US-China Competition: Another Cold War?
By: Evan Wright
Tags: Foreign Policy, United States, International Relations, Grand Strategy, China

Starting January 20th, the Biden administration will be tasked with “picking up the pieces” of America’s democracy, alliances, and the liberal international order while addressing threats posed by adversaries such as China. The Biden team will want to consult historical precedent to address these challenges, but they must restrain themselves from using the U.S.’ Cold War playbook. Under no circumstances should the next administration apply a strategy of containment to meet threats from its adversaries. Doing so would mark a failure by President-elect Biden to accurately assess what motivates contemporary Chinese grand strategy and the international context which made the strategy of containment successful against the Soviet Union in the first place.

Cold War Containment

The experiences of the Great Depression and two world wars shaped the U.S.’ Cold War strategy of containment. Cold War historian Melvyn Leffler best explains America’s overarching lesson from this period: never again could a totalitarian power be allowed to gain control of the Eurasian landmass and its resources. Doing so would pose an existential threat to the U.S. and would force it to maintain a permanent war footing, limiting civil liberties and turning America into a garrison state. At the outset of the Cold War, American policymakers knew that the Red Army did not pose any direct military threat to Europe or Asia; but Germany, Japan, and the rest of the world drifting towards the Soviet orbit and lending their manpower and resources to the socialist camp would have the same effect. The USSR would be in control of the Eurasian landmass. The strategy of containment was thus necessary to prevent the spread of the Soviet ideology that could give the USSR control over Eurasia.

The Soviet Union’s communist ideology made peaceful coexistence with the West impossible. Its sense of insecurity and Marxist-Leninist ideology informed this view. Soviet leaders suffered from “Barbarossa Syndrome” after Nazi Germany’s devastating invasion of Russia in June 1941. They believed that keeping Germany down, expanding Soviet borders, and establishing a buffer zone of neighboring states was key to ensuring Soviet security. Similarly, most Soviet leaders, particularly Stalin and Khrushchev, held strong socialist beliefs: that the capitalist world was hostile, aggressive, and unstable; that conflict between the socialist and capitalist powers was inevitable; and that socialism would ultimately emerge victorious. With World War II still fresh in the minds of Cold War policymakers and power vacuums forming all over the world because of decolonization, it was only natural that clashing ideologies and a shared sense of global insecurity would make conflict between the U.S. and Soviet Union seem inevitable during this period.

Black Cat, White Cat…

Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping famously once said that it doesn’t matter whether a cat is black or white so long as it catches mice. The same ideological pragmatism motivates contemporary China, which aspires to fulfill the “Chinese Dream” of attaining wealth and power coined by current President Xi Jinping and is ruled by a logic of political survival that preserves the power of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP). But becoming rich and powerful is not a motivation in itself — rather, overcoming the century of humiliation that China faced at the hands of Western and Japanese imperialism has greatly shaped the way many Chinese view their rightful place in the world. As one Tsinghua University professor put it, “they believe China’s decline to be a historical mistake, which they should correct.” To complicate matters, President Xi has made the CCP’s legitimacy contingent upon the party achieving the Chinese Dream. The CCP has put forth the narrative that the only thing protecting the Chinese from further humiliation by its adversaries is the party’s leadership.

As such, Xi’s China is equally as motivated by a logic of political survival as it is with achieving national rejuvenation, prosperity, and power. But this nuance is incredibly important for understanding the motivations undergirding contemporary Chinese grand strategy. The motivations of the Chinese people are not necessarily in lockstep with the CCP. As Yale professor Odd Arne Westad rightly notes, for the average Chinese citizen, “Communism is simply a name for the ruling party rather than an ideal to seek.” Under this assumption, competitive coexistence — if not peaceful coexistence — is possible between the United States and China so long as policymakers can properly differentiate between the motivations and aspirations of the Chinese people versus the CCP and act accordingly.

Moving Beyond Containment

Major takeaways can be drawn from this analysis. First, a Marxist-Leninist ideology is not the primary motivating factor for contemporary Chinese grand strategy. Coexistence — whether peaceful or competitive — is plausible and conflict with China is not inevitable. Second, China does not aim to take full control of the Eurasian landmass or its resources. President Xi does seek national rejuvenation, legitimacy in the international community, and influence over global affairs as a great power — things that cannot be dismissed out of hand. World domination is not on his mind, but prestige and power. Locking horns with the United States is not a necessary condition to achieving his Chinese Dream unless there are perceived to be no alternatives. In other words, the two motives that made the U.S.’ Cold War containment strategy necessary with the Soviet Union are simply absent from contemporary Chinese grand strategy.

Similarly, the international environment of the Cold War that made containment a sufficient strategy for addressing the threat posed by the Soviet Union no longer exists. Unlike the Soviet Union, which mostly sequestered its own economy from the rest of the world, China is a capitalist hub for the world economy and has been the world’s largest trading nation since 2013. As such, any attempt to contain China economically could tear apart the global economy itself — damaging one would hurt the other. Also absent from today’s international environment are the crop of new nations that formed during the Cold War due to decolonization, which upset the regional balance of power in many places. Instability still permeates the Middle East, Africa, and Southeast Asia, but the likelihood of a new nation forming that noticeably shifts the regional power balance in favor of the Chinese or Americans is low.

The U.S. is not in a new Cold War with China, though it still poses a threat to the world order that deserves attention and careful calculation by policymakers. Instead of misapplying an analogy like the Cold War, the U.S. should follow the ingenuity that its leaders had in the aftermath of World War II and craft a new strategy for a new era. One that goes beyond historical comparison and properly assesses its asymmetric capabilities, such as its network of alliances, that China does not possess. Anything less ambitious will only maintain the status quo or prove disastrous for the liberal international order.