Graham Allison on Thucydides Trap - The South China Morning Post
My Interview With The South China Morning Post |
The South China Morning Post interviewed me a couple of weeks ago after I returned from Beijing. Overall, it reflects my current thinking about how the U.S. is meeting the China challenge.
If you have reactions, we will be interested to receive them. Graham Allison |
Artigo relativamente pessimista sobre o futuro do Ocidente.
In the decade before the great financial crisis of 2008, the chair of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, became a virtual demigod in Washington. As U.S. Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, famously advised, “If he’s alive or dead it doesn’t matter. If he’s dead, just prop him up and put some dark glasses on him.”
During Greenspan’s two decades as chair, from 1987 to 2006, the Fed played a central role in a period of accelerated growth in the U.S. economy. Among the sources of Greenspan’s fame was what financial markets called the “Fed put.” (A “put” is a contract that gives the owner the right to sell an asset at a fixed price until a fixed date.) During Greenspan’s tenure, investors came to believe that however risky the new products that financial engineers were creating, if something went awry, the system could count on Greenspan’s Fed to come to the rescue and provide a floor below which stocks would not be allowed to fall. The bet paid off: when Wall Street’s mortgage-backed securities and derivatives led to the collapse of Lehman Brothers, triggering the 2008 financial crisis that sparked the Great Recession, the U.S. Treasury and the Fed stepped in to prevent the economy from sliding into a second Great Depression.
That dynamic is worth recalling when considering the effect that the 2024 U.S. presidential election is already having on the decisions of countries around the world. Leaders are now beginning to wake up to the fact that a year from now, former U.S. President Donald Trumpcould actually be returning to the White House. Accordingly, some foreign governments are increasingly factoring into their relationship with the United States what may come to be known as the “Trump put”—delaying choices in the expectation that they will be able to negotiate better deals with Washington a year from now because Trump will effectively establish a floor on how bad things can get for them. Others, by contrast, are beginning to search for what might be called a “Trump hedge”—analyzing the ways in which his return will likely leave them with worse options and preparing accordingly.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s calculations in his war against Ukraine provide a vivid example of the Trump put. In recent months, as a stalemate has emerged on the ground, speculation has grown about Putin’s readiness to end the war. But as a result of the Trump put, it is far more likely that the war will still be raging this time next year. Despite some Ukrainians’ interest in an extended cease-fire or even an armistice to end the killing before another grim winter takes its toll, Putin knows that Trump has promised to end the war “in one day.” In Trump’s words: “I would tell [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky, no more [aid]. You got to make a deal.” Facing a good chance that a year from now, Trump will offer terms much more advantageous for Russia than anything U.S. President Joe Biden would offer or Zelensky would agree to today, Putin will wait.
Ukraine’s allies in Europe, by contrast, must consider a Trump hedge. As the war approaches the end of its second year, daily pictures of destruction and deaths caused by Russian airstrikes and artillery shells have upended European illusions of living in a world in which war has become obsolete. Predictably, this has led to a revival of enthusiasm for the NATO alliance and its backbone: the U.S. commitment to come to the defense of any ally that is attacked. But as reports of polls showing Trump besting Biden are beginning to sink in, there is a growing fear. Germans, in particular, remember former Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conclusion from her painful encounters with Trump. As she described it, “We must fight for our future on our own.”
Trump is not the only U.S. leader to ask why a European community that has three times the population of Russia and a GDP more than nine times its size has to continue to depend on Washington to defend it. In an oft-cited interview with The Atlantic’s chief editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, in 2016, U.S. President Barack Obama lacerated Europeans (and others) for being “free riders.” But Trump has gone further. According to John Bolton, who was then Trump’s national security adviser, Trump said, “I don’t give a shit about NATO” during a 2019 meeting in which he talked seriously about withdrawing from the alliance altogether. In part, Trump’s threats were a bargaining ploy to force European states to meet their commitment to spend two percent of GDP on their own defense—but only in part. After two years of attempting to persuade Trump about the importance of the United States’s alliances, Secretary of Defense James Mattis concluded that his differences with the president were so profound that he could no longer serve, a position he explained candidly in his 2018 letter of resignation. Today, Trump’s campaign website calls for “fundamentally reevaluating NATO’s purpose and NATO’s mission.” When considering how many tanks or artillery shells to send to Ukraine, some Europeans are now pausing to ask whether they might need those arms for their own defense were Trump to be elected in November.
Leaders are waking up to the fact that Trump could return to the White House.
Expectations derived from a Trump put were also at work during the recently concluded COP28 climate change summit in Dubai. Historically, COP agreements about what governments will do to address the climate challenge have been long on aspirations and short on performance. But COP28 stretched even further into fantasy in heralding what it called a historic agreement to “transition away from fossil fuels.”
