風蕭蕭_Frank
以文會友
先看一個www.linkedin.com評論
王約瑟夫 Joseph Wang
計算天體物理學家和定量開發人員 2 周前
歎, 這樣絕對瘋狂的文章竟然出現在《外交政策》上
https://lnkd.in/gZWmgqie
這裏的基本問題是，中國有14億人口，美國有3.5億人口。如果中國不成為同等競爭對手，你“不可能”將中國人口提高到美國的生活水平。沒有他媽的方式。
美國獲勝後對中國的願景是什麽？俄羅斯？
對此最好的反駁是 William T. Sherman 在 1860 年寫的
“你們南方人民不知道自己在做什麽。這個國家將被鮮血浸透，隻有上帝知道它會如何結束。這都是愚蠢、瘋狂、對文明的犯罪！你們這些人如此輕描淡寫地談論戰爭；你不知道你在說什麽戰爭是一件可怕的事情！
你也誤會了，北方人。他們是和平的人民，但也是熱心的人民，他們也會戰鬥。他們不會讓這個國家在不付出巨大努力來拯救它的情況下被摧毀……此外，你們用來對抗他們的人和戰爭裝備在哪裏？北方可以製造蒸汽機、機車或火車車廂；你幾乎無法製作一碼布或一雙鞋。你正在與地球上最強大、最巧妙、最堅定的人之一展開戰爭——就在你家門口。你注定會失敗。隻有你的精神和決心才能為戰爭做好準備。
在其他方麵，你完全沒有準備好，一開始就有一個糟糕的原因。起初，您會取得進展，但隨著您有限的資源開始失效，被排除在歐洲市場之外，您的事業將開始衰退。如果你的人民停下來思考，他們最終一定會看到你一定會失敗。”
Joseph Wang Computational Astrophysicist and Quant Developer 2 weeks ago
誰在全球各地引戰?! 中國尋找統一台灣的窗口?! 美國麵對中國崛起的兩個選擇
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WG87OgRTBZ8&ab_channel=
2024年5月6日
0:00
我最近在《外交事務》上讀到一篇
0:03
名為《美國必須勝利》的文章
0:06
在我看來 這是一篇經典的
0:08
講述"美國好人"與"中國壞人"
0:12
之間冷戰一般的緊張關係的文章
0:18
這篇文章基本上在說
0:23
中美就台灣問題開戰
0:25
很可能是不可避免的
0:28
同時 中國也麵臨著許多
0:30
自身無法克服的挑戰
0:32
美國必須挺身而出
0:34
利用這個機會
0:38
最終戰勝中國
0:40
首先 讓我從歷史談起
0:45
我認為 美國在理解歷史的方麵
0:48
花的時間不多
0:51
但它卻對中國極為重要
0:54
我認為 如果你聽美國的敘事
0:57
他們會說中國的經濟已經達到頂峰
1:02
中國正在衰落
1:04
因此 國家統一的機會視窗
1:08
已經非常短了
1:12
這麼一來 衝突就是不可避免的
1:16
但大多數普通人不知道的是
1:23
中國大陸的漢族人口占總人口的92%
1:28
台灣的漢族人口占總人口的96%
1:35
因此 從中國大陸的角度來看
1:38
他們是把一個長期以來
1:42
一直是中國一部分的地方帶回了中國
1:47
我想說的第二點
1:49
是有關軍事層麵的
1:54
如果你讀了這篇文章
1:56
《美國必須勝利》
1:58
這篇文章的基本觀點是
2:00
中國天生好鬥
2:04
天生軍國主義
2:06
但實際情況是
2:08
如果你看看世界上的主要國家
2:11
然後捫心自問一下
2:13
大多數戰爭都是由誰發起的呢
2:16
並不是中國
2:18
這並不奇怪
2:20
因為中國人歸根結底是務實的
2:25
現實就是
2:26
如果你看看歷史上發生過的所有戰爭
2:30
你就會發現 幾乎每場戰爭都沒有贏家
2:40
我的意思是 一方麵經濟損失巨大
2:46
另一方麵人員損失也很大
2:50
因此 務實的中國人
2:52
非常傾向於不參與戰爭
2:56
現在讓我們來看看經濟問題
3:01
文章中提到的一個觀點是
3:04
中國正在急劇衰落
3:09
無論是在經濟方麵
3:10
還是在人民的幸福方麵
3:14
中國有很多問題
3:16
我們不否認這一點
3:18
中國人口老齡化嚴重
3:21
勞動適齡人口數量逐漸減少
3:27
還有許多其他內部問題
3:31
比如高額地方債務
3:33
比如中國正在努力解決的
3:35
青年失業問題
3:36
但現實情況是
3:38
如果你考慮一下
3:40
推動中國經濟發展的根本因素
3:43
它們都是相當可持續的
3:44
中國有非常厲害的產業政策
3:49
關於這個 你可以看看中國是如何從
3:53
當年鄧小平接手時的
3:58
全球勞動力成本最低的國家
4:01
發展到今天的
4:03
他們當時主導了非常簡單的商品
4:06
成為了世界工廠
4:07
但後來 中國便從低成本勞動力
4:11
發展到逐漸開始主導高端製造業
4:16
中國已經在電動汽車領域
4:18
實現了這一目標
4:19
多年來 中國在風能和太陽能等
4:22
可再生能源領域一直佔據主導地位
4:27
多年來 中國在高鐵領域
4:31
一直處於全球領先地位
4:34
美國必須接受這些現實
4:39
這不是一個美國應該
4:41
如何控製和遏製中國的問題
4:45
問題其實是
4:46
美國應該如何回應中國的崛起
4:49
首先
4:50
如果你回到文章裡談到的台灣問題
4:54
如果你瞭解中國的文化和歷史
4:59
你會知道 中國大陸認為
5:02
海峽兩岸都是中華民族
5:06
他們為什麼會傷害自己的同胞呢
5:10
因此 當那些西方人說
5:13
中美在台灣問題上一定會開戰時
5:19
都完全忽略了一個事實
5:22
即從中國政府的角度來看
5:25
戰爭是他們最不希望發生的事情
5:28
我想說的另一件事是
5:31
就中國未來的經濟機遇而言
5:36
我們可以從三個不同的維度
5:39
來審視今日的中國
5:40
其中之一是城市化
5:43
在過去的25年裡
5:45
中國經濟最大的一個刺激點
5:48
就是讓人們走出農場 搬進城市
5:54
當今世界上大多數主要國家的
5:57
城市化率為80%至90%
6:01
中國的城市化率僅為大約60%
6:05
因此 中國還可以通過提高城市化率
6:08
從60%城市化提升到80%城市化
6:12
來刺激經濟與生產力的發展
6:17
第二個維度是人均收入
6:20
如果你看看日本的人均收入
6:23
在他們進入停滯期之前
6:28
他們的人均收入水準與當時的美國相當
6:32
而今天中國的人均收入水準
6:36
隻有美國的1/3
6:39
從收入角度看
6:41
中國的上升空間是巨大的
6:45
從這些方麵來看
6:47
中國經濟才剛剛起步
6:50
由此 我的最後結論是
6:53
認為美國可以遏製中國的想法
6:57
從根本上是錯誤的
6:59
美國有兩個選擇
7:03
不好的選擇 就是這篇文章所指出的
7:07
美國應該遏製中國
7:10
並以自己的方式擊敗中國
7:13
第二個選擇是 我們無法遏製中國
7:17
但我們可以與中國競爭
7:20
因此 讓我們改善我們的教育體係
7:23
讓我們提高生產力
7:25
讓我們更明智地選擇資源投向
7:30
如果我們做到了所有這些
7:31
我們將在未來
7:33
成為中國強有力的競爭對手
7:36
但問題是 你無法同時做到這兩點
7:39
如果美國的心態是 我們可以遏製中國
7:43
而不是專注於讓自己變得更好
7:47
美國最終將失敗
轉寫文稿
0:00
so I recently read an article in foreign
0:02
affairs called No substitute for victory
0:06
which kind of a classic article from my
0:09
view on the Cold War tension between the
0:14
good guys in the US and the bad guys in
0:18
China and the article basically makes
0:21
the point that war with China over
0:25
Taiwan is probably
0:27
inevitable that China's got a number of
0:30
challenges they're not going to be able
0:31
to overcome the US has to step up and
0:34
take advantage of this
0:36
opportunity to finally put China in its
0:39
place and Prevail let me start as a
0:42
first point with history uh which is
0:46
something that I think the US does not
0:49
spend a lot of time on uh but is
0:52
extremely important in China I think if
0:54
you listen to the US they would say that
0:59
China's economy has peaked China is in
1:03
