end. Financial Times. Xiong, Y., Gan, N., & He, L. (2021, June 20). China has administered more than 1 billion Covid-19 vaccine doses. CNN World. https://edition.cnn. com/2021/06/20/asia/china-one-billion-doses-intl/index.html. Accessed 21 June 2021. Zakaria, F. (2021, October 19). China Town Hall. National Committee on China Relations.

CHAPTER 5

From Hegemony to the Squandering of Alliances

In the final phase of World War II, or in its subsequent years, a complex network of multilateral organizations, initiatives, mechanisms, and alliances began to take shape under the auspices of the United States. Under the stewardship of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Organization of the United Nations and the Bretton Woods Agreement came to life. Although the first sought to share international power, Bretton Woods established a new global monetary system dominated by the United States. As a result of it, the gold standard was replaced by the U.S. dollar as the global currency. To implement that system, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (initially International Bank for Reconstruction and Development) were created.

America’s Led International Architecture Later, under Harry S. Truman’s leadership, the International Trade Organization (ITO) was formed to complement the previous Bretton Woods’ institutions. However, this new organization did not fructify, and international trade was managed under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which also emerged in Truman’s time and under the umbrella of the United States. The Marshall Plan saw the light of day under this President, as well. This provided large-scale financial and economic aid for the rebuilding of Europe. Meanwhile, three joint © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 A. T. Hardy, America’s Two Cold Wars, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-9503-2_5

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defense organizations were founded under the auspices of the Truman Administration—the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Inter American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, and the ANZUS Treaty. The first established a collective defense system between the United States and multiple European countries, the second did the same at a hemispheric level, while the third joined together the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. Bilateral defense treaties with Japan and The Philippines also took shape during this presidential period. Under Truman, the Organization of American States (OAS) also came to life, generating a U.S.-led political partnership in the Western Hemisphere. In Dwight D. Eisenhower’s times, several collective and bilateral defense treaties emerged. Among them are the South Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), as an Asia–Pacific version of NATO, and the Mutual Defense treaties with the Republic of China (Taiwan) and the Republic of Korea. The United States became thus committed to defend fortytwo nations through a global network of alliances. The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) was founded during this period, as a major development financing institution for Latin America and the Caribbean. Under John F. Kennedy, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) came to existence as an intergovernmental economic organization committed to promote democracy and market economy. Through this network of institutions, initiatives, treaties, and mechanisms emerged under its liberal internationalism grand vision, the United States positioned itself at the head of a potent hegemonic system. One that allowed, as mentioned in Chapter 2, that the legitimacy of its leadership could be based on the consensual acquiescence of others. Its spectrum of allies was as huge as its capability to articulate the system on behalf of its Cold War’s objectives.

Soviet Bloc and Non-Alignment On the other side of the Iron Curtain, Moscow established its own system of alliances and common institutions. Although much more modest in size, it provided a multilateral structure to the Soviet bloc. Here we found the Warsaw Pact as the collective defensive counterpart to NATO; the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) which emerged as Moscow’s answer to the Marshall Plan in Eastern

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Europe, later including Mongolia, Cuba, and Vietnam as well; the International Bank for Economic Cooperation, which aimed at economic cooperation between the USSR and its European satellites; the Komsomol that was a Soviet-led transnational movement of youth groups or the Cominform, a joint Communist information bureau. Between these two systems of alliances, there stood the non-aligned countries. These came into being with the demise of European colonialism and the emergence of nationalism in what began to be called the “Third World”. Non-alignment allowed the Third World’s leaders to avoid commitment with either the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective Cold War objectives. Yugoslavia, not a Third World country, pioneered this process. Unlike most other East European leaders, Tito had been able to maintain a high degree of autonomy within the Soviet bloc because it had been the Yugoslavian guerrilla and not the Soviet army the one that liberated the country from the Nazi occupation. Sensing the strong tide of nationalism in Asia, Tito associated himself with two leaders from that part of the world who also wanted to resist alignment with the superpowers: Jawaharlal Nehru of India and Zhou Enlai of China; the latter, because after Stalin’s death China had increasingly disassociated itself from the Soviet Union: Actually, Beijing picked fights with the USSR and the United States at the same time under the assumption that the main concern of both superpowers were each other and the defeat of China would throw this out of balance. These three leaders convened the first conference of “non-aligned” nations in Bandung, Indonesia, in 1955. Among those they invited was Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, who would become the most skillful of non-alignment practitioners. More intelligently than China, that confronted the two superpowers, Nasser played them against each other for the benefit of his country (Conrad, 2019, p. 117; Gaddis, 2005 [1, Chapter 4]). Although non-alignment defied both sides, America’s alliance system remained as the epitome of political strength and economic prosperity. Within it, though, there was a spoiler—France’s Charles de Gaulle. He wanted to show the United States that in an age of superpowers, there was room for his country’s assertion of autonomy. As a result, he did everything to prove that France could go its own way. At the end of the day, he was just a free rider within America’s system, as there was no chance of Washington letting France go down in the case of a Soviet aggression (Gaddis, 2005 [2, Chapter 4]).

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America’s Alliance System Beside the stone in the shoe that was de Gaulle’s France, the United States enjoyed a clear and undisputed leadership within its sphere of influence. In the 1970s, however, that leadership came into question for two reasons. The first was the agonizing nightmare of the Vietnam War. The excesses therein committed, and the impotence to prevail militarily evinced by the United States, generated much discomfort among several of its allies. The second was the crisis of the Bretton Woods system. As a global reserve currency issuer, the stability of America’s currency was fundamental. Persistently, however, the United States had to run current account deficits to fulfil the supply of dollars at a fix parity with gold. This made the dollar less desirable, which in turn threatened its position as a reserve currency. This deficit was caused by the United States’ stagflation, its combined inflation and slow growth. When a run for America’s gold reserves showed lack of trust in its currency, Richard Nixon decided in 1971 to unhook the value of the dollar from gold altogether (Kollen Ghizoni, 2013). However, notwithstanding the two reasons that affected America’s prestige and credibility, the leadership upon its alliance system remained intact. In the face of the Soviet threat there was no alternative to the United States, and that was a determinant. Had the threat represented by Moscow disappeared, some might have thought it likely that America’s alliance would weaken. And yet, exactly the opposite happened when near two decades later the Soviet Union collapsed. As explained in Chapter 1, at that point America’s hegemony reached its apex, not only because it became more powerful than ever but because it had turned global. What counts is that the United States was able to confront the Soviet Union at the head of a potent alliance system; one that was as multifaceted as it was geographically diverse. The Soviet bloc was in clear disadvantage when they came face to face, as its own system was far less structured and its allies less numerous and much weaker. Only China could have added significant strength to the Soviet bloc. However, as mentioned before, from Stalin’s death onwards China had drifted apart from Moscow, morphing after the Washington-Beijing rapprochement of 1972 into a de facto ally of the United States. Currently, facing a new Cold War with China, the United States finds itself in a far less advantageous position. Although many of the multilateral organizations and defense alliances that it created in the 1940s and 1950s

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still exist, its position and credibility within them are weaker, and its role as the standard bearer of liberal internationalism has been significantly eroded. Although it would be an exaggeration to say that America is alone in this emerging contest with China, it would be fair to say that its true allies are scarce. Within those few are a group of mostly overlapping mini-coalitions: The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue or Quad, the Five Eyes intelligence alliance and the AUKUS. In essence, they represent a small group of countries that feel equally threatened by China, or that share common Anglo-Saxon bonds with the United States. In all, we are referring to Japan, Australia, India, New Zealand, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Of them, India’s consistency of purpose has yet to be tested. Certainly, China has been showing an overbearing attitude in relation to its longstanding dispute with New Delhi over the Aksai Chin border, as in its claim of most of the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. Meanwhile, its two oceans navy (Pacific and Indian) presents itself as a threat to India. And yet, India has a staunch tradition of following its own course of action and not bracketing with other countries. However, as significant as the doubts in relation to India was the refusal of some of those nations to follow Washington’s lead in blocking Huawei a few years ago, or in boycotting Beijing’s proposed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank in 2014.

The Erosion of America’s Hegemony The obvious questions to be asked are these: What has happened between the 1990s, when the power of the United States reached its apex, and now? How did America’s gigantic leverage upon a substantial part of the world weaken to the point of losing true relevance? Two names can provide the answers to these questions: George W. Bush and Donald Trump. In 2001, George W. Bush’s team came into government carrying an awkward notion about America’s might. Instead of understanding that the hegemonic system in place served their country’s interests exceedingly well, they felt that the system had to be rearranged in order to recognize the United States’ new position as sole superpower and its unmistakable primacy. As a result, they began to turn upside down a complex structure that had taken decades to build, precisely when America’s standing within it had reached its pinnacle.

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In doing so they did not understand, as T.V. Paul asserts, that legitimacy lowers the cost of exerting power and that for a hegemonic power legitimacy results fundamental for the maintaining of supremacy. The United States had attained a stage where its supremacy was accepted by the international community as both benign and legitimate, which had required interweaving the exercise of its power with international institutions and legal instruments. However, proclaiming the futility of cooperative multilateralism, which from their perspective just constrained the freedom of action of America’s power, the Bush administration asserted the prerogatives of their country’s primacy. Moreover, the United States’ national interest had to take precedence to international law, as was made clear by President Bush before the 2003 invasion of Iraq. During that time, he repeatedly emphasized that even if such invasion violated international law, his country would do whatever was necessary to ensure its security (Paul, 2018, Chapter 2). Unconcerned by international norms or by the United Nations’ rules, America became a free rider within the international system. Among many examples, the following are particularly telling: It refused to adhere to the Kyoto Protocol, as that would have imposed restraints upon its sovereignty, notwithstanding that with just 4 percent of the world’s population the country was responsible for 25 percent of the global pollution footprint; it refused to submit to the International Court of Justice, while pressuring other countries to follow suit, as its soldiers were being accused of human rights violations in Afghanistan and Iraq; it refused to pay its quotas to the United Nations and to other multilateral organizations that did not bow to Washington’s views (Prestowitz, 2003). The Bush administration’s world became one that searched for unconditional followers and not for allies’ worthy of respect; one of ad hoc coalitions and “with us or against us” propositions where multilateral institutions and norms had little meaning; one of punishment to dissidence and not of encouragement to cooperation; and one where preventive action prevailed over international law. Well-known neoconservatives such as Charles Krauthammer, Robert Kagan, and John Bolton, proclaimed America’s supremacy and derided countries not willing to follow its unilateralism. Krauthammer labelled those nations an axis of petulance, whose main problem was their irrelevance. Kagan, referring to Europe’s insistence in adhering to international norms, talked about that continent’s weakness and about its incapability to understand that raw power was the ultimate enforcer of national security. Bolton asserted that

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if the United Nations’ Security Council wanted to reflect the real correlation of power in the world, it should only have one member: The United States (Kagan, 2003, p. 37; Krauthammer, 2002; Toro Hardy, 2006 [1, p. 139]).

Neoconservatives But who were the neoconservatives, or neocons as they were also known? They became the intellectual architects of Bush’s foreign policy. Gathered around think tanks like the Project for the New American Century or the American Enterprise Institute, they occupied some of the top posts within the State Department or the Department of Defense, while continually providing ideas through written media such as The Weekly Standard, The Public Interest, or Commentary. Although immensely powerful figures within this administration like Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld were not neoconservatives, they were closely influenced by them. Neoconservatives considered themselves the natural inheritors of the foreign policy establishment of Truman’s time, which became responsible for creating the fundamental basis of America’s foreign policy during the Cold War. However, with the Cold War over and the United States the sole and undisputed superpower, they believed that a new set of foreign policy guidelines was needed. For them, those guidelines admitted no doubts. The United States had the right to assert its primacy within a unipolar world, which entailed its willingness to act preemptively and unilaterally to diffuse any threat to its security or leadership. This implied not being constrained by accepted rules, multilateral institutions, or international law. At the same time, they proclaimed the universal nature of America’s postulates of freedom and democracy identified with its exceptionalism, which entailed the right to propitiate regime change when these postulates were not respected, thus putting America’s security and the world order in jeopardy. Herein, the label of democratic imperialists with which many of the neocons identified themselves. Their position could be summed up as diplomacy if possible, force if necessary; United Nations if possible, ad hoc coalitions, unilateral action, and preemptive strikes if necessary. Moreover, the 2002 National Security Strategy declared that the United States would be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in hope of equaling America’s

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might. Theirs was a muscular foreign policy that aimed at projecting overwhelming power (Fukuyama, 2006 [1, p. 3]; Schmidt, 2018 [1, p. 18]; Steltzer, 2004, pp. 3–28; Toro Hardy, 2006 [2, pp. 140–141]). George Soros described neoconservative’s vision of international relations as a crude form of Darwinism, in which cooperation was ignored and all the emphasis was placed on competition, the survival of the fittest, and raw power; all of it with the avowed intention of preserving America’s supremacy. Inexplicable under any form of common sense, the Bush team disassociated power from the international structures and norms that facilitated and legitimized its exercise. As a result, the United States moved from being the most successful hegemonic power ever to becoming a pitiful imperial power, incapable of prevailing in two peripheral wars. Bogging down the country in Iraq and Afghanistan, while deriding and humiliating so many around the world, the neoconservatives undressed the emperor. By taking his clothes off, they made his frailties visible for everyone to watch (Soros, 2004, pp. 4–5; Toro Hardy, 2006 [3, p. 148]). At the beginning of 2005, while reporting a Pew Research Center poll, not surprisingly, The Economist mentioned that the prevailing antiAmerican sentiment around the world was greater and deeper than at any other moment in history. Around the same time, the BBC World Service and Global Poll Research Partners conducted another global poll in which they asked, “How do you perceive the influence of the U.S. in the world?”. Some of Washington’s traditional allies gave a negative answer in the following percentages: Canada 60 percent; Mexico 57 percent; Germany 54 percent; Australia 52 percent; Brazil 51 percent; the United Kingdom 50 percent. With such an adverse perception among America’s closest allies and around the world, hegemony no longer had ground on where to stand (The Economist, 2005; Walt, 2005, p. 72). While George W. Bush’s period was reaching its end, Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote a pivotal book in which he asserted that America had lost much of its international credibility and legitimacy. According to him, this felt particularly disturbing because the combined impact of modern technology and global political awakening was speeding up political history. What in the past had taken centuries to materialize, now it took decades, and what before had taken decades, now it could happen in a single year. The primacy of any world power was thus being subjected to immense pressures of change, adaptation, and fall (Brzezinski, 2007, p. 206).

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He believed, nonetheless, that although the United States had deeply eroded its international standing while facing the challenges of an accelerated political history, a second chance was still possible. In his view, this was helped by the fact that no other power could rival America’s role. To recuperate the credibility and legitimacy that had been lost, though, would be arduous, as it would require years of sustained effort and true ability. But the opportunity of a second chance should not be missed because, as he pointed out, there wouldn’t be a third one (Brzezinski, 2007 [2, pp. 206, 191, 192]).

Obama’s Failed Attempt It must be granted to Barak Obama that he did his best to recover the space that had been lost during the preceding eight years, recuperating America’s leading role within a liberal internationalist structure. However, times had changed since his predecessor’s inauguration. Firstly, a huge financial crisis received Obama when he arrived at the White House, thus increasing the international doubts about America’s leadership. Secondly, China’s economy and international standing had taken a huge leap ahead during those eight years. More importantly, Beijing was not only ready to challenge the United States’ leadership in its own regional sphere but was strategically positioning itself as a fundamental trade partner and influencer in America’s own hemisphere. Brzezinski’s notion that no other power could rival the United States was no longer true. Consequently, Obama was left facing a truly daunting challenge. To rebuild America’s standing in the international scene, Obama embarked his Administration on a dual course of action. On the one hand, he pursued cooperative multilateralism and collective action. On the other hand, he prioritized America’s presence where it was most needed. Within the first of these objectives, Obama seemed to have adhered to Richard Hass’ notion of power alone as simple potentiality, with the role of a successful foreign policy being that of turning potentiality into real influence. The role played by the United States in the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in relation to Iran, in the NATO summits, in the newly created G20, or in the summits of the Americas, amid other instances, was good evidence of this approach. Never becoming too overbearing and always respecting the other countries’ points of view, the Obama Administration played a

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leading influence within a context of collective action. Although theoretically one among many, the United States always played the leading role (Hass, 2017). To prioritize the United States’ presence where it was most needed, his Administration turned the attention to China and the Asia–Pacific. China had enjoyed a period of strategic opportunity while America was focusing on the Middle East. Obama’s “pivot to Asia” emerged as a result. This policy aimed at building economic prosperity and security within the region to counter the notion that America was losing its staying power in the Pacific. In this context, Obama’s Administration followed a coalition-building strategy. The Trans-Pacific Partnership— which represented the economic approach to the pivot- aimed at building an association that would cover 40 percent of the global economy, and where the United States would be first among equals. As for the security approach to the pivot, the U.S. Navy repositioned its forces from a roughly fifty-fifty correlation between the Pacific and the Atlantic to 60 percent in the Pacific. Meanwhile, it increased joint exercises and training with several countries of the region, while stationing 2500 marines in Darwin, Australia (Cambell, 2016, pp. 11–28). Within this prioritizing of objectives, Obama’s Administration gradually withdrew American soldiers from Afghanistan and Iraq—although during his first term, the American presence in the former had been increased. The President’s vision of warfare developed as a dual proposition as well. Firstly, military action had to be undertaken under the umbrella of collective security, as in the NATO-led intervention in Libya. Secondly, it had to be as restrictive as possible. Bush’s boots on the ground approach was considered extremely costly in American lives, in dollars, and in the country’s international reputation. Consequently, Obama emphasized a limited, stealthy, and whenever possible, a longdistance approach to warfare. This followed the so-called light-footprint notion (Toro Hardy, 2014).

Trump’s “Dog Eat Dog” Foreign Policy Barak Obama was in good track of consolidating the second chance alluded by Brzezinski. His foreign policy helped much to regain a significant degree of international credibility and standing for his country. If this road of cooperative multilateralism, collective action, and clear international priorities had continued, the Bush years would have been perceived

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as just a bump on the road of America’s foreign policy. Unfortunately for that country, Donald Trump was to be its next President. And definitely, Trump coming eight years after Bush, was more than what America’s allies could swallow. However, the Bush and Trump foreign policies cannot be put on an equal footing. Notwithstanding the abrasive arrogance of Bush’s neoconservatives, they embodied a school of thought in matters of foreign policy, one characterized by a merger between exalted visions of America’s exceptionalism and Wilsonianism. John Mearsheimer labelled it as Wilsionanism with teeth, whereas Francis Fukuyama defined it as Wilsionanism minus international institutions. In this sense, although overplaying conventional notions to the extreme, they remained in track with a longstanding foreign policy tradition. Trump’s foreign policy, as explained by Fareed Zakaria, was based on a more pedestrian premise—The world was largely an uninteresting place, except for the fact that most countries just wanted to screw the United States. Alternatively, Trump believed that stripping the global system of its ordering arrangements would produce a “dog eat dog” environment, in which the United States would come up as the top dog. His foreign policy, thus, was but a reflection of gut feelings, prejudice, and sheer ignorance (Cooley & Nexon, 2020 [2, p. 15]; Fukuyama, 2006 [2, p. 41]; Schmidt, 2018 [1, p. 18]; Steltzer, 2004 [2, pp. 3–28]; Zakaria, 2019). Trump also believed that the foundation of international relations was national sovereignty and not multilateral cooperation. Consequently, he preferred a bilateral approach to foreign relations, one in which America could exert its full power in a direct way instead of letting it dilute through multilateralism. America’s market leverage was thus to be used to bully others into accepting its positions. Concurrently, he equated economy and national security and, as a result, was prone to “weaponize” economic policies. Moreover, he premised on the use of the American dollar as a weapon, thus creating a powerful incentive to create an alternative currency for global trading purposes. This targeted not only China but some of America’s main allies as well. Dusting off Section 323 of the 1962 Trade Expansion Act, which allowed tariffs on national security grounds, he imposed penalizations in every direction. As a result, not just China but also some of America’s closest allies were all badly affected (Alden, 2019; Mahbubani, 2020b [1, pp. 61–68]; Swanson & Mozur, 2019).

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Given his contempt for cooperative multilateralism, but also to erase Obama’s legacy, an obsessive issue with him, Trump withdrew his country from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in relation to Iran. He equally withdrew the United States from other multilateral institutions, such as the United Nations’ Human Rights Commission and, amid the Covid 19 pandemic, from the World Health Organization. He threatened to cut funding to the U.N. and waged a largely victorious campaign to side-line the International Criminal Court, while bringing the World Trade Organization to a virtual standstill. Moreover, he didn’t just walk away from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in relation to Iran but threaten its other signatories to impose sanctions upon them if they continued to trade with Iran on the basis of the agreement (Mahbubani, 2020b [2, p. 61]).

Money, Money, Money Trump was guided by a transactional approach to foreign policy in which principles and allies mattered little. More widely, he prioritized trade and money over security considerations. In 2019, he not only asked Japan to increase fourfold its annual contribution for the privilege of hosting 50,000 American troops in its territory but requested South Korea to pay 400 percent more for hosting the U.S. soldiers; that, amid increasing Chinese assertiveness and continuous North Korean threats. In its relations with India, a fundamental American ally within any strategy of containment to China, Trump subordinated geostrategic considerations to trade. He attacked New Delhi and aroused high sensibilities there by raising the possibility of a trade war. This was on the basis that India was limiting American manufacturers from access to its markets (World Politics Review, 2019a, 2019b). Irked because certain NATO members were not investing enough on their defense, he labelled some of America’s closest partners within the organization as “delinquents”. He also threatened to reduce America’s participation in NATO, calling it “obsolete”, and referred to Germany as a “captive of Russia”. Meanwhile, he abruptly cancelled a meeting with the Danish Prime Minister because she refused to discuss the sale of Greenland to the United States, something expressively forbidden by the 1975 Helsinki Final Act, which represents the cornerstone of European stability. In Trump’s view, the European Union was not a fundamental

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ally, but a competitor and an economic foe. Not surprisingly, to antagonize European governments, including that of the United Kingdom at the time, Trump cheered Brexit. On the same footing, he imposed tariffs on steel and aluminium to many of its closest partners, while forcing a tough renegotiation in NAFTA that humiliated Canada and Mexico for no sensible reason, as the ensuing accord did not bring with it any significant changes. Meanwhile, he was able to fracture the G7, a group integrated by America’s closest allies, leaving the United States standing on one side and the rest on the other (Toro Hardy, 2020 [1, pp. 86–92]). It came as no surprise, therefore, that the country’s most trusted allies reached the conclusion that America could no longer be trusted. A few examples can attest to this. In November 2017, Australia’s White Paper on Asia’s security expressed uncertainty about America’s commitment to Asia. In April 2018, Germany, the United Kingdom, and France issued an official statement saying that they would forcefully defend their interests against America’s protectionism. On May 10, 2018, Angela Merkel declared in Aquisgran that the time in which Europe could trust the United States was over. A few days later, on May 31, 2018, Justin Trudeau aired his country’s affront at being considered a threat to the United States. In June, 2018, Donald Tusk, President of the European Council, said he was bewildered to see the rules-based international order being challenged by its main architect and guarantor—the United States. In November 2019, in an interview to The Economist, Emmanuel Macron declared that European countries could no longer rely on America, which had turned its back on them; and so on. Not surprisingly, Financial Times ’ columnist Martin Wolf wrote that under Trump the United States became a rogue superpower (Borger & Perkins, 2018; Breuninger, 2018; Cooley & Nexon, 2020 [2, p. 70]; The Economist, 2019; Mahbubani, 2020b [3, p. 56]; White, 2017).

More Than What America’s Allies Can Handle George W. Bush followed a few years later by Donald Trump is more than what America’s allies can handle. Specially so, because in 2024 Trumpism could perfectly well be back. The success of Trump’s stolen election narrative, shared by an overwhelming majority of Republicans, puts him in a place of privilege to win his party’s nomination once more. The spectacle of current American politics is but a reminder of the extremes to which that country has become so prone. For instance, in Republican-controlled

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states, Trump’s party is systematically changing electoral rules to make it harder for Democratic constituencies to vote, and in the event of their victory, easier for Republican-controlled assemblies to overturn elections. In face of this, there is little that Biden’s belief in liberal internationalism can do to reassure the country’s disillusioned friends. The good intentions of a frail old man who probably shall not run again in 2024, are not enough guaranty (Cooley & Nexon, 2020 [3, p. 17]; Kagan, 2021). But, even if Biden were in a stronger position in relation to his reelection possibilities, his so-called “Foreign Policy for the Middle Class” and his “Build Back Better” program, contain streaks of nativism and protectionism that worry many abroad. Managing international affairs as an extension to domestic politics and domestic economic policy, as these policies propose, echoes some of Trump’s misunderstandings on how modern economy works. Biden’s administration, as a result, has retained many of his predecessor trade initiatives, including the aluminium and steel tariffs on American allies. Meanwhile, the current White House has shown little interest in strengthening the World Trade Organization or in joining the TPP successor, the CPTPP. To win Rust Belt voters for his party, Biden seems unwilling to depart from Trump’s legacy in this area. On top of that, Biden’s decisions to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan without consulting its allies, or of imposing against their wishes a tight deadline for leaving Kabul, was seen as reminiscent of the unilateralism of Bush and Trump. Not surprisingly, this brought fresh doubts in relation to the trustworthiness of the United States and renewed calls for a European strategic autonomy. The European Union foreign policy chief, Josep Borell, talked about a wake-up call for Europe, and about their need to think and act in their own strategic terms. On a similar note, the Biden administration’s nuclear submarine deal with Australia, secretly bypassing a diesel submarine deal between France and Australia, was resented by the former and by other of its European partners as a new manifestation of America’s unilateralism. It would seem that although Biden has formally called for a liberal internationalist crusade against authoritarianism, and asserted his commitment to a “rules based international order”, many of his actions have created doubts about his true convictions in this matter. This has led Richard Hass to assert that the United States wants the benefit of international order without the hard work needed for building and maintaining it. In sum, the possibility of the United States getting a “third chance” looks, indeed, ever more

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distant and uphill (Dorsey, 2021; Hass, 2021; Karni, 2021; McGee, 2021; Menon, 2021; Schake, 2021). The United States faces now an extremely difficult assignment in gathering an alliance base, even more difficult when directed against the golden goose that China represents. In 2020 the European Union’s trade with China reached US$709 billion versus US$671 with the United States, a gap in China’s favor that will increase with every passing year. Not surprisingly, the European Union members, with Germany at their head, have been reluctant to confront the Asian country, claiming a strategic autonomy in its relationship with it. Although timidly supporting Biden’s proposition in the June 2021 G7 Summit—to keep a firmer stand in relation to China- European countries were squeamish about getting dragged by the United States in this contest. Germany, Italy, and France made it clear that the G7 should not be hostile to China (Brands, 2021; Collison, 2021; Deutsche Welle, 2021; Mahbubani, 2020a). Even in Obama’s time, it was difficult enough to gather the support of allies against the economic opportunities that China embodied, as evinced for instance in the foundation of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, AIIB. Proposed by China in 2013, Washington opposed the initiative and tried to boycott the participation of its main European and Asian allies. The fact that China could attain financial might in the world’s fastest growing region was considered a threat to the United States. However, the boycott’s fortune fell when one of America’s closest allies did not buckle under its pressure: The United Kingdom. As soon as London decided to participate as a founding member of AIIB, the rest followed suit before its initial subscription period was foreclosed. Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain, Australia, New Zealand, and South Korea, among others, were all in. The United States’ opposition to this initiative proved insufficient against the opportunities that it represented. In this context, China has moved in the opposite direction to the United States. Not only has it forged a strong strategic partnership with Russia, Iran, and Pakistan, but it has engaged in a multilateral institutional building process reminiscent of that undertaken by the United States between 1944 and the beginning of the 1960s, with the intention of creating a favorable international architecture. From the trio, Russia, Iran, and Pakistan, the first of them plays a fundamental role.