In reality, the signatories are doing precisely the opposite. Major producers and consumers of oil, gas, and coal are currently increasing—not reducing—their use of fossil fuels. Moreover, they are making investments to continue doing so for as far ahead as any eye can see. The world’s largest producer of oil, the United States, has been expanding its production annually for the past decade and set a new record for output in 2023. The third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, India, is celebrating its own superior economic growth driven by a national energy program whose centerpiece is coal. This fossil fuel accounts for three-quarters of India’s primary energy production. China is the number one producer of both “green” renewable energy and “black” polluting coal. So although China installed more solar panels in 2023 than the United States has in the past five decades, it is also currently building six times as many new coal plants as the rest of the world combined.
Thus, although COP28 saw many pledges about targets for 2030 and beyond, attempts to get governments to take any costly, irreversible actions today were resisted. Leaders know that if Trump returns and pursues his campaign pledge to “drill, baby, drill,” such actions will be unnecessary. As a bad joke that made its way around the bars at COP28 went: “What is COP28’s unstated plan to transition away from fossil fuels? To burn them up as rapidly as possible.”
A second Trump term promises a new world trading order—or disorder. On his first day in office in 2017, Trump withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement. The weeks that followed saw the end of discussions to create a European equivalent as well as other free-trade agreements. Using the unilateral authority that Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 gives the executive branch, Trump imposed 25 percent tariffs on $300 billion worth of Chinese imports—tariffs that Biden has largely kept in place. As the Trump administration’s trade negotiator Robert Lighthizer—whom the Trump campaign has identified as its lead adviser on these issues—explained in his recently published book, No Trade Is Free, a second Trump term would be much bolder.
In the current campaign, Trump calls himself “Tariff Man.” He is promising to impose a ten percent universal tariff on imports from all countries and to match countries that levy higher tariffs on American goods, promising “an eye for an eye, a tariff for a tariff.” The cooperation pact with Asia-Pacific countries negotiated by the Biden administration—the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity—will, Trump says, be “dead on day one.” For Lighthizer, China is the “lethal adversary” that will be the central target of protectionist U.S. trade measures. Beginning with the revocation of the “permanent normal trading relations” status China was granted in 2000 ahead of joining the World Trade Organization, Trump’s goal will be to “eliminate dependence on China in all critical areas,” including electronics, steel, and pharmaceuticals.
Since trade is a major driver of global economic growth, most leaders find the possibility that U.S. initiatives could essentially collapse the rules-based trading order almost inconceivable. But some of their advisers are now exploring futures in which the United States may be more successful in decoupling itself from the global trading order than in forcing others to decouple from China.
Trade liberalization has been a pillar of a larger process of globalization that has also seen the freer movement of people around the world. Trump has announced that on the first day of his new administration, his first act will be to “close the border.” Currently, every day, more than 10,000 foreign nationals are entering the United States from Mexico. Despite the Biden administration’s best efforts, Congress has refused to authorize further economic assistance to Israel and Ukraine without major changes that significantly slow this mass migration from Central America and elsewhere. On the campaign trail, Trump is making Biden’s failure to secure U.S. borders a major issue. He has announced his own plans to round up millions of “illegal aliens” in what he calls “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.” In the thick of their own presidential election, Mexicans are still searching for words to describe this nightmare in which their country could be overwhelmed by millions of people coming across both their northern and southern borders.
Historically, there have been eras when differences between Democrats and Republicans on major foreign policy issues were so modest that it could be said that “politics stops at the water’s edge.” This decade, however, is not one of them. Unhelpful as it may be to foreign-policy makers and their counterparts abroad, the U.S. Constitution schedules quadrennial equivalents of what in the business world would be an attempted hostile takeover.
As a result, on every issue—from negotiations on climate or trade or NATO’s support for Ukraine to attempts to persuade Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, or Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to act—Biden and his foreign policy team are finding themselves increasingly handicapped as their counterparts weigh Washington’s promises or threats against the likelihood that they will be dealing with a very different government a year from now. This year promises to be a year of danger as countries around the world watch U.S. politics with a combination of disbelief, fascination, horror, and hope. They know that this political theater will choose not only the next president of the United States but also the world’s most consequential leader.
· GRAHAM ALLISON is Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at the Harvard Kennedy School and the author of Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?
