风萧萧_Frank
以文会友
先看一个www.linkedin.com评论
王约瑟夫 Joseph Wang
计算天体物理学家和定量开发人员 2 周前
叹, 这样绝对疯狂的文章竟然出现在《外交政策》上
https://lnkd.in/gZWmgqie
这里的基本问题是，中国有14亿人口，美国有3.5亿人口。如果中国不成为同等竞争对手，你“不可能”将中国人口提高到美国的生活水平。没有他妈的方式。
美国获胜后对中国的愿景是什么？俄罗斯？
对此最好的反驳是 William T. Sherman 在 1860 年写的
“你们南方人民不知道自己在做什么。这个国家将被鲜血浸透，只有上帝知道它会如何结束。这都是愚蠢、疯狂、对文明的犯罪！你们这些人如此轻描淡写地谈论战争；你不知道你在说什么战争是一件可怕的事情！
你也误会了，北方人。他们是和平的人民，但也是热心的人民，他们也会战斗。他们不会让这个国家在不付出巨大努力来拯救它的情况下被摧毁……此外，你们用来对抗他们的人和战争装备在哪里？北方可以制造蒸汽机、机车或火车车厢；你几乎无法制作一码布或一双鞋。你正在与地球上最强大、最巧妙、最坚定的人之一展开战争——就在你家门口。你注定会失败。只有你的精神和决心才能为战争做好准备。
在其他方面，你完全没有准备好，一开始就有一个糟糕的原因。起初，您会取得进展，但随着您有限的资源开始失效，被排除在欧洲市场之外，您的事业将开始衰退。如果你的人民停下来思考，他们最终一定会看到你一定会失败。”
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?! 美國面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 中國也面臨著許多
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面
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
是有關軍事層面的
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 一方面經濟損失巨大
2:46
另一方面人員損失也很大
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
無論是在經濟方面
3:10
還是在人民的幸福方面
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
如何控制和遏制中國的問題
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
只有美國的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
從這些方面來看
6:47
中國經濟才剛剛起步
6:50
由此 我的最後結論是
6:53
認為美國可以遏制中國的想法
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
美國應該遏制中國
7:10
並以自己的方式擊敗中國
7:13
第二個選擇是 我們無法遏制中國
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系
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 我們可以遏制中國
7:43
而不是專注於讓自己變得更好
7:47
美國最終將失敗
转写文稿
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
<<<<<<>>>>>>
胜利无可替代