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Beijing-Moscow: Strategic Partnership or Axis? China and Russia have shaped a strategic partnership with two main objectives—the stabilization of their respective political regimes and the counterbalance of Western and American influence. For China, the partnership with Russia was a major help in bolstering its efforts to become a global power as Russia provided it with military, diplomatic, and technological support. Thanks to Russia, China made significant advances in modernizing its armed forces and gaining access to energy sources uncontrolled by the Western world. Currently, both countries pursue the strengthening of a multipolar world and have coordinated their foreign policies in relation to multiple issues. The latter includes Iran, Iraq, NATO, North Korea, Libya, Syria, Venezuela, and common positions within the UN Security Council. At the same time, they have acted together in the development of a sub-regional security system in Eurasia. Experts have argued that if American hostility to China and Russia increases, both countries may appeal to some sort of military alliance as a counterbalancing instrument. In 2019, Moscow and Beijing re-labelled their relationship as a “comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination in the new era”. The two parties have expressed their willingness to create a new geopolitical order where the West is excluded from their respective areas of influence. In that sense, according to some analysts, theirs would be a true geopolitical bloc in the making, whereas for others an axis between them already exists. Actually, the Kremlin calls its connection to Beijing as an “allied relationship”, while the latter has asserted that there are “no restricted areas” and “no upper limit” to their partnership (Kim, 2021; Rozman, 2014; Shambaugh, 2020 [1, p. 354]; Tetrais, 2021; Voskressenski, 2020, pp. 233–250). Some of the highlights of this strategic partnership have been the following: China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin have held nearly thirty meetings since 2013; in the military area both countries conducted 111 multiple high-level exchanges, strategic coordination meetings, and joint military drills between 2003 and 2018, while undertaking together equipment and technology developments; in 2021 they reached a bilateral trade of US$140 billion; 40 million tons of crude and 4 billion cubic meters of LNG are transmitted yearly from Russia to China; China remains as the largest export destination for Russia’s agricultural products; China and Russia inked a Memorandum of Understanding to build a shared international scientific research station on the moon; and they

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have supported each other in fields such as vaccine development, epidemic control, and treatment plans (Feng, 2021; Saunders, 2020, p. 202). The Global Times, a propagandistic voice of the Chinese Communist Party, declared that the two countries cannot be separated from each other, maintaining a back-to-back and shoulder-to-shoulder strategic relation. Moreover, it stated that their cooperative relation has no upper limits, which will make any attempt to attack China or Russia a daunting one. Being too big a country to be handled or truly accepted by the West, Russia’s national interest fits China’s aspirations, which in both cases diverge from those of the United States. Their partnership is the most important diplomatic and strategic asset that both countries have in order to confront external challenges (Global Times, 2021).

Why Did Russia Approach China? To understand the reasons why Russia became so close to China, while in the aftermath of the URRS’ collapse it leaned toward Washington, requires some historic background. One of the most difficult moments faced by Gorbachev after the dissolution of the Soviet’s Eastern and Central European bloc was the reunification of Germany in 1990. This implied that Moscow would have to accept a reunified Germany within NATO, which was a bitter concoction to swallow. To make this concoction more palatable, the Americans made a fundamental concession to Gorbachev: As stated by then Secretary of State James Baker, there would be no further expansion of NATO’s jurisdiction one inch to the east. However, Bill Clinton’s administration repudiated this commitment under the argument that Baker’s word had been given to the Soviet Union, which no longer existed (Gaddis, 2005 [2, Chapter 7]). By successive phases, Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Latvia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latonia, Lithuania, Rumania, Croatia, Albania, Montenegro, and Northern Macedonia would all be incorporated into NATO. Russia’s neighborhood would thus become hostile to it. Moreover, the bombardment of Belgrade and the occupation of Serbia by NATO forces, as well as the ulterior recognition given to Kosovo’s independence, in countercurrent to Moscow’s strong objections, also fell within the same Russian resentment chapter; one that also included the creation by the United States of NATO’s Partnership for Peace Program for the former Soviet republics, which began conducting joint military exercises in the region from 1997 onwards. By the same token, all Central

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Asian countries joined NATO’s North American Co-operation Council (NATC), while in 1999 the United States integrated Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, and Moldova into a military structure known by the acronym of GUUAM. Then, between 2004 and 2005, came the color revolutions in Ukraine, Georgia, and Kirgizstan, promoted under Washington’s Freedom Agenda. Equally offensive was the United States’ encouragement of oil and gas pipelines’ building between the former URRS republics of the Caspian Sea and Europe, with the double intention of diminishing Russia’s influence in these counties and the relevance of Russia’s hydrocarbons in Europe (Cooley & Nexon, 2020 [4, p. 52]; Mitchell, 2011; Moniz Bandeira, 2017; Nazemroaya, 2012 [1]; Rutland, 2018, pp. 219–237; Stent, 2014 [1]). Meanwhile, the United States downgraded the United Nations’ Security Council, the only institution where Russia retained parity with it. From Iraq to Libya, the Security Council was bypassed, or its resolutions manipulated to obtain a different result from the one agreed upon. In another context, for eighteen years until finally succeeding in 2012, Russia fought for its admission into the World Trade Organization, the longest negotiation to date. The reason for this delay was Washington’s objection resulting from the application of the Jackson-Vanik Amendment against Russia, a relic from the Cold War. Step by step the United States, duly accompanied by the European Union in this endeavor, tried to reduce Russia to irrelevance. This process not only overlooked Yeltsin’s initial desire to approach the West but also Putin’s support to America’s Global War on Terror, and his aspiration to become an essential partner of Washington in this war. Moreover, it ignored the fact that shortly after entering the Kremlin, Putin, as Yeltsin had done before him, suggested the possibility of Russia joining NATO. In 2013–2014, finally, the West try to cross a bridge too far. Its attempt to incorporate Ukraine into the Western sphere and into NATO was responsible for triggering a strong Russian reaction. Putin’s actions were easy to understand considering that Ukraine is a flat land extension that had been marched over by Napoleonic France, Imperial Germany, and Nazi Germany to invade Russia. No Russian leader would have tolerated that a military alliance that until recently had been Russia’s mortal foe, positioned itself in Ukraine. No one would cross his arms while Ukraine was being integrated into the Western World. Not understanding the portentous meaning that Ukraine has for Russia was indeed a huge blunder (Kissinger, 2014; Mearsheimer, 2014; Stent, 2014 [2, pp. 69–75]).

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Ukraine and Crimea As a result of Putin’s annexation of Crimea and his bold exploits in Southeast Ukraine, the West imposed sanctions on Moscow. This increased resentment and acrimony, and further pushed Russia into Beijing’s arms. It had been Boris Yeltsin, however, the first to put in motion the rapprochement to China, because of America’s doings. After the implosion of the Soviet Union and the emergence of the Russian State, there was an internal struggle inside the Kremlin between groups representing “Atlanticism” and “Eurasianism”. While the former pressed toward Washington, the latter looked in the direction of Asian powers. Had Washington acted differently, the “Atlanticist” group might have prevailed. Actually, the Kremlin’s collaboration with the successive administrations of Bush and Clinton to ensure that the former Soviet nuclear weapons were either destroyed or relocated on Russian soil was exemplary. However, the scale ended up leaning in the opposite direction as a result of Clinton’s gross disregard of Russian sensibilities and his critical standing toward Yeltsin’s handling of the Chechen War. The “Eurasianist” view took shape by way of the so-called Primakov Doctrine. This doctrine bore the name of its architect, Yevgeny Primakov, Prime Minister of Russia between 1998 and 1999, who aimed at building a strategic alliance between his country and China, India, and Iran. The straw that broke the camel and tilted the balance toward Asia, was a consequence of the clash between Boris Yeltsin and Bill Clinton in the meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, held in Istanbul in November 1999. One month later, Yeltsin visited the People’s Republic of China to cement Sino-Russian strategic ties in the face of Washington’s continuous shoving aside of Russia (Nazemroaya, 2012 [2, pp. 169–172, 279–282]; Sarotte, 2021). Russia’s contribution to China may end up becoming of the upmost importance, should an armed conflict erupt between Beijing and Washington. However, in another field this contribution has already proved invaluable to China: Vladimir Putin has become the godfather of rightwing populism, the cancer that threatens to destroy Western democracies from within. This has materialized not only through the Kremlin’s cybercampaigns on populists’ behalf but by way of their ideological affinities. Referring to the Trump-Putin summit, held in Helsinki in July 2018, Robert Kagan said that it was a meeting between allies, with convergent interests and common goals—to destroy the liberal world order that

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the United States had helped create seven decades before. Populism has become a formidable tool within Russia’s geopolitical aim of weakening America’s led network of alliances (particularly NATO), and in promoting the collapse of the European Union. No need to mention that the havoc populism has unleashed in the United States’ political system, has become one of China’s major strategic advances in its confrontation with that country (Cooley & Nexon, 2020 [5, p. 78]; Kagan, 2018). Common sense and the teachings of history would have dictated that the U.S. should not have antagonized China and Russia at the same time. Having to confront simultaneously the second-largest power of the day and a country that still holds more than 5900 nuclear warheads and possesses a modern and well-trained army, becomes America’s largest strategic blunder and security vulnerability. The risk therein derived was certainly not obvious at the close of the twentieth century. However, from 2008 onwards the danger implicit in this dual rivalry became clear. In that year, China’s assertiveness began to take shape while Russia invaded Georgia leaving no doubt that it would not tolerate Western encroachments in Georgia and Ukraine. This should have led Washington to prioritize objectives and rivalries, tuning down and if possible approaching the lesser of the two competitors. America’s current overstretch places it in a huge predicament. In the best-case scenario, Russia can become a major distraction to its handling of China’s rivalry, while in the worst case one China and Russia may coordinate their actions in order to overflow America’s response capacity.

China’s Revisionist Multilateral Building Simultaneous to its important strategic partnership with Russia, China has undertaken a multilateral institutional building process that recalls the efforts of the United States in the final months of WWII or in the following decades. As in the American case, this aims at building a favorable international architecture. There is a crucial difference between the two, however, as China’s international architecture tilts much more toward trade and economy than to security and defense. In essence, China’s ambitions to play a leadership role in global governance are driven by three fundamental motivations: First, to defend Chinese interests on a global scale. Second, to strengthen China’s strategic role in institution building. Third, to broaden China’s voice as a means of legitimizing its role as a global power. Underlying these motivations is China’s need to

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counterbalance the post-WWII U.S.-led alliance-based system (Morton, 2020, p. 164). There seems to exist a contradiction between China’s sponsoring global governance, and its rejection to accept global governance rules when they don’t conform with its “national rejuvenation” project. Two obvious instances of the latter are its refusal to adhere to the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea, of which it is a signatory party, or to accept the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice on South China Sea’s maritime disputes. A fine line seems to separate China as a revisionist power from its leadership ambitions in global governance. A very fine line that China crosses at will according to its interests. However, it must not be forgotten, that Beijing began building this international architecture because it mistrusted the established liberal order. Its purpose was to bypass the cabal of Western-controlled financial institutions that constrained its representativeness. The position China held in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a telling example of the treatment it received there. Although in 2014, China had already surpassed the United States’ GDP measured in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), its voting power within IMF stood at 3.8 percent versus 17.9 percent for the United States. Notwithstanding China’s repeated efforts to be duly recognized, it had to wait until a 2016 reform of the IMF to attain a higher share percentage and voting power. Still, even after that reform, the United States remained the only country with enough votes to block any future major reform. China’s incentive in building an international architecture more akin to its interests was guided hence by a revisionist attitude. But whatever its origins, this process has been creating stakeholders in China’s economic success and standing all over the world and has thus led it to the forefront of international governance. This undoubtedly shields China to a high degree when it crosses the line and becomes a belligerent revisionist power in its own environment. Before going into economic and financial multilateral cooperation building, China had already begun playing an international financial role through the China Development Bank. Dating back to 1994, this institution had become a key international lender. Just in Latin America between 2005 and 2013, the bank’s loans reached US$130 billion. This amount surpassed what the Inter-American Bank and the World Bank together had lent the region during that same period (Guajardo, 2016, p. 69).

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Cooperative Multilateralism In March 2012 the BRICS member countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) agreed to create a development bank. This financial institution aimed at improving access to funds for developing nations, while allowing them to do deals with one another in their local currencies. This was the first of many subsequent initiatives to sidestep the Western-controlled institutions within the world’s financial order. An initiative that included by-passing the grip of the world monetary and financial regime centered in the U.S. dollar. This institution came to life in 2014 as the BRICS’ New Development Bank and was headquartered in Shanghai, in recognition to the pivotal role played by China in its creation. The bank was called to support public and private projects through loans, guaranties, and other financial tools. The initial authorized capital of the bank was of US$100 billion, distributed in equal parts among its five members. In 2015, following the same direction, the BRICS member countries established a Contingency Reserve Arrangement aimed at providing protection against global liquidity pressures. This was seen as a competitor to the International Monetary Fund. Within its initial capital of US$100 billion, US$39.95 billion corresponded to China (Desai, 2012). Superseding the Shanghai Five Group, an institution founded in 1996 under the stewardship of China, the country promoted the creation of its successor: The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Its organizational charter was signed in 2002, becoming functional in 2003. As a multifaceted organization, it goes beyond mutually convened economic support, also covering security and political support. Eight Eurasian states share the membership of this institution, which in addition to China include Russia, India, Pakistan, and four Central Asian states. China was also the dynamo behind two other potent institutions: The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the Silk Road Fund. The former is a multilateral development bank whose main objective is to support infrastructure building in the Asia–Pacific region. Initially, it gathered around thirty-seven regional and twenty non-regional members. Currently, the AIIB has around a hundred members worldwide. Its capital is US$100 billion, which makes it the same size as the Word Bank. Beijing has pledged US$50 billion to the AIIB special fund, aimed at helping low-income countries to develop infrastructural projects. The bank is the outcome, as mentioned before, of a 2013 Chinese proposal and its

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launching was held in Beijing in 2014. The second institution, the Silk Road Fund, is not a multilateral financial organization, but a state-owned investment fund. Its guiding purpose was to foster investments along the mega Belt and Road project that preceded it. Established in 2014 with a Chinese pledge of US$40 billion, its investments are not limited to Asian countries, but include European ones as well. The Silk Road Fund and the AIIB complement each other in the financing of infrastructural developments along the Belt and Road project and leave virtually no space in it for the financial participation of the Washington-based financial institutions. (Toro Hardy, 2020 [2, pp. 99–100]).

Belt and Road The Belt and Road Initiative is a development strategy proposed by China’s government with the objective of promoting connectivity and cooperation projects between Asia, Africa, and Europe. President Xi Jinping unveiled it in 2013. With a price tag surpassing the one trilliondollar mark, this infrastructure mega-development plan encompasses around seventy countries and 65 percent of the world’s population, but also about one-third of the world’s gross domestic product and about a quarter of the world’s trade. With a land route (“Silk Road Economic Belt”) and a maritime route (“Maritime Silk Road”), the plan comprises the construction of railways, highways, oil and gas pipelines, fiber-optic cables, ports, and industrial ports, among other infrastructures. While the land route goes from Lianyungang in China to Rotterdam in the Netherlands, the maritime one would connect Quanzhou in China to Venice in Italy. Moreover, it involves not only “hard” infrastructure along six overland corridors and the Maritime Silk Road but also “soft” infrastructure, as is the case of the financial system needed to promote efficiency and facilitate economic flow. It encompasses an institution building process, susceptible of promoting trade and foreign direct investment. There have been also negotiations aiming at expanding the Belt and Road to Latin America and to the shipping routes of the Artic (Goh, 2017; Gonzalez, 2018). At the same time, through this initiative, China aims at consolidating its neuralgic position at the center of the global supply and manufacturing networks, which will be the clue to the global economy over the next decades. The Chinese regime is aware that with its economy maturing and its income levels rising, lower-wage industries will consolidate their

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migration into less-developed countries. As a result, it neither can nor wants to fight this trend. Much to the contrary, it wishes to turn this process to its advantage, by building itself an inexpugnable position at the heart of the expanding supply-chain web (White, 2017). Parag Khanna considers the Belt and Road Initiative the most significant diplomatic project of the twenty-first century. In his view, it constitutes the equivalent to the mid-twentieth century founding of the United Nations and the World Bank, plus the Marshall Plan, all put together. In magnitude and transformational nature, he asserts, the Belt and Road only compares to the Washington-led world order that emerged in the immediate months before the ending of World War II or in its subsequent years. Even assuming that this may be an overly optimistic vision, the truth is that in 2018 this initiative was envisaging projects totalling US$1.4 trillion which, after adjusting for inflation, would be the equivalent of twelve Marshall plans. Just between January 2015 and August 2017, 15,300 projects worth US$303 billion had been signed within this initiative (Allison, 2018 [1, p. 23]; Cooley & Nexon, 2020 [6, p. 101]; Khanna, 2019 [1, Introduction]).

Other Initiatives China’s wide range of initiatives doesn’t stop there. Beijing has also undertaken a leading role in the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). This is a free trade agreement mechanism that would encompass the ten member states of ASEAN (Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, The Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam) and the six states with which ASEAN currently has free trade agreements, that is, Australia, China, India Japan, South Korea, and New Zealand. Negotiations for RCEP began in 2012. The scale herein involved is enormous as its member states represent a combined GDP of US$49.5 trillion and a population of 3.4 billion people. Just in terms of GDP it would represent around 39 percent of the world’s GDP, thus becoming the largest trading bloc in the planet. The RCEP will be open as well to additional members, mainly Central Asian nations, and remaining countries from South Asia and Oceania. In essence, it is a conventional free trade agreement with a lax structure (Toro Hardy, 2020 [3, pp. 102–103]). China is also behind the Free Trade Area of the Asia–Pacific (FTAAP). This initiative would include nations located at both sides of the Pacific

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Basin. In 2014, at the APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting held in Beijing, a so-called Beijing Roadmap was adopted for its completion at the request of Xi Jinping. In 2016, a collective strategic study of this Free Trade agreement was subsequently approved at the APEC summit held in Lima, Peru. In the Lima gathering, President Xi urged for the materialization of the FTAAP as an answer to an emerging protectionism trend that was denting global trade. He made a call to transform the Asia–Pacific region into a growth engine in what should be an innovative, invigorated, interconnected, and inclusive world economy. Moreover, in September 2021, Beijing asked to join the revamped Trans-Pacific Partnership (now called Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership), whose eleven members moved forward after Trump pulled out from it. Hence, an agreement originally designed to contain China may end up being an additional space for the country to expand its convergence strategy (Xinhua, 2016; World Politics Review, 2021 [1]). In fact, except for a few organizations like the OECD, the International Energy Agency, and the Missile Technology Control Regime, China has become a member of almost every international organization. It has joined several multilateral institutions aimed at promoting development in emerging nations, like the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), with which China has deepened relations, especially through co-investment projects. More importantly, it has promoted or created a wide range of regional groupings around the world such as the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in 2000; the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum in 2004; the Forum for the Ministerial Meeting China-Community of Latin American and Caribbean States in 2006; or the China-Central and Eastern European States Cooperation Forum in 2021. In addition, it has been instrumental in the creation of several groups in Latin America and the Caribbean: China-Latin America Forum, China-Latin America Common Market Dialogue, and China-Latin America Business Summit; all of it with the intention of institutionalizing mechanisms for trade, investments, and economic cooperation, with different regions of the world. Beijing was also behind the creation of the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation Forum, which deals with water management investments (Burglof, 2015; Cooley & Nexon, 2020 [7, pp. 85, 106]; Kondapalli, 2020, pp. 313, 314). In synthesis, the United States and China have been moving in opposite directions. The first, who used to represent the epitome of

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globalization and the epicenter of the most successful and far-reaching hegemonic system in history, has dilapidated its standing. America’s system of alliances has significantly weakened and its role within it shrunken dramatically. Its loss of credibility may turn out to be irreversible in the face of a domestic political system that has proved to be prone to all kinds of excesses and a foreign policy characterized by its zigzags. Trust in the United States is at a historical low. Unless unexpectedly revamped by a conflict with Russia or China, there doesn’t seem to be much future in this area. Meanwhile, China has gone from being an inward-looking society in the 1970s to becoming the most commercially interconnected country in the world, and the main promoter of an Asian-led multilateral world order. Eschewing traditional power politics in favor of what it calls win–win cooperation, Beijing has built economic relations in every corner of the world. As a result, it has transformed itself in the indispensable partner for the many that have intertwined their economic future with China’s success.

Reputational Problems Three key issues, however, are affecting China’s reputation and by extension its capability for convergence building: Its abrasive nationalistic outreach with reference to several of its neighbors (an area where it has become aggressively revisionist); its authoritarian handling of the situation in Hong Kong and very particularly in Xinjiang; and the highly confrontational style of its “wolf warrior” diplomacy, that intimidates and harass countries that criticize or antagonize China and which is the exact opposite to soft power. The question is: Can these issues neutralize the benefits derived from China’s active cooperative multilateralism and the economic opportunities that the country offers so many? The late Lee Kuan Yew, probably the upmost interpreter of East Asian realities, believed that China’s economic sway would be extremely difficult to fight. This included even those of its neighbors with whom it maintained contentious issues. In Lee’s view, China was sucking the South Asian countries into its economic system, and not even Japan or South Korea would be able to avoid being sucked by it as well. On its part Charles Dunst, a Eurasia Group associate, asserts that China’s neighbors value economic cooperation more than security ties and China’s development financing for the region vastly outpaces that of the United States,

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who remains security-focused. Not surprisingly, a 2018 Pew Global Attitudes Survey showed that even with geopolitical contentions very much alive in its own region, China tilts 45 percent in its favor versus forty-four against it (Allison, 2018 [2, p. 23]; Shambaugh, 2020 [2, p. 362]; Siow, 2021). If that is the case for countries that directly resent the Chinese abrasive nationalism, presumably in faraway regions, where economic benefits clearly outweigh other considerations, China’s convergence capacity would not be seriously affected. Paradoxically enough, at a global level many consider China to be the epitome of the international liberal order. Indeed, it has become a paradigm of cooperative multilateralism, international cooperation, integrated supply chains, and multilateral lending. Generally, the liberal international order has been characterized by tree distinct principles: Political liberalism, which includes democratic systems and respect for human rights; economic liberalism, that comprises economic exchanges and investments among states; and cooperative multilateralism, which is tantamount to the management of international relations by way of multilateral institutions. Under this light, Beijing has become the most accomplished practitioner of two of those three principles. At the end, the most influential power will be the one better suited to set agendas, mobilize support and come across as the most reasonable. Within this context, Kishore Mahbubani posed the question of which of the two superpowers of the day was swimming in the same direction of the majority of the other 191 nation-states of the planet. The answer admits no doubt: China (Cooley & Nexon, 2020 [7, Chapter 2]; Dyer, 2014, p. 15; Mahbubani, 2020b [4, p. 13]).

A Big Magnet Besides any other consideration, the Chinese market is and will keep being a magnet for everybody. Between now and 2030, China’s consumption is expected to surpass that of the United States and Western Europe together. Moreover, China displaced the United States as the largest destination for foreign investments, attracting US$163 billions of fresh multinational investment in 2020, while its opening of the mainland capital markets to foreigners is drawing in huge investments. Clusters around the world depend on that country’s consumers, including cars and precision machinery in Germany, banking in Britain, luxury goods in France, mining in Australia, oil in Saudi Arabia, or soya and poultry

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in Brazil. China remains the largest goods trading partner for sixtyfour counties, versus just thirty-eight for the United States. Moreover, exporter countries from all over the world are banking on a postpandemic economic recovery powered by Chinese purchases. While China remains the standard bearer of globalization, the United States is still tied to Trump’s protectionist legacy (Pollack & Bader, 2019; Wang, 2019; World Politics Review, 2021 [2]). Outside the United States there does not seem to exist, indeed, a meaningful support to exclude China from playing an even larger role in global or regional economics. Countries around the world seem to be conscious that while 80 percent of the U.S. economy revolves around its domestic market, the same is not true for them. As The Economist puts it, should the United States try to isolate China, it could end up isolating itself. Beijing can find willing economic partners almost anywhere and is actively engaged in doing so. As a result, its leverage keeps growing. A few paragraphs ago, the question was whether Beijing’s nationalistic outreach, authoritarian handling of the situations in Hong Kong and Xinjiang, and its “wolf warrior” diplomacy might neutralize the benefits derived from its active cooperative multilateralism and economic oriented international relations. It seems probable that precisely the opposite is happening, that its, cooperative multilateralism and the economic instruments at its disposal are neutralizing to an important extent those three negative issues (The Economist, 2021; Zakaria, 2021).