Averting the Grandest Collision of all time |
| As relations between the US and China have declined to their worst state since Henry Kissinger and Zhou Enlai met in Beijing 50 years ago, the question many have been asking is: “What would Thucydides say now?” As I answered at Davos in January when this question was posed, my bet is that he would say this is a classic Thucydidean rivalry in which the two parties are right on script, each competing to show which can best exemplify the typical rising and ruling power—leaving him on the edge of his seat anticipating the grandest collision of all time. In the linked piece published in The Straits Times and at the Asia Research Institute, I argue the US and China need a “rivalry partnership,” an ancient Chinese concept that describes the relationship between the rival Song and Liao kingdoms. “Rivalry partners” sounds like a contradiction. But the US and China are locked in conditions defined by two contradictory imperatives: to compete in the greatest rivalry of all time, and to cooperate for each to ensure its own survival. For both nations, creating a grand strategy that combines competition and cooperation will require extraordinary strategic imagination. As policymakers in both nations are wrestling with this assignment, clues from the “rivalry partnership” that gave the Song and Liao 120 years without war can be instructive. https://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/us-china-ties-averting-the-grandest-collision-of-all If you have reactions, I’ll be interested to hear from you. Graham Allison |
Inconvenient Questions about the Russia-Ukraine War
Graham AllisonQuão credível é a ameaça de guerra nuclear da Rússia no caso da Ucrânia?
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Diplomata, professor
(www.pralmeida.org; diplomatizzando.blogspot.com)
Rememorando o caso dos mísseis soviéticos em Cuba.
Por duas ou três vezes, o próprio Putin, seu eterno chanceler Lavrov, e outros observadores, comentaristas ou jornalistas seguindo os assuntos da guerra de agressão da Rússia, ou do Putin, contra a Ucrânia e os ucranianos, chegaram a mencionar a possibilidade de uma guerra nuclear, sem que se saiba exatamente por que, com quais motivos ou dirigida a quais envolvidos nesse conflito, que são, ademais da própria Rússia e a Ucrânia, todos os países vizinhos, pró-Rússia (como a Belarus), ou os "ocidentais" membros da OTAN, ou seja, os bálticos e membros recentes da UE e da OTAN na Europa central e oriental, os próprios países líderes da UE ou da OTAN (França, GB e Alemanha), alguns escandinavos e, sobretudo, os Estados Unidos, o capitão e comandante da OTAN.
Sempre achei essa ideia estapafúrdia, despropositada, sem sentido, pura chantagem dos agressores russos, que não conseguiram realizar seus objetivos primários – ocupar toda a Ucrânia, eliminar seu governo atual e colocar um governo fantoche no lugar, ou seja, transformá-la numa nova Belarus – e resolveram partir para a intimidação nuclear contra não se sabe bem quem exatamente, supostamente algum membro da OTAN que decidisse intervir na guerra (já estão intervindo, mediante sanções e ajuda militar à Ucrânia, que não é nem da UE, nem da OTAN, mas aspira ingressar em ambas).
Não acredito, repito, em guerra nuclear, pois isso representaria a aniquilação de dezenas, possivelmente centenas de milhões de vidas humanas de um lado e outro, e a destruição da vida na Europa central, setentrional, meridional, oriental, ocidental, etc., etc., etc. Os generais e alguns estadistas responsáveis sabem disso, mas jornalistas e observadores ligeiros continuam especulando, como é de seu feitio, assim como os estrategistas amadores.
Em todo caso, como eu despertei para o tema da política internacional com a crise dos mísseis soviéticos em Cuba, sessenta anos atrás, fui buscar na biblioteca o livro quintessencial de reflexão sobre esse caso emblemático da política do MAD durante a Guerra Fria, este aqui, publicado originalmente em 1971 e objeto de uma segunda edição revista em 1999.
Permito-me unicamente reproduzir a primeira e metade da segunda página da Introdução, com as questões que serão examinadas ao longo do livro, aliás muito chato, pois combina descrição empírica daqueles terríveis quinze dias de outubro de 1962 com capítulos especulativos sobre modelos decisórios em situações de alto stress como foram aqueles dias e situações de quase aniquilação nuclear. Lembro-me que minha mãe foi me buscar na escola num daqueles dias, quando normalmente eu voltava sozinho, a pé, durante três ou quatro quarteirões da zona sul de São Paulo: não sei exatamente para quê, pois é evidente que não tínhamos os abrigos nucleares construídos por americanos, russos e europeus para se proteger (inutilmente) do Armageddon nuclear caso ele ocorresse. Mais tarde, os uruguaios diriam que a solução era ir para o Uruguai, um país no qual, segundo eles, "no pasa nada!".
Em todo caso, as questões em causa naquele conflito não encontram nenhuma correspondência com a situação atual. Para quê, exatamente, os russos usariam a arma nuclear, contra quem e onde? Estas questões alinhadas no livro do Allison (muito chato, diga-se de passagem) não encontram paralelo com o caso cubano ou outros casos menores ocorridos durante toda a era da Guerra Fria e além (tem os aventureiros coreanos do norte, iranianos, israelenses e os irmãos inimigos Índia e Paquistão).