美国与中国的竞争必须是胜利，而不是管理
作者：马特·波廷格, 迈克·加拉格尔
马特·波廷格, Matt Pottinger, 2019 年至 2021 年担任美国副国家安全顾问，并于 2017 年至 2019 年担任国家安全委员会亚洲事务高级主任。他是即将出版的《沸腾的护城河：保卫台湾的紧急步骤》一书的合著者和编辑。
迈克·加拉格尔 Mike Gallagher, 2017 年至 2024 年担任威斯康星州美国众议员，并担任众议院中国共产党特别委员会主席。
2024年5月/6月 2024年4月10日
中国国家主席习近平和美国总统乔·拜登于 2023 年 11 月在加利福尼亚州伍德赛德会晤中国国家主席习近平和美国总统乔·拜登于 2023 年 11 月在加利福尼亚州伍德赛德会晤
在阿富汗、乌克兰和中东等地区威慑失败的困扰下，拜登政府的对华政策成为一个相对亮点。本届政府加强了美国在亚洲的联盟，限制中国获得美国关键技术，并支持两党的竞争情绪。然而，美国政府却陷入了一个熟悉的陷阱，从而浪费了这些早期成果：优先考虑与中国领导人的短期解冻，而牺牲了对其恶意战略的长期胜利。拜登团队与北京“管理竞争”的政策可能会强调过程而非结果、以牺牲全球安全为代价的双边稳定以及旨在合作但只会产生自满情绪的外交举措。
美国不应该管理与中国的竞争；它应该赢得它。北京正在推行一系列旨在瓦解西方并引入反民主秩序的全球举措。它为俄罗斯、伊朗、朝鲜和委内瑞拉的扩张主义独裁政权提供支持。自2020年以来，它的核武库增加了一倍多，并且其常规力量建设速度比二战以来任??何国家都快。这些行动表明中国无意陷入僵局。美国也不应该。
获胜会是什么样子？中国的共产主义统治者将放弃在与美国及其盟友的冷热冲突中获胜的尝试。而中国人民——从统治精英到普通公民——将会找到灵感，探索不依赖于国内镇压和国外强迫性敌对的新发展和治理模式。
除了更加明确其最终目标之外，美国还需要接受这样的事实：实现这一目标将需要美中关系中出现更大的摩擦。华盛顿将需要采取可能让人感到不舒服的对抗性言论和政策，但实际上对于重建北京及其追随者所侵犯的边界是必要的。这意味着中国领导人习近平要为其助长全球混乱的政策付出代价。这意味着坦诚地谈论中国损害美国利益的方式。这意味着美国国防能力的迅速增强，以取得对北京明显的质量优势。这意味着切断中国获得西方技术的途径，并挫败习近平将国家财富转化为军事力量的努力。正如华盛顿和北京都认为的那样，这意味着只能从美国的实力地位来与北京进行密集的外交。
任何国家都不应该乐于发动另一场冷战。然而，中国领导人已经对美国发动了冷战。华盛顿不应该否认这场斗争的存在，而应该承认并赢得这场斗争。假装冷战不存在的冷淡言论反而会引发热战；它们向美国人民发出了自满的信号，向中国领导人发出了和解的信号。与原来的冷战一样，新冷战不会通过半途而废或胆怯的言辞来赢得胜利。要想取得胜利，就需要公开承认，一个实施种族灭绝、煽动冲突、威胁战争的极权政权永远不会成为可靠的伙伴。就像华盛顿在 20 世纪 70 年代针对苏联采取的声名狼藉的缓和政策一样，目前的做法不会给中国领导人带来多少合作，同时会强化他们的信念，即他们可以破坏世界稳定而不受惩罚。
拜登的新基线
政府的对华政策最初显示出了希望。乔·拜登总统维持了唐纳德·特朗普总统为应对猖獗的盗窃美国知识产权行为而对中国出口产品征收的关税。他重申了特朗普发布的行政命令，并进行了一些调整，以限制对某些与中国军方有关联的公司的投资，并阻止进口被视为国家安全威胁的中国技术。 2022 年 10 月，拜登迈出了尤为重要的一步，大幅扩大了特朗普政府对高端半导体及其制造设备出口的控制，减缓了北京主导先进微芯片制造的计划。在整个亚洲，拜登的外交官拉近了长期盟友和新伙伴的距离。他们组织了首次四方峰会，澳大利亚、印度、日本和美国领导人齐聚一堂，并与日本和韩国领导人召开了高调的三边峰会。拜登一
