On the menu today: I can understand why Americans might look at all the daunting challenges before us and the calamities that have befallen us in recent years and feel fear or despair. We have endured defeats and disappointments, and we have reason to doubt whether our leadership is up to the task. Certainly, our leaders tend to walk around with an excessive self-regard and confidence that betray the records they have accumulated. The line between war and peace, stability and chaos, and another American century or a national decline can feel as delicate and fragile as an Achilles tendon.
But we must not lose faith in our ability as Americans, or our fellow countrymen. Paraphrasing the argument from yesterday’s column about teachers, if your perception of your fellow Americans comes from whatever the social-media algorithms push to the top, you’ll only see the worst in everyone and learn to hate your country. But you’ve probably noticed that the Americans you know in real life act much differently than the “influencers” who elbow for your attention on TikTok or Instagram or Facebook. We’re still a good, strong, and decent country, with little in common with the endless freakshow on your social-media feed.
If you begin by believing your country is defeated, then defeat is sure to follow. And if you believe that conflict is unlikely, you are likely to stumble into it. To address the current preeminent geopolitical threat from China, we must not just prepare to win an ugly fight, we must be so self-evidently prepared to win an ugly fight that it deters the fight from starting in the first place.
This little pep talk is not about the New York Jets, although last night’s win over the Buffalo Bills after Aaron Rodgers appeared to have torn his Achilles tendon is a useful metaphor.
Contain and Deter
Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall, addressing the Air & Space Forces Association’s 2023 Air, Space & Cyber Conference yesterday:
China has been reoptimizing its forces for great power competition and to prevail against the U.S. in the Western Pacific for over 20 years. China has been building a military capability specifically designed to achieve their national goals and to do so if opposed by the United States. . . .
We must be ready for a kind of war we have no modern experience with.
I’m going to excerpt a long portion of Biden’s remarks in Vietnam on September 10 so that no one thinks this is one or two quotes taken out of context. Yes, Biden’s typically odd “dog-faced pony solder” remark and Karine Jean-Pierre’s effort to abruptly end the press conference received most of the attention. But it was also noteworthy that the president was bending over backward to assure both China and the international audience that the U.S. did not seek conflict with China, was not attempting to contain China, and was merely trying to maintain relationships with regional allies in the name of stability:
Q: How would you respond to that? And do you think President Xi is being sincere about getting the relationship back on track as he bans Apple in China?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, look, first of all, the — I am sincere about getting the relationship right. And one of the things that is going on now is China is beginning to change some of the rules of the game, in terms of trade and other issues.
And so, one of the things we talked about, for example, is that they’re now talking about making sure that no Chinese employ- — no one in the Chinese government can use a Western cell phone. Those kinds of things.
And so, really, what this trip was about — it was less about containing China. I — I don’t want to contain China. I just want to make sure that we have a relationship with China that is on the up and up, squared away, everybody knows what it’s all about. And one of the ways you do that is you make sure that we are talking about the same things.
And I think that one of the things we’ve done — I’ve tried to do, and I’ve talked with a number of my staff about this for the last, I guess, six months — is — we have an opportunity to strengthen alliances around the world to maintain stability.
That’s what this trip was all about: having India cooperate much more with the United States, be closer with the United States, Vietnam being closer with the United States. It’s not about containing China; it’s about having a stable base — a stable base in the Indo-Pacific.
And it’s — for example, when I was spending a lot of time talking with President Xi, he asked why we were doing — why was I going to have the Quad — meaning Australia, India, Japan, and the United States? And I said, “To maintain stability.”
It’s not about isolating China. It’s about making sure the rules of the road — everything from airspace and — and space and in the ocean is — the international rules of the road are — are — are abided by.
I cannot help but recall that Biden took office insisting he just wanted a “stable, predictable” relationship with Russia, too. It takes two to tango, and if the other guy doesn’t want a stable or predictable relationship, you don’t get one. At some point you have to take the hint.
Biden later elaborated:
I think China has a difficult economic problem right now for a whole range of reasons that relate to the international growth and lack thereof and the — the policies that China has followed.
And so, I — I don’t think it’s going to cause China to invade Taiwan. And matter of fact, the opposite — it probably doesn’t have the — the same capacity that it had before.