O próprio Allison veio agora recentemente (desde 2015, pelo menos) com a ideia maluca de uma "armadilha de Tucidides", que seria uma guerra entre China e EUA, que só poderia ser nuclear. Se não for, seria uma proxy war, como as muitas que já ocorreram desde o final dos anos 1940, inclusive a atual, na Ucrânia.
Em todo caso, cabe recomendar, ou pelo menos esperar, cabeça fria e racionalidade da parte dos malucos que nos governam, alguns mais malucos do que outros, obviamente, Putin em primeiro lugar, o baixinho da Coreia do Norte em segundo lugar, talvez os aiatolás, depois que o Saddam Hussein e o Kaddafy já se foram. Ainda bem que Brasil e Argentina resolveram baixar suas armas nos coldres, pois era sumamente ridícula qualquer competição militar nuclear ou tradicional entre os dois grandes do Cone Sul sul-americano. Mas até hoje existem militares e diplomatas que consideram FHC um traidor, porque resolveu vincular o Brasil ao TNP (em 1996-98). Ainda bem que o fez, inclusive porque a Constituição de 1988 já tinha liquidado qualquer hipótese diferente.
Concluo: não haverá guerra nuclear. Mas espero que a Rússia seja condenada a pagar toda a destruição material e em vidas humanas que a loucura do Putin provocou. Não, não será uma reprodução do Tratado de Versalhes de 1919, e a Rússia não se converterá numa nova Alemanha com desejos de vingança. Ela tem de ser contida em seus instintos primitivos, sendo colocada numa espécie de "curral de contenção econômico". Essa é única forma de mostrar ao povo russo que ele precisa escolher dirigentes mais compatíveis com a Carta da ONU e com os grandes princípios do Direito Internacional. A China tem todo interesse que seja assim, pois do contrário ela também pagará um preço se escolher outro caminho.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Brasília, 2 de maio de 2022
The Great Economic Rivalry: China vs the U.S.
ou A GRANDE PARANOIA AMERICANA
Paulo Roberto de Almeida; Graham Allison
A inacreditável PARANOIA da academia americana
Depois de descrever toda a COMPLEMENTARIDADE ECONÔMICA entre os Estados Unidos e a China, com todos os vínculos econômicos de integração comercial, industrial e financeira, esse acadêmico, tido por brilhante intelectual, ainda classifica essa relação como sendo a de uma GRANDE RIVALIDADE ECONÔMICA, o que é propriamente alucinante.
Eles ainda se referem à GRANDE RIVALIDADE MILITAR – que eles mesmos incitam, propagam e desenvolvem – e à GRANDE RIVALIDADE TECNOLÓGICA, como se não pudesse existir competição e avanços, relativos e absolutos, em outros países, e que APENAS os EUA têm o direito de definir o que é COMPETIÇÃO e o que é RIVALIDADE. Eles pretendem medir o mundo de acordo com a sua régua, caolha, deformada, absolutamente unilateral. Que grande mal estão fazendo ao mundo!
Esses acadêmicos foram contaminados pelo vírus da paranoia aguda dos generais do Pentágono, que entre ele é endêmico, natural e esperado, mas que de vez em quando tem brotes epidêmicos, quando surge algum novo competidor estratégico, que nem poderia ser caracterizado como sendo um rival e muito menos um adversário tecnológico – digamos, um imitador por vezes ousado demais – ou militar, o que só revela a paranoia arrogante do grande império da atualidade.
Lamento pelo mundo, e pelos países pobres, que continuarão pobres por muito tempo mais, já que os impérios da atualidade continuarão a torrar o dinheiro dos seus contribuintes com brinquedinhos militares que JAMAIS serão usados.
Os relatórios citados estão aqui:
1) The Great Economic Rivalry: https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/great-economic-rivalry-china-vs-us
2) The Great Military Rivalry: https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/great-military-rivalry-china-vs-us
3) The Great Tech Rivalry: https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/great-tech-rivalry-china-vs-us
Lamento pelos contribuintes americanos, e lamento mais ainda pela sua academia...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
========
The Great Economic Rivalry: China vs the U.S.
