At Bloomberg columnist Andreas Kluth, after a hat tip to Graham Allison’s “Thucydides trap” metaphor for the situation between the United States and China, about which I have already expressed my skepticism, says that the situation is really like that in which the United Kingdom and Prussia were in the lead-up to World War I:
But in the case of the U.S. and China, there’s a much better analogy, as these historians and economists have described. It is the struggle between the British Empire and the up-and-coming German Empire after its unification in 1871.
That era, like ours, was one of industrial and technological revolution and uneasy globalization. Like the U.S., Britain was a democracy that largely believed in free markets. And as the U.S. has done since World War II — at least, until the presidency of Donald Trump — the U.K. chaperoned an international order regulating trade and finance, overseeing the so-called Pax Britannica.
On the opposing side, resembling China today, was Germany, an autocratic state that held a grudge for being late to industrialize and was bent on overtaking the leader, with state-directed and nationalist economic policies. Also like China today, Germany did this in part by pilfering patents and technologies, and aggressively pushing alternatives to its rival’s standards.
which I don;’t think actually holds water, either. As I’ve pointed out before, irredentism is basic to Chinese politics and to what’s going on. I don’t believe that Prussia was notably motivated by irredentism in the late 19th and early 20th century. Hearkening back to the glories of the Holy Roman Empire? I don’t believe it.
There are other problems with the piece. For example, Mr. Kluth can’t seem to decide whether the United States is the United Kingdom or Prussia in the analogy. That’s one of the problems with the “Thucydides trap” hypothesis as well. Are we Athens or Sparta?
But wait! There’s more. At the Atlantic Council Frederick Kempe says that the situation is unique:
We’ve never been here before.
The escalating confrontation between the United States and China is so perilous because the world’s two largest economies – and the two defining countries of their times – are navigating uncharted terrain.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s landmark speech at the Nixon Library on Thursday marked the most robust call to action yet against the Chinese Communist Party. It came amid tit-for-tat consular shutdowns in Houston and Chengdu, and the Friday arrest by the FBI of an alleged Chinese military operative in San Francisco.
It’s tempting to brand this a hotter phase of a new Cold War, as this column did just last week. However, that language understates the historic novelty of what’s unfolding and its epochal enormity.
It’s a unique moment because the United States, since its rise to global power, has never confronted such a potent peer competitor across so many realms: political, economic, technological, military and even societal.
Maybe he means to place the emphasis on “we” in his declamation. We have never been here before. That seems facile to me. You can never step in the same river twice.
As someone or other (not Sam Clemens) pointed out years ago, history may never repeat itself but it does rhyme. That’s because history is crafted by human beings and the motivations of human beings are actually pretty limited, frequently mixed but limited.
What impresses me about these analogies is that they’re nearly always posed from what I presume the author believes is the Chinese point of view. I don’t honestly know what the Chinese point of view is but I don’t see much recognition of just how vast both the United States and China are or how reductionist their views are. There isn’t just one “Chinese point of view”.
Let me put it this way. There are many differences between the U. S. and China but one of the biggest is that what President Xi thinks and believes is a lot more important than what President Trump thinks or believes. Does President Xi think that China is in the process of drastically overreaching as Prussia did or does he think that China is an “emerging power” with the U. S. an “existing power” or, as I suspect, he’s a lot more interested in realizing his goals for China whether he sees China as emerging or not.
Agree, the German Empire was not irredentist. With the exception of Switzerland and the German-speaking portions of the Austrian Empire, Prussia had effectively absorbed or conquered all of the ethnically German areas in Europe. But once Kaiser Wilhelm II took power Germany became expansionist – building a salt-water navy to challenge Britain on the high seas, demanding slices of Africa to satisfy a manufactured need for ‘their place in the sun’. Whether it would have led to a war between the two powers without the Sarajevo incident is anybody’s guess. But such a conflict might well have ended up another fish and fox conflict like the second Peloponnese War did.
Is the US Athens or Sparta? We’re both, Athens economically, Sparta militarily. The Thucydides trap doesn’t work for the current situation. China is a land-centric economic and military power but unlike Sparta it is extremely dependent on exports as well as being irredentist and expansionist. Sparta was a self-sufficient economy happy to stay inside its borders – look how much it took to get them to actually participate in the Persian Wars (although their effort at Plataea did prove decisive). The dual monarchy only got sucked into the wars with Athens because of – guess what else – foreign entanglements (Corinth and its colonies primarily).
‘It’s a unique moment because the United States, since its rise to global power, has never confronted such a potent peer competitor across so many realms: political, economic, technological, military and even societal.’
What was the Soviet Union then? Chopped suey?
Sounds like yet another article breathlessly promoting the start of a new Cold War between the US and a foreign devil due to the reckless actions of OMB and his minions. What do you suggest we do, Mr. Kempe? Go back to the economic status quo ante Trump? That’s what Mr. Demented’s handlers would like. No thank you.
“status quo ante Trump?”
That’s my concern Vis- a- vis Obama 2.0. America needs to make a stand now, and we are. Smilin’ Joe could ease us back into complacency within weeks. I doubt if 10% of Americans understand why Chinese technology theft is a threat, or care.
I don’t see any protests against that.
In fact, many young Americans profess their leanings toward socialism.