Decline uh therefore China has a limited
1:07
period of time to be able to assert
1:10
itself in Taiwan and therefore conflict
1:14
is inevitable but I think what's lost on
1:18
most people uh who are not close to the
1:21
situation is that the Han population in
1:25
China is 92% of the total population the
1:28
Han population in Taiwan is 98% of the
1:34
population and therefore from the
1:36
Chinese point of view this is bringing
1:39
someone back into the fold who has been
1:42
part of China for a very long period of
1:46
time so the second point I'd like to
1:48
make has to do with the the
1:51
military dimension of all of this if you
1:54
read the article no substitute for
1:57
victory it basically makes the point
1:59
point that China is naturally
2:03
aggressive is naturally
2:06
militaristic but the reality is if you
2:09
look at Major countries around the world
2:11
and ask the question where has military
2:14
aggression taken place it has not been
2:18
China uh and that's not surprising
2:21
because the Chinese are ultimately
2:24
pragmatic and the reality is if you look
2:26
at all of the wars that have been fought
2:29
in history
2:30
and ask the question who won those Wars
2:35
almost every war ultimately turns out to
2:38
be a lose lose and by that I mean the
2:42
economic drain is enormous on the one
2:45
hand and the human drain is enormous on
2:49
the other so the Chinese being pragmatic
2:52
have a strong bias to not engage in war
2:56
so let's move past the military point
2:59
and look at the economic Point uh one of
3:01
the points that's made in the article is
3:04
that China is in precipitous decline
3:09
both in terms of economics and in terms
3:11
of the happiness of its
3:13
people and China has plenty of problems
3:16
so let's not deny that so China has an
3:19
aging
3:20
population uh the the number of people
3:23
who are of working age is gradually
3:26
declining and has a number of other
3:29
internal
3:30
issues uh like high debt uh and like
3:33
youth unemployment that it's trying to
3:36
deal with but the reality is if you
3:38
think about what the underlying factors
3:40
that have driven the Chinese economy
3:43
they're pretty sustainable they have a
3:46
very strong industrial policy so if you
3:50
look at how they have evolved from when
3:53
dung took over in the
3:56
1980s as the country that had the lowest
4:00
cost labor globally they dominated very
4:04
simple commodity and became the world
4:07
leader but then China basically evolved
4:10
from lowcost labor to dominating
4:14
high-end manufacturing and China has
4:17
already achieved that in electric
4:19
vehicles China has been dominant for
4:21
many years in renewable energy in terms
4:25
of wind and solar and China has been the
4:29
global Global leader in High-Speed Rail
4:33
for many years so you know the US just
4:36
has to accept that reality and it's not
4:40
going to be a question about how do we
4:42
control and contain China the question
4:45
is how do we as a country want to
4:48
respond to that the first if you come
4:50
back to the immediate issue of tension
4:53
is which is Taiwan if you understand the
4:55
role of culture and history in China
4:59
China would say these are our people
5:02
these are Han people these are Confucian
5:05
people why would we ever invade and
5:09
inflict damage on them and so when
5:11
anyone in the west says it's inevitable
5:14
that there will be a war between the US
5:17
and China over
5:18
Taiwan completely missed the reality
5:22
that from the Chinese government's point
5:24
of view that's the last thing they ever
5:27
want to have happen the other thing I'd
5:30
like to say is that in terms of where
5:32
China is and its Economic Opportunity
5:35
going forward so if you look at China
5:38
today on three different dimensions so
5:41
one of them is urbanization the biggest
5:43
lift in China over the course of the
5:46
last 25 years has been moving people out
5:51
of farms and into cities most major
5:55
countries in the world today are 80 to
5:58
90%
6:00