Who is the manufacturing workshop of the world? Who is the major trading partner of most nations, including the EU and Japan? Who is the exporter of the most essential links in the global supply chain? Who is the top foreign supplier of goods to the United States? According to the yardstick that both the CIA and IMF judge the best for comparing national economies, who has the largest economy in the world today? If you hesitated before answering any of these questions, you will find the Harvard China Working Group’s new report, The Great Economic Rivalry, bracing. The report documents what has actually happened in the economic competition between China and the U.S. since 2000. Two decades ago, China was still classified as a “poor, developing country,” struggling to be admitted to the WTO. 460 million of its citizens lived below the abject poverty line of $2 a day; China’s GDP was less than one-tenth of what it is today. Back then, the answer to most of the questions in the first paragraph was: USA. The big takeaway from this report mirrors the findings of the earlier reports in our “Great Rivalry” series: The Great Military Rivalry and the The Great Tech Rivalry. In one line: the days in which China could be thought of as a “near peer competitor” – as Washington keeps trying to call it – are over. China’s miracle economic growth over the past four decades at an average rate four times that of the U.S. has redefined the global economic order. Today and for the foreseeable future, China will be a full-spectrum peer competitor. What about the future? Will China continue growing at twice or more the rate of the U.S. in the decade ahead? Given the storm clouds on the horizon, most of the current American press and commentariat answer “no”. But examining the bets made this past year by the CEOs of America’s most valuable corporation (Apple), largest asset manager (BlackRock), and most successful automaker (Tesla), the answer for each is clearly “yes”. The concluding section of our report summarizes the main factors cited by those who have reached opposing conclusions and invites the reader to make his or her own bet. For disagreements and debate about the report, see the recent JFK Jr. Forum – “The Economic Olympics: Can China Win Gold?” – where I hosted Larry Summers, Keyu Jin, and Kelly Sims Gallagher. While Larry remains bearish on China’s prospects, Jin reminds us that “the Chinese government is one of the most adaptive governments in the world, with the ability to readjust its policies in ways that other governments don’t enjoy, including the U.S.” If you have reactions, I’ll be interested to hear from you. Graham Allison |
Não se trata sequer de uma competição ou rivalidade EUA-China, e sim de uma postura adversária UNILATERALMENTE DECIDIDA entre os EUA e a China, sendo que esta jamais descreveu a relação bilateral em termos tão diretamente confrontacionistas. Os americanos decididamente enlouqueceram, pois não admitem que qualquer outro poder possa sequer chegar a igualar, ou equiparar-se em capacidade de projeção, sua própria primazia hegemônica, que eles imaginam ser não apenas eterna, como inevitável, necessária e benéfica para toda a humanidade.
Os chineses precisam manter a calma, nos próximos 50 anos, período no qual sua primazia tecnológica e militar terá condições de alcançar e talvez superar a dos EUA.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
The Great Military Rivalry: China vs. the U.S.
The Harvard China Working Group has just completed the next installment in our series on the “Great Rivalry” between the U.S. and China. The first paper, on the Great Tech Rivalry, reported an uncomfortable finding: on current trajectories, China could become the global leader within the next decade in every one of the 21st century’s foundational technologies. Our second paper on the Great Military Rivalry documents what has happened in the military competition between China and the U.S. since 2000. While America’s position as a global military superpower remains unique, China has made great leaps forward on many fronts. What that means for the bottom line is that the era of American military primacy is over—dead, buried, gone. Indeed, in the most likely scenario of conflict between the U.S. and China—a hot war over Taiwan—America could very well lose. Unfortunately, too many politicians and pundits have missed the harsh realities of a grave new world. One leader who recognized China’s military rise and spoke bluntly about its consequences is former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis. His 2018 National Defense Strategy states directly: “for decades the U.S. has enjoyed uncontested or dominant superiority in every operating domain… Today, every domain is contested—air, land, sea, space, and cyberspace.” The reason for finally confronting ugly realities is not to discourage, or counsel defeatism, but to motivate political and military leaders to act now to change current trendlines. The decisions that can have the greatest positive impact are the hardest to make and execute. If you have a chance to look at the paper and have reactions, we’ll be eager to hear from you. For those interested in a shorter version of the argument, see my recent op-ed for The National Interest. A slide deckprovides a visual illustration of the paper’s key findings. Graham Allison |
Sumary:
I’m writing to share my article published today in The National Interest previewing some of the major findings of a forthcoming Harvard report, “The Great Rivalry: China vs. the US in the 21st Century.”
Part of a set of Transition Memos for the new administration prepared by members of the Harvard China Working Group led by the late Ezra Vogel and me, and supported by a grant from the Harvard Global Institute, the five chapters of the report along with other memos have been provided to those leading the Biden administration’s strategic reviews (as well as those who had been heading up plans for a second Trump term). After the Biden team and leaders of Congress have had the opportunity to use the memos and chapters in whatever ways they find helpful, they will be published later this year as Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center discussion papers. But since there have recently been a number of public comments and inquiries about the report, it seemed appropriate to preview some of the key findings.
If you have reactions, we will look forward to reading them.
Graham Allison
Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School
Follow me on Twitter
Complete Article:
In the past two decades, China has risen further and faster on more dimensions than any nation in history. As it has done so, it has become a serious rival of what had been the world’s sole superpower.
Graham Allison
The National Interest, July 29, 2021
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/geopolitical-olympics-could-china-win-gold-190761
The Tokyo Olympics offers an apt analogy for reflecting on the much more consequential geopolitical Olympics in which China is challenging the United States today. In the century-long history of the modern Olympics, when did China win its first medal? Not until the 1984 Games in Los Angeles. Just a quarter-century later, in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, China displaced the United States from its accustomed position as No. 1—taking home forty-eight gold medals to the United States’ thirty-six.