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Burglof, E. (2015, November 25). Will China change the world’s financial institutions? World Economic Forum. https://www.weforum.org/age nda/2015/11/will-china-change-the-worlds-financial-institutions/ Accessed 19 Mar 2020. Cambell, K. M. (2016). The pivot: The future of American statecraft in Asia. Twelve. Collison, S. (2021, June 15). Biden pushes China threat at G7 and NATO, but European leaders tread carefully. CNN . https://edition.cnn.com/2021/06/ 14/world/meanwhile-in-america-june-15-intl/index.html. Accessed 15 June 2021. Conrad, R. (2019). Culture hacks: Deciphering differences in American, Chinese and Japanese thinking. Lioncrest Publishing. Cooley, A., & Nexon, D. (2020). Exit from hegemony: The unraveling of the American global order. Oxford University Press. Desai, R. (2012, April 2). The West must wake up to the growing power of the Brics. The Guardian. Deutsche Welle. (2021, March 26). EU and US similar, but split on China, Merkel says. https://www.dw.com/en/eu-and-us-similar-but-split-on-chinamerkel-says/a-57009094 Accessed 26 Mar 2021. Dorsey, J. M. (2021, September 1). Foreign policy debate rages, but fails to move the needle. The turbulent world of Middle East Soccer. https://medium.com/ the-turbulent-world-of-middle-east-soccer/us-foreign-policy-debate-ragesbut-fails-to-move-the-needle-e3046e21c4ad. Accessed 1 Sept 2021. Dyer, G. (2014). The contest of the century: The new era of competition with China—And how can America win. Alfred A. Knopf. Feng, Q. (2021, March 22). Highlights of China-Russia strategic partnership. Global Times. Fukuyama, F. (2006). After the neoconservatives: America at the crossroads. Profile Books. Gaddis, J. L. (2005). The Cold War: A new history. The Penguin Press. Global Times. (2021, March 22). China-Russia cooperation has no upper limits. Global Times Editorial. https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202103/ 1219115.shtml Accessed 3 June 2021. Goh, S. N. (2017, May 11). China makes tracks on modern Silk Road. The Straits Time. Gonzalez, A. (2018, February 12). Brexit, the US, China and the future of global trade. World Economic Forum. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/ 2018/02/brexit-china-global-trade/ Accessed 4 Mar 2020. Guajardo, J. (2016). A Latin American perspective on China’s growing presence in the region. In R. Riordan & P. Guadalupe (Eds.), Latin America and the Asian giants: Evolving ties with China and India. Brookings Institution Press. Hass, R. (2017, December 28). America and the great abdication. The Atlantic.

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Hass, R. (2021, November/December). The age of America first: Washington’s flawed new foreign policy consensus. Foreign Affairs. Kagan, R. (2003). Paradise and power: America and Europe in the new world order. Atlantic Books. Kagan, R. (2018, July 17). The United States and Russia aren’t allies. But Trump and Putin are. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2018/07/17/629598 855/opinion-the-united-states-and-russia-arent-allies-but-trump-and-put in-are. Accessed 18 July 2020. Kagan, R. (2021, September 23). Our constitutional crisis is already here. The Washington Post. Karni, A. (2021, September 30). Biden campaigned as the anti-Trump. But a clean break is never easy. The New York Times. Khanna, P. (2019). The future is Asian: Global order in the twenty-first century. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Kissinger, H. (2014, November 13). Interview with Henry Kissinger. Spiegel Online. https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/interview-with-henrykissinger-on-state-of-global-politics-a-1002073.html. Accessed 14 May 2021. Kim, P. M. (2021, November 15). China’s search for allies: Is Beijing building a rival alliance system? Foreign Affairs. Kollen, G. S. (2013, November 22). Nixon ends convertibility of US dollars to gold and announces wage/price controls. Federal Reserve History. https:// www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/gold-convertibility-ends. Accessed 24 May 2021. Kondapalli, S. (2020). Regional multilateralism with Chinese characteristics. In D. Shambaugh (Ed.), China and the world (p. 2020). Oxford University Press. Krauthammer, C. (2002, March 1). The axis of petulance. The Washington Post. Lo, B. (2009). Axis of convenience: Moscow, Beijing and the new geopolitics. Brookings Institution Press. Mahbubani, K. (2020a, July 1). Can America lose to China? The National Interest. Mahbubani, K. (2020b). Has China won? The Chinese challenge to American primacy. Public Affairs. Mearsheimer, J. (2014, September/October). Why the Ukraine crisis is the West’s fault. Foreign Affairs. Menon, R. (2021, October 22). What’s really standing in the way of European strategic autonomy. World Politics Review. McGee, L. (2021, September 16). America’s deal with UK and Australia leaves France bruised and Europe in the cold on China. CNN. Mitchell, L. (2011, February 24). North Africa through the lens of the color revolutions. Eurasianet.com. https://eurasianet.org/north-africa-thr ough-the-lens-of-the-color-revolutions. Accessed 3 June 2021.

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Moniz Bandeira, L. A. (2017). The Second Cold War: Geopolitics and the strategic dimension of USA. Springer. Morton, K. (2020). China’s global governance interactions. In D. Shambaugh (Ed.), China and the world. Oxford University Press. Nazemroaya, M. D. (2012). The globalization of NATO. Clarity Press. Paul, T. V. (2018). Restraining great powers: Soft balancing from empires to the global era. Yale University Press. Pollack, J. D., & Bader, J. A. (2019, July). Looking before we leap: Weighing the risk of US-China disengagement. Brookings. https://www.brookings. edu/research/looking-before-we-leap-weighing-the-risks-of-us-china-diseng agement/. Accessed 29 July 2020. Prestowitz, C. (2003). Rogue nation. Basic Books. Rozman, G. (2014). The Sino-Russian challenge to the world order: National identities, bilateral relations, and East versus West in the 2010s. Woodrow Wilson Center Press. Rutland, P. (2018). US foreign policy in Russia. In M. Cox & D. Stokes (Eds.), US foreign policy. Oxford University Press. Sarotte, M. E. (2021, November/December). Containment beyond the Cold War: How Washington lost the Post-Soviet peace. Foreign Affairs. Saunders, P. C. (2020). China’s global military-security interactions. In D. Shambaugh (Ed.), China & the world. Oxford University Press. Schake, K. (2021, May 27). Biden brings more class warfare to foreign policy. The Atlantic. https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2021/06/biden-brings-moreclass-warfare-foreign-policy/174421/. Accessed 2 June 2021. Schmidt, B. (2018). Theories of US foreign policy. In M. Cox & D. Stokes (Eds.), US foreign policy. Oxford University Press. Shambaugh, D. (2020). China and the world: Future challenges. In D. Shambaugh (Ed.), China and the world. Oxford University Press. Siow, M. (2021, August 26). What is the Indo-Pacific region and why does the US keep using this term? South-China Morning Post. Soros, G. (2004). The bubble of American supremacy: Correcting the misuse of American power. Public Affairs. Steltzer, I. (2004). 2004. Atlantic Books. Stent, A. E. (2014). The limits of partnership: U.S.-Russian relations in the twentyfirst century. Princeton University Press. Swanson, A., & Mozur, P. (2019, June 8). Trump mixed economic and national security, plunging the U.S. into multiple fights. The New York Times. Tetrais, B. (2021, November 9). The doomsayers are all wrong about the future of security alliances. World Politics Review. The Economist. (2005, February 19). Pew Research Center poll. The Economist. (2019, November 7). Emmanuel Macron warns Europe: NATO is becoming brain-dead.

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The Economist. (2021, March 20). Dealing with China. Toro Hardy, A. (2006). Can democracy be imposed in the Middle East? Reflections on American neoconservatives. In N. Ayad, N. (Ed.), The impact of technology on intelligence and security. The Diplomatic Academy of London Press. Toro Hardy, A. (2014). Estados Unidos: O declive das súas águias imperiais? Tempo Exterior, XV (29), Xulio-Dezembro. Toro Hardy, A. (2020). China versus the US: Who will prevail? World Scientific. Voskressenski, A. D. (2020). China’s relations with Russia. In D. Shambaugh (Ed.), China and the world. Oxford University Press. Walt, S. (2005). Taming American power. W.W. Norton and Company. Wang, H. (2019). China’s role in the Asian century of globalization. World Economic Forum. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/07/the-dawnof-the-asian-century/ Accessed 2 Aug 2020. White, H. (2017, April, 27). China’s One Belt, One Road to challenge US-led order. The Straits Time. White, H. (2017, November 25). Canberra voices fears but who will contain the dragon? The Straits Time. World Politics Review. (2019a, October 14). Can Modi Steer India back to relevance? World Politics Review. (2019b, November 20). Trump works overtime to shake down allies in Asia and appease North Korea. World Politics Review. (2021, June 28). The backlash against globalized trade is changing, not subsiding. Xinhua. (2016, November 21). Highlights of president Xi’s attendance at the Lima APEC Meeting. https://chinareportasean.com/2016/11/22/highli ghts-of-president-xis-attendance-at-the-lima-apec-meeting/. Accessed 30 Oct 2020. Zakaria, F. (2019, July/August). The self-destruction of American power: Washington squandered the unipolar moment. Foreign Affairs, 98, 10–16. Zakaria, F. (2021, October 19). China Town Hall. National Committee on China Relations.

CHAPTER 6

From Strategic Consistency to Zigzagging

The twenty years that succeeded the end of WWII represented the golden age of America’s foreign policy. It was a rational period where consistency prevailed. Mistakes, there were many, with Vietnam being the most notorious of them. However, in context, the period 1945–1965 showed a high degree of cohesion and predictability. A group of rules of the game and conceptual bases are associated with that period. The rules of the game were essentially the following: The President’s undisputed leadership in foreign policy; the presence of a limited number of political interlocutors who enjoyed ample negotiating powers; and the active participation of a cohesive elite that assumed foreign policy as a sort of group crusade.

Rules of the Game The President of the United States’ leadership in foreign policy was not contested. This was not the result of an express mandate by the Constitution but of a tacit compliance by Congress. The Constitution’s lack of clarity on this topic places foreign policy within the so-called implicit or inherent constitutional powers, in which either tradition or the acquiescence by other branches of power determines who is in charge of what. Through America’s history, this sinuous approach to presidential powers has given rise to important institutional confrontations and debates. It © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 A. T. Hardy, America’s Two Cold Wars, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-9503-2_6

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was perhaps during the successive presidencies of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft when the interpretative gap about presidential powers grew wider. According to Roosevelt, the President was entitled to do whatever the needs of the Nation required, unless expressively forbidden by Constitution or Law. Conversely, Taft believed that the President could not exercise any power that had not been specifically granted by the Constitution or a law approved by Congress. The fact remains, though, that during the period 1945–1965, Congress did not dispute the President’s right to conduct the country’s foreign policy. World War II and the subsequent challenge posed by the Soviet Union had inclined the balance in that direction (Fisher, 1985, pp. 18–19, 23). The main initiatives in foreign policy were implemented by way of negotiations and agreements between a reduced number of political actors, who enjoyed a high degree of representativeness and freedom of maneuver. The simple support given to a presidential initiative in this field by the Senate Majority Leader, or the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Policy Committee, could carry the day. This by extension implied the ample latitude of the power those figures had, able as they were to control important majorities within Congress. This was an expression, as well, of the relatively reserved domain that foreign policy enjoyed. Finally, every President, independently of his political affiliation, could count on the loyal and efficient collaboration of a highly homogeneous elite devoted to the foreign policy of the country. This group, known as the “establishment”, was formed by a network of figures that interconnected Washington, Wall Street, Ivy League universities, and powerful private foundations. Names such as Dean Acheson, George Kennan, Averell Harriman, Robert Lovett, John J. McCloy, Charles Bohlen, James Forrestal, or Paul Nitze represented the best and the brightest of this group. They embodied common values, particularly in their reverence to bipartisanship, moderation, and rationality. Not surprisingly, they have been called “Wise Men”. Theirs were the ideas that guided the foreign policy of the decades that followed World War II, including the containment policy to the Soviet Union. As such, they were the architects of the “creation”, name given to the forging of the Cold War’s main foreign policy guidelines during Truman’s time. The “establishment” gathered around the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations, from where internationalism emerged (Hodgson, 1978; Isaacson & Thomas, 1986).

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Conceptual Bases Together with the rules of the game, a group of conceptual bases guided that period. These bases were mainly three: Internationalism, which advocated the active engagement of the United States in world affairs; bipartisanship, which advanced the idea that foreign policy was too important to be submitted to the blusters of partisan confrontation; and centrism, based on the notion that it was only possible to reach consensus sailing through the middle of the political and ideological spectrum. Internationalism promoted the active engagement of the country in world affairs by contrast to the isolationism that had endured between both world wars and that had been so prevalent all along America’s history. Under its premises, the preservation of the nation’s security had to be found outside its borders and not within them. Only by advancing an international environment favorable to the country’s values, interests, merchandise, and investments, could America’s way of life and safety be preserved. Hence, it was necessary to confront whatever international challenges might emerge, and not try to shield from them by invoking the protection of the surrounding oceans. Moreover, isolationist tendencies within the country had to be confronted from their outset. Bipartisanship responded to the prevailing perception in American politics that the preservation of national security was the natural purview of foreign policy. This implied that an area of such importance could not be submitted to the vicissitudes and zigzags that characterized partisan politics. As such, it was worthy of deferential treatment, whereby both parties were required to search for consensus when dealing with foreign policy matters. Centrism related to the idea that consensus could only be found by avoiding the extremes. According to Theodore Sorensen, consensus has never been tantamount to unity. However, since the end of World War II, moderate politicians were a majority in both parties, which made it easier to reach agreements. By circumventing the antipodes, initially represented by Henry Wallace at the left and Joe McCarthy at the right, a middle ground appeared in which convergence was possible (Sorensen, 1984, p. 13). The implementation of the Marshall plan in 1948 helps to visualize how the rules of the game and the conceptual bases interacted.

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The Marshall Plan In June 1948, Truman’s second Secretary of State, General George Marshall, presented the guidelines of the European Recovery Program in a lecture at Harvard University. Subsequently, the program would be known as the Marshall Plan. This contemplated an economic recovery aid of over US$13 billion (equivalent to US$142 billion in 2020) to Western Europe. Its purpose was to rebuild war-torn regions, modernize industry, improve prosperity, and remove trade barriers. Ultimately, its aim was to prevent the spread of communism in Western Europe. The beneficiaries of this aid included countries that just three years before had been at war with the United States. The plan contemplated the largest transferal of public resources to other countries in history. Even for a politically strong President, whose party was in control of the Senate, this ambitious undertaking would have been a difficult sale. However, political strength was far from being the case. The American political environment at the time had two characteristics: an administration that did not control Congress and low chances of reelection. In fact, eight months before, Truman’s Democrats had lost for the first time in fourteen years the control of both the Senate and the House. In eighteen months, a presidential election was to take place, one in which President Truman’s chances for reelection, given his low popularity, were scant. In other words, the most ambitious economic aid plan in history was being proposed by an administration that had no control over Congress and which presumably would be ousted in just a year and a half. However, ten months after its formal presentation at Harvard, the Marshall Plan had not only been approved by Congress but a Federal Agency in charge of its implementation—the Economic Cooperation Administration—had been created and its funds allocated. How was this possible? Several reasons can explain what made this possible: 1. The respect that the President of the United States had in an area under his implicit constitutional power, outweighed the political weakness of the temporary tenant of the White House. 2. The fact that national security was involved, allowed for this issue to be dealt with all due respect and consideration, thus propitiating bipartisan convergence. 3. The support given to the plan by the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Republican Senator Arthur

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Vanderberg, had sufficient standing to commit the vote of most of the Senate. Favorable voting senators not only recognized the leadership in this area of the Chairman of the Committee with jurisdiction on the matter but respected the agreement reached within the Committee. 4. The dissent to the Marshall Plan that existed within the extremes of the political spectrum was manifestly overcome by the moderate majorities within both parties. 5. Internationalism’s supporters, comprising bankers, scholars, press editors, union leaders, and the like, gathered in an intensive public opinion campaign within the so-called Committee for the Marshall Plan. 6. Acting as organizers and eager beavers of said Committee, the members of the “establishment” played a pivotal role in its promotion.

Containment The same basic elements that were so effective during the Marshall Plan’s implementation remained in place until 1965. A workable foreign policy system had been established. At the center of this system, a clear sense of purpose prevailed in relation to what its main objective was: Containment. The United States would seek to contain Soviet expansionism by pushing back against it with economic, political, and, if needed, military means (Toro Hardy, 1988, [1, pp. 7–13]). But, why containment? In successive wartime summits at Teheran, Yalta and Potsdam, Soviet and American leaders decided that at the end of the war, they would be responsible for rebuilding the nations under their control (Eastern Europe and North Korea for the Soviets, Western Europe, Japan, and South Korea for the United States), and that they would allow free elections in their occupied countries. Joseph Stalin, however, failed to live up to his commitment. Instead of permitting elections, he installed communist puppet regimes in the Soviet Union-occupied territories. Thus, Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania in Europe, and North Korea in Asia became Soviet satellites. In famous 1946 speeches at Fulton Missouri and at Westminster College, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill decried that an “Iron Curtain” had fallen across Europe. Indeed, in 1946, American chargé d’affaires

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in Moscow, George Kennan, sent an 8000-word telegram to the State Department stating his views on the Soviet Union expansionist policies. In this “long telegram”, he explained the need for the United States to contain them. As Kennan put it in a published version of his argument the following year, a “long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies” was necessary. This gave birth to what would become America’s main foreign policy strategy in the decades to follow (Gaddis, 2005, Chapter 1; Kroenig, 2020, pp. 140–142). Hence, America’s foreign policy system was structured around a group of rules of the game and conceptual bases and had at its center a clear strategic purpose. It was a solid and functional system. However, in 1965, this whole structure was shaken to its foundations. A war event and a President were responsible for it. The former was Vietnam; the latter, Lyndon B. Johnson. As a variation on the central theme of containment, President Dwight D. Eisenhower introduced the concept of the “falling domino” principle in relation to Indochina. Within the analogy of a row of dominoes situation, it was fundamental to avoid the first one being knocked over. Otherwise, the whole row could follow. In this case, the row might include the whole of Southeast Asia and even more. Events in Vietnam, during his Administration, were seen under this light. Eisenhower’s successor John F. Kennedy would follow suit with this principle, making of Vietnam a test case of America’s determination to contain the expansion of communism in the region. However, although he opened the door for the subsequent massive American military involvement there, he kept it within limits. It was up to Lyndon B. Johnson, after Kennedy’s assassination, to put in motion that massive involvement (Leeson & Dean, 2009).

Johnson, Vietnam, and the Foreign Policy Crisis Johnson’s domestic “Great Society” program had already won him a place of privilege in the history of the United States. Moreover, his relationship with Congress concerning this overtly ambitious package of domestic reforms in civil rights, education, or fight against poverty, had been masterly. Why then, would it be Johnson precisely the one to bring havoc upon America’s foreign policy system? Johnson would wreck it because although he was one of the most experienced politicians to have reached the presidential office, he had little experience of international affairs.

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His insecurity in this area led him to overreact in relation to Vietnam, fearing that if he didn’t show enough resolve in confronting communism, his “Great Society” would be seriously affected. In doing so, he created a nightmare for himself and for his country (Destler et al., 1984, pp. 61–62). As the country got increasingly bogged down in an uncertain war with no end in sight, the gap between the official optimistic messages and the costs involved led to a loss of presidential credibility. In 1964 and 1965, Johnson deliberately created expectations that could not survive a long war, while making of this “his” war. Meanwhile, 1965 became the year in which 175,000 American soldiers were sent to Vietnam and the bombing of North Vietnam began. On this occasion, however, instead of searching for common grounds with Congress, it seemed as if he just wanted to extract a blank check from it (Neustadt, 1986, p. 168). From this moment onwards, dramatically, everything within the foreign policy system got jolted out of place. Congress began to assert its prerogatives in foreign policy, thus contesting the inherent constitutional powers of the President. Legal constrains to the presidential power in the conduction of the country’s foreign policy soon followed. In this respect, a long list of legislative initiatives took shape including the Case Act of 1972, the War Powers Act of 1973, the Hughes-Ryan Amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act in 1974, the Jackson-Vanik Amendment to the Trade Act in 1974, the Arms Export Control Act of 1976, or the Boland Amendment between 1982 and 1984. A cacophony of voices within the Senate shouted down the deference that had existed toward leadership in foreign policy matters. The establishment, on its side, divided itself before losing all relevance, amid the emergence from nowhere of a legion of foreign policy experts and think tanks with conflicting and quarrelsome points of view. Bipartisanship became a much more difficult task. And so on (Herring, 2008, Chapter 18; Toro Hardy, 1988, [2, pp. 66–81]). However, the emerging tumult did not drag everything on its path. Internationalism remained in place as a fundamental guiding principle of America’s foreign policy. Centrism continued to be the natural way of building up consensus amid the more vociferous extremes which, by extension, kept alive the need for bipartisanship. And containment endured as America’s main foreign policy strategy. Overall, the foreign policy system, even if badly wobbled, would show a remarkable resilience. In the following decades, America’s foreign policy vessel would sail wilder seas without losing its course. The years 1977–1979 are a good example

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of this. Even if the White House had to wage battles with Congress for each of its foreign policy initiatives, the odds remained very much in its favor. During that triennium, President Carter engaged in five confrontations with the Senate in relation to the following issues: The Panama Canal Treaty, the arms sales to moderate Arab countries, military assistance to Turkey, the veto to the Defense Bill, and the normalization of diplomatic relations with the Popular Republic of China. In those five battles, the White House ended up carrying the day. And that would be the case until the end of the Cold War, although there were moments when the wrestle between Congress and the White House could get rough, like in the so-called Iran-Contra Affair, during President Reagan’s second term in office (Toro Hardy, 1984, pp. 147–148). Nowadays, there is no course to follow, nor is there a foreign policy vessel in sight, at least not one that embodies a structured system. The United States does have a foreign policy, though, one that reinvents itself every time a new correlation of political forces takes hold in Washington. Polarization, indeed, seems to have snatched the American political system away, tearing apart its strategic consistency in international affairs.

America’s Divides In the past, the United States was split vertically by its multiple divides. This was consistent with the anti-majoritarian nature of the system that its Founding Fathers had so carefully constructed. Today, however, partisan identities have merged with those multiple divides, generating two overwhelming majorities. These antagonistic majorities have in turn solidified into differentiated identities who exist side by side demonizing each other. A virtual civil war of identities seems to be crisscrossing America. As a result, a dangerous horizontal fracture is splitting not only the political system but society itself. Under those circumstances, the decision-making process suffers blockages, and a radical change inevitably follows every time a new political correlation of power takes place in Washington. This argument needs to be put in context. Thomas Hobbes had no faith in human nature. Left to their free will, humans tended to fall into the worst excesses. Therefore, to save mankind from itself, a strong State was required—The Leviathan, called to provide law and order in exchange for the liberties of its citizens. The Founding Fathers of the United States shared Hobbes’ mistrust in human nature, but the

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medicine they envisioned went in a totally different direction from his. Instead of proposing an oppressive State, they aimed at dividing power as much as possible. Among other things, this empowered factions to check one another through a negative equilibrium of forces. Consequently, competing powers and factions would have no other option than to bargain and compromise (Micklethwait & Wooldridge, 2015, pp. 45, 46; Rauch, 2021, [1, p. 188]). To the extent that every recto had its verso, and that these proliferated amid numerous single interest groups, society thus could control itself. Nonetheless, for this to happen naturally, minorities had to be protected from the standardizing effect of too powerful a majority. When minorities thrived, the role of the State was to channel their differences by allowing them to preserve their own space. This in turn, as mentioned above, required avoiding the emergence of an overwhelming majority. Hence, the anti-majoritarian nature of the American political system. This antipathy toward majorities also found expression inside Government institutions. A classic example was the two senators assigned to each state of the Union, independent of its population. As a result, in our day’s Senate, Kentucky or Montana are worth as much as California or New York. This mechanism puts in check the system of representation by population established in the House of Representatives.

A Fractured Society Matters have now changed, and a curious fusion of the factions is altering the anti-majoritarian nature of the system. The numerous rectos and versos, which were called to control each other through bargain and negotiation, are merging into the two major political parties. Two great majorities—Republicans and Democrats—have been integrating them within their ranks. Examples in this direction are many and stark. There is an economic divide whereby some sustain that lowering taxes to the rich promotes investments, while others believe in redistribution by way of taxation; there is a regional divide, expressing the dichotomy failuresuccess that exists between regressive hinterland areas tied to rural or decaying industrial zones, and booming coastal cities associated to intensive knowledge industries; there is a racial divide in which a shrinking white population perceives itself as a besieged fortress, and an expanding colored one that feels discriminated and vulnerable; there is a cultural divide where some hang on to the past as an identity anchor, whereas

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others want to reinterpret that past under the light of current values; there is a religious divide where the immovable certainties of the revealed truth clash with the reason and the moderation invoked by a more secular or theologically moderate population; there is an environmental divide whereby sceptics to climate change support fossil fuels and traditional basic industries being confronted by those who believe in climate change and claim for a green economy; there is an arms-bearing divide in which while some feel entitled others feel threatened; there is an abortion divide in which some see an attack against human life, while others see an attack against their body rights; there is a knowledge divide where some disparage science and merit while others defend them; there is an educational divide where the scant opportunities derived from the lack of a College degree is contrasted by the widening of opportunities resulting from it; there is an immigration divide where some look at it as an existential threat to the nation while others value it as an integral part of America’s successful melting pot machine; there is a gender identity divide that for some remains straightforwardly traditional, whereas for other admits multiple variations; there is a reality divide whereby some privilege convictions over facts while others believe in a verifiable reality. And so on and so forth. Until not long ago these differences appeared inside vertical social fractures, which allowed for countless groups with contrasting beliefs to balance each other out. No other country was so well prepared as the United States to deal with those divisions and to control majorities. Not anymore, because the system is being turned upside down as Republicans and Democrats delineate two alternative visions of society based on the summation of those vertical divides. The result is none other than a gigantic horizontal fracture of the American society as such. One in which two irreconcilable majorities face each other in an existential confrontation, as everything they represent threatens the existence of the other. This aberrant horizontal fracture is not only disjointing the country’s institutions but detaching the communal bonds that hold society together. The Latin words that symbolize America’s ideal of society “e pluribus unum”—out of many, one—have lost all their meaning, giving birth to a seemingly unmanageable social polarization. It has been said that a single vote can now encompass a person’s religion, race, ethnicity, gender, neighborhood, and even her or his favorite grocery store. As a result, partisanship becomes tantamount to megaidentity, with all the psychological and sociological implications therein

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involved. Being a Democrat or a Republican belongs to a person’s core identity. This carries, of course, into the foreign policy realm, where Republicans and Democrats now seemingly inhabit different planets. The American Enterprise Institute 2020 poll found that 64 percent of Democrats saw Republican policies so misguided that they posed a serious threat to the country, while 75 percent of Republicans thought exactly the opposite. This kind of polarization rings particularly true in the Federal Congress. Moreover, with Republican incumbents in the Senate continually vulnerable to primaries where extremists could derail their careers, moving into the fringe themselves seems to be the best way to secure those careers. That being the case, how to have a functional foreign policy system? How can there be any kind of consistency or continuity in this area? How to avoid a Sisyphus type of syndrome, carrying a huge rock to the top of the mountain only to see it roll down with the arrival of every new Administration of a different political sign? (Enten, 2021; Klein, 2020, p. 69; Patrick, 2021; Rauch, 2021, [2, p. 193]).