urbanized China is only 60%
6:04
urbanized so China has a long way to go
6:08
to take advantage of that productivity
6:11
lift that comes from moving from 60%
6:14
urbanized to 80%
6:17
urbanized the second dimension is
6:20
incomes uh if you looked at the incomes
6:22
of Japan before they went into their
6:26
period of stagnation their income level
6:29
were comparable to those in the US today
6:33
China's income levels on average are
6:36
onethird of the US so the upside from an
6:41
income point of view are enormous so
6:45
when you think about those areas China
6:48
is really just getting going so this
6:50
kind of leads me to my final conclusion
6:53
the notion that the US can contain China
6:57
is fundamentally flawed so the US has
7:00
two
7:02
choices the not good choice is where
7:05
this article was pointing which is we
7:08
can contain China and beat China on its
7:11
own terms the second choice is we can't
7:16
contain China we can compete against
7:19
China so let's improve our education
7:22
system let's improve our productivity
7:25
Let's Get Smart smarter about where we
7:28
put our resources
7:30
and if we do all those things we will be
7:32
a very strong competitor to China going
7:35
forward but the problem is you can't do
7:38
both at the same time if your mindset is
7:41
we can contain China then we're not
7:44
focused on getting better ourselves and
7:47
that is a losing proposition
<<<<<<>>>>>>
勝利無可替代
美國與中國的競爭必須是勝利，而不是管理
作者：馬特·波廷格, 邁克·加拉格爾
馬特·波廷格, Matt Pottinger, 2019 年至 2021 年擔任美國副國家安全顧問，並於 2017 年至 2019 年擔任國家安全委員會亞洲事務高級主任。他是即將出版的《沸騰的護城河：保衛台灣的緊急步驟》一書的合著者和編輯。
邁克·加拉格爾 Mike Gallagher, 2017 年至 2024 年擔任威斯康星州美國眾議員，並擔任眾議院中國共產黨特別委員會主席。
2024年5月/6月 2024年4月10日
中國國家主席習近平和美國總統喬·拜登於 2023 年 11 月在加利福尼亞州伍德賽德會晤中國國家主席習近平和美國總統喬·拜登於 2023 年 11 月在加利福尼亞州伍德賽德會晤
在阿富汗、烏克蘭和中東等地區威懾失敗的困擾下，拜登政府的對華政策成為一個相對亮點。本屆政府加強了美國在亞洲的聯盟，限製中國獲得美國關鍵技術，並支持兩黨的競爭情緒。然而，美國政府卻陷入了一個熟悉的陷阱，從而浪費了這些早期成果：優先考慮與中國領導人的短期解凍，而犧牲了對其惡意戰略的長期勝利。拜登團隊與北京“管理競爭”的政策可能會強調過程而非結果、以犧牲全球安全為代價的雙邊穩定以及旨在合作但隻會產生自滿情緒的外交舉措。
美國不應該管理與中國的競爭；它應該贏得它。北京正在推行一係列旨在瓦解西方並引入反民主秩序的全球舉措。它為俄羅斯、伊朗、朝鮮和委內瑞拉的擴張主義獨裁政權提供支持。自2020年以來，它的核武庫增加了一倍多，並且其常規力量建設速度比二戰以來任??何國家都快。這些行動表明中國無意陷入僵局。美國也不應該。
獲勝會是什麽樣子？中國的共產主義統治者將放棄在與美國及其盟友的冷熱衝突中獲勝的嚐試。而中國人民——從統治精英到普通公民——將會找到靈感，探索不依賴於國內鎮壓和國外強迫性敵對的新發展和治理模式。
除了更加明確其最終目標之外，美國還需要接受這樣的事實：實現這一目標將需要美中關係中出現更大的摩擦。華盛頓將需要采取可能讓人感到不舒服的對抗性言論和政策，但實際上對於重建北京及其追隨者所侵犯的邊界是必要的。這意味著中國領導人習近平要為其助長全球混亂的政策付出代價。這意味著坦誠地談論中國損害美國利益的方式。這意味著美國國防能力的迅速增強，以取得對北京明顯的質量優勢。這意味著切斷中國獲得西方技術的途徑，並挫敗習近平將國家財富轉化為軍事力量的努力。正如華盛頓和北京都認為的那樣，這意味著隻能從美國的實力地位來與北京進行密集的外交。
任何國家都不應該樂於發動另一場冷戰。然而，中國領導人已經對美國發動了冷戰。華盛頓不應該否認這場鬥爭的存在，而應該承認並贏得這場鬥爭。假裝冷戰不存在的冷淡言論反而會引發熱戰；它們向美國人民發出了自滿的信號，向中國領導人發出了和解的信號。與原來的冷戰一樣，新冷戰不會通過半途而廢或膽怯的言辭來贏得勝利。要想取得勝利，就需要公開承認，一個實施種族滅絕、煽動衝突、威脅戰爭的極權政權永遠不會成為可靠的夥伴。就像華盛頓在 20 世紀 70 年代針對蘇聯采取的聲名狼藉的緩和政策一樣，目前的做法不會給中國領導人帶來多少合作，同時會強化他們的信念，即他們可以破壞世界穩定而不受懲罰。
拜登的新基線
政府的對華政策最初顯示出了希望。喬·拜登總統維持了唐納德·特朗普總統為應對猖獗的盜竊美國知識產權行為而對中國出口產品征收的關稅。他重申了特朗普發布的行政命令，並進行了一些調整，以限製對某些與中國軍方有關聯的公司的投資，並阻止進口被視為國家安全威脅的中國技術。 2022 年 10 月，拜登邁出了尤為重要的一步，大幅擴大了特朗普政府對高端半導體及其製造設備出口的控製，減緩了北京主導先進微芯片製造的計劃。在整個亞洲，拜登的外交官拉近了長期盟友和新夥伴的距離。他們組織了首次四方峰會，澳大利亞、印度、日本和美國領導人齊聚一堂，並與日本和韓國領導人召開了高調的三邊峰會。拜登一
還公布了澳大利亞、英國和美國之間的防務條約 AUKUS。
然而，事實證明，侵略將來自相反的方向，即歐洲。在入侵烏克蘭前不到三周，俄羅斯總統弗拉基米爾·普京在北京與習近平簽署了“無限製”安全協議。入侵後，拜登謹慎地劃出了紅線，在視頻通話中警告習近平，如果中國向莫斯科提供“物質支持”，美國政府將實施全麵製裁。盡管如此，習近平仍然找到了很多方法來支持俄羅斯的戰爭機器，發送半導體、非武裝無人機、火藥和其他商品。中國還向莫斯科提供急需的資金，以換取俄羅斯的大量石油運輸。據美國國務院稱，中國官員在全球親俄宣傳上花費的資金甚至比俄羅斯本身花費的還要多。
北京還與伊朗和朝鮮進行了更密切的協調，盡管這些政權派遣武器幫助莫斯科在歐洲發動戰爭。然而，華盛頓正在推行孤立的政策——同時抵製俄羅斯、安撫伊朗、遏製朝鮮，並尋求與中國競爭和接觸的混合體——這顯然是不連貫的。事實上，習近平在拜登執政之初所預測的情況正在成為現實：“世界最重要的特征，一句話，就是‘混亂’，而且這種趨勢很可能會持續下去，”習近平對一位記者表示。 2021 年 1 月召開的共產黨高級官員研討會。習近平明確表示，這對中國來說是一個有益的發展。 “時代和趨勢都站在我們這一邊，”他補充道，“總體而言，機遇大於挑戰。”到 2023 年 3 月，習近平透露，他不僅將自己視為全球動蕩的受益者，而且也是這場動蕩的締造者之一。 “現在，發生了一些變化，我們已經一百年沒有見過這樣的變化了，”他在結束對克裏姆林宮的訪問時在鏡頭前對普京說道。 “我們是共同推動這些變化的人。”
如果說譴責北京煽動混亂並開始係統性地讓國家為此付出代價的時機已經成熟的話，那就是 2023 年初。令人費解的是，拜登卻做了相反的事情。 2月1日，蒙大拿州居民發現一個巨大的白色球體向東漂移。美國政府已經在追蹤中國間諜氣球，但一直計劃讓它在不通知公眾的情況下從頭頂飛過。迫於政治壓力，拜登下令氣球一到達大西洋就將其擊落，國務卿安東尼·布林肯推遲了原定的北京之行以抗議此次入侵。媒體報道稱，政府對氣球保持沉默，是為了收集有關氣球的情報。但北京淡化冒犯行為的令人不安的模式在其他情況下仍將持續存在。
假裝不存在冷戰的不冷不熱的言論反而會引發熱戰。