While the United States snapped back in 2012 and 2016, the outcome of this summer’s games looks to be tight. Most betting sites have the United States winning forty gold medals to China’s thirty-three. But curveballs and caveats abound: tight rules have banned spectators and excluded elite athletes who failed Covid-19 tests. Meanwhile, several favored U.S. Olympians have stumbled in early competition. Sportswriters can be forgiven for repeating Yogi Berry’s one-liner about baseball: “It ain’t over till it’s over.”
In the geopolitical Olympics, China’s rise to rival the United States has been even more dramatic. Only two decades ago at the dawn of the twenty-first century, China did not even appear on the league tables of any geopolitical competition. Economically, it was classified as a “poor, developing country” (and thus allowed to join the World Trade Organization on terms reserved for developing economies). Technologically, with a per capita income at roughly the same level as Guyana and the Philippines, its citizens did not have enough money to buy advanced computers or cellphones, much less the resources to produce them. Militarily, it was for the Defense Department inconsequential, covered as what it called a “lesser included threat.” Diplomatically, it sat quietly, following Deng Xiaoping’s guidance to “hide and bide.”
But that was then.
In the past two decades, China has risen further and faster on more dimensions than any nation in history. As it has done so, it has become a serious rival of what had been the world’s sole superpower. Moreover, to paraphrase former Czech president Vaclav Havel, all this has happened so quickly that we have not yet had time to be astonished.
Who is today the manufacturing workshop of the world? Who is the No. 1 trading partner of most nations in the world? Who has been the principal engine of economic growth in the decade and a half since the Great Recession of 2008? By the yardstick that both the Central Intelligence Agency and the International Monetary Fund have concluded is the best single metric for comparing national economies, who has the largest economy in the world?
In the military arena, who has eroded America’s competitive edge in every domain of warfare to the point that “today, every domain is contested: air, land, sea, space, and cyberspace”—in the words of former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis? While the United States remains the only global military superpower, in the Department of Defense’s most carefully constructed simulations of conflict over Taiwan, who has won eighteen of the past eighteen war games—according to former Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work?
Who is the largest producer and consumer of automobiles? Who does Elon Musk see as the largest market for Teslas and other electric vehicles? In the technology likely to have the greatest impact on economies and security in the next generation—artificial intelligence (AI)—who is the clear leader in facial recognition, voice recognition, supercomputers, and fintech—in the judgment of Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google (which is the leading AI company in America)?
Readers who hesitate before answering these questions will find bracing the forthcoming Report from Harvard’s China Working Group on the “Great Rivalry: China vs. the US in the 21st Century.” Prepared as part of a package of Transition Memos for the new administration after the November 2020 election, chapters of the report have been provided to those leading the Biden administration’s strategic reviews (as well as to those who had been heading up plans for a second Trump term). After the Biden team and leaders of Congress have had an opportunity to use them in whatever ways they find helpful, the chapters will be published later this year as Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center Discussion Papers. But since there have recently been a number of public comments and inquiries about the report, this essay previews some of our key findings.
The specific assignment to which our report on the “Great Rivalry” responds was “to document what has actually happened in the past two decades in the array of races between China and the US.” The goal was to provide an objective database that could serve as a foundation for policymakers who would undertake a fundamental strategic reassessment of the China challenge. Five chapters drill down on the rivalry in five core arenas of power: economic, technological, military, diplomatic, and ideological. Each chapter begins by identifying criteria, metrics for assessing various races, and the best-unclassified sources of data on each topic. Each then summarizes the evidence about what has happened over the past two decades and concludes with a candid assessment of where the competitors now stand.
In offering judgments, we have made our best effort to follow the lead of judges in the Olympics: scoring results impartially according to established criteria. For example, in assessing where the United States and China currently stand in AI applications for voice recognition, we report the results of Stanford’s international challenge for machine-reading, where Chinese teams won three of the top five spots, including first place. In most of these races, this means reporting that China’s performance has improved dramatically. But as the report explains, these advances should not be surprising, since China has essentially been playing catch up, closing gaps by copying technologies and practices pioneered by the United States and others.
Nonetheless, for Americans—including us!—news about China overtaking us and even surpassing us in some races is unsettling. Indeed, as students of international security, we recognize that the international order the United States has led for the seven decades since World War II provided a rare “long peace” without war between great powers, and larger increases in health and prosperity worldwide than in any equivalent period in history. The impact of China’s meteoric rise on that order is thus a matter of deep concern. But as John Adams repeatedly reminded his compatriots as they fought for freedom against the most powerful nation in the eighteenth-century world: “facts are stubborn things.”