Between Dispersion and Bashing If that was not enough to promote inconsistency, there is more to add. The United States continues to act as “the” global player, notwithstanding its limitations. As a result, it involves itself simultaneously in multiple geopolitical scenarios, which includes six regional military commands distributed all around the world. This increases its risks of dispersion, distraction, or loss of priorities. During the Trump Administration, the United States went off on a tangent and almost unleashed a totally unnecessary war with Iran. This could have bogged the country there, with unforeseeable consequences or time involved. This of course would have meant an unexpected gift to China. According to Beijing’s self-conceptualized “strategic opportunity”, the first two decades of the new millennium were supposed to be a relatively benign period, in which the country could increase its power without fearing serious foreign challenges. Although that period of strategic opportunity ended earlier than expected, a war between the United States and Iran would have extended it beyond China’s wildest imagination. Hubris, dispersion, and short spans of attention are a dangerous combination. One in which, given its current polarized domestic situation, the United States cannot afford to indulge.

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There is nonetheless a subject on foreign policy that could somewhat resemble a strategy shared by Republicans and Democrats and that is the containment of China. A proof of this could be that in June 2021, the two parties were agreed to pass a US$200 billion Innovation and Competition Act, with the aim of improving competitiveness with China. Notwithstanding the manifestly insufficient amount, it showed at least that this is a rare topic on which both parties can converge. The only American political sector reluctant to assume a forceful standing against China is the Progressive Democrats, which fearful of the implications of a Cold War with that country, has been advocating for restraint. However, more than a well thought over and structured strategy, this common position responds to intense feelings of mistrust and insecurity toward China. Kishore Mahbubani refers to them as subconscious emotions, whereas former Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson categorizes America’s position toward China as attitude, not policy. In sum, an emotional attitude guides the U.S. approach toward China. One characterized by its bashing and its lack of any kind of master plan on how to confront that country’s ascendancy. The different perceptions of what role allies can play in this endeavor underscore the absence of a master plan. While Trump believed that there was no role for them to play, as he put allies on an almost equally bashing level as China, Biden aims at conforming a sort of phalanx of liberal democracies to go against Beijing. The fact that both parties live in different foreign policy planets does not help to build a master plan (Bade, 2021; Mahbubani, 2020, pp. 7, 253; Reynolds, 2021; Sanders, 2021).

A Focused China The situation of China is completely different to that of the United States. Beijing has a clear national project and a well-rounded foreign policy aimed at supporting the materialization of that project. Moreover, its geopolitical ambitions are much more localized, interconnected, and, in most instances, closer to home. That helps preserving its focus and accordingly, all its actions are related to a group of converging strategies. These include from attaining China’s “Great Unification” with Taiwan, to controlling the South China Sea through its Nine Dash Line and its “sea denial” positioning; from establishing an Air Defense Identification Zone over most of the East China Sea to its aiming at pushing America’s naval presence farther out into the western Pacific; from undermining U.S.’

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alliances with other Asian countries to foster a strategic cooperation with Russia; from consolidating a two oceans blue-water navy able to protect its trade sea-lanes in the Pacific and the Indian oceans, to acquiring port facilities in the latter. All ends adding up to a dual but intertwined notion: Strengthening China and overcoming its external vulnerabilities. This, in turn, is complemented by its economic objectives, which include the making of China the epicenter of an Asian-led global economic order and attaining world technological leadership. Its Belt and Road Initiative falls under the former. But more broadly, China has defined a pristine national project: Becoming the number one power in the world by 2049. According to former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, China marches toward the perception of its global destiny, with a clear strategy in mind. Such destiny is none other than the resurrection of its historical glory (Rudd, 2017). A sophisticated and clearly identifiable Chinese civilization is traceable back to 1500 BC, making it the oldest continuous civilization in the world. Having been amid the cradles of human civilization and a commanding presence throughout recorded history, for millennia China enjoyed the privileges of the great powers of the world. From the beginning of the seventeenth century up to the beginning of the nineteenth, China represented between a quarter and a third of the world’s GDP. In 1776, Adam Smith wrote that China was richer than the whole of Europe put together, and even as recently as 1820, China could account for thirty percent of the global GDP (Gunder Frank, 1994; Maddison, 2003; Ropp, 2010). But while several countries of Europe led by Britain experienced the tremendous economic boost that their industrial revolutions carried, China remained bound to its traditional economy. Simultaneously, a European military modernization took place, which again China did not follow. This coalesced in the so-called “Century of Humiliation” when a lagging China was brought to its knees by more modern nations. The dramatic downturn of the country’s history, which began with the opium wars with Britain between 1840–1842 and 1856–1858, was to end with China’s worst nightmare—The Japanese occupation between 1937 and 1945, which caused twenty million Chinese deaths. In between, all kinds of concessions and debasements were extracted and inflicted, including the loss of millions of square kilometers of Chinese territory. During this period, China lost Taiwan and the Ryukyus Islands as well as its formal

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suzerainty over Korea, Vietnam, and Burma. And, of course, it had to forcefully lease Hong Kong to the British for ninety-nine years. With the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the country put an end to this humiliation by foreign powers and began to stand tall again. This has been a fundamental legitimacy title for the Communist regime. The commemoration of the one-hundredth anniversary of such an event is thus the moment when China should attain its destiny and become the number one power in the world. Several notions are therein involved: Rejuvenation, resurgence, redress, and reprisal. But behind all of them, lies not only a clear sense of purpose but a forceful nationalistic drive shared by the Chinese Communist Party and by the country’s population. Bringing its intentions into the limelight has provided China with three tangible benefits: It buttresses the nationalistic resolve of its population and unifies it under shared goals; it coalesces the country’s different levels of leadership under common banners; and it provides a clear sense of direction, thus avoiding the risks of dispersion or distraction. A potent leadership that sets the tone reinforces all of this by avoiding internal dissensions or factional infighting.

Xi’s Autocracy Xi Jinping is the leader and the tone that he is setting for China aims at making it strong, in the same way Deng made it prosper, and Mao made it stand up. In order to restore China to a position of world’s leadership, Xi believes that a one-man rule is necessary. As a result, he has almost completely disassembled forty years of mechanisms designed for collective leadership. Those mechanisms were put in place by Deng Xiaoping after Mao’s death, to avoid the concentration of too much power in a single political figure. And although thanks to his personal stature, connections, and breadth of experience, Deng was able to reserve for himself key decisions, a true collective leadership was implemented after his retirement. This implied that the Standing Committee of the party’s Politburo made policy decisions based on consensus and compromise. Within it, issues were submitted to open discussion and debate behind closed doors. Xi’s disassembling of this system takes back the decision-making process to the time when a single voice could impose itself without dissention. Concurrently, came the elimination of a term limit on Xi’s presidency, a result of the amendment of the country’s Constitution at the 2018 National

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People’s Congress. Not surprisingly, Xi’s power is being compared to that of Mao Zedong, surpassing even that of Deng. During the November 2021 Sixth Plenum of the party’s Central Committee, a bold so-called “history resolution” enshrined his historical position along Mao, positioning him as the country’s modern savior (Blanchette, 2021a; Holtz, 2018; Nakazawa, 2017; Oftedal, 2017; Zhao, 2020, [1, pp. 88, 90, 91]). How to assess this change in terms of efficacy? A collective leadership implied an institutionalized system of ruling and succession. This system is lacking in an autocratic one, where not only checks and balances within the party disappear but where, more importantly, the sudden death of the core leader would subject the country to a period of disarray. The latter could affect significantly the efficacy of the system. Conversely, however, a collective leadership was tantamount to a weak leadership. A weak leadership, in turn, was equal to strong factions (essentially four of them: The Communist Youth League or Tuanpai, the Tsinghua clique, the Shanghai gang, and the Princelings). This caused the competition of the different vested interests from within the party to impose their own views and, in this case, their own foreign policy agendas. It translated, crucially, into a much more independent People’s Liberation Army. The military, indeed, seemed to have been walled off from the rest of the Party-State. Weak leaders were not able to control a strong military nor did they have sufficient political leverage for resisting, if needed, a vociferous nationalistic public opinion (Dyer, 2014, pp. 36, 37). When Xi Jinping took power, there were serious concerns that the civilian leadership was losing control over the military. At the same time, the party was plagued by corruption, power struggles, and even by the threat of fragmentation. To make matters worse, there was a growing disconnection between the party and the people. Fears about a crumbling of the party rule were very much in the air. Xi used his anti-corruption campaign not only to address that pressing problem but also as a tool to push his rivals and their respective competing factions out of the way. More to the point, the anti-corruption campaign allowed Xi to impose his control over the military. The scale of the investigations and purges is almost incomprehensible. Since late 2012, when the campaign began, more than 2.7 million party officials have been investigated, while 1.5 million of them have been purged. The latter included seven members of the Politburo and the Cabinet. The campaign has encompassed purging about two dozen high-ranking generals and investigating 13,000 army

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officers. But in addition to this, Xi undertook the most thorough reorganization of the People’s Liberation Army since the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949, unifying it under his control in a manner that escaped almost any of his predecessors. He has received public proclamations of allegiance by an important number of top military officials. Within the party itself, Xi not only reduced the number of members of the Standing Committee of the Politburo from nine to seven but chairs in person all the important groups responsible for policymaking. As a result, he is not first among equals, but simply the first. This seems to have increased the efficacy of the regime by overcoming the fracture of political power that existed within it, and by maintaining the People Liberation Army’s in tune with the party’s guidelines. His strong and nationalistic leadership, which appeals to the prevailing sentiments in the country, has reconnected the CCP with the population, thus restoring the legitimacy of the party. This translates into a clear-cut agenda, firm control of power, the possibility of coordinated action through the different levels of civilian and military leadership, and shared goals between the rulers and the ruled (Economy, 2014; McGregor, 2019; Rosen, 2021; South China Morning Post, 2021; Zhao, 2020, [2, p. 102]). However, if a clear-cut agenda, a firm control of power, the possibility of coordinated actions, and the presence of shared goals with the Chinese people were not enough to firmly sustain the rudder of the country’s foreign policy in a given direction, then there is more. Xi Jinping’s attention is being directed to a focal point in time. Besides the aim of transforming China in the top dog by 2049, Xi foresees the next ten to 15 years as a strategic window of opportunity for his country. During this period, according to Xi’s line of thinking, Beijing would be able to take advantage of what he calls “profound changes unseen in a century”. A perceived shift in the global balance of power away from the United States, together with China’s rapid technological advances, demand bold and immediate actions. By narrowing his vision to a particular time frame, Xi is instilling a tremendous sense of determination in the Chinese political system, focusing its energies in a group of converging and mutually reinforcing strategies. Nothing remotely similar can be seen on the American side (Blanchette, 2021b). The most evident downside of this situation, however, is that the longer Xi remains in charge, the more the political structure will adapt to his personality and his objectives. This equates his person to the political stability of the country. Without any indication of when and how he

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will exit power, China faces the possibility of a destabilizing succession crisis. Throughout the history of the People’s Republic, there have been many instances of traumatic succession infighting. From Mao’s designated heir Lin Biao, who died in 1971 in a mysterious plane crash when trying to flee the country, to the arrest in 1976 of the “Gang of Four” who attempted to seize power after Mao’s death and from the side-lining in 1978 of Mao’s handpicked successor Hua Guofeng to Deng’s unseating of his designated successors Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang in 1980, this has been a topic susceptible of intense political turmoil. When Xi Jinping acceded to leadership, a predictable and peaceful transfer of power had been the norm for decades. Now again, uncertainty looms in the air. Specially so as the stability of the country depends on an overweight sixty-eight-year-old man with a history of smoking, who is a notorious workaholic carrying on his shoulders the problems of a country of almost 1.4 billion inhabitants. Should he die suddenly, China may find itself in big trouble (Blanchette & McGregor, 2021).

References Bade, G. (2021, May 19). Progressives warn Biden, congress against fueling hatred with anti-China measures. Politico. https://www.politico.com/news/ 2021/05/19/china-policies-racism-489688. Accessed 14 June 2021. Blanchette, J. (2021a, July/August). Xi’s gamble: The race to consolidate power and stave off disaster. Foreign Affairs. Blanchette, J. (2021b, November 23). Xi’s confidence game: Beijing’s actions show determination, not insecurity. Foreign Affairs. Blanchette, J., & McGregor, R. (2021, July 20). China’s looming succession crisis: What will happen when Xi is gone? Foreign Affairs. Destler, I. M., Gelb, L. H., & Lake, A. (1984). Our own worst enemy: The unmaking of American foreign policy. Simon & Schuster. Dyer, G. (2014). The contest of the century: The new era of competition with China—And how can America win. Alfred A. Knopf. Economy, E. (2014, November/December). China’s imperial president: Xi Jinping tightens his grip. Foreign Affairs. Enten, H. (2021, November 20). Statistically democrats and republicans hate each other more than ever. CNN. https://edition.cnn.com/2021/11/20/pol itics/democrat-republican-hate-tribalism/index.html. Accessed 21 November 2021. Fisher, L. (1985). Constitutional conflicts between congress and the president. Princeton University Press.

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Gaddis, J. L. (2005). The cold war: A new history. The Penguin Press. Gunder, F. A. (1994, December). The world economic system in Asia before European hegemony. The Historian, 56(2), 259–276. Herring, G. C. (2008). From colony to superpower: U.S. Foreign relations since 1776. Oxford University Press. Hodgson, G. (1978). America in our time: From world war II to Nixon. Vintage Books. Holtz, M. (2018, February 28). Xi for life? China turns its back in collective leadership. Christian Science Monitor. https://www.csmonitor.com/World/ Asia-Pacific/2018/0228/Xi-for-life-China-turns-its-back-on-collective-leader ship. Accessed 15 June 2021. Isaacson, W., & Thomas, E. (1986). The wise men: Six friends and the world they made. Simon & Shuster. Klein, E. (2020). Why we’re polarized. Avid Reader Press. Kroenig, M. (2020). The return of great power rivalry: Democracy versus autocracy from the ancient. Oxford University Press. Leeson, P. T., & Dean, A. M. (2009, July). The democratic domino theory: An empirical investigation. American Journal of Political Science, 53(3), 553–551. Maddison, A. (2003). The world economy: Historical statistics. OECD. Mahbubani, K. (2020). Has China won? The Chinese challenge to American primacy. Public Affairs. McGregor, G. (2019, September/October). Party man: Xi Jinping’s quest to dominate China. Foreign Affairs. Micklethwait, J., & Wooldridge, A. (2015). The fourth revolution: The global race to reinvent the state. Penguin Books. Nakazawa, K. (2017, October 23). Xi Jinping and the end of collective leadership. Nikkei Asia. https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Xi-Jinping-and-the-endof-collective-leadership. Accessed 15 June 2021. Neustadt, R. E. (1986). Presidential power. Macmillan Publishing. Oftedal, S. H. (2017, January). China’s collective leadership at crossroads? Norwegian Institute for Defense Studies. https://www.jstor.org/stable/res rep25801?refreqid=pub-view%3A488bb1ddacec72e684b89514db96565c& seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents. Accessed 15 June 2021. Patrick, S. M. (2021, June 7). America’s ‘return’ might not be enough to revive the West. World Politics Review. Rauch, J. (2021). What’s ailing American politics. In J. Goldberg (Ed.), The American crisis: What went wrong: How we recover. Simon & Shuster. Reynolds, S. (2021, June 7). A landmark industrial policy bill aim at countering China easily clears the Senate in a bipartisan vote. The New York Times. Ropp, P. S. (2010). China in world history. Oxford University Press. Rosen, D. H. (2021, July/August). China’s economic reckoning: The price of failed reforms. Foreign Affairs.

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Rudd, K. (2017, October 23). “Xi Jinping” offers a long-term view of China’s ambitions. Financial Times. Sanders, B. (2021, June 17). Washington’s dangerous new consensus on China. Foreign Affairs. Sorensen, T. (1984). A different kind of presidency. Harper & Row Publishers. South China Morning Post. (2021, June 24). As the Communist Party turns 100, Xi Jinping has a problem: Who will take over? Toro Hardy, A. (1984). ¿Para Qué una Política Exterior? Editorial Ateneo de Caracas. Toro Hardy, A. (1988). El Desafío Venezolano: Como Influir las Decisiones Políticas Estadounidenses. Universidad Simón Bolívar. Zhao, S. (2020). China’s foreign policy making process: Players and institutions. In D. Shambaugh (Ed.), China and the world. Oxford University Press.

CHAPTER 7

From Economic High Ground to Economic Lowland

At the end of the 1970s, the Soviet Union was sustaining a defense budget that represented around the same aggregate amount than that of the United States, but from a GDP base that was but a fraction of its American counterpart. Moreover, while the U.S. economy was highly diversified, the Soviet one was exceedingly dependent on the export of its oil and raw materials. In other words, the latter’s military expenses not only imposed an irrational economic burden but were contingent on inherently volatile economic resources. Moreover, the United States was able to “offset” the Soviet Union’s advantage in force size, by maintaining a technological edge. That meant forcing the USSR into even bigger expending to compensate for the technological gap. Finally, as the two superpowers’ competition was global, so were the scenarios where the Soviet Union had to deploy its military presence.

A Vulnerable and Hyper Militarized Society More precisely, by the end of the 1970s the Soviet Union was sustaining a defense burden comparable to that of the United States, while its gross domestic product was just about one-sixth in size to that of America. According to some estimates, by mid-1980s, Moscow’s defense expenditures made up a whopping 17 percent of the country’s GDP. However, Eduard Shevardnadze, the future Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs, went © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 A. T. Hardy, America’s Two Cold Wars, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-9503-2_7

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much further than that, when estimating that up to 50 percent of the Soviet Union GDP was being devoted to defense spending (Gaddis, 2005, [1, Chapter 6]; Harvey, 2003, [1, p. 330]; Kroenig, 2020, [1, p. 125]). But whatever the true percentage of the Soviet Union’s defense expending in relation to its GDP, or of the size of its gross domestic product in relation to that of the United States, one thing is certain: The amount of such expenditures was not only utterly irrational but transformed the country into a hyper militarized society. Excluding a few shop-window sectors such as the space program, some areas of medicine, and little more, the Soviet economy was grinded as a result. Moreover, while in the 1970s and 1980s roughly 20 percent of the global economic activity occurred within the United States, the Soviet economy was that of a major oil exporter. This made it a highly volatile one. Moscow benefited from the price increases derived from the Arab oil embargo triggered by the 1973 Egyptian Israeli war, in the same way it was badly hit by the downfall of oil prices in the mid-1980s. Hence, while Washington had a strong and highly diversified economy able to sustain its military expenditures on solid ground, Moscow’s expenditures were dependent on the vagaries of geopolitical or market forces beyond its control. However, despite high oil prices during the 1970s, the Soviet economy did not grow due to the “long stagnation” that had set in during the 1960s. Therefore, when the oil prices plummeted in the 1980s, its already exhausted economy simply went into shambles (Gaddis, 2005, [2, Chapter 6]; Glasser, 2019; Harvey, 2003 [2, p. 328]; Kroenig, 2020, [2, p. 144]).

Lagging Technology and Escalating Compromises As if the above were not enough, the United States was able to offset on its behalf their military correlation, by maintaining a technological edge. The First Offset Strategy materialized in the 1950s during Eisenhower’s time. As Moscow’s deterrent approach was based on the overwhelming superiority of its conventional forces, Washington refused to pay the economic penalty of matching it man-for-man or tank-for-tank, aiming at a smaller but technologically superior force. To that end, it emphasized reliance on strategic and tactical nuclear weapons, including missiles, rockets, and artillery shells tipped with low-yield atomic warheads. Eisenhower’s “New Look” national security policy referred to atomic weapons as “more bang for the buck”. So, conventional forces, which were

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more demanding on the “buck”, were cut dramatically. A Second Offset Strategy was put in place at the end of the 1970s, during Jimmy Carter’s time. It was evident from the beginning of that decade, that the First Offset Strategy had run its course for two reasons. Firstly, Moscow’s nuclear arsenal had become as powerful as that of the United States, transforming any early use of tactical nuclear weapons an unnecessary invitation to nuclear escalation. Secondly, Moscow’s quantity superiority in conventional assault forces had been matched in quality to those of NATO. To turn around that situation, Washington undertook the development of conventional weapons able of near-zero miss through the ability to look deep and shoot deep. This was obtained by the operational merging of several weapon systems—Airborne targeting radars, guided anti-armor sub munitions, missiles, and air-delivered bombs plus ground-based data processing stations. Under this military-technological revolution, conventional guided munitions could attain battlefield results comparable to those of tactical nuclear weapons. As a result, the Soviet Union had to escalate its expending to compensate in volume of armaments what it lacked in technological proficiency (Herring, 2008, p. 659; Work & Grant, 2019). The Soviet Union military expenditures run high for an additional reason: As a superpower it had to take care of a multifaceted agenda that involved several geographic scenarios simultaneously. In Europe, it deployed its SS-20 intermediate-range nuclear missiles which led to America’s counter-deployment of the more accurate Pershing II, thus initiating an additional arms race. In Afghanistan, it deployed more than 300,000 soldiers in a full-scale invasion of the country, its own version of Vietnam. In addition to suffering countless losses there, it led President Carter to withdraw Moscow’s much needed SALT II treaty from Senate approval, while generating U.S. embargoes in fundamental grain and technology shipments. In Africa, it provided active military equipment supply and financing to Cuban troops fighting on its behalf, to promote Marxist revolutions. Countries such as Angola, Uganda, and Ethiopia became costly undertakings for Moscow, further depleting its limited resources. As a result, the Soviet leadership failed to perform the most fundamental task of any viable strategy—the efficient use of available means to accomplish chosen ends (Brayton, 1979; Gaddis, 2005, [3, Chapter 6]).

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Moscow’s Nightmare The Soviet Union’s quagmire multiplied several folds when Ronald Reagan entered office in 1981. He decided to put an end to détente, “roll back” Soviet presence around the world, make nuclear-armed missiles obsolete by developing a Strategic Defense Initiative, and aim for regime change in Moscow itself. For the Soviets, Reagan became a true nightmare. This requires some background. Détente with the Soviet Union was one of the favorite offspring of both Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford and of their indispensable hyphen: Henry Kissinger. In essence, this policy aimed at freezing the Cold War in place. This didn’t entail putting an end to it, but simply respecting existing spheres of influence, avoiding direct military clashes, normalizing the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction, and refraining from efforts to discredit or undermine their respective leaders. Simply put, it meant accepting the world as it was. Perfect examples of it were the 1972 SALT I accords and the 1975 Helsinki Agreement. Leonid Brezhnev signed the first with Richard Nixon and the second with Gerald Ford. In accordance to SALT I, the parties accepted capping the number of their intercontinental and submarine ballistic missiles and to ban anything other than symbolic defenses to such missiles. This represented a legitimation of the logic of Mutual Assured Destruction and an acceptance of satellite verification of its compliance. Through the Helsinki Agreement both countries formally recognized the existing boundaries in Eastern Europe, thus legitimizing Stalin’s territorial grabs (Gaddis, 2005 [3, Chapter 6]). Ford’s successor, Jimmy Carter, on the one hand, moved around the corners of détente, without frontally challenging it. Instead of simply freezing strategic arsenals, he sought to reduce them. The 1979 SALT II Agreement was the result of this initiative. On the other hand, he was adamant about human rights issues in the URRS and openly supported Soviet dissidents. However, after the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan, he discarded détente altogether. This led to withdrawing the SALT II Agreement from Senate ratification. Moreover, he took punishing measures against Moscow in several areas, while proceeding with significant defense increases and modernization. Reagan, however, went much further. His objective was to compress the Russian bear against the ropes until it finally threw the towel. To that end, he moved in every possible direction, beginning with the premise that the West should look ahead and attempt the demise of the Soviet

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regime, and therefore, deny its legitimacy. The idea that the Soviet Union had become equal to the United States, earning geopolitical and ideological legitimacy, was thus flatly rejected. He not only proceeded to a rhetoric onslaught of the Soviet Union but was able to put substantial sums of money behind his avowed objectives. In 1985, America’s military budget had almost doubled in relation to that of five years earlier. Moreover, he went after the project of building defenses against offensive nuclear weapons, thus upsetting the delicate equilibrium upon which deterrence was dependent. The whole idea of his Strategic Defense Initiative exploited the Soviets’ backwardness in computer and other new technologies where Moscow could not keep up with America. And although the United States was decades away from developing an effective missile defense capability, Reagan was able to convince the panicked Soviets that it was feasible. This demanded from Moscow two things it did not have: technological strength and economic resources. On top of it all, his Administration lavishly supported the mujahedeen guerrillas fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. It not only provided them with the deadly Stinger missiles but helped organizing an international Jihad against the Soviets (one is that a couple of decades later would come back to haunt America). Moreover, he elevated the costs of Soviet actions in every corner of the world, by vigorously responding to the challenge they posed. Until Moscow could no more. Perestroika followed and with it the beginning of the end of what once had been a mighty empire (Gaddis, 2005 [4, Chapter 6]).