还公布了澳大利亚、英国和美国之间的防务条约 AUKUS。
然而，事实证明，侵略将来自相反的方向，即欧洲。在入侵乌克兰前不到三周，俄罗斯总统弗拉基米尔·普京在北京与习近平签署了“无限制”安全协议。入侵后，拜登谨慎地划出了红线，在视频通话中警告习近平，如果中国向莫斯科提供“物质支持”，美国政府将实施全面制裁。尽管如此，习近平仍然找到了很多方法来支持俄罗斯的战争机器，发送半导体、非武装无人机、火药和其他商品。中国还向莫斯科提供急需的资金，以换取俄罗斯的大量石油运输。据美国国务院称，中国官员在全球亲俄宣传上花费的资金甚至比俄罗斯本身花费的还要多。
北京还与伊朗和朝鲜进行了更密切的协调，尽管这些政权派遣武器帮助莫斯科在欧洲发动战争。然而，华盛顿正在推行孤立的政策——同时抵制俄罗斯、安抚伊朗、遏制朝鲜，并寻求与中国竞争和接触的混合体——这显然是不连贯的。事实上，习近平在拜登执政之初所预测的情况正在成为现实：“世界最重要的特征，一句话，就是‘混乱’，而且这种趋势很可能会持续下去，”习近平对一位记者表示。 2021 年 1 月召开的共产党高级官员研讨会。习近平明确表示，这对中国来说是一个有益的发展。 “时代和趋势都站在我们这一边，”他补充道，“总体而言，机遇大于挑战。”到 2023 年 3 月，习近平透露，他不仅将自己视为全球动荡的受益者，而且也是这场动荡的缔造者之一。 “现在，发生了一些变化，我们已经一百年没有见过这样的变化了，”他在结束对克里姆林宫的访问时在镜头前对普京说道。 “我们是共同推动这些变化的人。”
如果说谴责北京煽动混乱并开始系统性地让国家为此付出代价的时机已经成熟的话，那就是 2023 年初。令人费解的是，拜登却做了相反的事情。 2月1日，蒙大拿州居民发现一个巨大的白色球体向东漂移。美国政府已经在追踪中国间谍气球，但一直计划让它在不通知公众的情况下从头顶飞过。迫于政治压力，拜登下令气球一到达大西洋就将其击落，国务卿安东尼·布林肯推迟了原定的北京之行以抗议此次入侵。媒体报道称，政府对气球保持沉默，是为了收集有关气球的情报。但北京淡化冒犯行为的令人不安的模式在其他情况下仍将持续存在。
假装不存在冷战的不冷不热的言论反而会引发热战。
2023 年 6 月，向媒体泄露的消息显示，北京正计划在古巴建立一个联合军事训练基地，并已经在那里建立了一个针对美国的信号情报设施，这与冷战时期的情况截然不同。在国家安全委员会发言人称有关间谍设施的报道不准确后，一名匿名白宫官员向媒体发表讲话，暗示中国从古巴进行间谍活动“不是新事”，从而将这些报道最小化。政府还对新的证据表示欢迎，这些证据表明，COVID-19 可能是在中国实验室意外泄漏后最初传播的。如果这种导致全球约 2700 万人死亡的病毒在逃逸之前被人为增强，那么这一发现将标志着人类历史的一个转折点，就像核武器的出现一样——这种情况这已经要求美国发挥领导作用来管理全球危险的生物研究。
2023 年春天，随着北京的行动变得更加大胆，拜登发起了白宫所谓的“全力以赴”的外交行动——不是为了让北京付出代价，而是为了奉承北京，派出五名美国内阁级官员到中国。五月至八月。布林肯六月与习近平的会面就体现了这一动态。几天前，习近平还和亿万富翁比尔·盖茨(Bill Gates)亲切地坐在一起，而当习近平在人民大会堂的一张桌子上发表讲话时，美国国务卿则坐在一旁。多年来，习近平似乎首次成功地将美国定位为双边关系中的恳求者。
美国通过所有这些外交得到了什么回报？在拜登政府的统计中，好处包括北京承诺恢复军事对话（北京已单方面暂停）、关于负责任地使用人工智能（技术）的新对话。
北京已经通过在社交媒体上传播虚假图像和其他宣传手段，将针对美国人民的武器化），并进行了初步合作，以阻止助长美国芬太尼危机的前体化学品泛滥（这些化学品主要由中国公司供应）。
