Analogies hand us a useful device for understanding the unfamiliar in terms of the familiar.[1] The key thing is to pick the right analogy.[2] In Summer 2019, Walter Russell Mead offered the early Soviet-American Cold War as a useful analogy for understanding the contemporary relationship between the United States and the Peoples’ Republic of China (PRC).[3] He emphasizes that the Soviet-American relationship plunged down-hill so fast that it caught the American public flat-footed. Mead suggests that today China and the United States stand on the edge of a similar precipice. If we go over the edge, no one can predict the duration or nature or outcome of the struggle.
Looking back at the Soviet-American rivalry for lessons, Mead asks about the impact of ideologies, the future “hot spots” of the competition, the impact on American society, the role of and impact on the high cultures (meaning higher education and technology) of the rivals, and how the densely woven relationship between China and America will affect and be affected by such a competition.[4]
Just as “the emperor counsels simplicity,” Mead counsels Americans to give much thought to understanding both themselves and China. First, how do Chinese leaders see China and its place in the world? Since the death of Mao, China has experienced tremendous economic growth under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party. That economic growth created a large and self-confident middle class. Some observers, applying the analogy of the European bourgeoisie in the 18th and 19th Centuries, believe that this middle class is showing the first signs of restlessness with the Party’s leading strings.[5] Will Beijing pursue an assertively nationalist foreign policy to squelch dissent? What might be the outcomes of such a policy?[6]
Second, how can Americans forge a consistent and effective China policy when the country is so deeply divided? Here Mead penetrates much less deeply. On the one hand, the origin of our discontents has not yet found any satisfying explanation.[7] On the other hand, he doesn’t broach the subject of whether America even has the resources to rise to the challenge. So, coming to know ourselves may be a lengthy undertaking.
[1] See: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/reasoning-analogy/
[2] Ernest R. May, “Lessons of the Past”: The Use and Misuse of History in American Foreign Policy (1975).
[3] Walter Russell Mead, “Americans Aren’t Ready for Cold War II,” WSJ, 11 June 2019. It’s an encouraging choice of analogy in the sense that the Cold War never turned into a full-scale direct military conflict.
[4] At this point, it might be useful to start building a library of Cold War history books. Aaron L. Friedberg, In the Shadow of the Garrison State: America’s Anti-Statism and Its Cold War Grand Strategy (2000); John Lewis Gaddis, The Long Peace: Inquiries Into the Cold War (1989); and Geir Lundstad, East, West, North, South: International Relations since 1945 (2017) can all be recommended.
[5] On the European analogies, see Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution, 1789-1848 (1962); and William L. Langer, Political and Social Upheaval, 1832-1852 (1969). Sure they’re “old” books. That’s because a couple of really smart guys got there first. Everybody since has been nibbling around the edges.
[6] For this analogy, see Volker Berghahn, Germany and the Approach of War in 1914 (1973).
[7] Kevin M. Kruse and Julian Zelizer, Fault Lines: A History of the United States Since 1974 (2020) and Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum, That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back (2012) fall into the Blame Republicans First camp. Charles Murray, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 (2013); and Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom, America in Black and White: One Nation, Indivisible (1999) are conservative interpretations of one theme in the conversation. Reading the Conclusions and Recommendations of The 9/11 Commission Report (2004) would be a good way to begin.
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