2023 年 6 月，向媒體泄露的消息顯示，北京正計劃在古巴建立一個聯合軍事訓練基地，並已經在那裏建立了一個針對美國的信號情報設施，這與冷戰時期的情況截然不同。在國家安全委員會發言人稱有關間諜設施的報道不準確後，一名匿名白宮官員向媒體發表講話，暗示中國從古巴進行間諜活動“不是新事”，從而將這些報道最小化。政府還對新的證據表示歡迎，這些證據表明，COVID-19 可能是在中國實驗室意外泄漏後最初傳播的。如果這種導致全球約 2700 萬人死亡的病毒在逃逸之前被人為增強，那麽這一發現將標誌著人類曆史的一個轉折點，就像核武器的出現一樣——這種情況這已經要求美國發揮領導作用來管理全球危險的生物研究。
2023 年春天，隨著北京的行動變得更加大膽，拜登發起了白宮所謂的“全力以赴”的外交行動——不是為了讓北京付出代價，而是為了奉承北京，派出五名美國內閣級官員到中國。五月至八月。布林肯六月與習近平的會麵就體現了這一動態。幾天前，習近平還和億萬富翁比爾·蓋茨(Bill Gates)親切地坐在一起，而當習近平在人民大會堂的一張桌子上發表講話時，美國國務卿則坐在一旁。多年來，習近平似乎首次成功地將美國定位為雙邊關係中的懇求者。
美國通過所有這些外交得到了什麽回報？在拜登政府的統計中，好處包括北京承諾恢複軍事對話（北京已單方麵暫停）、關於負責任地使用人工智能（技術）的新對話。
北京已經通過在社交媒體上傳播虛假圖像和其他宣傳手段，將針對美國人民的武器化），並進行了初步合作，以阻止助長美國芬太尼危機的前體化學品泛濫（這些化學品主要由中國公司供應）。
哈馬斯 10 月 7 日在以色列進行大屠殺後，任何關於習近平將美國的姿態視為軟弱的疑慮都煙消雲散了。北京利用這次攻擊，通過 TikTok 進行無休止的反以色列和反美宣傳，而 TikTok 的算法受到中國共產黨 (CCP) 的控製。與俄羅斯外交官一樣，中國外交官會見了哈馬斯領導人，並為該恐怖組織提供了外交掩護，否決了聯合國安理會譴責哈馬斯的決議。盡管華盛頓提出要求，但幾乎沒有跡象表明北京采取了任何行動來幫助遏製胡塞武裝對紅海商船和美國軍艦的襲擊——也門叛亂組織使用伊朗導彈（包括擁有技術的導彈）進行的襲擊中國首創。 （不出所料，中國船隻通常可以自由通過殺傷區。）
無論習近平是在投機取巧還是在按照宏偉的計劃行事——或者幾乎可以肯定，兩者兼而有之——很明顯，他看到了煽動危機的好處，他希望這些危機能夠讓美國及其盟友筋疲力盡。在十月中旬在橢圓形辦公室發表的一次發人深省的講話中，拜登似乎意識到了局勢的嚴重性。他說：“我們正麵臨曆史的轉折點，我們今天做出的決定將決定未來幾十年的未來。”然而奇怪的是——實際上是挑釁性的——他沒有提及中國，而中國是他在演講中點名的侵略者的主要支持者：伊朗、朝鮮和俄羅斯。由於疏忽，拜登給了北京通行證。
那是70年代的表演
當前的時刻與 20 世紀 70 年代有著驚人的相似之處。蘇聯正在損害美國在世界各地的利益，對其盟友埃及 1973 年對以色列的突然襲擊沒有發出任何警告；援助安哥拉、葡萄牙和越南的共產黨人；並迅速擴大其核武庫並大力投資常規軍事。這些都是緩和政策的苦果——由理查德·尼克鬆總統和他的最高外交政策顧問亨利·基辛格倡導的一係列政策，基辛格在傑拉爾德·福特總統的領導下繼續堅持這一方針。通過施壓和利誘，以及淡化意識形態差異，美國試圖引誘俄羅斯進入全球權力的穩定均勢。在關係緩和的情況下，華盛頓削減了國防開支，並軟化了莫斯科侵犯人權的行為。可行的假設是，蘇聯在海外采取破壞穩定行動的胃口會以某種方式自我限製。
但俄羅斯人對於緩和關係的效用有自己的想法。正如曆史學家約翰·劉易斯·加迪斯（John Lewis Gaddis）所觀察到的那樣，蘇聯“可能將緩和局勢視為他們自己誘導西方自滿的工具，同時他們完成了施加壓力的最終手段——他們成為美國的全麵軍事競爭對手。 ”尼克鬆和基辛格認為，緩和關係將確保蘇聯在管理世界各地的危機方麵得到幫助，正如加迪斯所說，“使蘇聯陷入一個經濟關係網絡，這將使俄羅斯人在全球範圍內采取行動變得困難，甚至不可能。”未來不利於西方利益。”但該政策未能實現其目標。
1977 年，吉米·卡特總統上任，打算維持緩和關係，但這一政策對他來說也不起作用。他試圖將損害美國利益的蘇聯行動與蘇聯軍控合作“脫鉤”，最終在這兩方麵都遭遇了挫折。蘇聯在全球範圍內變得更加咄咄逼人，而謹慎的美國國會對莫斯科的誠意失去了信心，拒絕批準卡特團隊煞費苦心談判達成的《第二限製戰略武器條約》。與此同時，卡特的國家安全顧問茲比格涅夫·布熱津斯基對緩和局勢越來越持懷疑態度。布熱津斯基認為，1978年是一個轉折點，當時蘇聯資助了數千名古巴士兵在非洲之角發動暴力革命，支持埃塞俄比亞與索馬裏的戰爭。布熱津斯基在日記中寫道，次年蘇聯入侵阿富汗是軍控談判以及更廣泛的緩和政策的“棺材上的最後一顆釘子”。
1981 年，羅納德·裏根 (Ronald Reagan) 總統入主白宮時，尼克鬆和基辛格的發明已到了最後階段。 “緩和關係一直是蘇聯用來實現其目標的一條單行道，”裏根在就任總統後的第一次新聞發布會上斬釘截鐵地說，實際上埋葬了這一概念。
裏根尋求贏得冷戰，而不僅僅是管理冷戰。他的講話坦率，與他的前任截然不同。
認識到獨裁者經常通過將誠實描述為一種侵略形式來迫使民主國家保持沉默，從而了解蘇聯威脅的本質。 1987年，當裏根準備在柏林牆附近發表演講時，他的一些助手懇求他刪除他們認為無端挑釁性的一句話。他明智地否決了這些建議，並說出了他總統任期內最具標誌性的一句話：“特朗普先生。”戈爾巴喬夫，推倒這堵牆。”
無煙戰爭
華盛頓今天必須采取類似的態度，更加努力地在中國境內傳播真實信息，讓中國公民能夠彼此安全地溝通。拆除——或者至少炸開——中國的“防火長城”必須成為華盛頓今天政策的核心，就像拆除柏林牆對於裏根的政策一樣。
北京正在對美國發動一場激烈的信息戰——盡管美國擁有天然優勢，但它正在失敗。習近平和他的核心圈子認為自己正在與西方進行一場存在主義的意識形態運動，正如習近平在 2014 年的一份官方出版物中所說的那樣：
“精神控製”之戰發生在無硝煙的戰場上。它發生在意識形態領域內。誰掌控了這個戰場，誰就能贏得人心。他們將在整個比賽和戰鬥中掌握主動權。 。 。 。在意識形態領域的鬥爭中，我們沒有任何妥協和退卻的餘地。我們必須取得全麵勝利。
對於習近平來說，互聯網是這場沒有硝煙的戰爭的“主戰場”。 2020年，學者袁鵬在以中國最高間諜機構副部長的新名字重新出現之前寫道，也認識到控製網絡言論的力量：“在互聯網時代…… 。 。什麽是真，什麽是假，已經不重要了；重要的是誰掌握了話語權。”習近平投入了數十億美元來建立和利用他所說的“外部話語機製”，其他中國領導人也特別強調了 TikTok 等短視頻平台作為話語權的“擴音器”。他們並不害怕使用這些擴音器。根據國家情報總監辦公室 2024 年 2 月的一份報告，中國宣傳機構運營的 TikTok 賬戶“據稱在 2022 年美國中期選舉周期中針對了兩個政黨的候選人”。
當中共試圖製定全球話語權時，它最希望美國和西方國家保持沉默——對中國侵犯人權的行為保持沉默，對台灣的侵略保持沉默，對西方的侵略保持沉默。自己根深蒂固的信念，與黨的信念形成了不可調和的對比。因此，毫不奇怪，中共在無煙戰場上的大部分戰略都是為了淹沒中國境內外的其不喜歡的言論。真正具有挑釁性的是美國的沉默，而不是坦白，因為它向中共發出中國在前進、美國在後退的信號。
重新武裝、減少、招募
美國官員首先需要明確與中國的競爭。他們必須認識到，如果美國要遏製戰爭並贏得長期競爭，短期內緊張局勢升級是不可避免的。一旦他們麵對這些事實，他們就需要製定更好的政策：重新武裝美國軍隊，降低中國的經濟影響力，並招募更廣泛的聯盟來對抗中國。
習近平正在為台灣戰爭做好準備。按照目前的軌跡，美國可能無法阻止這場戰爭，這場戰爭可能會導致數萬名美國軍人死亡，造成數萬億美元的經濟損失，並導致我們所知的全球秩序的終結。避免這種未來的唯一途徑是華盛頓立即建立和增強足夠的硬實力，以阻止習近平成功入侵台灣。然而拜登政府最新的預算要求放棄了急需的戰鬥力，提議退役 10 艘艦艇和 250 架飛機，並將弗吉尼亞級潛艇的生產目標從每年兩艘降至一艘。它隻補充了國會授權總統向台灣提供軍事援助的 10 億美元的一半。在 2023 年的補充請求中，白宮要求為印太地區提供略高於 50 億美元的武器和工業基礎支出，僅占整個補充請求的 5%。看預算趨勢線，人們會認為是 1994 年，而不是 2024 年。
拜登政府應立即改變方針，扭轉經通脹調整後的國防開支削減措施。華盛頓不應將 GDP 的 3% 左右用於國防，而應支出 4% 甚至 5%，這一水平仍處於冷戰時期支出的低端。台海近期威懾每年應追加200億美元
未來五年，在亞洲激增和分散足夠的戰鬥力所需的粗略數量。理想情況下，這筆錢將存放在由國防部長監督的專門“威懾基金”中，國防部長將向最適合台灣防禦的項目提供資源。
威懾基金應該成為總統領導的一代人為恢複美國在亞洲的主導地位而做出的努力的主要內容。當務之急應該是最大限度地利用現有生產線，並為亞洲關鍵彈藥建立新的生產能力，例如可以遠距離摧毀敵方目標的反艦和防空導彈。五角大樓還應該利用威懾基金來改造現有的軍事係統，甚至民用技術，例如可能有助於保衛台灣的商用無人機。其“複製者計劃”要求各軍種部署數千架低成本無人機，將台灣海峽變成一些人所說的“沸騰的護城河”，五角大樓應迅速采用其他創造性解決方案，以補充這一計劃。例如，它可以分散隱藏在商業集裝箱箱中的導彈發射器，或部署動力聯合直接攻擊彈藥，這是一種低成本套件，可將標準 500 磅炸彈變成精確製導巡航導彈。
中國最希望美國和其他西方國家保持沉默。