哈马斯 10 月 7 日在以色列进行大屠杀后，任何关于习近平将美国的姿态视为软弱的疑虑都烟消云散了。北京利用这次攻击，通过 TikTok 进行无休止的反以色列和反美宣传，而 TikTok 的算法受到中国共产党 (CCP) 的控制。与俄罗斯外交官一样，中国外交官会见了哈马斯领导人，并为该恐怖组织提供了外交掩护，否决了联合国安理会谴责哈马斯的决议。尽管华盛顿提出要求，但几乎没有迹象表明北京采取了任何行动来帮助遏制胡塞武装对红海商船和美国军舰的袭击——也门叛乱组织使用伊朗导弹（包括拥有技术的导弹）进行的袭击中国首创。 （不出所料，中国船只通常可以自由通过杀伤区。）
无论习近平是在投机取巧还是在按照宏伟的计划行事——或者几乎可以肯定，两者兼而有之——很明显，他看到了煽动危机的好处，他希望这些危机能够让美国及其盟友筋疲力尽。在十月中旬在椭圆形办公室发表的一次发人深省的讲话中，拜登似乎意识到了局势的严重性。他说：“我们正面临历史的转折点，我们今天做出的决定将决定未来几十年的未来。”然而奇怪的是——实际上是挑衅性的——他没有提及中国，而中国是他在演讲中点名的侵略者的主要支持者：伊朗、朝鲜和俄罗斯。由于疏忽，拜登给了北京通行证。
那是70年代的表演
当前的时刻与 20 世纪 70 年代有着惊人的相似之处。苏联正在损害美国在世界各地的利益，对其盟友埃及 1973 年对以色列的突然袭击没有发出任何警告；援助安哥拉、葡萄牙和越南的共产党人；并迅速扩大其核武库并大力投资常规军事。这些都是缓和政策的苦果——由理查德·尼克松总统和他的最高外交政策顾问亨利·基辛格倡导的一系列政策，基辛格在杰拉尔德·福特总统的领导下继续坚持这一方针。通过施压和利诱，以及淡化意识形态差异，美国试图引诱俄罗斯进入全球权力的稳定均势。在关系缓和的情况下，华盛顿削减了国防开支，并软化了莫斯科侵犯人权的行为。可行的假设是，苏联在海外采取破坏稳定行动的胃口会以某种方式自我限制。
但俄罗斯人对于缓和关系的效用有自己的想法。正如历史学家约翰·刘易斯·加迪斯（John Lewis Gaddis）所观察到的那样，苏联“可能将缓和局势视为他们自己诱导西方自满的工具，同时他们完成了施加压力的最终手段——他们成为美国的全面军事竞争对手。 ”尼克松和基辛格认为，缓和关系将确保苏联在管理世界各地的危机方面得到帮助，正如加迪斯所说，“使苏联陷入一个经济关系网络，这将使俄罗斯人在全球范围内采取行动变得困难，甚至不可能。”未来不利于西方利益。”但该政策未能实现其目标。
1977 年，吉米·卡特总统上任，打算维持缓和关系，但这一政策对他来说也不起作用。他试图将损害美国利益的苏联行动与苏联军控合作“脱钩”，最终在这两方面都遭遇了挫折。苏联在全球范围内变得更加咄咄逼人，而谨慎的美国国会对莫斯科的诚意失去了信心，拒绝批准卡特团队煞费苦心谈判达成的《第二限制战略武器条约》。与此同时，卡特的国家安全顾问兹比格涅夫·布热津斯基对缓和局势越来越持怀疑态度。布热津斯基认为，1978年是一个转折点，当时苏联资助了数千名古巴士兵在非洲之角发动暴力革命，支持埃塞俄比亚与索马里的战争。布热津斯基在日记中写道，次年苏联入侵阿富汗是军控谈判以及更广泛的缓和政策的“棺材上的最后一颗钉子”。
1981 年，罗纳德·里根 (Ronald Reagan) 总统入主白宫时，尼克松和基辛格的发明已到了最后阶段。 “缓和关系一直是苏联用来实现其目标的一条单行道，”里根在就任总统后的第一次新闻发布会上斩钉截铁地说，实际上埋葬了这一概念。
里根寻求赢得冷战，而不仅仅是管理冷战。他的讲话坦率，与他的前任截然不同。