In brief, the major findings of our report across the five arenas are these. First, China is not only rising. It has already risen to a point that it has upended the post-Cold War order: geopolitically, economically, technologically, militarily, diplomatically, and politically. Washington officials continue straining to see China in our rearview mirror. They insist that it is no more than what they call a “near-peer competitor.” Reality says otherwise. The time has come to recognize China as a full-spectrum peer competitor of the United States. As such, it poses a graver geopolitical challenge than any American living has ever seen.
The difference between the terms is not just semantic. If our assessment is correct, the Director of National Intelligence’s 2021 Global Threat Assessment describing China as “increasingly a near-peer competitor” is wrong. And the difference matters. Ask American athletes in Tokyo about peer competitors.
Second, China has not only overtaken the United States in a number of significant arenas, including the size of its economy, but has established leads the United States is unlikely to recover. While many readers may find this hard to believe, they should consider the arithmetic. Since China has four times as many people as the United States, if Chinese workers were only one-quarter as productive as Americans, their gross domestic product (GDP) would equal that of ours. GDP, of course, is not everything. But it forms the substructure of power in relations among nations.
Third, if both nations continue on their current trajectories, by 2030, China’s economy will be twice the size of America’s. Moreover, in many other sports that the United States has traditionally dominated, China is likely to have sustainable advantages. Painful as it will be, Americans will have to find some way to come to grips with a world in which, at least in some realms, “China is No. 1.”
Fourth, in contests like the Olympics, winning the largest number of medals is essentially a matter of national pride. In core geopolitical rivalries, however, including GDP, relative military capabilities for potential conflicts (for example, over Taiwan), or leadership in frontier technologies like AI, if China succeeds in winning gold medals that we should have, the consequences for the American economy, American security, and the American-led international order will be profoundly negative. Anyone who has doubts about what life under Chinese rules looks like should watch what is happening in Hong Kong.
Fifth, contrary to those for whom these findings lead to defeatism, the authors of the Harvard report decidedly do not believe that this means “game over” for the United States. Historically, American democracy has been slow to awake to great challenges. On the battlefield, had its greatest wars ended after the first innings, American colonists would have never become independent, Germany would have emerged the victor in World War I, Asia would now be a grand Japanese co-prosperity area, and Europeans would be speaking German in a Nazi empire. Had the United States not made the Soviet Union’s launch of the first satellite into space a “Sputnik moment” of awakening, the United States would not have been the first nation to send a man to the moon.
In the past two decades, China has risen further and faster on more dimensions than any nation in history. As it has done so, it has become a serious rival of what had been the world’s sole superpower.
Recognition of the magnitude of the challenge posed by what Singapore’s founding leader Lee Kuan Yew presciently predicted would be “the biggest player in the history of the world,” is the beginning of wisdom. We believe it should—and will—lead the United States to mobilize a response proportionate to the challenge.
As the United States and China compete neck-and-neck in the Tokyo Games, the head of China’s General Administration of Sports, Gou Zhongwen, has made no secret of China’s goal. As he put it recently: the Tokyo and Beijing Games are stepping stones on the path to China’s becoming a global “sports power by 2035.” In pursuit of this mission, China sent its biggest-ever team to Tokyo with 777 athletes to America’s 621. Nonetheless, as she arrived in Tokyo, the CEO of the U.S. Olympic Committee declared: “Team USA is ready” for everything. In sum, the game is on.
Americans have never shrunk from competition. Indeed, our market economy and democracy are founded on the proposition that fair competition will spur the rivals to run faster than they would do running alone. But for students of war and peace, the big question is: in the great geopolitical rivalry, can the United States and China can find a way to structure and manage constructive competition? Can the necessity for coexistence drive enlightened leaders to engage in peaceful competition in which each nation does its best to demonstrate which system—America’s democracy, or China’s Party-led autocracy—can deliver more of what human beings want? Since citizens’ lives in both countries depend on an affirmative answer, we must hope and pray that they can find their way to yes.
Graham T. Allison is the Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is the former director of Harvard’s Belfer Center and the author of Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?
Ao mesmo tempo em que assisto a um webinar da Carnegie Institution sobre:
(link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jx8pW0yL7s),
recebo mais uma das cartas do maior especialista americano em "decision making", Graham Allison, do Belfer Center da Harvard University, autor do famoso The Essence of Decision (sobre a crise dos mísseis soviéticos em Cuba em 1962, que foi superada brilhantemente por Kennedy, mais racional do que Kruschev), trazendo mais uma vez as elaborações paranóicas sobre a China como adversária.
