WASHINGTON, DC: Due to its grievous mistakes, the U.S. permitted the rise of its enemy. Now Russia and Iran are operating in the space that the PRC provides them.
The foreign policy of the U.S. under President Biden has been a failure. From the disastrous retreat in Afghanistan, the war in Ukraine to the horrific terror attack on October 7th 2023 and the subsequent wars in the Middle East, the world has been thrown into flames. This is to say nothing of the daily threats that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is making against allies like the Philippines and key partners like India and Taiwan.
The deep causes of these problems are not found in Moscow, Tehran, Tokyo or Taipei, rather they are the result of two fundamental and interrelated grand strategic mistakes made by the U.S. First, the willful refusal to recognize the threat from the PRC. Second, the failure to balance against it to defeat the PRC. As a result of these mistakes, the U.S. is at risk of losing its national security vis-à-vis its dominant position in global politics to an emboldened PRC working in cooperation with Putin’s Russia and the mullahs in Iran.
Surveying the unrest in the world, it is important for Americans, allies, and partners like India to understand how this happened, how it was possible that the U.S. could achieve victory in the Cold War and give that away to the PRC and the unsatisfactory strategic condition America finds itself in today.
First, the U.S. failed to perceive the PRC threat due to the dramatic change in the distribution of power in the U.S.’s favour due to the collapse of the Soviet Union. This left the U.S. without a peer threat as the PRC was then a minor power. The U.S. national security entered a period of what we term “threat deflation”, where year-after-year U.S. decision-makers consistently dismissed or underestimated the threat from the PRC.
The end of the Cold War yielded triumphalism of the “End of History,” and thus caused the ideological and strategic disarmament of the U.S. as democracy and free market economics were triumphant. The widespread belief among the foreign policy elite were that modernizing states like the PRC were on the path to democratization and free market economics. Consequently, the Department of Defense, the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC), and the leadership from successive administrations neglected to sustain a focus on great power threats.
Second, U.S. business interests and financiers consistently and indefatigably sought economic gain from cooperation with the PRC, treating the Chinese people as the source of cheap physical labour for manufacturing, investment, as well as inexpensive intellectual labour, including for research and development. This facilitated the PRC’s rise as it entered the West’s economic ecosystem, including the sustainment of Most Favoured Nation (MFN) trade status and ultimately admission to the World Trade Organization (WTO).
Their influence on the major U.S. political parties and at the highest levels of U.S. politics hindered the U.S. response and promoted the conceit of globalization. Thus emerged an “engagement school,” which asserted that by engaging the PRC, it would become wealthy and in time democratic. In essence, the U.S. willingly and enthusiastically taught, trained, and even equipped, its mortal enemy. Business interests and financiers also funded think tanks, including major national security think tanks and media which, in turn, contributed to a bias towards the engagement school of thought, and thus the consistent underestimation of the PRC threat.
Third, the U.S.’s enemies were the greatest strategists of the 20th century. Led by Deng Xiaoping and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the PRC advanced its political warfare strategy of “elite capture.” Deng profited from studying and improving upon Soviet efforts to penetrate U.S. society as well as learning key lessons from the Soviet Union’s mistakes in the Cold War. He also leveraged the concept of “threat deflation” within the U.S. national security establishment, who incredibly adopted and promoted the CCP’s strategic agenda.
The PRC successfully caused threat deflation by adopting a complex strategy. They focused on elites in all aspects of U.S. and other Western societies, enriching them and shaping their perception of the PRC and of the CCP, while using the enticement of a growing market to influence their behaviour. For a generation, the PRC masked their intentions and framed their expansion as economic rather than strategic, and an unalloyed good that would benefit the world. The result was the U.S. did not have an effective balancing campaign until the Trump administration, which has unfortunately been reversed by President Biden.
Consequently, the PRC has risen, and is now employing its power to the detriment of U.S. national security through its own actions in the South China Sea and very likely against Taiwan but also through its proxies in Russia and Iran.
Regarding the specific measures that the U.S. should undertake, we argue that the U.S. national security community should adopt nine necessary measures.
First, American national security elites must now admit that they failed and must throw the rudder of the ship of state hard over—to the principles of power politics vis-à-vis the PRC—if America, and what it stands for, is to have any chance of survival against its CCP enemy.
Second, Americans must understand the existing distribution of power within the U.S. national security community is resistant to withdrawing from the engagement school of thought—their predilection will be to return the rudder of the ship of state to amidships and the course towards engagement with the PRC.
Third, executing this rudder change within the foreign policy community will take years of consistent pressure to reverse—as can already be clearly seen from the sudden resumption of visits to the PRC by senior cabinet level officials from the Biden administration.
Fourth, while significant challenges have been identified, there is reason to be optimistic because of America and the great strengths that come from our Declaration, Constitution, and the 247 years of history.
Fifth, yet America’s victory over these internal and external forces is only possible if action is taken now. Given the shift in the balance of power towards Beijing and the existence of the CCP’s “timeline” for the Great Rejuvenation within this “Decade of Concern” (2020-2030), it must be understood that action to prevent the final destruction of the nation must be taken immediately.
Sixth, as in the Cold War, the U.S. needs to create a “Team B” dynamic to address the threat. An independent and dynamic Team B for the PRC is needed that would bring together individuals from industry, scientists, negotiators, academics, and government service to create “quick fixes” to the immediate problems of the PRC threat.
Seventh, again, as in the Cold War, Soviet doctrine was well studied by the U.S. national security community to discern where the Soviets were investing, what they were developing, and the force structure they were creating and the missions that force structure could support. Today, the U.S. needs to have the same familiarity with the PLA’s doctrine to understand their priorities for investment, research, and force structure development, and the missions and options that force structure would support.
Eighth, the U.S. needs to support nuclear proliferation in the case of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, to complicate the PRC’s strategic calculus. Nuclear proliferation introduces considerable risks, notably the incentive of the PRC to arrest it, including by military action before the state becomes nuclear. But given the PRC’s overwhelming conventional military advantages in the Far East and the current state of unpreparedness by the U.S. Department of Defense, expanding the nuclear umbrella for these states would provide a strong deterrent against the PRC and thus increase America’s national security.
Ninth, the U.S. needs to take bold action to target the CCP directly. This requires a multifaceted approach that will include the rollback the PRC’s gains in the South China Sea, and the defeat of the PRC in its attempted coercion of the Philippines at Second Thomas Shoal. The U.S. and its allies will have to evict the PRC from facilities in other countries like Djibouti and Ream, Cambodia. Those are important and necessary measures to place Beijing on the strategic backfoot. But the center of gravity that the U.S. must attack is the CCP itself to ensure that the CCP, the Chinese people, and all global audiences know that it is illegitimate and that the U.S., working with the Chinese people and allies, is working to evict it from power.
Due to its grievous mistakes, the U.S. permitted the rise of its enemy. Now Russia and Iran are operating in the space that the PRC provides them. That space and the PRC’s aggression will only increase if the U.S. does not act. It is time for the U.S. to end its threat deflation, break the chokehold of the Engagement school on the U.S. foreign policy establishment, and in conjunction with partners like India, to defeat the CCP.
James E. Fanell and Bradley A. Thayer are authors of Embracing Communist China: America’s Greatest Strategic Failure from which this article is drawn.