A Different Game Altogether While confronting Beijing in a new Cold War, Washington finds itself in a different game altogether. China accounts for 25 percent of the global industrial output and in 2017 contributed one-third of the growth of the global economy. Moreover, the country holds the world’s largest financial reserves and trade surplus while being recipient of the largest foreign investments worldwide. In a few years’ time China will be surpassing America’s GDP in absolute terms, while it already did so in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP). Indeed, in PPP measurement, China was in 2018 the largest world economy with US$25.3 trillion versus US$20.5 trillion for the United States. It is estimated that after 2030 a GDP gap on absolute terms will begin accruing on China’s behalf. By mid-century, indeed, China’s GDP could be three times as large as that of the United

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States. Hence, it should be able to militarily outspend the United States’ defense budgets at will. Moreover, China will need to protect its new status using military force, which translates into larger military expending. Should Washington try to follow China’s budgets in this area, it might be subjected to similar economic strains than those of the Soviet Union when trying to militarily match the United States (Auslin, 2020, p. 26; Beckley & Brands, 2021 [1]; Pillsbury, 2015 [1, Chapter 9]; Sutter, 2020, p. 211). However, without reaching economic supremacy and a larger military budget, China has already developed the capability to maintain America’s superior military strength at bay. This, while spending much less than the United States. Beijing has attained this capability by several ways. Firstly, by maintaining a technological edge in asymmetric weapons. Secondly, through a minimum deterrent nuclear strategy susceptible of a retaliatory strike capability that inhibits America’s first use of its superior arsenal. Thirdly, by concentrating the bulk of its military forces close to home while the Americans diffuse theirs around the world. Asymmetric weapons are the military equivalent to the disruptive innovation brought up by start-ups like Amazon, Uber, Netflix, or Airbnb to the traditional industries with which they compete. This is attained by way of weapons priced at a fraction of the targets that they aim to destroy or render useless. The United States, however, is not properly addressing this threat, or in general Chinese increasing military strength, as it confidently relies in its nuclear superiority. This, notwithstanding that China’s deterrent nuclear strategy, based in preserving retaliatory capabilities against an American first strike, renders that superiority more theoretical than real. Moreover, while Washington has a global reach that forces it to cover multiple fronts at the same time, Beijing compresses the bulk of its military forces in its “Near Seas” within an area-denial/anti-access strategy. One that minimizes costs while making immensely difficult for the Unites States to prevail against this new China Wall planted on the sea. In 2018, China reached four decades of Deng Xiaoping’s economic reform and opening, a process that lifted more than 700 million Chinese citizens out of poverty. During that time, the country’s GDP grew at an average annual rate of 10 percent. As the economy of China has matured, its GDP growth slowed from 14.2 percent in 2007 to 6.9 percent in 2017. Moreover, under the impact of the trade war with the United States, it grew 6.1 percent in 2019. Beijing, nonetheless, has embraced this slower economic growth as the “new normal”, recognizing

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the country’s need to rely less on fixed investments and exports, while emphasizing private consumption, services, and innovation. Growth now is more dependent on consumption than investment, and on domestic demand over external demand. This economic slowdown, though, needs some perspective. On the one hand, in 2019 China grew 6.1 percent, adding to its GDP that year the equivalent to the entire Australian GDP, which is the world’s number thirteen. On the other hand, a magnitude of growth averaging 6.5 percent was sufficient to double China’s GDP during the decade of 2010–2020 (BBC News, 2019; Tan, 2020; Wong, 2018, 2018 [1]).

Middle Classes and Innovation China’s domestic demand is sustained by a middle class that went from being just 3 percent of its population in 2000 to around half of it in 2018, becoming the fastest growing in the world, a group of about 700 hundred million people who are following the same patterns as its counterparts world-wide in terms of consumption of goods and services. Shanghai’s per capita GDP already exceeded US$23,000 with the average value of its household assets being US$1.2 million, which is testimony to the strength of this city’s middle class. But the strength of Chinese metropolitan middle classes goes much further than that. In 2014, China had fewer than fifty metropolitan areas within the world’s top 300. In 2018, this number had increased to 103, which was more than what North America and Western Europe together could exhibit. Even more, in 2018 five Chinese cities were among the world’s ten best performing metropolitan economies, which was a testament to the vitality of their middle classes (Bouchet & Padilla, 2018; Center for Strategic & International Studies|China Power Project, 2020; Riddell, 2021). But jointly with this huge domestic demand, innovation plays a fundamental role in promoting economic growth. The government’s “Made in China 2025” initiative, launched in 2015, was modeled on Germany’s “Industry 4.0 plan” and pursues to upgrade and modernize the country’s manufacturing process in a group of key sectors. By way of an extensive government support, “Made in China 2025” looks at transforming the nation into a technological powerhouse and a major global player in sectors like automated machine tools and robotics; new advanced information technology; aerospace and aeronautical equipment; new materials; maritime equipment and high-tech shipping; modern rail

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transport; new energy vehicles and equipment; power equipment; or bio pharma and advanced medical products. Since 2006, indeed, China’s R&D spending has tripled. The 2025 Initiative also calls for a greater emphasis on improving management capabilities. Moreover, these new technologies can help China in significantly circumventing the negative impact of a shrinking workforce. A September–November 2016 KPMG’s survey of 841 high-tech executives around fifteen countries concluded that China was transforming itself from an investment-intensive exportled model, into one driven by consumption and innovation. Indeed, using disruptive technologies such as cloud computing, the Internet of Things, smart industrial robotics, Data and Analytics, and enhanced automation, Chinese companies were successfully capturing new business opportunities within a virtuous circle of innovation-induced productivity (Appelbaum, et al., 2018, p. 13; Beckley & Brands, 2021 [2]; Healy, 2018, p. 11). China’s crackdown on some powerful high tech companies, which wiped out substantial amounts of market value for them, has stoked fears about the future of innovation in that country. Companies like Alibaba, Tencent, PDD, or Didi have felt the strong hand of the State in their back. However, according to Goldman Sachs, this is a strategy called to rebalance capital markets with socialism. As such, social welfare and wealth redistribution are prioritized over capital markets in areas that are deemed social necessities and public goods. Moreover, regulations have been imposed over public outcry that certain companies grossly mishandled sensitive data about their users or in response to anticompetitive behavior or to reduce adolescents’ addiction to video-gaming playing or to provide better support to underpaid drivers or trying to rein over high tech companies’ culture of overwork as represented by the “996” culture: from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. Although, this crackdown could affect the innovation process, it seems to respond to reasonable motives and not to arbitrary abuse of power by an authoritarian regime. Moreover, as Jude Blanchette argues, this is no David and Goliath story but rather a family feud, given the close and enduring connections between these companies and government. In this sense, Xi Jinping seems to have drawn a line to the wide latitude previously enjoyed by powerful high tech enterprises that emerged, thanks to government support. Consequently, no enduring damage to the Chinese economy should be expected from this family feud. On the contrary, the U.S. government should draw a line as well to the overwhelming latitude enjoyed by many of its high tech

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companies, especially given the pivotal role played by social networks in the fracturing of its society (Blanchette, 2021; He, 2021; The Economist, 2021). In the Nineteenth Party Congress of the CCP, in 2017, Xi Jinping detailed his long-term vision for the development of his nation’s economy. This vision comprised three distinctive stages. Stage one aimed at becoming a moderately well-off society by 2020; stage two looks to achieve a modern socialist economy by 2035; and stage three strives to turn China into a prosperous and strong society by 2050. The third of these stages should materialize shortly after the first centennial of the People’s Republic of China, when high quality and efficient economic growth would have been attained. Its total GDP at that moment should have reached $US50 trillion, almost three times that of the United States nowadays, while its GDP per capita should be US$40,000, which is the equivalent of Germany’s today. To fulfill this objective, China needs to maintain a 5 percent average growth between 2020 and 2035 and a 3.5 percent average growth between 2035 and 2050. Given China’s combination of domestic demand and innovation productivity, these rates of economic growth seem more than attainable. If successful in this aim, by 2050 China would have a much larger GDP than that of the United States (Wong, 2018 [2]). Significantly, China has still a lot of tissue to cut upon as its GDP per capita should keep growing for many decades ahead. Deng Xiaoping dream was to “plant thousands Singapore in China”, which eventually materialized with China becoming a gigantic Singapore. However, Singapore’s GDP per capita still remains well ahead to that of China which is about US$18,000. Should China reach Singapore’s per capita income, a country where 75 percent of the population is ethnic Chinese, its GDP would skyrocket to US$141 trillion in Purchasing Power Parity terms. Even if never attaining such GDP per capita high mark, this shows how ample space China has for improving its economic growth. Conversely, the United States’ GDP is now $US20 trillion and, as a matured economy, has limited chances of importantly increasing its GDP per capita. Hence, the possibility of China’s achieving a much larger economy than that of the United States looks realistic enough (Ghesquiere, 2007, p. 1; Mahbubani, 2020 [1, p. 75]). Contrary to China’s economic growth, since the early 1970s, the United States’ growth fell under 3 percent annually, further decelerating to below 2 percent since 2000. According to the Congressional

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Budget Office, by mid-2020s America’s estimated annual growth will just average 1.7 percent per year. As a result of their divergent economic growing curves, China’s GDP should be surpassing the United States one in absolute terms around 2030, although in Purchasing Power Parity, it already did so in 2014. Based on several estimates, Robert Fogel believes that in 2040 China’s GDP could attain a 40 percent share of the global GDP, versus a 14 percent for the United States. Michael Pillsbury asserts that according to several projections, by 2050 China’s economy could perhaps become three times larger than that of the United States. Although presenting a more modest estimate, PricewatherhouseCoopers is equally devastating in relation to the United States’ economic perspectives: In 2050, China’s GDP at Purchasing Power Parity will be of US$58,499 trillion versus US$34,102 for the United States (Gruber & Johnson, 2019, p. 9; Fogel, 2010; Pillsbury, 2015 [2, Chapter 9]; PricewatherhouseCoopers, 2017).

Outspending, Outsmarting According to some analysts, China will need to protect its new economic status with military might, and since it may soon be capable of outspending the United States militarily, this will spell serious problems for the latter. Actually, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, if China continues its current rate of increase in military spending, it will attain a bigger defense budget than the United States in 2025. However, the problem will arise when China reaches economic supremacy. Washington would be then submitted to two equally unpalatable alternatives. On the one hand, surrendering conventional military supremacy and spaces of influence to the Asian nation. On the other hand, being pushed into bankruptcy if it tries to emulate China’s superior military expending capacity, in a repetition of what happened to the Soviet Union decades before. In any case, one thing seems certain—the United States has already entered a countdown in terms of its conventional military superiority. The only plausible debate is on how long it will stay ahead (Dyer, 2014 [1, p. 45]; Pillsbury, 2015 [3, Chapter 9]; McLeary, 2017). But before outspending the United States, China is already outsmarting it, not needing to match Washington dollar for dollar to achieve its goals. This, as mentioned before, is attained through several means. The first of those means is represented by its asymmetrical weapons. Ancient Chinese folklore tells of a legendary hero who could

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knock down more powerful enemies with a single blow of his mace. Surprise and knowledge of his enemy’s weakest point were the factors that allowed him to defeat superior opponents. Assassin’s Mace would be the approximatively English translation to this hero’s armament. This is a term frequently use in the Chinese military doctrine of our days when referring to asymmetric weapons. That is, weapons that allow an inferior power to defeat a stronger one by striking at the adversary’s weakest point (Pillsbury, 2015 [3, Chapter 7]). Although the Chinese have never referred to an offset strategy in relation to the United States, the fact is that their asymmetric weapons represent exactly that. In just over twenty years, the People’s Liberation Army has accomplished technological achievements that could defeat the United States in its own game. This implies overcoming America’s superior military budget and its technological advantages, by focusing on its weaknesses—on its Achilles heels. This has been achieved, thanks to two main factors. Firstly, by an increase of military spending of at least 620 percent in real terms between 1996 and 2015, which represents an annual average increase of 11 percent. Secondly, by concentrating a disproportionate amount of that spending on weapons that have allowed China to become an asymmetric superpower, outside the realm of conventional military power. This means, attempting a generational leap in military capabilities, able to neutralize and trump the superior conventional forces of the United States (Leonard, 2008, p. 106; Work & Grant, 2019). Asymmetric armaments aim at a double target. A first group of weapons are directed at penetrating America’s battle network defenses through intermediate-range precision missiles and advanced targeting systems. A second group of weapons concentrate in crippling America’s command, control, communication, and intelligence battle networks, with weapons of system destruction. Good examples of the first kind of armaments are the DF-26 missile and the DF21/CSS-5 ballistic missile, known as the aircraft carrier killer missile. The former has the capability of striking Guam at long distance and with a conventional weapon. With a range of about 1900–2500 miles (3000–4000 kilometer) and a conventional warhead of up to 3300 pounds, China can hit Guam without the need of going nuclear or risk its forces in a naval confrontation. The aircraft carrier-killer missile, on its part, can hit aircraft carriers more than 1500 miles away, without being detected by radars. The second group of armaments are identified with cyber and space warfare. Among them would be the following: Electromagnetic pulse weapons, able of knocking

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down all electronic activity over a wide area; land-based lasers, susceptible to blind or blow out American satellites in space; or microsatellites that can push American satellites out of orbit through electronic jamming. The common denominator of asymmetric weapons is that they can destroy or render useless immensely costly systems, with arms priced at a fraction of their cost. This is exemplified by the carrier killer missile, that at a cost of US$11 million can destroy a Gerald R. Ford class aircraft carrier with a price tag of US$13.2 billion plus over sixty-five F-35C air fighters that it carries inside, each at a cost of US$107 million. For that amount of money, China could build over 1200 of those missiles (Dyer, 2014, [2, p. 47]; Hendrix, 2018; Pillsbury, 2015 [4, Chapter 7]; Roblin, 2018; Shugar, 2017; The Economist, 2019a, 2019b).

America’s Complacency American analysts have pointed out that their country has been overly complacent in the face of this challenge. Fareed Zakaria has written that America’s defense budget is out-of-control and lacks strategic coherence. In his view, it is mismanaged, ruinous, and wasteful and yet it keeps expanding. He adds that the threats of the future like cyberwar or space attacks, which require different strategies and spending, have been absurdly overlooked while Washington continues to spend billions on aircraft carriers and tanks. Other critics have remarked that America’s military forces have gotten smaller, are being modernized too slowly, and remain increasingly dependent on an aging weapons inventory. And yet, the overall defense budget has not declined. Two factors can explain this apparent contradiction. One is that the cost of operation and support activities has gone up substantially—this includes from military and civilian pay to funding for health care and other personnel benefits, to food, fuel, utilities, spare parts, and other supplies. The other is that the new weapons systems cost far more than the systems they are supposed to replace. Hence, while China’s military advances toward a technological edge, America’s military seems to be losing focus, fitness, and agility (Kosiak, 2017; Zakaria, 2019). Other analysts have pointed out that, although in these last few years, the United States has shifted its defense strategy from combatting terrorism into great power interstate competition, the Pentagon continues to operate as if nothing had changed. Meaning, it keeps carrying its business as usual, notwithstanding that in 2016 the Obama Administration

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abandoned the post-9/11 strategy, a change that the Trump Administration reaffirmed in 2018. Pentagon’s bureaucratic inertia and its resistance to change have prevented the implementation of new capabilities and practices consistent with the new defense strategy. But besides inertia and resistance to change another factor seems responsible for this gap between national defense strategy and policies in place: Weapons systems are purchased according to a complex lobbying system by defense contractors who have allocated manufacturing plants to all key congressional districts in the country. Not surprisingly, its own war games reportedly show that current force plans would leave the U.S. military unable to deter and defeat a Chinese act of aggression (Flournoy, 2021; Mahbubani, 2020 [2, p. 107]). America’s complacency in the face of China’s disruptive weapons and overall military challenge can only be explained through its reliance on nuclear weapons. And indeed, the Arms Control Association states that the correlation of nuclear warheads puts the United States with 5800 versus the 320 in China’s possession. Two kinds of nuclear weapons are involved in this count—tactical and strategic. The former with a smaller explosive capacity is designed to be used on battlefields. The latter with much larger explosive capability aim at vital targets within the enemy’s home front, thus degrading its possibility to wage war. America has total superiority in tactical nuclear weapons, as the Chinese are not known to have any. Nonetheless, in terms of long range, accuracy, and extensive number, China’s conventional ballistic missiles can become a good match to America’s tactical nuclear weapons. The big difference between both countries, thus, is centered in America’s overwhelming superiority in strategic nuclear warheads (Arms Control Association, 2020). Faced to the overwhelming superiority of the U.S.’ strategic nuclear arsenal, China follows a much less expensive road—a minimum deterrent nuclear strategy. One that simply aims at making the costs of Washington’s first use of strategic nuclear weapons prohibitive. Chinese analysts argue that, within a cost–benefit decision, a limited nuclear force able to target an adversary’s strategic points, can deter a superior power’s use of nuclear weapons. This requires, however, retaliatory strike capability. By emphasizing the mobile and stealth nature of its nuclear arsenal, China retains such retaliatory capability. This is attained through roadmobile missiles difficult to find and destroy, and by way of missiles based on submarines, also inherently mobile and hard to discover. Moreover, Beijing is developing hypersonic nuclear missiles hard to track and destroy.

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This imposes restrain in the use of the United States’ larger arsenal and undermines its ability to carry out nuclear blackmail. Would the United States be ready to sacrifice Los Angeles or San Francisco as the result of a first use of its strategic nuclear force? What rational course of action could justify such a sacrifice? For this purpose, Beijing has developed new nuclear ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and sea-based nuclear delivery systems. These include the DF-41 solid-fueled road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missile (capable of carrying ten independent nuclear warheads within a range of 15,000 kilometer) or the submarine-launched JL-3 solid-fueled ballistic missile (whose range is likely to exceed 9000 kilometer). To launch the JL-3 missiles, China counts with four Jin-class nuclear submarines, with an upgraded fifth under construction, armed each with twelve ballistic missiles. Moreover, China is developing a hypersonic glide vehicle armed with a nuclear warhead, hard to track and destroy by U.S. missile defense system. According to the Financial Times, in August 2021 China tested such weapon, by launching a rocket that carried a hypersonic glide vehicle which flew through low-orbit space before cruising down toward its target. This test demonstrated that the Chinese can potentially launch an attack over the South Pole, a trajectory that can elude America’s early warning systems. In sum, America’s superiority in this area could turn out to become much more theoretical than practical, given China’s retaliatory strike capability. It is thus perfectly possible that even attaining the capability to outspend Washington at will, Beijing may not try to match its expensive overkilling capacity, considering it superfluous. As a matter of fact, China’s most recent defense strategy document, released in 2019, stated that the country would keep its nuclear capabilities at the minimum level required for national security. However, recent information indicates that China might be building hundreds of new long-range missile silos (which do not respond to a mobile nature), and the 2021 Pentagon’s annual report to Congress estimates that by 2030 China could have 1000 deliverable nuclear warheads. Even if that turns out to be the case, this would still be way short from America’s overwhelming nuclear warhead capacity (Bertrand, 2021; Cooper, 2021; Friedman, 2021; Huang, 2019; Panda, 2018; Ross, 2009, p. 161; The Economist, 2021; Torode & Lague, 2019; Sevastopulo & Hille, 2021).

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Concentrating Versus Diffusing Finally, the United States emphasizes its condition of world superpower and, as a result, maintains a costly global military overextension within what Paul Kennedy calls imperial overstretch. Conversely, China keeps the bulk of its military presence close to home, thus substantially reducing its military invoice bill. The former was clearly and bluntly expressed when in January 2012, the U.S. Department of Defense released its “Joint Operational Forces Concept”, which states the following: “As a global power with global interests, the United States must maintain the credible capability to project military force into any region of the world in support of those interests”. As expression of this approach, the United States maintains six regional combatant commands across vast geographical expanses, the Pentagon lists 750 bases in more than 80 countries and 153 countries host U.S. military personnel. Even prosperous democracies such as Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom, fully capable of defending themselves and with no military threat in sight, garrison American forces. The United States prolifically diffuses its forces which becomes a highly costly undertaking. Meanwhile, China concentrates them where they matter more: In it’s so called “Near Seas”. This implies that the People’s Liberation Amy can maintain a strong defensive position with short lines of communication to its front lines. This not only greatly reduces costs but maximizes the effectiveness of its weapons through areadenial/anti-access strategies (Andrews, 2015, p. 210; Bacevich & Sheline, 2021; Dyer, 2014 [3, p. 22]; Hayton, 2014, p. 215; Kennedy, 1989). The “Near Seas” are formed by the Yellow, East China, and South China seas. The Yalon Bay naval base on Hainan Island is part of China’s strategy to exerting control over this area. Within it, the contested South China Sea plays a special role. John Mearsheimer has written about the stopping power of water as a forbidding barrier to a navy that attempts to take control of a well-defended land. The military build-up that China has undertaken in the South China Sea has undoubtedly increased that stopping power multiple folds. China’s immensely fortified twenty-seven outposts in the Paracel and Spratlys Islands are by now a virtually impenetrable barrier to the U.S. Navy, materializing what Admiral Harry Harris, Commander of the U.S. forces in the Pacific, called in 2015 a “Great Wall of Sand”. According to the Pentagon, in 2015, China possessed an immense arsenal of conventional missiles. These included around 1200 short-range ballistic missiles with a 300–100 kilometer range; 200–300

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medium-range missiles with a 1000–3000 kilometer range; an unspecified number of intermediate-range missiles with a 3000–5500 kilometer range; and 200–300 ground-launched cruise missiles with a range of 1500 or more kilometers. An important amount of these missiles, which by now have multiplied, is located within the great wall of sand. But its missiles are distributed as well within the coastal areas of its “Near Seas” in general. This is compounded by the presence of the People’s Liberation Army Navy, which currently possesses the largest fleet in the world. With several hundred increasingly advanced warships flooding the zone, along with China’s fleet of silent submarines that already surpassed the American fleet, China’s concentrated strength looks overwhelming. Moreover, the “wolf pack” operations that can be carried out by its several hundred easy-and-cheap-to-build ships equipped with cruise missiles from China’s coast guard and its maritime militia, pose a lethal threat to any approaching navy (Dyer, 2014 [4, p. 48]; Erickson, 2019; Fabey, 2018, p. 231; Mearsheimer, 2001, pp. 114–128; Shugar, 2017 [2]).

References Andrews, J. (2015). The world in conflict: Understanding the world’s troublespots. The Economist Books. Appelbaum, R. P., Cong, C., Xueying, H., Parker, R., & Simon, D. (2018). Innovation in China. Polity Press. Arms Control Association. (2020, August). Nuclear weapons: Who has what at a glance. https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Nuclearweaponswhoh aswhat. Accessed 21 June 2021. Auslin, M. R. (2020). Asia’s new geopolitics: Essays on reshaping the Indo-Pacific. Hoover Institution Press. Bacevich, A. J., & Sheline, A. (2021, October 15). The end of American militarism? Biden must confront Washington’s addiction to force. Foreign Affairs. BBC News. (2019, January 18). China’s economy grows by 6.9% in 2017 . BBC.com. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-42727781. Accessed 15 June 2020. Beckley, M., & Brands, H. (2021, October 1). The end of China’s rise: Beijing is running out of time to remake the world. Foreign Affairs. Bertrand, N. (2021, October 22). China’s latest missile test raise the stakes for Biden’s nuclear weapons review. CNN. https://edition.cnn.com/2021/10/ 22/politics/china-hypersonic-missile-joe-biden-nuclear-policy/index.html. Accessed 23 Oct 2021.

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CHAPTER 8

From Reasonable Containment to Unattainable Containment

Although World War II took its toll on America, its casualty figures were considerably lower than those inflicted to frontline battleground nations. Moreover, the economic surge generated by the war effort lifted the country’s economic power to unprecedented levels. The United States emerged from the war as the richest and most powerful nation in the world. Its GDP, which in 1939 hadn’t reached US$1 billion, skyrocketed to US$135 billion in 1945, with its productive capacity having doubled during that period. The war allowed the creation of seventeen million new jobs, doubled the nation’s salaries, and made possible a sevenfold increase in savings. As America’s standard of living rose, unemployment virtually vanished. Meanwhile, its navy was larger than the combined fleets of the rest of the planet, its air force commanded the skies and it was the only country in possession of atomic weapons (Bremmer, 2013 [1, pp. 40–41]; Herring, 2008 [1, pp. 597–598]). Conversely, in Germany the war destroyed 40 percent of all buildings in its fifty largest cities and produced a meltdown of its industrial production; in Italy one-third of the county’s assets were destroyed; Japan lost more than 80 percent of its pre-war Asian territory, 80 percent of its textile machinery, while its coal production fell to one-eighth of pre-war levels; in France 20 percent of its houses, half of its livestock, two-thirds of its railway system and around 40 percent of its national wealth were destroyed; in Britain a gigantic debt substituted its pre-war condition © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 A. T. Hardy, America’s Two Cold Wars, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-9503-2_8

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as the world’s largest creditor, the pound sterling lost its international reserve status and its trade was cut to 30 percent of what it was before the conflict; in China, devastation prevailed after the Japanese occupation, while the country re-entered civil war; in the Soviet Union the war claimed twenty-five million lives and destroyed 70,000 towns and villages (Bremmer, 2013 [2, pp. 38–40]).