美軍要想真正威懾中國，就需要能夠在打擊範圍內移動。考慮到印度-太平洋地區的海洋地理以及中國龐大的導彈庫對美國基地構成的威脅，國務院將需要擴大與盟國和合作夥伴的托管和準入協議，以擴大美國在該地區的軍事影響力。與此同時，五角大樓將需要加強美國在該地區的軍事設施，並在整個太平洋地區預先部署燃料、彈藥和設備等關鍵物資。
但如果中國在經濟上成為西方的人質，美國就可以遏製中國的軍事力量，但仍然會輸掉新冷戰。北京決心將其對全球供應鏈的控製及其對關鍵新興技術的主導地位武器化。為了降低中國的影響力並確保美國而不是中國開發未來的關鍵技術，華盛頓需要重新設定雙邊經濟關係的條款。首先應該廢除中國的永久正常貿易關係地位，該地位為中國提供了以慷慨的條件進入美國市場的機會，並讓中國進入新的關稅列，其中對美國國家安全和經濟競爭力至關重要的產品逐步提高關稅。提高關稅帶來的收入可用於抵消美國出口商因中國不可避免的報複措施而承受的成本，以及加強具有戰略意義的產品的美國供應鏈。
華盛頓還必須停止美國資金和技術流向支持北京軍事建設和高科技監控係統的中國公司。拜登政府於 2023 年 8 月發布的限製部分對華對外投資的行政命令是朝著正確方向邁出的重要一步，但還遠遠不夠。華盛頓必須擴大投資限製，將高超音速技術、太空係統和新生物技術等關鍵和新興技術納入其中。它還必須結束美國金融公司提供公開交易金融產品（例如交易所交易基金和共同基金）的令人不安的做法，這些產品投資於美國政府黑名單上的中國公司。以當前先進半導體出口管製為模式，商務部應通過對量子計算和生物技術等美國創新的其他關鍵領域實施類似的出口禁令，減少關鍵技術流向中國。
2023年2月，中國間諜氣球墜入南卡羅來納州瑟夫賽德海灘附近的海洋 2023年2月，中國間諜氣球墜入南卡羅來納州瑟夫賽德海灘附近的海洋
隨著中國加大經濟自力更生力度並逐步停止從西方進口工業產品，美國需要招募友好夥伴聯盟來深化相互貿易。華盛頓應該與英國達成雙邊貿易協定。它應該升級與日本的雙邊貿易協定，並與台灣建立新的雙邊貿易協定，該地區其他符合條件的經濟體可以加入這些協定。它應該建立一項印度-太平洋數字貿易協定，以美國-墨西哥-加拿大協定設定的高標準為基準，促進誌同道合的經濟體之間的數據自由流動。
為了徹底改造其破舊的國防工業基礎，美國應該通過從盟國招募人才來推動國防工業的創新
。每年，美國政府通過 EB-5 計劃批準大約 10,000 個簽證，該計劃允許移民在美國企業投資數十萬美元即可獲得綠卡。該計劃充斥著欺詐行為，遠遠偏離了創造就業計劃的初衷，主要成為中國和其他地方的百萬富翁成為永久居民的一種手段。這些簽證應重新用作對在國防關鍵領域擁有高級學位的夥伴國家公民的工作授權。
美國政府還需要招募下一代冷戰戰士，將他們的才能運用到與中國的較量中。它應該從扭轉征兵危機開始——不是通過降低標準、承諾寬鬆的薪酬或向軍隊注入多樣性、公平和包容的意識形態，而是通過毫無歉意地宣揚精英、色盲、全誌願部隊和具有挑戰性的美德。美國年輕人挺身而出。情報界還需要招募新興技術、金融和開源研究領域的專家，並讓他們更容易暫時離開私營部門進入政府工作。國家安全機構需要在亞洲以及中共的曆史和意識形態方麵培養深厚的專業知識。軍種學院和戰爭學院的課程以及正在進行的專業軍事教育應該反映這種轉變。
最後，美國官員需要招募普通美國人為這場鬥爭做出貢獻。盡管昨天的蘇聯和今天的中國之間存在種種差異，但美國政策製定者對“冷戰”一詞的謹慎態度導致他們忽視了冷戰動員社會的方式。冷戰提供了一個相關框架，美國人可以用它來指導自己的決策，例如公司選擇是否在中國設立敏感研發中心，或者個人選擇是否下載 TikTok。然而，左翼和右翼民選官員往往給人的印象是，與中國的競爭範圍如此狹窄，美國人可以毫無顧慮地采取此類步驟。他們想讓人們相信，與北京的競爭不應過多關注普通公民，而是將通過精確的白宮政策和國會立法來處理。
中國作為一個正常國家
當今美國外交政策的一個獨特特征是，房間裏的大象——華盛頓在與北京的競爭中所希望的最終狀態——是一個禁忌話題，以至於曆屆政府都從未闡明過如何結束競爭的明確目標。拜登政府提出將管理競爭作為目標，但這不是目標；這是一種方法，而且是適得其反的方法。華盛頓正在讓其對華政策的目標成為一個過程：會議本應成為美國推進其利益的工具，而會議本身卻成為核心目標。
華盛頓不應該擔心越來越多的中國人所期望的最終狀態：一個能夠製定自己的路線、擺脫共產主義獨裁的中國。習近平的嚴厲統治甚至讓許多中共黨員相信，導致中國繁榮、地位和個人幸福度急劇下降的製度值得重新審視。這個製度產生了全方位的監視國家、強迫勞動殖民地以及對境內少數群體的種族滅絕，它同樣褻瀆了中國哲學和宗教——而更好的模式最終將由此而產生。
幾代美國領導人都明白，通過戰爭或美國投降來結束冷戰是不可接受的。如果說 20 世紀 70 年代給華盛頓帶來了什麽教訓的話，那就是試圖與強大而雄心勃勃的列寧主義獨裁政權實現穩定和持久的權力平衡（緩和）也注定會適得其反。最好的策略在裏根時代得到了最終的綜合，那就是讓蘇聯人相信他們正在走向失敗，這反過來又加劇了人們對他們整個體係的懷疑。
華盛頓正在讓其對華政策的目標成為現實。
當然，美國的勝利並不是裏根一個人的勝利。它以兩黨總統製定的戰略為基礎，並體現在 1950 年杜魯門政府政策文件 NSC-68 等文件中，該文件認為，美國的“政策和行動必須促進性質的根本改變”蘇聯體製。”人們可以將該文件與第 75 號國家安全決策指令聯係起來，這是 1983 年裏根政府的命令，呼籲“對蘇聯施加內部壓力，以削弱蘇聯帝國主義的根源”。從某些方麵來說，冷戰戰略的失常是在緩和時期，而不是裏根時期。
具有諷刺意味的是，裏根最終會追求更多
與蘇聯的接觸可能比他的任何前任都更加充實和富有成效，但隻有在他加強了華盛頓相對於莫斯科的經濟、軍事和道德地位之後，並且隻有在蘇聯產生了一位領導人米哈伊爾·戈爾巴喬夫之後，裏根才可以與他一起實現真正的目標。進步。裏根明白測序就是一切。他也知道，對抗性的第一階段不會輕鬆或舒適。 1982 年 5 月，他關於國家安全戰略的第一個指令預測，“八十年代的十年可能會對我們的生存和福祉構成自二戰以來最大的挑戰。”誠然，這是一個緊張而令人不安的時期，裏根稱蘇聯為“現代世界邪惡的焦點”，並故意尋求削弱其經濟並對抗其在世界各地破壞穩定的活動。但它得到了回報。
習近平曾詆毀戈爾巴喬夫，並在斯大林之後塑造了自己的領導風格，他一次又一次地證明，他不是一個可以與美國人解決問題的領導人。他是混亂的代理人。華盛頓應該尋求削弱中共帝國主義的根源，並支持一位表現得不像無情敵人的中國領導人。這並不意味著強製政權更迭、顛覆或戰爭。但這確實意味著實事求是，正如中國領導人喜歡說的那樣，並理解中共無意與宣揚自由價值觀、從而對其統治構成根本威脅的大國無限期共存。
當前中國人大規模逃離祖國表明他們希望生活在尊重人權、尊重法治並提供廣泛機會選擇的國家。正如台灣的例子所表明的那樣，中國也可能是這樣的地方。到達那裏的路可能很長。但為了美國自身的安全，以及所有中國人的權利和願望，這是唯一可行的目的地。
No Substitute for Victory
America's Competition With China Must Be Won, Not Managed
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/no-substitute-victory-pottinger-gallagher
By Matt Pottinger and Mike Gallagher
Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Joe Biden meeting in Woodside, California, November 2023
Amid a presidency beset by failures of deterrence—in Afghanistan, Ukraine, and the Middle East—the Biden administration’s China policy has stood out as a relative bright spot. The administration has strengthened U.S. alliances in Asia, restricted Chinese access to critical U.S. technologies, and endorsed the bipartisan mood for competition. Yet the administration is squandering these early gains by falling into a familiar trap: prioritizing a short-term thaw with China’s leaders at the expense of a long-term victory over their malevolent strategy. The Biden team’s policy of “managing competition” with Beijing risks emphasizing processes over outcomes, bilateral stability at the expense of global security, and diplomatic initiatives that aim for cooperation but generate only complacency.
