The US Is Learning the Wrong Cold War Lessons on China
Hoping for a repeat of history isn’t the wisest foreign-policy strategy for winning the 21st century version of the Washington-Moscow rivalry.
There's no Chinese Gorbachev.
Photographer: Pedro Pardo/AFP/Getty Images
By now few question the proposition that the US and China are locked in an open-ended strategic rivalry, if not a new Cold War. But what the end game of this contest looks like is a hotly debated topic. Hawks in Washington are calling for “victory,” rejecting the strategy of a managed competition that prioritizes the prevention of an uncontrolled escalation and even a great power war.
The definition of victory, spelled out in an influential recent article in Foreign Affairs, appears to be the capitulation of the Chinese Communist Party and regime change, a triumph best achieved through a strategy of confrontation similar to Ronald Reagan’s policy toward the Soviet Union in the early 1980s.