Containment For the United States, it should have been a moment of supreme confidence on itself and on its international towering presence. Paradoxically, it was time of much insecurity and uncertainty. Having felt protected by two oceans before the war, Americans learned the extent of its interconnection to the rest of the world. As a result, they understood that only by having an international environment favorable to their values and interests it was possible to find protection. They especially feared an aggressive Stalin, whose country had deeply suffered during the war but had emerged from it as a military juggernaut. The fruit was ripe for Moscow to exploit global instability on its behalf. As mentioned in Chapter 6, America’s more articulated response to that fear came from the young chargé d’affaires of its Embassy in Moscow, George Kennan. In his 1946 “long telegram”, he addressed the futility and even danger of further negotiations with the Soviets. There could be no resolution of differences with a government that relied on the fiction of external threat to maintain its domestic legitimacy. Even more, how to find common grounds when the traditional Russian expansionism had been reinforced by a missionary Communist ideology? In Kennan’s logic, the progressive subjugation of nations located between America and the center of world’s communism could, if not resisted, reduce the United States to a position of helplessness, loneliness, and ignominy. A patient, systematic, and long-term containment of that expansionist drive was thus the only way to deal with Moscow. Kennan’s assertion was shortly after reinforced by Winston Churchill’s famous “Iron Curtain” speech, where he pictured the Soviets as wanting not only the “fruits of war” but “the indefinite expansion of their power and doctrine”. Containment appeared, indeed, as the most rational option to confront the Soviet Union (Gaddis, 1982, Chapter 1). Containment was further conceptualized in the 1946 Clifford-Elsey Report, which had been commissioned by President Truman to two of

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his closest aides. Borrowing heavily from Kennan’s long telegram, this report presented Soviet expansionism as a grave threat to America’s vital interests around the world, insisting on the need to stand firm against it. To put teeth to containment, the 1947 National Security Act—the Magna Charta of the United States’ national security architecture—put in motion a group of fundamental institutional initiatives to address the Soviet threat. The most important among them were the following: Creating the cabinet-level position of Secretary of Defense to preside over the departments of Army, Navy, and Air Force; providing a permanent character to the wartime structure of Joint Chief of Staff; creating a National Security Council within the White House to coordinate policy-making in this area; and establishing the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to replace the defunct wartime OSS. Another document, the 1949 NSC-68, set forward a national security ideology. This defined a zero-sum game, in which any gain for Communism was automatically to be considered as a loss for the “free world” (Herring, 2008 [2, Chapter 14]). The 1947 Truman Doctrine, on its part, established that the United States would provide political, military, and economic assistance to all democratic nations under the threat of external or internal totalitarian forces. The doctrine committed the United States to actively guarantying the political integrity of democratic nations, when this was deemed to be in America’s best interest. The most immediate expression of this doctrine was the 1947 economic assistance given to Greece and Turkey, which included US$400 million and the plunging of the United States in the Greek Civil War. The latter, through the supply of massive firepower to the Greek government which was being challenged by a Communist insurgency. As an offspring of the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan for European economic recovery would follow. Fearing that the worsening economic crisis in Western Europe might produce Communist takeovers by way of the ballot boxes, a massive economic aid took shape. Between 1948 and 1952, the United States furnished Western European counties with US$13 billion in economic support. Covert operations by the CIA to prevent electoral takeovers by the Communists were also in line, as was the case of the crucial Italian election of 1948. Moreover, to confront the Berlin Blockade of 1948, Americans flew 250 missions a day during eleven months, moving an average of 2500 tons of food, fuel, raw materials, and manufacturers to feed and heat two million West Berliners. Indeed, alarmed by the prospect of West Germany’s reindustrialization under Allied control, Stalin had sealed all access to Berlin, aiming at reunifying

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it under Soviet control. On top of the previous undertakings, by 1950 the United Stated had stationed 180,000 soldiers in Europe. In sum, containment of Communism expressed itself in full in the fragile postWWII European theatre (Gaddis, 2005 [1, Chapters 1 and 2]; Herring, 2008 [3, Chapter 14]; Office of the Historian).

Moving to the Third World As Stalin understood that no new gains were possible in Europe beyond the “Iron Curtain”, Soviet expansionist intents began to move away from this sphere and over the so-called Third World. This represented a fundamental first success for the containment policy, as the Communist threat was lifted away from the most geopolitical sensible region of the world, one where the possibility of a direct confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union was always high. Except for the Berlin crisis in 1961, which was solved by the construction of its famous wall, tension between the superpowers in Europe became manageable. Western Europe, as a result, settled into an unaccustomed period of stability. By moving the Cold War scenarios to peripheral regions, the likelihood of war between the two superpowers had been substantially diminished. Henceforward, they would be able to face each other and advance their agendas through proxy wars in client states. The conflict not only shifted to new battlegrounds but took new forms which required new weapons (Herring, 2008 [4, pp. 708–710]). However, while containment was still essentially centered in Europe, a civil war between a pro-American government and a Communist insurgency was taking place in China. Although Washington helped the Nationalist regime of Chiang Kai-shek economically through military aid—in 1948 the Truman Administration agreed to an additional US$338 million in economic aid and US$125 million in military aid—it miscalculated the rapidity of Chiang’s collapse. The United States had hoped to stabilize the situation in Europe before providing a greater support to Chiang’s Nationalists. The Truman Administration had flatly rejected recommendations to send U.S. troops to save the Chinese Nationalists while tensions were still running high in Europe. As it happened, the year 1949 brought with it the Communist triumph in China together with the Soviet explosion of its first atomic bomb. This heightened the sense of vulnerability of the Americans, giving rise to the idea that the Cold War was turning against them (Herring, 2008 [3, Chapter 14]).

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Not surprisingly, when a year later Communist North Korean troops crossed the 38th parallel and invaded its southern sovereign neighbor, the United States responded in full to the aggression. At the end of 1949, the Truman Administration had approved NSC-49, which advocated that the United States would “block further Communist expansion in Asia”. Curiously enough, it had been America’s Secretary of State Dean Acheson the one to set the stage for that invasion, by not having included South Korea while outlining his country’s Asian Defense Perimeter. This projected the impression that the country did not fall under its containment umbrella. As a result, a reluctant Stalin had finally agreed to North Korea’s leader Kim Il-sung pressing for the invasion, under the assumption that the United States would not respond to it (Gaddis, 2005 [2, Chapters 1 and 2]; Herring, 2008 [4, Chapter 14]). The Asian containment chapter would undoubtedly be the most costly and traumatic for the United States. This not only led to the loss of 40,000 American lives in a three years’ bloody and messy war in Korea, which would also confront them with the Chinese, but a couple of decades later would involve sending massive forces to Vietnam. The latter conflict would produce around 58,000 American military fatalities within a protracted war that would shake to its bones the American society. However, the U.S. direct involvement in Vietnam dated back to 1955 when the first Military Assistance Advisory Group was deployed in South Vietnam by President Eisenhower.

Anomalies But the Asian chapter would be only one of many, as the American containment process assumed a global projection. Its rhetorical zenith would come with John F. Kennedy’s inaugural speech, when he vowed that the United States would “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and success of liberty”. This assertiveness had been preceded by the so-called Eisenhower Doctrine, according to which the United States would send its military forces to any nation threatened by a Communist-controlled country. Containment, however, presented two main anomalies. In the first place, the Truman Doctrine precept of supporting “democratic nations” under the threat of external or internal Communist forces was totally diluted. The architect of containment himself, George Kennan, reasoned

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that the United States shouldn’t be too fussy when choosing who could serve its interests better. Within the Third World, indeed, the United States clearly preferred to avoid the uncertainties of the ballot boxes, betting on authoritarian regimes to do its bidding in a forthright manner (Herring, 2008 [5, Chapter 14]). From Reza Pahlavi to Ferdinand Marcos, from Augusto Pinochet to the Somoza dynasty, from Mobutu Sese Seko to Ngo Dinh Diem, from Suharto to Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, from Fulgencio Batista to the Argentinian Military Junta, the list of dictators in charge of containing real or imaginary Communist insurgencies became a long one. The havoc created in different parts of the world by America’s national security ideology was enormous, because social progressiveness was dealt with as a Communist revolution on the making. Latin America was a good case in point. This included the 300,000 people killed in Central America by the United States’ allies during Reagan’s two terms, or the no less than 30,000 dead or people who disappeared during the few years in which the Argentinian Military Junta remained in power (Afoaku, 2000; Toro Hardy, 2018, pp. 134–137). The so-called Kirkpatrick Doctrine, expounded by the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. in Reagan’s time, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, sustained that a distinction existed between totalitarian regimes and authoritarian ones. While the former were self-perpetuating and dominated all aspects of the life of its citizens, the latter acted only upon politically sensible areas and were amenable to evolution toward democracy. This was an American self-serving vision of authoritarian governments, that did not consider the bloody and repressive nature of so many of them. More accurate was Raymond Aron’s distinction, according to which totalitarian regimes governed through faith and fear whereas authoritarian ones relied just on fear. The kind of fear that authoritarian governments imposed on their population was in direct contradiction to the notion of “Free World” invoked by the United States (Aron, 1965; Dominguez, 1999, p. 33; Toro Hardy, 1984, p. 31). The second anomaly evinced by American containment was its inability to discern between nationalism and the risk of Communism. As a result, successive U.S. administrations acted as if they were under the spell of ideological demons, often on the verge of irrationality. As in the case of social progressiveness, nationalism was seen as a threat to the United States. This led by extension to Washington’s support of colonial metropolis against nationalist freedom fighters. Forgetting not only

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its own revolutionary past against a colonial power, but also the anticolonial legacy bequeathed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the United States placed itself in the wrong side of history and, in doing so, unnecessarily antagonized many emerging nations. Provided that in the heyday of decolonization, more than one hundred new sovereign states came into being, this was pure and simple myopia. Both Truman and Eisenhower viewed these new nations as childlike and irresponsible, not ready for independence and particularly vulnerable to Communism. Notwithstanding this tendency, Washington adroitly responded to the 1956 Suez Crisis, where it took a firm stand against the invasion of Egypt by British and French forces. Unfortunately for America’s image in the Third World, this was simply the exception to the rule as the distinction between indigenous conflicts and international Communism remained blurred. India and Indonesia were good cases in point. Nehru’s determination to remain neutral in the Cold War was perceived with alarm by Washington, who feared that the country might drift into the Communist camp. In the end, America’s pressures and its coopting of Pakistan would produce what it wanted to prevent: Nehru’s driving his country toward the Soviet Union. As Nehru, Indonesia’s Sukarno wanted to keep his new country neutral. However, Washington feared that his mercurial nature could make Indonesia susceptible to a Communist takeover. Differently to India, America succeeded in having him deposed, and replaced him by an acolyte dictator: Suharto (Herring, 2008 [7, Chapter 14]).

Kennedy and the Vietnam Floodgates President Kennedy had a greater understanding of the nationalist phenomenon and of these new nations’ search for their own path. Paraphrasing Wilson, he spoke of making the world safe for diversity, which in his case translated into trying to tailor specific policies for different regions and countries. Within this approach, programs like Food for Peace and the Peace Corps put on display Kennedy’s concern for the Third World. Moreover, he made Africa a centerpiece of his anti-colonialism, giving for the first time a high profile to that continent within America’s foreign policy. Again, India was a good example, as Kennedy made a particular effort to earn Nehru’s respect by sending as Ambassador to New Delhi a top American figure: John Kenneth Galbraith (Herring, 2008 [8, Chapter 14]).

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Paradoxically enough, it was precisely Kennedy who, by not letting the flux of domestic currents run its course, would put in motion one of America’s worst nightmares: Vietnam. Although Hoh Chi Minh was a Communist, North Vietnamese considered their struggle against South Vietnam’s ruler Ngo Dinh Diem and his American sponsors, merely as a new chapter of its nationalistic war. One that had begun against the Japanese and later continued against the French. Their determination to unify Vietnam was their main driving force. De Gaulle warned the United States that getting involved in that conflict would sink them step by step into a bottomless military and political quagmire. However, Kennedy chose Vietnam as a test case for American theories of state building and counterinsurgency. By so doing, he approved his country’s direct involvement in Vietnam’s internal quarrels, elevating the number of American advisers there from 800 to 11,000. The so-called “advisers” took an active role in combat and suffered casualties. Meanwhile, military aid included modern hardware such as armored personnel carriers and aircrafts. And, although it would be his successor Lyndon B. Johnson the one responsible for metastasizing the United States’ military participation, it falls on Kennedy’s shoulders the responsibility of having sparked off this dangerous process. George F. Kennan, the father of containment and the brainiest of the so-called Wise Men, believed that Vietnam should be left to go its own way, without the United States taking sides in its internal disputes. In his view, America’s willingness to decide the outcome of this domestic conflict was an improper application of the containment doctrine. For him, containment should be applied in strategic points of the world, not at every corner of it (Britannica Encyclopedia; Doyle, 2004; Herring, 2008 [9, p. 726]; Moise, 1988).

Spectacular Triumph However, notwithstanding the flaws shown in the application of containment, this policy proved to be successful in the end, attaining the ultimate intent that it had pursued since its inception. That intention, as expressed by George Kennan in 1947 in The Sources of Soviet Conduct, was to contain Soviet power until the domestic problems within the USSR forced political change. That, in addition to the detachment of Moscow’s European satellites. Indeed, America’s containment strategy had been built on the prediction that the Soviet Union would one day crumble under its own weight, as it contained within it the seeds of its own

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decay. Patiently and systematically opposing Soviet expansionism until that moment arrived was Kennan’s main prescription. And the United States achieved its goal spectacularly. The main reason of this policy success was simple: Strategic consistency. During more than four decades a country characterized by its short spans of attention was able to follow the same route map in its relationship with the Soviet Union. Despite tactical variations along the route, the strategy remained constant. Obsessively constant, it must be added. In musical terms these were variations on a same theme (Campbell & Sullivan, 2019; Herring, 2008 [10, p. 638]; Saull, 2018, p. 93). However, consistency alone would not have been enough. Economic preponderance must come into the equation as well. Putting continuous pressure on the other side could only have worked for whomever was on the winning side of the defense budgetary competition. Otherwise, it would have been like shooting oneself in the foot. In 1953, America’s defense budget exceeded US$85 billion, represented 12 percent of its GDP, and consumed 60 percent of its federal expenditures. Moreover, its foreign aid budget averaged US$5 billion per year between 1948 and 1953. Those amounts represented a mammoth economic burden even for a nation that had emerged from WWII as the richest in the world, and whose economy was booming. It is easy to imagine the impact that trying to match that kind of expenditure could have meant for the Soviet Union. Specially so, as by the end of 1952, European defense spending within NATO swelled as well from 5 to 12 percent of their GDP (Herring, 2008 [11, pp. 647–678]). It comes as no surprise, then, that in 1958 Nikita Khrushchev announced Soviet intentions to cut conventional forces by three hundred thousand troops. Acutely aware that military spending was holding back his country’s economic development, he sought the kind of agreements that would allow to divert precious economic resources into the domestic front. However, the imperatives of the Cold War frustrated his wishes. At that point in time, it must be added, the Soviet economy was still growing rapidly. So much so, that in 1961 Khrushchev predicted that around 1970, the USSR would catch up with and henceforward surpass the United States. The exact opposite happened, though. Shortly after, already in Brezhnev’s time, the Soviet economy began to drop behind America’s, increasing the gap between them at a constant pace. According to some analysts, the absence of a market mechanism, the limited role that money played in economic life and the limits on labor mobility,

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began clashing with the requirements of a modern economy. This put in motion the long stagnation that shadowed the Soviet Union until its demise (Gaddis, 2005 [3, Chapter 3]; Herring, 2008 [12, pp. 696–699]; Trachtenberg, 2018 [1]). One of the most curious and significant features of the Cold War was that the CIA systematically and greatly overestimated the Soviet Union’s economic performance. This led America to keep pushing itself toward bigger defense expenditures, under the assumption that the USSR had the economic capability to match them. In turn, this forced the Soviet Union to transform itself into a hyper militarized society where the percentage of its GDP devoted to defense bore no correlation to the size of its economy. In the end, this process broke not only its economy but its political system as well. As stated by the U.S. Senator and later Ambassador to the United Nations Daniel Patrick Moynihan, for thirty years the CIA systematically misinformed successive Presidents in relation to the size and growth of the Soviet economy. Indeed, it portrayed it as a maturing industrial society with a faster economic growth rate than that of the United States. The Soviet economy, according to Moynihan, was presented as roughly being three times as large as it turned out to be, and as a result, perfectly capable of sustaining its domestic military as well as its foreign adventures (Trachtenberg, 2018 [2]). This distorted America’s estimates of the Soviet threat. So it was that in the 1980s the United States turned itself into a major debtor nation to counter the threat of a country whose economy was already collapsing. The reasons behind the CIA’s overestimation of the Soviet Union’s economic performance were explained by Paul Kennedy as a combination of several factors: The artificial dollar-ruble exchange; its limited understanding of the complex Soviet budgetary procedures; the difficulties to put a dollar-cost on Russian manpower costs; and institutional and ideological biases. The result of this was an array of guess estimates (Kennedy, 1989 [1, p. 646]).

Replicating Containment Having attained such a huge success with its Soviet containment policy, nothing seems more natural nowadays for America than trying to replicate it with China. So, even without framing its approach to China that way, the United States is clearly in the process of containing China’s geopolitical positioning, technological advancement, financial leverage, and trade

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expansion. In its “The World Ahead 2022”, The Economist refers to this process as something akin to paranoid containment (The Economist, 2021). The first expression of this containment policy came by way of Obama’s “pivot to Asia”. Through it, the United States was signalling that the country would not sit passively while China established itself as regional leader. The pivot materialized through an Asia–Pacific security and prosperity area for the twenty-first century. This project had two broad objectives. On the one hand, to seek a sustainable regional security by rebalancing China’s emergence. This meant joint military deployments by the United States and its regional allies. On the other hand, to promote what Obama called “our shared prosperity”, which translated into an enlarged trans-Pacific trade and economic liberalization agreement: The so-called Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). This pivot policy, clearly aimed at containing China, was labelled by a well-known regional analyst as America’s most ambitious strategic doctrine since Truman committed America to contain the Soviet Union (White, 2011). The security leg of this pivot policy entailed that a majority of America’s naval resources were to be shifted from the Atlantic to the Pacific theatres—this represented 60 percent of nuclear and high-tech naval vessels, including at least six aircraft carriers. It included, as well, plans to surround China with stealth planes, B-2 bombers and F-22 and F-35 fighter planes. Meanwhile, bases in the region were to be expanded in size, while a new base was opened in Darwin, Australia. Regional allies, and specially Japan, were encouraged to rearm. Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy contested Chinese excessive maritime claims in the South China Sea, thus preserving access to waterways “governed by international law”. Simultaneously, the U.S. Air Force challenged China’s “Air Identification Zone” over the East China Sea (Woodward, 2017 [1, Chapter 3]). The economic leg of this policy, the TPP, was a twelve-country comprehensive Free Trade Agreement. This agreement implicitly excluded China by way of a provision that considered state-owned companies as expressions of unfair competition. China’s Pacific neighborhood was thus being tied to the United States through an economic integration mechanism whose avowed aim was to reduce Beijing’s economic clout upon it. Not surprisingly, some of China’s analysts considered the Trans-Pacific Partnership as being tantamount to an economic NATO (Woodward, 2017 [2, Chapter 1]).

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Meanwhile, the Obama Administration also tried to reduce Beijing’s economic influence by boycotting the participation of its European and Asian allies in China’s sponsored Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). As mentioned before, this multilateral development bank that aimed at supporting infrastructure developments in the Asia–Pacific region had been proposed by China in 2013, and been formally launched in Beijing in 2014. From the beginning, Washington opposed a project that could render Beijing a high degree of financial influence in the fastest growing region of the planet. The boycott however proved to be an utter failure because Washington’s allies were not ready to give up the opportunities that this golden goose project offered them. Within another context, in 2011 a U.S. bill forbade bilateral contacts between NASA and Chinese scientists, while the Obama Administration foreclosed the possibility of China’s participation in the U.S.-Russia International Space Station (Toro Hardy, 2020 [1, pp. 57–58 and 247–249]).

Distorting but Not Abandoning The Trump Administration distorted but not abandoned containment to China. The President’s first act in the White House was to withdraw his country from the TPP, which fell under his drive of abandoning Obama’s signature legacies. However, the security limb of the pivot policy remained very much in place. Hence, even if Obama’s “shared prosperity” notion disappeared from the equation, the rest was kept going. This placed many countries of the area under the predicament of having to choose between China’s economic opportunities and America’s security offers, which for some left no other option than to accept the former. Trump’s people announced a major buildup in East Asia. This included deploying additional submarines and destroyers in the Pacific and plans to expand or add new bases in Japan and Australia. Meanwhile, talks of installing air force long-range strike assets in South Korea were held. At the same time, the U.S. Navy followed up with its “freedom of navigation patrols” in Chinese claimed areas in contention within the South China Sea, while the U.S. Air Force continued challenging China’s “Air Defense Identification Zone” over the East China Sea. Moreover, in multiple occasions American warships navigated through the Taiwan Strait, the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act made strong affirmations of support for Taiwan, and substantial arms sales to the island took place. Meanwhile, Taiwan’s President was given a high-level treatment while in its transit

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stops in the United States. Moreover, the Trump Administration began using the concept Indo-Pacific as expression of an expanded coverage zone of America’s commitment to counter China. This made of East Asia and the Pacific subsets of a much larger area of the United States’ power projection that also included the Indian Ocean (Jackson, 2021; Reuters, 2019a, 2019b; Sutter, 2020 [1, p. 226]; Woodward, 2017 [3, Chapter 1]). Jointly with the above, the Trump Administration advanced containment by way of an ambitious trade war, and by targeting on selected China’s high-tech developments. The White House’s intent on coercing China to abandon its industrial policies as a precondition for trade could have no other meaning than economic containment. Indeed, constraining Chinese trade by way of unattainable demands could only be explained as a means of slowing and burdening its economy. In May 2019, Washington imposed 25 percent tariffs on US$250 billion worth of China’s exports to the United States, while it later burdened it with an additional 10 percent on the remaining US$300 billion. Consequently, by August 2019, up to 41 percent of American companies manufacturing in that country had moved away from it or were planning to do so. Also in August 2019, President Trump threatened to use its executive powers to forbid the United States’ companies to keep doing business inside China, arguing that the Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 entitled him to do so. In November 2020, Trump signed an Executive Order banning Americans from investing in Chinese firms that he claimed had ties with China’s military (CNN, 2019, 2020; Klein, 2019). The Trump Administration also targeted Chinese high-tech companies, beginning with Huawei. Although it argued that its escalating measures against that company were based on national-security concerns, it was difficult not to see them as part of an overall containment process. Particularly so, because slowing Huawei’s lead in the once in a generation 5G technology, hindered Chinese command in such a strategic area. Indeed, this wide-ranging and truly potent technology offers many advantages to its users, such as facilitating connectivity in remote locations as well as connecting sensors and robots; increasing the autonomy of vehicles, traffic control and factories; empowering digital economies and smart cities; transforming the military equipment embedded with it more efficient and autonomous. Huawei is in a privileged position within the global 5G market, being likely to control up to 60 percent of it. There is no doubt that the American government’s repeated attacks on Huawei aimed at

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obstructing its commanding position (Drezner, 2019; Toro Hardy, 2020 [2, pp. 242–244]). However, the Trump Administration not only targeted Huawei. By different means, it tried to stall China’s innovation process. The 2018 National Defense Authorization Act included provisions that expanded the size and power of the Committee on Foreign Investments and other legal measures, to protect American high technology from acquisition by China. The Trump Administration detected China’s Achilles heel in the field of electronics and accordingly tried to prevent that country from acquiring the U.S.-produced microchips. Indeed, while leading the industry of electronic products, China has been unable to master the control of an area on which such products depend: The integrated circuit microchips. In 2018 Washington brought the Chinese giant ZTE to the verge of bankruptcy, through an export ban of America’s microchips to that company. Although the Trump Administration had to backtrack from that measure, given its side effects on America’s competitive position in this area, it proved its desire to erode China’s technological stand. In the same manner, the Trump Administration attempted to blacklist the United States’ operations of the popular Chinese owned video sharing app TikTok, forcing its sale to an American company. American courts, however, sided against Trump’s ban, ruling that it was politically motivated (Allyn, 2021; Sutter, 2020 [2, p. 225]; Toro Hardy, 2020 [3, pp. 244–246]). Adding insult to injury, the Trump Administration sustained a systematic rhetorical demonization of the Chinese regime that recalled Reagan’s own in relation to the Soviet Union. From authoritative U.S. documents such as the 2017 National Security and National Defense Strategy, and the 2018 National Defense Strategy that presented China as a “predatory” strategic rival that threatened all that America held dear, to the U.S. Trade Representative characterization of China as an “existential threat” to the United States, from the “Chinese virus” labelling of the Covid-19 coronavirus to the “genocide” label applied to the regime’s activities in Xinjiang, the examples of this demonization were numerous. This demonization insinuated calls for regime change (Sutter, 2020 [3, pp. 220, 221]; Swaine, 2018).