The United States shouldn’t manage the competition with China; it should win it. Beijing is pursuing a raft of global initiatives designed to disintegrate the West and usher in an antidemocratic order. It is underwriting expansionist dictatorships in Russia, Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela. It has more than doubled its nuclear arsenal since 2020 and is building up its conventional forces faster than any country has since World War II. These actions show that China isn’t aiming for a stalemate. Neither should America.
What would winning look like? China’s communist rulers would give up trying to prevail in a hot or cold conflict with the United States and its friends. And the Chinese people—from ruling elites to everyday citizens—would find inspiration to explore new models of development and governance that don’t rely on repression at home and compulsive hostility abroad.
In addition to having greater clarity about its end goal, the United States needs to accept that achieving it will require greater friction in U.S.-Chinese relations. Washington will need to adopt rhetoric and policies that may feel uncomfortably confrontational but in fact are necessary to reestablish boundaries that Beijing and its acolytes are violating. That means imposing costs on Chinese leader Xi Jinping for his policy of fostering global chaos. It means speaking with candor about the ways China is hurting U.S. interests. It means rapidly increasing U.S. defense capabilities to achieve unmistakable qualitative advantages over Beijing. It means severing China’s access to Western technology and frustrating Xi’s efforts to convert his country’s wealth into military power. And it means pursuing intensive diplomacy with Beijing only from a position of American strength, as perceived by both Washington and Beijing.
No country should relish waging another cold war. Yet a cold war is already being waged against the United States by China’s leaders. Rather than denying the existence of this struggle, Washington should own it and win it. Lukewarm statements that pretend as if there is no cold war perversely court a hot war; they signal complacency to the American people and conciliation to Chinese leaders. Like the original Cold War, the new cold war will not be won through half measures or timid rhetoric. Victory requires openly admitting that a totalitarian regime that commits genocide, fuels conflict, and threatens war will never be a reliable partner. Like the discredited détente policies that Washington adopted in the 1970s to deal with the Soviet Union, the current approach will yield little cooperation from Chinese leaders while fortifying their conviction that they can destabilize the world with impunity.
BIDEN'S NEW BASELINE
The administration's China policy initially showed promise. President Joe Biden maintained the tariffs that President Donald Trump had imposed on Chinese exports in response to the rampant theft of U.S. intellectual property. He renewed, with some adjustments, the executive orders Trump had issued to restrict investment in certain companies affiliated with the Chinese military and to block the import of Chinese technologies deemed a national security threat. In a particularly important step, in October 2022, Biden significantly expanded the Trump administration's controls on the export of high-end semiconductors and the equipment used to make them, slowing Beijing's plans to dominate the manufacturing of advanced microchips. Across Asia, Biden's diplomats pulled longtime allies and newer partners closer together. They organized the first summits of the Quad, or Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, bringing together the leaders of Australia, India, Japan, and the United States, and convened high-profile trilateral summits with the leaders of Japan and South Korea. Biden also unveiled AUKUS, a defense pact among Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
As it turned out, however, aggression would come from the opposite direction, in Europe. Less than three weeks before invading Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin had signed a “no limits” security pact with Xi in Beijing. In a prudent step after the invasion, Biden drew a redline by warning Xi in a video call that the U.S. government would impose sweeping sanctions if China provided “material support” to Moscow. Xi nonetheless found plenty of ways to support the Russian war machine, sending semiconductors, unarmed drones, gunpowder, and other wares. China also supplied Moscow with badly needed money in exchange for major shipments of Russian oil. Chinese officials, according to the U.S. State Department, even spent more money on pro-Russian propaganda worldwide than Russia itself was spending.
Beijing was also coordinating more closely with Iran and North Korea, even as those regimes sent weapons to help Moscow wage war in Europe. Yet Washington was pursuing siloed policies—simultaneously resisting Russia, appeasing Iran, containing North Korea, and pursuing a mix of rivalry and engagement with China—that added up to something manifestly incoherent. Indeed, the situation that Xi had forecast at the start of the Biden administration was becoming a reality: “The most important characteristic of the world is, in a word, ‘chaos,’ and this trend appears likely to continue,” Xi told a seminar of high-level Communist Party officials in January 2021. Xi made clear that this was a useful development for China. “The times and trends are on our side,” he said, adding, “Overall, the opportunities outweigh the challenges.” By March 2023, Xi had revealed that he saw himself not just as a beneficiary of worldwide turmoil but also as one of its architects. “Right now, there are changes, the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years,” he said to Putin on camera while wrapping up a visit to the Kremlin. “And we are the ones driving these changes together.”
If ever the time was ripe to call out Beijing for fomenting chaos and to start systematically imposing costs on the country in response, it was early 2023. Biden, inexplicably, was doing the opposite. On February 1, residents of Montana spotted a massive, white sphere drifting eastward. The administration was already tracking the Chinese spy balloon but had been planning to let it pass overhead without notifying the public. Under political pressure, Biden ordered the balloon shot down once it reached the Atlantic Ocean, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken postponed a scheduled trip to Beijing to protest the intrusion. Press reports suggested the administration had kept quiet about the balloon in order to gather intelligence about it. But a troubling pattern of downplaying affronts by Beijing would persist in other contexts.
Lukewarm statements that pretend as if there is no cold war perversely court a hot war.
In June 2023, leaks to the press revealed that Beijing, in a remarkable echo of the Cold War, was planning to build a joint military training base in Cuba and had already developed a signals intelligence facility there targeting the United States. After a National Security Council spokesperson called reports about the spy facility inaccurate, a White House official speaking anonymously to the press minimized them by suggesting that Chinese spying from Cuba was “not a new development.” The administration also greeted with a shrug new evidence suggesting that COVID-19 may have initially spread after it accidentally leaked from a Chinese laboratory. If the virus, which has led to the deaths of an estimated 27 million people worldwide, turns out to have been artificially enhanced before it escaped, the revelation would mark a turning point in human history on par with the advent of nuclear weapons—a situation that already cries out for U.S. leadership to govern dangerous biological research worldwide.
In the spring of 2023, as Beijing’s actions grew bolder, Biden initiated what the White House termed an “all hands on deck” diplomatic campaign—not to impose costs on Beijing but to flatter it by dispatching five cabinet-level U.S. officials to China from May to August. Blinken’s June meeting with Xi symbolized the dynamic. Whereas Xi had sat amiably alongside the billionaire Bill Gates just days earlier, the U.S. secretary of state was seated off to the side as Xi held forth from the head of a table at the Great Hall of the People. For the first time in years, Xi appeared to have successfully positioned the United States as supplicant in the bilateral relationship.
What did the United States get in return for all this diplomacy? In the Biden administration’s tally, the benefits included a promise by Beijing to resume military-to-military talks (which Beijing had unilaterally suspended), a new dialogue on the responsible use of artificial intelligence (technology that Beijing is already weaponizing against the American people by spreading fake images and other propaganda on social media), and tentative cooperation to stem the flood of precursor chemicals fueling the fentanyl crisis in the United States (chemicals that are supplied mainly by Chinese companies).
Any doubts that Xi saw the American posture as one of weakness were dispelled after Hamas’s October 7 massacre in Israel. Beijing exploited the attack by serving up endless anti-Israeli and anti-American propaganda through TikTok, whose algorithms are subject to control by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Chinese diplomats, like Russian ones, met with Hamas’s leaders and provided diplomatic cover for the terrorist group, vetoing UN Security Council resolutions that would have condemned Hamas. And there is little sign Beijing has done anything, despite Washington’s requests, to help rein in attacks carried out by the Houthis on commercial vessels and U.S. warships in the Red Sea—attacks conducted by the Yemeni rebel group using Iranian missiles, including ones with technology pioneered by China. (Chinese ships, unsurprisingly, are usually granted free passage through the kill zone.)