认识到独裁者经常通过将诚实描述为一种侵略形式来迫使民主国家保持沉默，从而了解苏联威胁的本质。 1987年，当里根准备在柏林墙附近发表演讲时，他的一些助手恳求他删除他们认为无端挑衅性的一句话。他明智地否决了这些建议，并说出了他总统任期内最具标志性的一句话：“特朗普先生。”戈尔巴乔夫，推倒这堵墙。”
无烟战争
华盛顿今天必须采取类似的态度，更加努力地在中国境内传播真实信息，让中国公民能够彼此安全地沟通。拆除——或者至少炸开——中国的“防火长城”必须成为华盛顿今天政策的核心，就像拆除柏林墙对于里根的政策一样。
北京正在对美国发动一场激烈的信息战——尽管美国拥有天然优势，但它正在失败。习近平和他的核心圈子认为自己正在与西方进行一场存在主义的意识形态运动，正如习近平在 2014 年的一份官方出版物中所说的那样：
“精神控制”之战发生在无硝烟的战场上。它发生在意识形态领域内。谁掌控了这个战场，谁就能赢得人心。他们将在整个比赛和战斗中掌握主动权。 。 。 。在意识形态领域的斗争中，我们没有任何妥协和退却的余地。我们必须取得全面胜利。
对于习近平来说，互联网是这场没有硝烟的战争的“主战场”。 2020年，学者袁鹏在以中国最高间谍机构副部长的新名字重新出现之前写道，也认识到控制网络言论的力量：“在互联网时代…… 。 。什么是真，什么是假，已经不重要了；重要的是谁掌握了话语权。”习近平投入了数十亿美元来建立和利用他所说的“外部话语机制”，其他中国领导人也特别强调了 TikTok 等短视频平台作为话语权的“扩音器”。他们并不害怕使用这些扩音器。根据国家情报总监办公室 2024 年 2 月的一份报告，中国宣传机构运营的 TikTok 账户“据称在 2022 年美国中期选举周期中针对了两个政党的候选人”。
当中共试图制定全球话语权时，它最希望美国和西方国家保持沉默——对中国侵犯人权的行为保持沉默，对台湾的侵略保持沉默，对西方的侵略保持沉默。自己根深蒂固的信念，与党的信念形成了不可调和的对比。因此，毫不奇怪，中共在无烟战场上的大部分战略都是为了淹没中国境内外的其不喜欢的言论。真正具有挑衅性的是美国的沉默，而不是坦白，因为它向中共发出中国在前进、美国在后退的信号。
重新武装、减少、招募
美国官员首先需要明确与中国的竞争。他们必须认识到，如果美国要遏制战争并赢得长期竞争，短期内紧张局势升级是不可避免的。一旦他们面对这些事实，他们就需要制定更好的政策：重新武装美国军队，降低中国的经济影响力，并招募更广泛的联盟来对抗中国。
习近平正在为台湾战争做好准备。按照目前的轨迹，美国可能无法阻止这场战争，这场战争可能会导致数万名美国军人死亡，造成数万亿美元的经济损失，并导致我们所知的全球秩序的终结。避免这种未来的唯一途径是华盛顿立即建立和增强足够的硬实力，以阻止习近平成功入侵台湾。然而拜登政府最新的预算要求放弃了急需的战斗力，提议退役 10 艘舰艇和 250 架飞机，并将弗吉尼亚级潜艇的生产目标从每年两艘降至一艘。它只补充了国会授权总统向台湾提供军事援助的 10 亿美元的一半。在 2023 年的补充请求中，白宫要求为印太地区提供略高于 50 亿美元的武器和工业基础支出，仅占整个补充请求的 5%。看预算趋势线，人们会认为是 1994 年，而不是 2024 年。
拜登政府应立即改变方针，扭转经通胀调整后的国防开支削减措施。华盛顿不应将 GDP 的 3% 左右用于国防，而应支出 4% 甚至 5%，这一水平仍处于冷战时期支出的低端。台海近期威慑每年应追加200亿美元
未来五年，在亚洲激增和分散足够的战斗力所需的粗略数量。理想情况下，这笔钱将存放在由国防部长监督的专门“威慑基金”中，国防部长将向最适合台湾防御的项目提供资源。