Inacreditável como os universitários, os melhores, os maiores, supostamente os mais brilhantes, se deixaram contaminar pela paranoia – que eu sempre considerei normal – dos militares do Pentágonos. Não é possível que eles estejam considerando a China como uma adversária, ao mesmo título que foi a suprema "encarnação do mal", a União Soviética dos tempos da Guerra Fria (e mesmo antes). Não é que eles não reconhecem que a China seja diferente da URSS, mas é que eles interpretam o mundo, e a China, EXCLUSIVAMENTE DO PONTO DE VISTA AMERICANO, numa demonstração de miopia inacreditável para uma grande potência que não é dirigida por nenhum líder psicopata como Stalin ou Hitler – OK, tem o idiota do Trump, mas ele é so um grande idiota, capaz de desmantelar um monte de coisas, mas incapaz de conceber qualquer coisa para colocar no lugar –, mas por presidentes que são assessorados pelas melhores cabeças que um país democrático pode oferecer.
O que realmente me tem surpreendido de maneira frustrante é como esses intelectuais podem ser cegos pela hubris, pela arrogância do poder, como revelado por esta frase da carta abaixo:
"Recognition that China is not just a twin of Russia and thus another “great power competitor” but a genuine Thucydidean rival whose meteoric rise threatens to upend the American-led international order".
Ou seja, o que vale é a ordem internacional liderada pelos EUA, que eles acham a melhor possível. Não há dúvida de que uma ordem internacional aberta e democrática, livre e flexível às mais diversas variedades culturais e intelectuais, é muito melhor do que um mundo autocrático, dominado pela censura e pelo poder irrestrito do Estado.
Mas quem disse que a China quer e pretende moldar o mundo à sua imagem e semelhança? Os americanos estão ignorando a história milenar da China, com todas as suas magníficas manifestações culturais e artísticas, com todos os progressos científicos e tecnológicos, a extraordinária vitalidade, energia e inventividade do seu povo?
Será que eles acham que o comunismo – do governo, não do povo – é o ponto final da história de uma nação estraordinária, é a realização evolutiva última dessa cultura extraordinária? Será que eles pensam que meros 70 anos de dominação autocrática do Partido Comunista vão dominar a história, a vida e o futuro da China por toda a eternidade? Como eles podem ser tão míopes, e achar que a China quer destruir os EUA e o mundo "dominado" ou liderado pelos EUA?
Parece que sim: eles ainda estão vivendo no mundo da Guerra Fria geopolítica, como revelado ainda por esta pequena frase de Graham Allison:
"Realism about the inescapable fact that the U.S. and China live on a small globe where each one faces existential threats neither can defeat by itself (including climate MAD as well as nuclear MAD)."
Esse "small globe", eles o tomam como seu, ou devendo ficar eternamente sob sua liderança exclusiva. Essa história de "Thucydidean rival" é uma loucura completa, mas o pior é que essa cegueira pode realmente levar os americanos a tratar a China como um rival, o que é pior coisa que poderá ocorrer no século XXI, talvez condenado a viver sob a sombra de uma catástrofe nuclear, um novo Armageddon, como já ocorreu na segunda metade do século XX (o primeiro foi uma repetição da Guerra de Trinta Anos, do século XVII). Temos que escapar dessa loucura, mas parece que vai ser difícil com os "acadêmicos" americanos.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Brasília, 3 de dezembro de 2020
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From Belfer Center, December 2, 2020:
President-elect Biden recognizes that the impact of the rise of China on the U.S. and the international order will pose the defining international challenge for his first term—and as far beyond that as any eye can see. Because his national security team includes many familiar faces from the Obama Administration, some in the press have suggested that it will be the third term of the Obama Administration. But that misses the extent to which the world has changed, the U.S. has changed, and most importantly, in the new administration Biden will be the decider.
Others, particularly in China, have speculated that in relations with China, this could be a second term of the Trump Administration. That misses what are sure to be even starker differences between what we’ve seen in the past four years and the incoming Biden Administration’s approach to foreign policy in general, and China in particular.
In my recent interview with the Global Times (China’s major English-language mouthpiece of the People’s Daily), I summarize differences that should become visible from day one between Biden and Trump’s China policy under 5 Rs: Restoration of normal foreign policy practices (e.g., an end to idiosyncratic, personalized government by tweet); Reversal of Trump's harmful initiatives (rejoining the Paris Accord, the WHO, etc.); Review of Trump’s “159 accomplishments” in dealing with China asking about each how it impacts American national interests (e.g., tariffs that harmed the U.S. more than China); Recognition that China is not just a twin of Russia and thus another “great power competitor” but a genuine Thucydidean rival whose meteoric rise threatens to upend the American-led international order; and Realism about the inescapable fact that the U.S. and China live on a small globe where each one faces existential threats neither can defeat by itself (including climate MAD as well as nuclear MAD).
If you have reactions, I’ll be interested.
Best regards.
Graham Allison
Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School
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