Whether Xi is acting opportunistically or according to a grand design—or, almost certainly, both—it is clear he sees advantage in stoking crises that he hopes will exhaust the United States and its allies. In a sobering Oval Office address in mid-October, Biden seemed to grasp the severity of the situation. “We’re facing an inflection point in history—one of those moments where the decisions we make today are going to determine the future for decades to come,” he said. Yet bizarrely—indeed, provocatively—he made no mention of China, the chief sponsor of the aggressors he did call out in the speech: Iran, North Korea, and Russia. Through omission, Biden gave Beijing a pass.
THAT ' 70S SHOW
The current moment bears an uncanny resemblance to the 1970s. The Soviet Union was undermining U.S. interests across the world, offering no warning of its ally Egypt’s 1973 surprise attack on Israel; aiding communists in Angola, Portugal, and Vietnam; and rapidly expanding its nuclear arsenal and investing heavily in its conventional military. These were the bitter fruits of détente—a set of policies pioneered by President Richard Nixon and his top foreign policy adviser, Henry Kissinger, who stayed on and continued the approach under President Gerald Ford. By using pressure and inducement, as well as downplaying ideological differences, the United States tried to lure the Russians into a stable equilibrium of global power. Under détente, Washington slashed defense spending and soft-pedaled Moscow’s human rights affronts. The working assumption was that the Soviet Union’s appetite for destabilizing actions abroad would somehow be self-limiting.
But the Russians had their own ideas about the utility of détente. As the historian John Lewis Gaddis observed, the Soviets “might have viewed détente as their own instrument for inducing complacency in the West while they finished assembling the ultimate means of applying pressure—their emergence as a full-scale military rival of the United States.” Nixon and Kissinger thought détente would secure Soviet help in managing crises around the world and, as Gaddis put it, “enmesh the U.S.S.R. in a network of economic relationships that would make it difficult, if not impossible, for the Russians to take actions in the future detrimental to Western interests.” But the policy failed to achieve its goals.
President Jimmy Carter came into office in 1977 intending to keep détente in place, but the policy didn’t work for him either. His attempt to “de-link” Soviet actions that hurt U.S. interests from Soviet cooperation on arms control ultimately yielded setbacks in both categories. The Soviets became more aggressive globally, and a wary U.S. Congress, having lost faith in Moscow’s sincerity, declined to ratify SALT II, the arms control treaty that Carter’s team had painstakingly negotiated. Meanwhile, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter’s national security adviser, had grown increasingly skeptical of détente. Brzezinski felt that a turning point had come in 1978, after the Soviets sponsored thousands of Cuban soldiers to wage violent revolution in the Horn of Africa, supporting Ethiopia in its war with Somalia. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan the following year was “the final nail in the coffin” for arms control talks, Brzezinski wrote in his journal—and for the broader policy of détente.
By the time President Ronald Reagan entered the White House, in 1981, Nixon and Kissinger’s invention was on its last legs. “Détente’s been a one-way street that the Soviet Union has used to pursue its aims,” Reagan stated flatly in his first press conference as president, effectively burying the concept.
Reagan sought to win, not merely manage, the Cold War. In a sharp departure from his immediate predecessors, he spoke candidly about the nature of the Soviet threat, recognizing that autocrats often bully democracies into silence by depicting honesty as a form of aggression. In 1987, when Reagan was preparing to give a speech within sight of the Berlin Wall, some of his aides begged him to remove a phrase they found gratuitously provocative. Wisely, he overruled them and delivered the most iconic line of his presidency: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”
THE SMOKELESS WAR
Washington must adopt a similar attitude today and try harder to disseminate truthful information within China itself and to make it possible for Chinese citizens to communicate securely with one another. Tearing down—or at least blowing holes in—the “Great Firewall” of China must become as central to Washington’s approach today as removing the Berlin Wall was for Reagan’s.
Beijing is waging a bitter information war against the United States—which is losing, despite its natural advantages. Xi and his inner circle see themselves as fighting an existential ideological campaign against the West, as Xi’s words from an official publication in 2014 make clear:
The battle for “mind control” happens on a smokeless battlefield. It happens inside the domain of ideology. Whoever controls this battlefield can win hearts. They will have the initiative throughout the competition and combat. . . . When it comes to combat in the ideology domain, we don’t have any room for compromise or retreat. We must achieve total victory.
For Xi, the Internet is the “main battlefield” of this smokeless war. In 2020, the scholar Yuan Peng, writing before he resurfaced under a new name as a vice minister of China’s premier spy agency, also recognized the power of controlling speech online: “In the Internet era . . . what is truth and what is a lie is already unimportant; what’s important is who controls discourse power.” Xi has poured billions of dollars into building and harnessing what he calls “external discourse mechanisms,” and other Chinese leaders have specifically highlighted short-video platforms such as TikTok as the “megaphones” of discourse power. They aren’t afraid to use those megaphones. According to a February 2024 report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, TikTok accounts run by Chinese propaganda outfits “reportedly targeted candidates from both political parties during the U.S. midterm election cycle in 2022.”
As the CCP seeks to set the terms of global discourse, what it wants more than anything from the United States and the rest of the West is silence—silence about China’s human rights abuses, silence about its aggression toward Taiwan, and silence about the West’s own deeply held beliefs, which contrast irreconcilably with the party’s. It is no surprise, then, that so much of the CCP’s strategy on the smokeless battlefield is about drowning out speech it doesn’t like—both inside and outside China. It is American silence—not candor—that is truly provocative, for it signals to the CCP that China is advancing and the United States is retreating.
REARM, REDUCE, RECRUIT
What U.S. officials need first is clarity about the contest with China. They have to recognize that rising tensions are inevitable in the short run if the United States is to deter war and win the contest in the long run. Once they have faced these facts, they need to put in place a better policy: one that rearms the U.S. military, reduces China’s economic leverage, and recruits a broader coalition to confront China.
Xi is preparing his country for a war over Taiwan. On its current trajectory, the United States risks failing to deter that war, one that could kill tens of thousands of U.S. service members, inflict trillions of dollars in economic damage, and bring about the end of the global order as we know it. The only path to avoid this future is for Washington to immediately build and surge enough hard power to deny Xi a successful invasion of Taiwan. Yet the Biden administration’s latest budget request sheds badly needed combat power, proposing the retirement of ten ships and 250 aircraft and a drop in the production goal for Virginia-class submarines from two per year to just one. It replenishes only half the $1 billion that Congress authorized for the president to furnish military aid to Taiwan. And in its 2023 supplemental request, the White House asked for just over $5 billion in weapons and industrial base spending earmarked for the Indo-Pacific—barely five percent of the entire supplemental request. Looking at the budget trend line, one would think it was 1994, not 2024.
The Biden administration should immediately change course, reversing what are, in inflation-adjusted terms, cuts to defense spending. Instead of spending about three percent of GDP on defense, Washington should spend four or even five percent, a level that would still be at the low end of Cold War spending. For near-term deterrence in the Taiwan Strait, it should spend an additional $20 billion per year for the next five years, the rough amount needed to surge and disperse sufficient combat power in Asia. Ideally, this money would be held in a dedicated “deterrence fund” overseen by the secretary of defense, who would award resources to projects that best align with the defense of Taiwan.
The deterrence fund should headline a generational effort directed by the president to restore U.S. primacy in Asia. The priority should be to maximize existing production lines and build new production capacity for critical munitions for Asia, such as antiship and antiaircraft missiles that can destroy enemy targets at great distances. The Pentagon should also draw on the deterrence fund to adapt existing military systems or even civilian technology such as commercially available drones that could be useful for defending Taiwan. Complementing its Replicator Initiative, which tasks the services to field thousands of low-cost drones to turn the Taiwan Strait into what some have called “a boiling moat,” the Pentagon should quickly embrace other creative solutions. It could, for example, disperse missile launchers concealed in commercial container boxes or field the Powered Joint Direct Attack Munition, a low-cost kit that turns standard 500-pound bombs into precision-guided cruise missiles.