威慑基金应该成为总统领导的一代人为恢复美国在亚洲的主导地位而做出的努力的主要内容。当务之急应该是最大限度地利用现有生产线，并为亚洲关键弹药建立新的生产能力，例如可以远距离摧毁敌方目标的反舰和防空导弹。五角大楼还应该利用威慑基金来改造现有的军事系统，甚至民用技术，例如可能有助于保卫台湾的商用无人机。其“复制者计划”要求各军种部署数千架低成本无人机，将台湾海峡变成一些人所说的“沸腾的护城河”，五角大楼应迅速采用其他创造性解决方案，以补充这一计划。例如，它可以分散隐藏在商业集装箱箱中的导弹发射器，或部署动力联合直接攻击弹药，这是一种低成本套件，可将标准 500 磅炸弹变成精确制导巡航导弹。
中国最希望美国和其他西方国家保持沉默。
美军要想真正威慑中国，就需要能够在打击范围内移动。考虑到印度-太平洋地区的海洋地理以及中国庞大的导弹库对美国基地构成的威胁，国务院将需要扩大与盟国和合作伙伴的托管和准入协议，以扩大美国在该地区的军事影响力。与此同时，五角大楼将需要加强美国在该地区的军事设施，并在整个太平洋地区预先部署燃料、弹药和设备等关键物资。
但如果中国在经济上成为西方的人质，美国就可以遏制中国的军事力量，但仍然会输掉新冷战。北京决心将其对全球供应链的控制及其对关键新兴技术的主导地位武器化。为了降低中国的影响力并确保美国而不是中国开发未来的关键技术，华盛顿需要重新设定双边经济关系的条款。首先应该废除中国的永久正常贸易关系地位，该地位为中国提供了以慷慨的条件进入美国市场的机会，并让中国进入新的关税列，其中对美国国家安全和经济竞争力至关重要的产品逐步提高关税。提高关税带来的收入可用于抵消美国出口商因中国不可避免的报复措施而承受的成本，以及加强具有战略意义的产品的美国供应链。
华盛顿还必须停止美国资金和技术流向支持北京军事建设和高科技监控系统的中国公司。拜登政府于 2023 年 8 月发布的限制部分对华对外投资的行政命令是朝着正确方向迈出的重要一步，但还远远不够。华盛顿必须扩大投资限制，将高超音速技术、太空系统和新生物技术等关键和新兴技术纳入其中。它还必须结束美国金融公司提供公开交易金融产品（例如交易所交易基金和共同基金）的令人不安的做法，这些产品投资于美国政府黑名单上的中国公司。以当前先进半导体出口管制为模式，商务部应通过对量子计算和生物技术等美国创新的其他关键领域实施类似的出口禁令，减少关键技术流向中国。
2023年2月，中国间谍气球坠入南卡罗来纳州瑟夫赛德海滩附近的海洋 2023年2月，中国间谍气球坠入南卡罗来纳州瑟夫赛德海滩附近的海洋
随着中国加大经济自力更生力度并逐步停止从西方进口工业产品，美国需要招募友好伙伴联盟来深化相互贸易。华盛顿应该与英国达成双边贸易协定。它应该升级与日本的双边贸易协定，并与台湾建立新的双边贸易协定，该地区其他符合条件的经济体可以加入这些协定。它应该建立一项印度-太平洋数字贸易协定，以美国-墨西哥-加拿大协定设定的高标准为基准，促进志同道合的经济体之间的数据自由流动。
为了彻底改造其破旧的国防工业基础，美国应该通过从盟国招募人才来推动国防工业的创新
。每年，美国政府通过 EB-5 计划批准大约 10,000 个签证，该计划允许移民在美国企业投资数十万美元即可获得绿卡。该计划充斥着欺诈行为，远远偏离了创造就业计划的初衷，主要成为中国和其他地方的百万富翁成为永久居民的一种手段。这些签证应重新用作对在国防关键领域拥有高级学位的伙伴国家公民的工作授权。
美国政府还需要招募下一代冷战战士，将他们的才能运用到与中国的较量中。它应该从扭转征兵危机开始——不是通过降低标准、承诺宽松的薪酬或向军队注入多样性、公平和包容的意识形态，而是通过毫无歉意地宣扬精英、色盲、全志愿部队和具有挑战性的美德。美国年轻人挺身而出。情报界还需要招募新兴技术、金融和开源研究领域的专家，并让他们更容易暂时离开私营部门进入政府工作。国家安全机构需要在亚洲以及中共的历史和意识形态方面培养深厚的专业知识。军种学院和战争学院的课程以及正在进行的专业军事教育应该反映这种转变。