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Following Suit Although more orderly and less demonizing than Trump’s, the Biden Administration aims at becoming more challenging for China by being fitter and smarter. Biden foresees a struggle that pits the United States against China—a struggle that can have only one winner because in his view, China is less interested in coexistence than in dominance. As a result, the task of the United States is to blunt that ambition. This includes building strengths at home and working with allies. The latter has led to transiting multilateralism, as evidenced by Biden’s position in the G-7 and NATO summits in June 2021. Although European nations showed themselves keen to preserve their own distinctive and less combative approach to China, not wanting to jeopardize their economic interactions with it, Biden did attempt to bring the world’s liberal democracies together in a contest against authoritarian China. In trade matters, although Biden had said that he disagreed with Trump’s approach to China, he has proved to be in no hurry to reverse the tariffs imposed on that country. Much to the contrary, his administration has stated that it is open to using tariffs as a tool to fight the Chinese’s unfair practices. Similarly, Biden has kept in place and refined Trump’s prohibitions on doing business with Huawei and a long list of technology companies and military-affiliated businesses, adding multiple names to that list. As an extension of this, Biden is enforcing export controls, so that American companies do not fuel China’s development of critical technologies. Meanwhile, it revoked China’s Telecom right to operate in the United States, citing national security concerns. On the world stage, his administration aims at countering China’s influence in the United Nations and other multilateral institutions. And as part of an overall confrontation with China, Biden has imposed successive sanctions on Chinese officials and entities for human rights abuses in the Xinjiang region and for the crackdown on political freedoms in Hong Kong. The latter also included Hong Kong officials. Targeting Beijing where it hurts, the White House slapped China’s 2022 Winter Olympiads with a diplomatic boycott (Sergeant, 2021; The Economist, 2021, 2021). Geopolitically, Biden was the first President since 1978 to host Taiwan’s envoy to the United States at his inauguration. Days after, the State Department released a statement affirming that Washington’s commitment to the island was “rock solid”. The Biden Administration introduced, as well, a tough stand in relation to The Philippines’ maritime

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controversy with China. In 2021 America’s Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said that his country could invoke the U.S.-Philippines mutual defense pact in the event of any Chinese military action against Philippine assets in the South China Sea, including among those assets not only the country’s armed forces but also public vessels or aircrafts. On the same token, the U.S. Navy continued with its freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea, while since February 2021, it undertook for some time monthly “routine Taiwan Strait transits”. At the same time, Biden kept Trump’s Indo-Pacific concept, stressing that “preserving a free an open Indo-Pacific” was one of his top priorities. Further to fostering the “Quad” by becoming the first U.S. President in hosting and participating in an in-person Summit of this security group, Biden was instrumental in the creation of a newly minted Australia-U.K.-U.S. security pact known by its acronym of AUKUS. The first expression of this last grouping was a submarine deal that would allow sharing American nuclear submarine technology to Australia. The importance of this technology sharing is reflected by the fact that the last time that something similar happened dates back to 1958, when the U.K. adopted American naval reactors as part of the effort to counter the Soviets expanding nuclear arsenals. Besides labeling China’s actions in Xinjiang as “genocide”, Biden sanctioned Chinese officials in charge of security affairs in the region. On the same token, his administration added additional sanctions in response to Beijing’s restrictive new national security law in Hong Kong. Meanwhile, in its March 2021 Interim National Security Strategic Guidance, the Biden administration labeled China as the only competitor able “to mount a sustained challenge to a stable and open international system” (Hansler & Lendon, 2021; Jackson, 2021; Reuters, 2021; Sanger, 2021; Wang, 2021 [1]). Since the first Obama period, the United States has shown consistency of purpose in containing China. Even if lacking a master plan for this purpose, Obama, Trump, and Biden have followed the same direction. Kishore Mahbubani remarked that two key American strategic thinkers like Henry Kissinger and Fareed Zakaria, who rarely share the same opinions, agree that a comprehensive strategy on China is missing. Although this is certainly the case, the simple fact that the same direction has been followed during three successive presidential administrations is, in itself, a substantial achievement in an otherwise fractured society. However, although this kind of consistency proved vital in relation to the Soviet

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Union, it may be insufficient to prevail against China’s ambitions. In addition to articulating a route map, two additional elements, that seem to be missing, would be indispensable for that purpose: Economic preponderance and geopolitical feasibility. The first entails the possibility of outspending China, particularly Chinese military budgets, for a prolonged period. The second implies being able to indefinitely constrain China to a subordinate role in its own backyard. With those two elements seemingly out of the equation, consistency alone (even if it were to respond to a coherent strategy) could not achieve a successful containment of China (Mahbubani, 2020 [1, p. 49]).

Gone Are the Days The United States does not have a comparable economic preponderance in relation to China to the one it had when it confronted the Soviet Union. By the end of 2021 the Chinese GDP in absolute terms will be the equivalent to around 71 percent of the American one, whereas in the early 1980s, the Soviet GDP equaled less than 50 percent of that of the United States. However, in Parity Purchasing Power measurement, in 2018 China was the largest world economy with US$25.3 trillion versus US$20.5 trillion for the United States. Moreover, China will be equaling America’s GDP in absolute terms around 2030. From that moment onwards, their different economic growing curves will generate an increasing gap in China’s favor. As previously mentioned, according to several estimates by 2040 China’s GDP should be considerably larger than that of the United States (Auslin, 2020 [1, p. 26]; Fogel, 2010; Wang, 2021 [2]). Gone are thus the days when the United States could outspend its foe, leading it into bankruptcy. In not a distant future, just the opposite may be happening. The United States will be hard-pressed if it tries to follow suit on Chinese deeper pockets’ spending. As Paul Kennedy asserted, the need to divert investment away from butter toward guns, leads any great power to the downward spiral of slower growth, heavier taxes and deepening domestic splits over spending priorities. As previous “number one” have experienced, he argues, when their relative economic strength ebbs, the growing foreign challenges to their receding position have compelled them to allocate more and more of their resources into the military sector, thus accelerating its decay. Hence, America’s obvious danger in following the Soviets’ footsteps. Moreover, in order to be effective a containment

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policy requires to be on the winning side of the budgetary competition. Otherwise, any measure taken in pursuit of that purpose could be outmatched and outspent by the counterpart. A good example of this was given by the 1977 Soviet deployment of the SS-20 intermediate missiles in Europe, which was met by America’s counter-deployment of the Pershing II missiles, reputed to be fifteen times more accurate than the SS-20s (Gaddis, 2005 [4, Chapter 6]; Kennedy, 1989 [2, p. 689]). As mentioned, Michael Pillsbury believes that once China attains economic predominance, it shall be forced to protect its new status through military force and that would translate into increasing military expenditure. This would be in tune with Paul Kennedy’s idea that although many nations have wealth at their focus in the beginning, once they attain prosperity their priority switches to the protection of said wealth. China’s increasing military expenditure is already in sight. By 2025 China could be allocating up to US$585 billion to the official budget of the People’s Liberation Army. However, it is estimated that the real defense expending could be fifteen to 20 percent higher than that, as military-related expenditure would be also included in other budgets (such as the State’s science and technology budget) or allocated to other forces (the People’s Armed Police, the Coast Guard, the naval militia, and the civil defense forces). Not surprisingly, in a key conclave of the Chinese Communist Party held in November of 2020, it was unveiled that the plans to attain a fully modern military on par with that of the United States by 2027 had already been drawn. This date commemorates the centennial of the founding of the People’s Liberation Army. The United States can expect to be subjected from that year on to an increasing budgetary competition in this area (Buttler-Bowdon, 2015, p. 145; Pillsbury, 2015, Chapter 9; Shambaugh, 2020, p. 348; The Economic Times, 2020).

The Lack of Geopolitical Feasibility But more significant than its lack of economic preponderance in relation to China would be the lack of geopolitical feasibility of America’s containment. This clearly differs with the containment of the Soviet Union during the first Cold War. Once Stalin had understood that no new gains were possible in Europe beyond the Iron Curtain, Soviet expansionism moved to the Third World at the beginning of the 1950s. Conversely, in 1956 rebellious Hungarians turned against their own Soviet puppet

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regime. When the Kremlin sent the Red Army to restore order, it was met by a brave popular resistance that with Molotov cocktails in hand ran the Soviets out of Budapest. This was the moment that the Americans had been waiting for since 1945—a nationalistic uprising against the Soviet occupation. However, Eisenhower decided to respect the Iron Curtain boundary line and not to intervene. Hence, both parties would respect the red lines of the other, thus greatly reducing the threat of a direct confrontation between them. The United States and the Soviet Union would engage in a power competition by way of proxy wars in client states but would always avoid going to the jugular of the other side’s strategic sensibilities. The only exception to this rule came by the adventurous positioning of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba, seventy miles away from American mainland. This almost led to a nuclear confrontation in 1963 (Dailey, 2018, pp. 243, 244). Opposite to the USSR’s containment, it is unrealistic to assume that China can be constrained to remain indefinitely as a secondary player in a region that for millennia was tributary to its power. Even more unrealistic would be presuming that it might be restrained in relation to its ambition to incorporate Taiwan to the People’s Republic. What is herein involved is not only the restoration of its glorious past, but China’s “great unification” of its territory. The “great rejuvenation” narrative, that gathers and unifies the energy of almost 1,4 billion Chinese, is at the other side of America’s containment drive. This is a totally different proposition from America’s containment of the Soviets in Afghanistan or Congo. Even more, containing a force implies confining it within a certain boundary in order to avoid its expansion, and what China wants is essentially to avoid outside penetration within its self-defined boundaries. At the same time, the distance from California to the South China Sea is around 7400 miles and from Hawaii almost 6000 miles, whereas from California to Taiwan is 7000 miles and from Hawaii close to 5300 miles. Meanwhile, the distance between mainland China and Taiwan is just ninety miles (eighty-one miles at its closest point, to be precise), while part of its coastal areas is within the South China Sea. Hence, John Mearsheimer’s notion of the stopping power of water in relation to long sea distances fully applies in relation to the United States. But even if that would not be considered as a sufficient deterrent barrier by the United States, the firm control of the operational theatre by China should indeed be taken very seriously. The latter comes not only as a result of its short distance from the mainland, but from the flooding of the area by China’s

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powerful navy and from its construction of what has been labelled the “great wall of sand”. All of this is duly supported by China’s missiles’ might. According to Michael R. Auslin, indeed, it is arguable that the Chinese military can already assert control over the waters and the skies of the South China Sea and even of the first island chain. Furthermore, he says, policy makers in Washington are increasingly worried that America’s power to prevail in the area is not commensurate with U.S. commitments (Auslin, 2020 [2, pp. 13, 16]; Fabey, 2018, p. 231; Mearsheimer, 2001, pp. 114–128). Indeed, America is badly prepared to confront this pushing-out pressure by China. Not only its Air Force and Navy ceased working as a team at the end of the Cold War, but both forces decided to give priority to short-range missions over long-range ones. The Air Force moved its emphasis from long-range strategic bombing aircrafts to short-range tactical fighters, dramatically cutting back the former as a percentage of its overall force. The Navy on its side yanks off, all together, from longrange strike missions. America’s campaigns in both Kuwait and Kosovo, which depended on aircrafts flying short distances from their airfields or aircraft carriers, helped crafting the new policy. The accentuation is thus on short-range, high sortie rates and precision strikes. This implies that while the Chinese have developed an intermediate-range area-denial strategy, the U.S. forces need to approach its targets to be effective. On top of that, America’s F-22 and F-35A are by design short-range fighters. Fifth-generation stealth strike aircrafts, on its side, do not have sufficient range to reach their targets unless supported by highly vulnerable “big wing” oil tankers (Hendrix, 2018). A geopolitical containment that must prevail not only against the unified will of almost 1,4 billion Chinese in what they perceive as their historical entitlement but also against huge distances and the firm control of the operational theatre by the counterpart is hardly a realistic option. What is herein involved seems to surpass what is attainable short of a major war. And even if America summoned the will to commit its armed forces against China, its dependence on short-range air and naval approaches makes it unsuitable to confront that country’s layered defensein-depth. Under such circumstances, America’s consistency of purpose in following containment seems clearly insufficient to prevail. Moreover, the military balance between China and the United States will temporarily shift further in the former’s favor in the late 2020s, when many aging

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American ships, submarines, and planes will have to be retired (Beckley & Brands, 2021).

Taiwan The case of Taiwan is particularly forbidding in relation to a containment policy. For the People’s Republic, reuniting Taiwan with the mainland represents a historical restitution and not an expansion. A restitution susceptible of removing the last vestige of its century of humiliation. For Beijing what is therein involved are its sovereignty rights over what it considers to be an integral part of its territory. This is supported by a huge nationalistic wave. In tune with that wave, in its June 2021 Tiananmen Square’s address commemorating the centenary of the CCP, Xi Jinping vowed to crush any attempt at obstructing the complete reunification of the mainland with Taiwan. This is consistent with China’s 2015 Defense White Paper, where the unification of the motherland appears as the priority task of the People’s Liberation Army. Beijing and Washington have thus asymmetric interests in relation to Taiwan. The first sees it as part of its country’s territory and has immanent incentives in seeking unification. For the United States, on the contrary, only reputational interests are involved. Its reason for deterring the People’s Republic use of force, indeed, solely rests in the preservation of its international credibility. What is at stake for both superpowers, then, lies at completely different levels. A nation would be ready to fight to its last combatant to preserve its sovereignty and territorial integrity, whereas it would be irrational to do so only to safeguard its reputation (Chung, 2021; Ross, 2009, p. 159; Saunders, 2020, p. 184; Skylar Mastro, 2021 [1]). To those asymmetrical interests it must be added that the United States does not contest the One China policy. The 1972 joint communique between Washington and Beijing stated as follows: “The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is part of China. The United States does not challenge that position”. Since 1972 that has been Washington’s official position. A good example of this was given by Clinton’s “three no’s” policy, expressed during his 1998 visit to China: “We don’t support independence for Taiwan, or ‘two Chinas’ or ‘one Taiwan, one China’ [and] we don’t believe that Taiwan should have a membership in any organization for which statehood is a requirement”. As a matter of fact, until the 1895 seizure of Taiwan by Japan, the island had been Chinese

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ruled. So clear seemed to have been the Chinese titles upon the island that, upon defeating Japan, Washington did not hesitate in returning Formosa, as it was then known, to Beijing. The fact that the Nationalists and not the Communists were the ruling regime at the time does not preclude the validity of the Chinese titles then recognized by Washington. Why then go to war for simple reputational motives, when the party that you support cannot claim sovereignty titles over the contested land? (Mahbubani, 2020 [2, p. 95]; Skylar Mastro, 2021 [2]; Woodward, 2017 [4, Chapter 7]). The United States had so far maintained a policy of strategic ambiguity in relation to Taiwan. This implies remaining deliberately vague about whether it would defend the island in case of a Chinese invasion. However, a shift of position seems to be gathering pace. This began with the Trump administration, which lifted existing rules that forbade seniorlevel contacts between American and Taiwanese officials, while increasing arms sales to the island. The House of Representatives, on its side, unanimously passed the Taiwan Assurance Act in 2019. In accordance to its content, the United States should not only continue selling arms to the island, but should actively support Taiwan’s participation in international organizations. Although the bill has yet to be approved by the Senate, it represents an important bipartisan step toward recognizing statehood status to Taiwan. In the same direction, in October 2021 Biden’s Secretary of State Anthony Blinken called on UN member states to support Taiwan’s “robust” participation in the UN system and in its specialized agencies. Moreover, Biden who was the first American President since 1978 to receive a Taiwan’s official representation at his inauguration, asserted in October 2021 that America’s commitment to Taiwan was “rock solid”. In the same occasion, when asked if his country would protect Taiwan if attacked by China, he unequivocally responded with a yes. In addition to official statements, the United States is currently engaged in training Taiwanese military forces. Speaking at the Aspen Forum in November 2021, America’s Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, said that his country’s military could “absolutely” defend Taiwan from a potential PLA attack if asked to do so. At the same Aspen Forum, Representative Adam Schiff the influential Chairman of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee publicly urged the Biden administration to leave aside its ambiguity policy toward the island (Auslin, 2020 [3, foreword by N. Ferguson]; Liu, 2021; Wang, 2021).

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If a shift in policy does indeed materialize, America’s possibilities of getting involved in a war for Taiwan would undoubtedly increase. Especially so as the flames of Chinese nationalism have also produced a hardening in the opposite direction as well, with 70 percent of mainlanders strongly propping up the use of force to attain unification if necessary. America’s abandonment of its ambiguity policy could only generate a dangerous spiral. It would push Taiwan’s authorities toward becoming bolder in their pro-independence stand, thus propelling Beijing’s aggressiveness toward the island, which in turn would force an American strong stance in Taiwan’s defense. For the United States, though, a war for Taiwan would be a highly undesirable option: Recent war games conducted by the Pentagon and the RAND Corporation have shown that a military clash over Taiwan would result in an American defeat, with China completing an all-invasion in just days or weeks. As Chas Freeman has warned, a continued American commitment to Taiwan is incompatible with the waning of its relative power in the region and the priority that Beijing places on the issue. Along similar lines, John Mearsheimer argues that China’s rise to great power status makes the United States’ security commitment to Taiwan increasingly unsustainable (Ping-Kuei et al., 2017, p. 261; Skylar Mastro, 2021 [3]). Reputational interests, as seen, guide America’s support to Taiwan. However, a loosing war with the People’s Republic of China over Taiwan, a probable outcome of such a conflict, would shatter its superpower reputation. Hence, the risks herein involved seem to defeat the purpose of America’s security commitment to Taiwan. The example of the RussoJapanese war of 1904–1905 illustrates well what is at risk. Russia’s defeat deeply damaged its great power reputation, while exponentially enhancing Japan’s standing. Should a war with Beijing ensue as a result of Taiwan’s commitment, the United States could be subject to a much bigger and significant defacement than the one experienced by Russia.

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Ross, R. S. (2009). Chinese security policy: Structure, power and politics. Routledge. Sanger, D. E. (2021, October 17). Washington hears echoes of the 50s and worries: Is this a Cold War with China? The New York Times. Saull, R. (2018). American foreign policy during the Cold War. In M. Cox & D. Stokes (Eds.), US foreign policy. Oxford University Press. Saunders, P. C. (2020). China’s global military-security interactions. In D. Shambaugh (Ed.), China and the world. Oxford University Press. Sergeant, G. (2021, June 15). Biden’s multilateral approach to China is paying off. The Diplomat. Shambaugh, D. (2020). China and the world: Future changes. In D. Shambaugh (Ed.), China and the world. Oxford University Press. Skylar, M. O. (2021, July/August). The Taiwan temptation: Why Beijing might resort to force. Foreign Affairs. Sutter, R. (2020). China relations with the United States. In D. Shambaugh (Ed.), China and the world. Oxford University Press. Swaine, M. D. (2018, June 29). The U.S. can’t afford to demonize China. Foreign Policy. https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/06/29/the-u-s-cant-affordto-demonize-china/. Accessed 15 July 2021. The Economic Times. (2020, November 1). Chinese Communist Party unveils plan to make PLA on par with US military by 2027. https://economict imes.indiatimes.com/news/defence/chinese-communist-party-unveils-planto-make-pla-on-par-with-us-military-by-2027/articleshow/78983356.cms? from=mdr. Accessed 6 Aug 2021. The Economist. (2021, November 21). The Biden administration will try to box clever on China. The World Ahead 2022. The Economist. (2021, June 17). Biden’s new China doctrine. The Economist. (2021, November 21). Manichean and messy. The World Ahead 2022. Toro Hardy, A. (1984). ¿Para Qué Una Política Exterior? Editorial Ateneo de Caracas. Toro Hardy, A. (2018). Understanding Latin America: A Decoding Guide. World Scientific. Toro Hardy, A. (2020). China versus the US: Who will prevail? World Scientific. Trachtenberg, M. (2018). Assessing soviet economic performance during the Cold War: A failure of intelligence? Texas National Security Review, 1(2), 77–101. Wang, A. (2021, November 6). China-US tension: Fresh uncertainty over America’s ‘strategic ambiguity’ on Taiwan. South China Moring Post. Wang, J. (2021, July/August). The plot against China? How Beijing sees the new Washington Consensus. Foreign Affairs. White, H. (2011, November 26). Contain China? The Straits Times.

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Woodward, J. (2017). The U.S. VS China: Asia’s New Cold War? Manchester University Press.

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The irrationality of the amounts that the Soviet Union was dedicating to its defense budget not only implied a tremendous burden on its economy but imposed a huge sacrifice on the standard of living of its population. Subsidies to the rest of the members of the Soviet bloc had to be added to this huge bill. Such amounts were hardly sustainable for a country that from the first half of the 1960s had been subjected to a continuous economic stagnation. This was aggravated by the fact that since the mid-1980s the prices of oil, main Soviet export product, showed a strong decline. However, the reescalation of the Cold War undertaken by Jimmy Carter and particularly by Ronald Reagan put in motion an American military buildup that, pure and simple, could not be matched by Moscow. Reagan’s policy openly repudiated détente and reasserted the moral absolutes of the Cold War. Going beyond mere containment, he used all the means at his disposal to corner the Soviet Union and inflict upon its system costs susceptible of breaking it. In order to avoid the implosion of the system, Moscow triggered a reform process that attained none other than accelerating such implosion. Mikhail Gorbachev opened the pressure cooker hoping to release, in a controlled manner, the force therein contained. However, once liberated, such force swept away with everything on its path. Truth is that the Soviet system could not survive without changes but, at the same time, it © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 A. T. Hardy, America’s Two Cold Wars, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-9503-2_9

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could not assimilate them. It was a system that had exhausted its survival capacity. A doomed one. Without a single shot being fired, the United States had won the Cold War. The exuberant sentiment of triumph existing in that country had its better expression in the “end of history” thesis. This thesis proclaimed that by having defeated its rival ideology, liberalism had become the final point in the ideological evolution of humanity. That implied the final form of government and, by extension, the end of history. Things, of course, were not as simple. However, in the essential, the new millennium began with an all-powerful United States and with a world that had been homogenized under its liberal credo. America had indeed attained global hegemony. Fukuyama’s end of history thesis seemed to have become a reality. As it happened, though, the history of the end of history proved to be a very brief one. In a few years’ time, the global “Pax Americana” had not only been seriously shaken, but the United States was facing the challenge of a powerful rival that had emerged practically from nowhere: China. How did this happen? At the beginning of the 1970s, China and the United States had reached a simple but transformative agreement. Washington would henceforward recognize the Chinese Communist regime as the legitimate government in China, while Beijing would no longer quest to constrain America’s power projection in Asia. In other words, its leadership. By natural extension, this agreement provided China with an economic opening to the West. Notwithstanding the several challenges encountered along the way, both the United States and China made a deliberate effort to overcome problems and remain within the road opened in 1972. Their agreement showed to be not only highly resilient but had the capability to evolve amid changing circumstances. The year 2008, though, became an inflexion point in this relationship. From that moment onwards, everything began to disentangle. What made this year such a momentous point in time? The answer could be found in a notion familiar to the Chinese mentality, but entirely foreign to the Western world—the shi. This notion can be understood as an alignment of forces able to shape a new situation. Which were the alignment of forces that materialized in 2008? The answer is clear: The American financial excesses that produced the world’s worst financial crisis since 1929; China’s sweeping efficiency in

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overcoming the risk of contagion from this crisis; China’s ability in maintaining its economic growth, which prevented a major global economic downturn; and finally, the highly successful Beijing Olympic games of that year that uplifted the country’s self-esteem. Concomitant to those events was the erosion suffered by America’s hegemonic standing resulting from its inability to prevail in two peripheral Middle Eastern wars. In sum, the United States had proven not to be ten feet tall, while China turned out much taller than believed. Deng’s guidance for future generations of leaders had emphasized the necessity of preserving a low profile, while waiting for the attainment of a position of strength. The events of 2008 seemed to prove that China was strong enough to begin acting more boldly. The shi was in motion and the strategic advantage therein derived had to be exploited. China’s post-2008 assertiveness became much bolder after Xi Jinping’s coming into power. His faith in China’s capabilities and a sense of entitlement regarding the country’s role in the world have been made public. China is ready to contend for global leadership. More importantly, China’s sense of centrality within its own region and the perception of the United States as an alien power within it generate a pushing-out pressure which goes together with an area-denial/anti-access positioning against American forces. Feeling challenged not only in its Asian leadership but in its global standing as well, the United States is reacting forcefully. Since 1854, the United States has uninterruptedly been an Asia–Pacific power. Moreover, its global leadership is also at stake. This is not only for reputational reasons, as yielding its presence in that region would put in motion a snowball effect that would shatter its superpower status, but also because of China’s assertiveness at the world stage. Accommodating two behemoths that feel entitled to preeminence is never easy. Especially so when one of them perceives to be under threat and the other feels that its emergence is being constrained. Moreover, both remain prisoners of their history and of their national myths and, as such, incapable of looking at the facts without distorting them with the subjective lenses of their perceived sense of mission and superiority. The possibility of a war ensuing under those circumstances is not small. However, while war is a plausibility, Cold War is already a fact. A systematic, continuous, and presumably long-term wrestle has taken shape between them. A multifaceted wrestle in which geopolitics, technology, trade, finances, alliances, and warfare capabilities are involved.

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And although converging interests still exist between both countries, remaining ties are being cut by the day. However, when analyzing how different a contender China is from the Soviet Union and how different the United States of today is in relation to its former self when confronting the USSR, a worrisome picture of America emerges. The configuration of factors that served Washington so well during its first Cold War, now seems to be playing against it in this second Cold War. This can be attested through five big changes. These would be the following: from ideology to efficiency; from hegemony to the squandering of alliances; from strategic consistency to zigzagging; from economic high ground to economic lowland; and from reasonable containment to unattainable containment. From ideology to efficiency: Although multifaceted, the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States had ideology as its core underpinning element. The United States was particularly well suited for an ideologically oriented Cold War. Having been the birthplace of liberal democracy and its most devoted preacher, it was easy for it to reclaim the mantle of leader of the “Free World”. Particularly so, after Woodrow Wilson endowed its foreign policy with a missionary impulse that aimed at placing democracy in the pinnacle of the international system. On the other side of the fence, the Soviet regime also embodied an ideology that aimed at global expansion. This ideological contest was not only clear−cut but unmistakably favorable to free ideas and free societies. Freedom was indeed an arrow directed to the Achilles Heel of a totalitarian system. This emerging Cold War is not based on ideology. On the one hand, the liberal order is being seriously contested within the United States itself. On the other hand, China is not trying to sell the virtues of communism to anyone, not even to its own population. All that matters for China, since Deng’s time, is that the cat catches mice. Meaning, that the system delivers. Hence, not only America’s liberal order has become an ideological nonstarter, but what seems to matter in this rivalry is the capability shown by each to outmatch the other in terms of results. Efficiency, thus, becomes the defining element of the current Cold War. Contrary to the comparative advantage enjoyed by the United States in its ideological contest with the Soviet Union, the country is badly prepared for a competition framed in these new terms. Indeed, the United States fares poorly in numerous areas in relation to other nations of the developed world. Many areas, indeed, have been

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left unbridled for too long. The botched management of COVID-19 is testament of America’s current lack of responsiveness to big challenges. Biden’s initiatives are trying to reverse many of America’s shortcomings. If successful, this could undoubtedly place his country in a better competitive position in terms of efficiency. However, his is an uphill quest amid a highly polarized political system and society. Conversely, during the last four decades, China has shown the most impressive historical record in generating results. In Kevin Rudd’s words what has happened in China is the equivalent to the English Industrial Revolution and the global information revolution combusting simultaneously and compressed not into 300 years but into 30. From hegemony to the squandering of alliances: In the final phase of World War II or in its subsequent years, a network of multilateral organizations, initiatives, and alliances began to take shape under the auspices of the United States. Through this network, Washington positioned itself at the head of a potent hegemonic system. One that allowed the legitimacy of its leadership to be based on consensual acquiescence. Its spectrum of allies was as huge as was its capability to articulate the system on behalf of its Cold War’s objectives. On the other side of the fence, the Soviet Union established a much more modest system of alliances, initiatives, and common institutions. Although non-alignment defied both sides, America’s network remained the epitome of political, military, and economic strength. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the whole community of nations had to find arrangements under America’s hegemonic system, which henceforward became global. Incomprehensible under the light of common sense, George W. Bush’s administration proclaimed the futility of multilateral cooperation, which in its eyes constrained the freedom of action to which American power was entitled. Its raw unilateralism not only gravely weakened a system that had served Washington so well, but also the country’s standing within it. Although the possibility for the United States of redeeming its standing and credibility seemed well underway under Obama, Trump’s combination of unilateralism and isolationism cut short that option. His “dog eat dog” approach to foreign policy, ended up shattering the trust in America’s leadership. U.S. allies are finding exceedingly difficult to tie its future to a country so prone to extremes and zigzags, a fact that transcends the current positive trend within the White House. Especially so, as in a few years, Washington could be inaugurating a new Trump Administration.