But as I said, I’m not — we’re not looking to hurt China, sincerely. We’re all better off if China does well — if China does well by the international rules. It grows the economy.
It seems to me that one of the riskiest ways to approach the tense issue of China and Taiwan is to run around declaring that you don’t think China will invade Taiwan, and that you think China doesn’t have the capacity to invade Taiwan.
It is good that Biden is emphasizing that he and his administration, and the American people, do not want war with China. (These remarks are significantly better than “Russia will be held accountable if it invades. And it depends on what it does. It’s one thing if it’s a minor incursion and then we end up having a fight about what to do and not do.”)
But it also seems abundantly clear that China does not want to abide by anyone else’s “rules of the road.” (Did you notice the Biden administration has stopped even bothering to try to get China to release more data about how the Covid-19 pandemic started?)
And when Biden insists that we don’t want to contain China . . . don’t we? Aren’t we trying to deter any territorial expansion or military aggression, in Taiwan or anywhere else? Xi Jinping wants to expand China’s sphere of influence, and we don’t want him strong-arming Japan, South Korea, or any countries in southeast Asia. And this is indisputably an ideological struggle for what form of government will dominate the globe. Xi clearly believes that the Chinese model is a better form of governance, and is trying to persuade the rest of the world that Western-style democracy with checks and balances leads to chaos and paralysis; we vehemently disagree.
Doesn’t all that sound akin to Cold War containment? If we aren’t pursuing the containment of China, why is the Biden administration reaching a “Comprehensive Strategic Partnership” with the government of Vietnam, a Communist authoritarian state with a human-rights record that “remains dire in virtually all areas”?
(Recall that upon taking office, Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken pledged that U.S. foreign policy would center upon “the defense of democracy and the protection of human rights.” Since then, Biden has held a summit with Vladimir Putin, fist-bumped Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, announced a new $6 billion money-for-hostages deal with Iran on the anniversary of 9/11, and announced a vast new rail and shipping-corridor deal with Indian prime minister Narendra Modi. Apparently, a foreign policy “centered upon democracy and human rights” means briefly bringing democracy and human rights up in behind-closed-doors bilateral meetings, and then moving on to agreements on other issues.)
Today, Michael Mazza and Shay Khatiri write at National Review that the U.S. effectively has a policy of looking like we’re trying to contain China, without actually doing any containing. “To Beijing, these measures smack of containment. But Congress has failed to match them with a stick big enough to actually do the containing, tempting Beijing to bust out while it still can.”
Maybe that’s what Biden means when he declares our policy isn’t containment, it’s just going through the motions to look like we’re trying to contain Beijing. As Mazza and Khatiri write, “The Biden administration’s policy is clear: We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty — but we will not invest in a military capable of doing the job.”
In Vietnam, Biden said, “We think too much in Cold War terms.” But his Air Force secretary says China, a nuclear-armed superpower with a fast-growing military and an increasingly close relationship with Russia, a country that is adamantly opposed to our values and geopolitical worldview, is preparing for war with us. This summer, the Chinese military did a training exercise that mimicked “a total war scenario at sea with the United States.”
Doesn’t that . . . feel kind of like a Cold War? What else could or should we call it?
Because another big Cold War term, “deterrence,” is what we need the most.
If, God forbid, the U.S. and China went to war, it would be preferable to win. But even if the U.S. won a war with China, it would probably be a bloodbath. Back in 2022, the Center for Strategic and International Studies developed a wargame for a Chinese amphibious invasion of Taiwan and ran it 24 times. Even the winning results were ugly: “In most scenarios, the United States/Taiwan/Japan defeated a conventional amphibious invasion by China and maintained an autonomous Taiwan. However, this defense came at high cost. The United States and its allies lost dozens of ships, hundreds of aircraft, and tens of thousands of servicemembers. Taiwan saw its economy devastated. Further, the high losses damaged the U.S. global position for many years.”
But the much better outcome is to deter China from invading until Taiwan becomes too well-defended to make any invasion attempt worthwhile.
ADDENDUM: The great Dana Perino is now hosting a podcast on Fox News, and she was kind enough to have me on for a wide-ranging conversation yesterday.