What China wants more than anything from the United States and the rest of the West is silence.
For U.S. forces to actually deter China, they need to be able to move within striking range. Given the maritime geography of the Indo-Pacific and the threat that China’s vast missile arsenal poses to U.S. bases, the State Department will need to expand hosting and access agreements with allies and partners to extend the U.S. military’s footprint in the region. The Pentagon, meanwhile, will need to harden U.S. military installations across the region and pre-position critical supplies such as fuel, ammunition, and equipment throughout the Pacific.
But the United States could keep the Chinese military contained and still lose the new cold war if China held the West hostage economically. Beijing is bent on weaponizing its stranglehold over global supply chains and its dominance of critical emerging technologies. To reduce Chinese leverage and ensure that the United States, not China, develops the key technologies of the future, Washington needs to reset the terms of the bilateral economic relationship. It should start by repealing China’s permanent normal trade relations status, which provides China access to U.S. markets on generous terms, and moving China to a new tariff column that features gradually increasing rates on products critical to U.S. national security and economic competitiveness. The revenue raised from increased tariffs could be spent on offsetting the costs that U.S. exporters will incur as a result of China’s inevitable retaliatory measures and on bolstering U.S. supply chains for strategically important products.
Washington must also halt the flow of American money and technology to Chinese companies that support Beijing’s military buildup and high-tech surveillance system. The Biden administration’s August 2023 executive order restricting a subset of outbound investment to China was an important step in the right direction, but it doesn’t go far enough. Washington must expand investment restrictions to include critical and emerging technologies such as hypersonics, space systems, and new biotechnologies. It must also put an end to U.S. financial firms’ disturbing practice of offering publicly traded financial products, such as exchange-traded funds and mutual funds, that invest in Chinese companies that are on U.S. government blacklists. Using the current export controls on advanced semiconductors as a model, the Department of Commerce should reduce the flow of critical technology to China by introducing similar export bans on other key areas of U.S. innovation, such as quantum computing and biotechnology.
The Chinese spy balloon falling into the ocean near Surfside Beach, South Carolina, February 2023
As China doubles down on economic self-reliance and phases out imports of industrial goods from the West, the United States needs to recruit a coalition of friendly partners to deepen mutual trade. Washington should strike a bilateral trade agreement with the United Kingdom. It should upgrade its bilateral trade agreement with Japan and establish a new one with Taiwan, agreements that could be joined by other eligible economies in the region. It should forge an Indo-Pacific digital trade agreement that would facilitate the free flow of data between like-minded economies, using as a baseline the high standards set by the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement.
To overhaul its dilapidated defense industrial base, the United States should turbocharge innovation in the defense industry by recruiting talented workers from allied countries. Every year, the U.S. government authorizes roughly 10,000 visas through the EB-5 program, which allows immigrants to obtain a green card if they invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in American businesses. The program is rife with fraud and has deviated far from its intended purpose as a job-creation program, becoming mostly a method for millionaires from China and other places to become permanent residents. These visas should be repurposed as work authorizations for citizens of partner countries who hold advanced degrees in fields critical to defense.
The U.S. government also needs to recruit the next generation of cold warriors to apply their talents to the contest with China. It should start by reversing the crisis in military recruitment—not by lowering standards, promising easy pay, or infusing the force with diversity, equity, and inclusion ideology but by unapologetically touting the virtues of an elite, colorblind, all-volunteer force and challenging young Americans to step up. The intelligence community also needs to recruit experts in emerging technology, finance, and open-source research and make it easier to temporarily leave the private sector for a stint in government. National security agencies need to cultivate deep expertise in Asia and in the history and ideology of the CCP. The curricula of the service academies and war colleges, as well as ongoing professional military education, should reflect this shift.
Finally, U.S. officials need to recruit everyday Americans to contribute to the fight. For all the differences between the Soviet Union yesterday and China today, U.S. policymakers’ squeamishness about the term “cold war” causes them to overlook the way it can mobilize society. A cold war offers a relatable framework that Americans can use to guide their own decisions—such as a company’s choice whether to set up a sensitive research and development center in China or an individual’s choice whether to download TikTok. Too often, however, elected officials on the left and the right give the impression that the competition with China is so narrow in scope that Americans can take such steps without worry. The contest with Beijing, they would have people believe, shouldn’t much concern ordinary citizens but will be handled through surgically precise White House policies and congressional legislation.
CHINA AS A NORMAL COUNTRY
It is a peculiar feature of U.S. foreign policy today that the elephant in the room—the end state Washington desires in its competition with Beijing—is such a taboo subject that administrations come and go without ever articulating a clear goal for how the competition ends. The Biden administration offers up managing competition as a goal, but that is not a goal; it is a method, and a counterproductive one at that. Washington is allowing the aim of its China policy to become process: meetings that should be instruments through which the United States advances its interests become core objectives in and of themselves.
Washington should not fear the end state desired by a growing number of Chinese: a China that is able to chart its own course free from communist dictatorship. Xi’s draconian rule has persuaded even many CCP members that the system that produced China’s recent precipitous decline in prosperity, status, and individual happiness is one that deserves reexamination. The system that produced an all-encompassing surveillance state, forced-labor colonies, and the genocide of minority groups inside its borders is one that likewise desecrates Chinese philosophy and religion—the fountainheads from which a better model will eventually spring.
Generations of American leaders understood that it would have been unacceptable for the Cold War to end through war or U.S. capitulation. If the 1970s taught Washington anything, it is that trying to achieve a stable and durable balance of power—a détente—with a powerful and ambitious Leninist dictatorship is also doomed to backfire on the United States. The best strategy, which found its ultimate synthesis in the Reagan years, was to convince the Soviets that they were on a path to lose, which in turn fueled doubts about their whole system.
Washington is allowing the aim of its China policy to become process.
The U.S. victory wasn’t Reagan’s alone, of course. It was built on strategies forged by presidents of both parties and manifested in documents such as NSC-68, the 1950 Truman administration policy paper that argued that the United States’ “policy and actions must be such as to foster a fundamental change in the nature of the Soviet system.” One can draw a straight line from that document to National Security Decision Directive 75, the 1983 Reagan administration order that called for “internal pressure on the USSR to weaken the sources of Soviet imperialism.” In some ways, it was the détente years, not the Reagan years, that were an aberration in Cold War strategy.
Ironically, Reagan would end up pursuing a more fulsome and productive engagement with the Soviets than perhaps any of his predecessors—but only after he had strengthened Washington’s economic, military, and moral standing relative to Moscow and only after the Soviet Union produced a leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, with whom Reagan could make real progress. Reagan understood that sequencing was everything. He also knew that the confrontational first phase wouldn’t be easy or comfortable. His first directive on national security strategy, in May 1982, predicted, “The decade of the eighties will likely pose the greatest challenge to our survival and well-being since World War II.” It was a tense and unsettling period, to be sure, during which Reagan called out the Soviet Union as “the focus of evil in the modern world” and deliberately sought to weaken its economy and contest its destabilizing activities around the world. Yet it paid off.
Xi, who has vilified Gorbachev and fashioned his own leadership style after that of Joseph Stalin, has proved time and again that he is not a leader with whom Americans can solve problems. He is an agent of chaos. Washington should seek to weaken the sources of CCP imperialism and hold out for a Chinese leader who behaves less like an unrelenting foe. This does not mean forcible regime change, subversion, or war. But it does mean seeking truth from facts, as Chinese leaders are fond of saying, and understanding that the CCP has no desire to coexist indefinitely with great powers that promote liberal values and thus represent a fundamental threat to its rule.
The current mass exodus of Chinese people from their homeland is evidence they want to live in nations that respect human rights, honor the rule of law, and offer a wide choice of opportunities. As Taiwan’s example makes plain, China could be such a place, too. The road to get there might be long. But for the United States’ own security, as well as the rights and aspirations of all those in China, it is the only workable destination.
About writer
MATT POTTINGER served as U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser from 2019 to 2021 and as Senior Director for Asia on the National Security Council from 2017 to 2019. He is a co-author and editor of the forthcoming book The Boiling Moat: Urgent Steps to Defend Taiwan.
MIKE GALLAGHER served as U.S. Representative from Wisconsin from 2017 to 2024 and chaired the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party.