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As a result, the United States is entering its Cold War with China having squandered one of its biggest assets: its impressive network of alliances. Conversely, China has shown an extraordinary capability for convergence building. To begin with, it is giving shape to a geopolitical bloc with Russia, a country much underestimated by the United States after the collapse of the Soviet Union. But jointly with this, China has undertaken a multilateral institutional building process that recalls the efforts of the United States in the final months or subsequent years of WWII. As in the American case, this aims at creating a favorable international institutional architecture. This not only neutralizes to an important extent China’s nationalistic excess but allows it to acquire a huge array of stakeholders in its future. From strategic consistency to zigzagging: The twenty years that succeeded the end of WWII represented the golden age of America’s foreign policy. It was a highly rational period where consistency prevailed. A group of rules of the game and conceptual bases were associated with this period. At the center of these rules of the game and conceptual bases, there was a fundamental guiding strategy: The containment of the Soviet Union’s expansionist impulse. From 1965 onwards, when the Vietnam War turned America upside down, its foreign policy system was shaken dramatically. Not everything, though, was swallowed by the emerging tumult. Although it became more difficult to maintain consistency in foreign policy matters, Washington certainly retained the capability to do so. This consistency was fundamental in confronting the Soviet Union with success. Nowadays, foreign policy consistency has completely disappeared. In the past, the United States was split vertically by its multiple divides, which was coherent with the anti−majoritarian nature of its system as constructed by its Founding Fathers. Today, however, partisan identities have merged with those multiple divides, generating two overwhelming majorities that coexist side by side demonizing each other. A dangerous horizontal fracture is detaching not only the political system but society as a whole. Under those circumstances, radical change of course becomes unavoidable each time that a new political correlation of power takes place in Washington, as Republicans and Democrats inhabit in different foreign policy planets. Although the containment of China is the only foreign policy subject where Republicans and Democrats can converge, a master plan on how

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to confront that country is totally lacking. Inhabiting two foreign policy planets doesn’t help much in defining such master plan. China is in a completely different position. Beijing has a clear national project and a well−rounded foreign policy, aimed at supporting the materialization of that project. Moreover, its geopolitical ambitions are more localized, interconnected, and, in most instances, closer to home. That helps preserving focus. This, in turn, is complemented by its economic objectives, which include making of China the epicenter of an Asian−led global economic order and attaining world technological leadership. More broadly put, though, China marches toward its perception of its destiny: Becoming the number one power in the world by 2049, the centenary of the People’s Republic. China’s capability to implement its foreign policy strategy is closely linked to Xi Jinping’s leadership. His autocratic drive has brought uncertainty upon what used to be a well-stablished succession model. Conversely, it has also provided greater unity to the party, civilian control over the military, and a reconnection of the party with the population. As a result, his leadership is making the implementation of a consistent foreign policy much easier, while making it a collective enterprise shared by society as a whole. From economic high ground to economic lowland: At the end of the 1970s, the Soviet Union was sustaining a defense budget comparable to that of the United States but from a GDP base that was a fraction of its American counterpart. Moreover, while America’s economy was highly diversified, the Soviet one was exceedingly dependent on its oil exports, making its defense budget contingent on an inherently volatile economic source. Moreover, the United States was able to offset the Soviet Union military by maintaining a technological edge. This translated into forcing the Soviets into even bigger expending to compensate for the technological gap. On top of it, as the two superpowers competed on a global scale, Moscow had to multiply its expenditures to provide military support in different corners of the world. The Soviet Union’s quagmire multiplied several folds when Ronald Reagan entered office in 1981. He decided to put an end to détente, to “roll back” communism all around the world, to aim at making nucleararmed missiles obsolete by developing a Strategic Defense Initiative, and to pursue regime change in Moscow itself. Countering an offensive of this magnitude would have required economic means that the Soviet Union

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did not possess. Simply put, the Soviet Union was pushed into the ropes by bankrupting its economy. Confronting Beijing in a new Cold War, Washington finds itself in a different position altogether. China accounts for twenty-five percent of the global industrial output and in 2017 contributed one-third of the growth of the global economy. In a few years’ time, China will be surpassing America’s GDP in absolute terms, while it already did so in Purchasing Power Parity. It is estimated that after 2030, a GDP gap will begin accruing on China’s behalf, becoming three times larger than that of the United States by mid-century. Hence, China would be able to militarily outspend the United States’ defense budgets at will. China will probably need to protect its new status through military force, which would translate into larger military expending. Should Washington try to follow China’s economic capability in this area, it might be led to bankruptcy in the same way the Soviet Union was when trying to compete with the United States. However, without reaching economic supremacy and a larger military budget, China has already developed the capability to maintain America’s superior military strength at bay, spending much less than the United States. This has been attained by several ways. First, by maintaining a technological edge in asymmetric weapons that cost but a fraction of the arm systems that they aim to destroy or render useless. Second, through a minimum deterrent nuclear strategy susceptible of a retaliatory strike capability that inhibits America’s use of its superior arsenal. Third, by concentrating the bulk of its military forces close to home while the Americans diffuse theirs around the world. From reasonable containment to unattainable containment: The United States emerged from WWII as the richest and most powerful nation in the world, which should have translated into a moment of supreme confidence on the country’s international towering presence. Paradoxically, it was a time of much insecurity and uncertainty. Conscious of the extent of its interconnection to the rest of the world, Americans understood that only by molding an international environment favorable to their values and interests they could find protection. They especially feared an aggressive Stalin, whose country had emerged from the war as a military juggernaut and who seemed ready to exploit global instability on its behalf. America’s more articulated response to that fear came from the strategy of containment: A patient, systematic and long−term containment of the

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Soviet expansionist drive. As Stalin understood that no new gains were possible in Europe beyond the “Iron Curtain”, Soviet expansionism and American containment moved away into the so−called Third World. This lifted away the frictions from the most geopolitical sensible region of the world, one where the possibility of a direct confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union was always high. Henceforward, the United States and the USSR would face each other and advance their agendas through proxy wars in client states. Containment proved to be extraordinarily successful in the end, attaining the goal that it had pursued since its inception. This was achieved thanks to strategic consistency. By burdening the Soviets at every step of the way, by imposing high costs on their actions, by confronting them at every corner of the planet, and by forcing increasingly higher military expending on their part, the United States finally exhausted Moscow. But together with strategic consistency, economic preponderance resulted fundamental. It would have been extremely difficult to lead to exhaustion in a country with superior economic means. Having attained such a huge success with its Soviet containment policy, nothing seems more natural for the United States than trying to replicate it now in relation to China. And, indeed, even if not framing it as such, America is clearly in the process of containing China’s geopolitical positioning, technological advancement, financial leverage, and trade expansion. Obama, Trump, and Biden have followed this road, although without a master plan and amid multiple ups and downs. Consistency in the path, however, may prove insufficient to prevail against China’s ambitions. Two other things would be necessary: Economic preponderance and geopolitical feasibility. The first entails the possibility of outspending China, particularly Chinese military budgets, for a prolonged period. The second refers to the viability of a policy that aims at constraining China indefinitely to a subsidiary role in its own backyard. Since these two elements seem out of the equation, a successful containment of China seems unattainable. This is a containment that would have to prevail not only against the unified will of almost 1.4 billion Chinese, but against the firm control of the operational theater by China, amid a huge distance from the United States. What is herein involved seems to surpass what is attainable, short of a major war. And even if America were to summon the will to commit to an armed conflict with China, its dependence on short−range air and

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naval approaches makes it utterly difficult to prevail against the layered defense−in−depth imposed by China. In sum, during its first Cold War the United States had the wind on its back. All the right configuration of elements supported it. The playing field was the right one—the core underpinning element was its biggest strength: ideology. Its support base was large—it could count with an extensive network of alliances that strengthened its position. The consistency of purpose was clear—both domestically and externally it followed a clear road map. The economic correlation favored it—it inhabited in the economic high ground. The final objective was attainable—containment was a reasonable and plausible strategy. This allowed for a successful outcome: Becoming an all−powerful hegemon. In this emerging Cold War, the opposite is the case. The United States faces the wrong configuration of factors. The playing field does not favor it—the core underpinning element is its main weakness: efficiency. The support base is faltering—true allies are scarce and its credibility among them is at a historical low. The consistency of purpose is extremely weak—while its political parties inhabit different foreign policy planets and its society is fractured, it may still exhibit a China’s−bashing common denominator, but this falls short of the requirements of an articulated foreign policy. The economic correlation puts it in a wavering place—in a few years time, the United States will be irreversibly positioned in the economic lowlands. The final objective is unattainable—containing China is not a reasonable or plausible proposition. Conversely, China can excel in an efficiency−oriented contest, its international support base is wide, its focus and consistency of purpose are as strong as they are ironclad, its economic strength will keep increasing with every passing year, and its containment remains illusory. As a result, while the first Cold War ended up projecting the United States to the pinnacle of the international system, this new one can only propitiate its nosediving. America’s two Cold Wars might thus signal its transit from preeminence to decline. With such inauspicious outlook, perhaps it would be wise for the United States to explore other alternatives to Cold War with China. A constructive cohabitation with that country could become a reasonable option for three reasons. First, it would allow it to assume world’s shared governance responsibilities that could benefit humanity as a whole and enhance the reputation of the United States. As Kishore Mahbubani has argued, the world would

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be happy to see an America which is strong and self−confident and does not need to shine militarily. This would entail analyzing the possibilities of what C. Fred Bergsten labeled as the “G2”, when elaborating on the idea that none of the world’s most pressing challenges could be effectively addressed without cooperation between Washington and Beijing. In his view, there was no way to rebalance the world economy, to solve the climate change conundrum, to breathe life to global trade differences, or to manage the main transnational problems, without the burden sharing and the coordinated leadership of both the United States and China. This would be a world in which both the American and the Chinese leadership would become indispensable partners (Bergsten, 2005; Mahbubani, 2020a [1]). Second, as stated by Henry Kissinger, a conflict between both superpowers is a choice, not a necessity. They can indeed choose whether to move toward a genuine effort of cooperation, creating a new order in Asia, or fall into a dangerous rivalry. As he admits, cooperation is not an easy task. The United States has few precedents in relating to a country of comparable size, self−confidence, economic achievement, and international scope. At the same time, China had never to relate before to a fellow great power with a permanent presence in Asia, a vision of universal ideas alien to the Chinese conceptions and alliances with several of China’s neighbors. However, the danger of an overt rivalry is overwhelming as a major war between these two developed nuclear countries, could bring casualties, and upheavals with it impossible to relate to calculable objectives (Kissinger, 2012a). Third, as argued by Fareed Zakaria, China and the United States are both part of a global economy that is deeply interdependent. Moreover, contrary to the relation between America and the Soviet Union during their Cold War, which traded at best a few billion dollars’ worth of goods every year, China, and the U.S. trade as much in a few days. As a matter of fact, much complementarity still exists between the two countries. Despite being a highly complex relation, their needs not to be purely adversarial. Washington’s greatest challenge is embracing and managing the complexity of this relation (Zakaria, 2021). Summarizing, if both countries might be able to become indispensable partners in solving some of the world’s most pressing problems, if conflict is a choice and not a necessity, and if theirs is a highly complex relation whose main challenge consists in embracing and managing complexity itself, there is still much stuff to work on.

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An agreement of this sort should lead to the United States remaining as a major power in Asia, under a power-sharing structure with China, while Washington accepts a larger global role for Beijing. If that were the case, Washington would have to negotiate a new distribution of political authority and influence to match the new distribution of power. Any chance of success would require that America be prepared to treat China as an equal, something for which this country is entirely unprepared. However, as argued by Paul Kennedy, the decline of American leadership is relative and not absolute, and the only serious threat that could accelerate that trend would come from its failure to adjust to a newer world order. Not being able to adjust to a new distribution of political authority reflecting a new distribution of power could well fit that characterization (Kennedy, 1989, p. 691; White, 2012). But jointly with being a power sharing structure, an agreement of this nature would also need for both sides to adopt a flexible and nuance approach. Kurt Campbell and Jack Sullivan use the Taiwan case as the model to follow. In their view, Taiwan is the greatest unclaimed success in the history of the United States and China relations, one characterized by intense engagement, mutual vigilance, and a degree of distrust, patience, and restrain. These should be, according to their perspective, the rules that should guide their great powers relationship. At the same time, as Wang Jisi states in order to build mutual respect both countries need to make an effort in understanding the roots of their mutual distrust, by placing each other in their counterpart’s shoes (Campbell & Sullivan, 2019; Wang, 2021). Needless to say that you need two to tango. Even if America turns out to be inclined to this kind of arrangement, this would also require of China’s willingness to accept a power-sharing structure in its own region and in the world at large. That willingness is not clear, as contrasting signs coexist in this respect. On the positive side is the fact that during his initial years in power, Xi Jinping promoted a “New Type of Great Power Relations” between his country and the United States. This proposal was based on three points: (1) no conflict or confrontation, through the emphasis on dialoge and by treating each other’s strategic intentions objectively; (2) mutual respect, which included respecting each other’s core interests and major concerns; and (3) mutually beneficial cooperation, by abandoning zero-sum game mentality and advancing areas of mutual interests (Cheng & Xu, 2014).

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Reinforcing the positive side of the scale is the fact that according to both Kishore Mahbubani and Martin Jacques, the Chinese civilization has a powerful anti-military DNA. One that probably goes back to Confucius. That would make China an inherently non-militaristic power. This assertion would be sustained by a few examples: Of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (the club of great powers), only China has not fought a war in forty years; in the 500 years up to the middle of the nineteenth century, China fought only one war—with Vietnam—which is lost; although conquered by the Mongols and enduring a Mongolian dynasty between 1279 and 1368, the crossfertilization therein derived curtailed their masters’ bellicosity instead of the opposite. Henry Kissinger argues in this same direction by saying that China’s imperial expansion materialized by osmosis rather than military conquest. This perspective, though, has to be counter-balanced with the fact that since the Chinese Communist Party arrived to power in 1949, China has fought three wars—with the United States and the UN forces in Korea in the 1950s, with India in the 1960s, and with Vietnam in the 1970s. Moreover, at the beginning of the 1970s it sustained a seven-month undeclared conflict with Soviet forces along the Ussuri River (Mahbubani, 2020a [2]; Mahbubani, 2020b, pp. 84–89; Jacques, 2019; Kissinger, 2012b, pp. 25, 537). On the negative side we find, basically, three considerations. Firstly, China perceives itself to be on the crest of the wave. Meaning, precisely at the time of the big power pushover. In many of his foreign policy addresses, since 2017, Xi Jinping has been declaring that the world is amid “great changes unseen in a century”. For Xi, these shifts are not only the result of China’s growing power but also of what he sees as the United States’ process of apparent self-destruction induced by populism. After the storming of the U.S. Capitol in January 2021, Xi stated that “time and momentum are on our side”. The messy withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, followed by the fall of Kabul into Taliban’s hands and by the botched evacuation of Americans and its Afghan supporters, reinforced Xi’s perception of America’s decay. Actually, Beijing believes that the next ten to fifteen will likely determine on whose side the correlation of power bends down. Why would China seek an arrangement with the United States when the shi is perceived to be accelerating? (Blanchette, 2021; Doshi, 2021). Secondly, the world order, and not simply the regional one, is at stake because of such great changes. According to Rush Doshi, China no longer

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seeks to shape the regional order but aims at shaping the twenty-first century much as the United States shaped the twentieth. Hence, a new regional order would no longer satisfy its aspirations, which have become global. Could there be basis for an agreement between both parties under such circumstances? (Doshi, 2021). Thirdly, according to Kevin Rudd, an integral part of this big power pushover consists in persuading countries in Asia and around the world that China’s dominance is inevitable. In other words, they have no other option but to start bending over to Beijing’s demands. This would allow China to begin rewriting the rules of the international order without having to fire a shot. Would China be willing to reach an agreement with the United States that makes null this strategy? (Rudd, 2021). If these three considerations proved out to be accurate, any attempt by the United States to find an accommodation with China would be groundless. It’s not possible to tango alone. However, whichever the case may be, before jumping into an uncertain, unchartered and probably irreversible Cold War with China, amid a highly pessimistic forecast, the United States should responsibly analyze and explore alternative options. The country thought much and deep before embarking in a Cold War with the Soviet Union. It should do no less in relation to China. For a nation like the United States, which has the biggest strategic thinking ecosystem in the world, this would seem as an obvious step. This ecosystem not only includes a huge national security apparatus that includes the NSC, the CIA, the FBI, and the NSA but also a myriad of think tanks plentiful of talent and with the world’s largest budget in this area.

References Bergsten, F. C. (2005). The United States and the world economy: Foreign economic policy for the next decade. Institute for International Economics. Blanchette, J. (2021, July/August). Xi’s gamble: The race to consolidate power and stave off disaster. Foreign Affairs, 100(4). Campbell, K. M., & Sullivan, J. (2019, September/October). Competition without catastrophe: How America can both challenge and coexist with China. Foreign Affairs. Cheng, L., & Xu, L. (2014, December 4). Chinese Enthusiasm AND American cynicism over the “new type of great power relations”. Brookings. https:// www.brookings.edu/opinions/chinese-enthusiasm-and-american-cynicismover-the-new-type-of-great-power-relations/. Accessed August 6, 2021.

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Index

A Acheson, Dean, 106 Afghanistan, 80 African Development Bank (AfDB), 97 Air Defense Identification Zone, 28, 116 Albania, 109 Albright, Madeleine, 17 Andropov, Yuri, 8 Angola, 127 Anti-access/area-denial strategy, 32 Arunachal Pradesh, 77 ASEAN, 96 Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), 87 Asia-Pacific, 82 Asia-Pacific security and prosperity area, 155 Asymmetric weapons, 130 Australia, 74 Authoritarianism, 58 Azerbaijan, 90

B Baker, James, 89 Bangladesh, 30 Bay of Bengal, 30 Belt and Road Initiative, 95 Berlin, 21 Berlin Wall, 9 Biao, Lin, 121 Biden, Joe, 49 Bipartisanship, 107 Bipartisan system, 57 Blinken, Anthony, 160 Brazil, 80 Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS), 94 Bretton Woods’ institutions, 73 Brexit, 85 Brezhnev, Leonid, 8 Brunei, 28 Brzezinski, Zbigniew, 80 Bulgaria, 109 Bush, George W., 17

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 A. T. Hardy, America’s Two Cold Wars, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-9503-2

205

206

INDEX

C Canada, 80 Carter, Jimmy, 7 Central Europe, 9 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 147 Centrism, 107 “Century of Humiliation”, 117 Cheney, Dick, 79 Chernenko, Konstantin, 8 Chiang Kai-shek, 148 “Chimerica”, 25 China Development Bank, 93 “China Dream of National Rejuvenation”, 1 Chinese Communist Party, 89 Churchill, Winston, 109 Civil Rights Movement, 49 Clinton, Hillary, 53 Cold War, 1 Communist Party, 58 Communist Party Congress, 31 Congress, 55 Containment, 109 Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON), 74 COVID-19, 39 Czechoslovakia, 9 D Democracy, 63 Democrats, 53 Deng Xiaoping, 22 DF21/CSS-5 ballistic missile, 135 DF-26 missile, 135 E East China Sea, 28 Eastern Europe, 9 Egypt, 75 Eisenhower Doctrine, 149

Eisenhower, Dwight D., 110 Electoral College, 55 “End of history” thesis, 14 European Union, 87 Exceptional nation, 45

F First Offset Strategy, 126 Five Eyes intelligence alliance., 77 Ford, Gerald, 22, 128 France, 75 Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP), 96 “Free World”, 45

G G2, 183 G20, 81 Gaulle, Charles de, 75 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), 73 Georgia, 90 Germany, 33 Glasnost, 8 Globalization, 15 GOP party, 54 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 5 Gramsci, Antonio, 15 “Great rejuvenation”, 163 “Great Unification”, 116 “Great Wall of Sand”, 32

H Harris, Admiral Harry, 32 Hegemony, 1 Helsinki Agreement, 128 Hoh Chi Minh, 152 Hong Kong, 24, 98 House of Representatives, 56 Hua Guofeng, 121

INDEX

Huawei, 157 Hu Jintao, 24 Hungary, 9 Hu Yaobang, 121

I India, 30 Indian Ocean, 30 Indo Pacific, 36 Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), 97 International Court of Justice, 78 Internationalism, 107 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 16 Iraq, 80 Iron Curtain, 9 Italy, 87

J Japan, 35 Jaruzelski, Wojciech, 11 Jefferson, Thomas, 46 Jiang Zemin, 24 Johnson, Lyndon B., 110 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in relation to Iran, 84 “Joint Operational Forces Concept”, 139

K Kabul, 86 Kennan, George, 106 Kennedy, John F., 74 Khrushchev, Nikita, 153 Kirgizstan, 90 Kirkpatrick, Jeanne, 150 Kissinger, Henry, 128 Korean War, 21 Kremlin, 163

207

L Lee Kuan Yew, 98 Liberal order, 48 Libya, 82 Lincoln, Abraham, 57 “Long stagnation”, 126 M “Made in China 2025”, 1 Malaysia, 28 “Mandate of the Heavens, The”, 58 Mao Zedong, 21 Marcos, Ferdinand, 150 Maritime free passage, 36 Maritime Silk Road, 95 Marshall Plan, 73 Marxism, 10 McCarthy, Joe, 107 Merkel, Angela, 85 Mexico, 80 Middle East, 82 Middle Kingdom, 29 Moynihan, Daniel Patrick, 154 Mutual Assured Destruction, 128 Myanmar, 30 N Nasser, Gamal Abdel, 75 National Security Council, 147 Nehru, Jawaharlal, 75 Neoconservatives, 79 “New Type of Great Power Relations”, 184 New Zealand, 74 Ngo Dinh Diem, 150 Nine-Dash Line, 28, 116 Nixon, Richard, 21 “Non-aligned” nations, 75 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 16, 74 Nuclear weapons, 137

208

INDEX

O Obama, Barak, 81 “One country, two systems”, 24 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 74

P Pahlavi, Reza, 150 Pakistan, 30 Paracel Islands, 32 Paris Agreement on Climate Change, 81 “Pax Americana”, 18, 174 “Peaceful rise”, 30 Pentagon, 35, 60, 139 People’s Liberation Army, 33 People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), 33 Perestroika, 8 Philippines, The, 28 “Pivot to Asia”, 82 Poland, 10 Polarization, 112 Populism, 50 Power Transition Theory, 37 Primakov Doctrine, 91 Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), 93 Putin, Vladimir, 88

Q QAnon, 56 Qin dynasty, 58 Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, 77

R Reagan, Ronald, 7 Red Army, 163 “Reform and Opening Up”, 23

Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), 96 Republican party, 54 Republicans, 116 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 151 Roosevelt, Theodore, 46 Rumsfeld, Donald, 79 S SALT I, 128 SALT II treaty, 127 Saudi Arabia, 99 Second Offset Strategy, 127 Senate, 56 Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), 94 Shevardnadze, Eduard, 125 shi, 26 Silicon Valley, 16, 52 Silk Road Fund, 94 Solidarity, 10 South Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), 74 South China Sea, 1, 27 South Korea, 84, 87, 96, 98, 109, 149, 156 Special Economic Zones (SEZ), 24 Spratly Islands, 32 Sri Lanka, 30 Stalin, 76 Strategic Defense Initiative, 128 Sukarno, 151 Supreme Court, 55 T Taft, William Howard, 106 Taiwan Strait, 23 Taliban, 185 “Third World”, 75 Thucydides’ Trap, 37 Tiananmen, 23

INDEX

Tibet, 28 Tito, 75 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 45 Trans-Pacific Partnership, 82 Tributary system, 28 Trudeau, Justin, 85 Truman Doctrine, 147 Truman, Harry S., 73 Trump, Donald, 50, 53 Tusk, Donald, 85 U Ukraine, 90 U.N. Convention of the Law of the Sea, 28 “Unipolar moment”, 15 United Kingdom, 33 United Nations, 78 United Nations’ Security Council, 79 U.S. Constitution, 65 US Navy, 33 Uzbekistan, 90

209

Warsaw Pact, 9, 74 Washington Consensus, 15 Washington’s Freedom Agenda, 90 Wen Jiabao, 24 Western Europe, 99 Western Hemisphere, 74 Western societies, 50 Wilson, Woodrow, 45 Winthrop, James, 46 World Bank, 16 World Health Organization (WHO), 84 World Trade Organization (WTO), 24, 84 World War II, 15 X Xi Jinping, 1 Xinjiang, 28

V Vietnam, 21

Y Yang Jiechi, 28, 65 Yellow Sea, 29 Yeltsin, Boris, 5 Yugoslavia, 75

W Walesa, Lech, 10 Wall Street, 52, 106 War on Terror, 26

Z Zhao Ziyang, 121 Zhou Enlai, 75 Zhu Rongji, 24