最后，美国官员需要招募普通美国人为这场斗争做出贡献。尽管昨天的苏联和今天的中国之间存在种种差异，但美国政策制定者对“冷战”一词的谨慎态度导致他们忽视了冷战动员社会的方式。冷战提供了一个相关框架，美国人可以用它来指导自己的决策，例如公司选择是否在中国设立敏感研发中心，或者个人选择是否下载 TikTok。然而，左翼和右翼民选官员往往给人的印象是，与中国的竞争范围如此狭窄，美国人可以毫无顾虑地采取此类步骤。他们想让人们相信，与北京的竞争不应过多关注普通公民，而是将通过精确的白宫政策和国会立法来处理。
中国作为一个正常国家
当今美国外交政策的一个独特特征是，房间里的大象——华盛顿在与北京的竞争中所希望的最终状态——是一个禁忌话题，以至于历届政府都从未阐明过如何结束竞争的明确目标。拜登政府提出将管理竞争作为目标，但这不是目标；这是一种方法，而且是适得其反的方法。华盛顿正在让其对华政策的目标成为一个过程：会议本应成为美国推进其利益的工具，而会议本身却成为核心目标。
华盛顿不应该担心越来越多的中国人所期望的最终状态：一个能够制定自己的路线、摆脱共产主义独裁的中国。习近平的严厉统治甚至让许多中共党员相信，导致中国繁荣、地位和个人幸福度急剧下降的制度值得重新审视。这个制度产生了全方位的监视国家、强迫劳动殖民地以及对境内少数群体的种族灭绝，它同样亵渎了中国哲学和宗教——而更好的模式最终将由此而产生。
几代美国领导人都明白，通过战争或美国投降来结束冷战是不可接受的。如果说 20 世纪 70 年代给华盛顿带来了什么教训的话，那就是试图与强大而雄心勃勃的列宁主义独裁政权实现稳定和持久的权力平衡（缓和）也注定会适得其反。最好的策略在里根时代得到了最终的综合，那就是让苏联人相信他们正在走向失败，这反过来又加剧了人们对他们整个体系的怀疑。
华盛顿正在让其对华政策的目标成为现实。
当然，美国的胜利并不是里根一个人的胜利。它以两党总统制定的战略为基础，并体现在 1950 年杜鲁门政府政策文件 NSC-68 等文件中，该文件认为，美国的“政策和行动必须促进性质的根本改变”苏联体制。”人们可以将该文件与第 75 号国家安全决策指令联系起来，这是 1983 年里根政府的命令，呼吁“对苏联施加内部压力，以削弱苏联帝国主义的根源”。从某些方面来说，冷战战略的失常是在缓和时期，而不是里根时期。
具有讽刺意味的是，里根最终会追求更多
与苏联的接触可能比他的任何前任都更加充实和富有成效，但只有在他加强了华盛顿相对于莫斯科的经济、军事和道德地位之后，并且只有在苏联产生了一位领导人米哈伊尔·戈尔巴乔夫之后，里根才可以与他一起实现真正的目标。进步。里根明白测序就是一切。他也知道，对抗性的第一阶段不会轻松或舒适。 1982 年 5 月，他关于国家安全战略的第一个指令预测，“八十年代的十年可能会对我们的生存和福祉构成自二战以来最大的挑战。”诚然，这是一个紧张而令人不安的时期，里根称苏联为“现代世界邪恶的焦点”，并故意寻求削弱其经济并对抗其在世界各地破坏稳定的活动。但它得到了回报。
习近平曾诋毁戈尔巴乔夫，并在斯大林之后塑造了自己的领导风格，他一次又一次地证明，他不是一个可以与美国人解决问题的领导人。他是混乱的代理人。华盛顿应该寻求削弱中共帝国主义的根源，并支持一位表现得不像无情敌人的中国领导人。这并不意味着强制政权更迭、颠覆或战争。但这确实意味着实事求是，正如中国领导人喜欢说的那样，并理解中共无意与宣扬自由价值观、从而对其统治构成根本威胁的大国无限期共存。
当前中国人大规模逃离祖国表明他们希望生活在尊重人权、尊重法治并提供广泛机会选择的国家。正如台湾的例子所表明的那样，中国也可能是这样的地方。到达那里的路可能很长。但为了美国自身的安全，以及所有中国人的权利和愿望，这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.
