We Can All Do Better (18 page)

While China has been busy enhancing its national power for generations to come, the United States has been engaged in two wealth-sapping wars. We have poured our treasure into the desert sands. The predominant press and policy attention of the last decade has been focused on the Middle East. While we have endless debates about promoting democracy, getting reluctant countries to the negotiating table, winning hearts and minds, defining and redefining what is a strategic interest, the Chinese have been laying the groundwork for economic dominance in the twenty-first century, and they are doing it without firing a shot. A Chinese official once asked me, “Why are you Americans so interested in all those small countries?”

The front page of the
New York Times
on October 29, 2011 had two stories side-by-side that illustrated our relative positions in the world. The headline on the China story read, “China Is Asked for Investment In Euro Rescue.” It described European government officials imploring the Chinese to buy bonds in the new euro bailout fund. The Chinese predicated any investment on strong conditions, such as getting Europe's support for recognizing China as a market economy in the World Trade Organization—which would essentially make it harder to level trade sanctions against China. The story confirmed that China is using its strong export trade economy, vast currency reserves, and large market to play a global power game. Right next to this story was a headline that read, “Western Companies See Prospects for Business in Libya.” While China increasingly calls the shots in a new global economy, we pick over the bones of our latest military adventure in the Middle East.

On September 4, 1989, Deng Xiaoping offered seven guidelines culled from China's history to direct its future: “Observe calmly,
secure our own position, cope with affairs calmly, hide our capacities and bide our time, be good at maintaining a low profile, never claim leadership, and seize the opportunity to make a difference.”
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China is methodically following Deng's strategy, to secure its advantage in sector after sector, country after country.

The challenge in Chinese martial arts is to change movements continuously in order to overcome an opponent with skill, rather than brute force. The I Ching tells a leader to be modest and rule by example rather than by fear or diktat. The Chinese seem to have applied these approaches in their relations with the world. We don't have a clue how to play their game. They're all about subtle strategy that leads to dominance. We're all about tactics that lead to destruction. We see our defense in terms of global power projection. They see theirs in terms of cyberpower and other assymetric security strategies that can disable the war-fighting capabilities of any would-be invader. Our approach is very expensive; theirs is much cheaper. While we're busy defeating ourselves by our braggadocio, impatience, and desire to lead like a general on a white horse parading before the applauding crowd, the Chinese ruling elite engage in a three-year, comprehensive debate about the role that China wants to play in the world. While 40 million Americans watch
American Idol
, 100 million Chinese are watching a twelve-part series of hour-long TV programs on
The Rise and Fall of Nations
.

China's game plan is there in its history—all we have to do is read it. The ancient Chinese Empire sought to enrich others so it could enrich itself more. The goal is incompatible with traditional notions of war. We invade Afghanistan, and the Chinese buy up one of the world's great mining tracts there. We fight the Taliban to create democracy, but the Indians build the Afghani Parliament building. We wage a war in Iraq to kill a dictator and bring freedom to the Iraqis, and the oil companies of other nations get large oil concessions. When President Obama puts troops in Australia, the Chinese
shrug; they know that they can get the mineral resources of Australia for China (which is all they really want) with economic power, because Australia finds such deals are in its interests too. The Chinese don't do press releases; they just steadily advance their position.

The real irony is that if we understood how to play the game, we could enhance the power of our own country. What is required to secure our future is skill at paradoxical thinking—that is, China simultaneously can be our greatest ally in creating a better world and our most formidable rival. As F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” Instead of racketing around the world like some stereotype of a warrior king, we need to find the quiet center of our ideals and lead from there. We need to make change our friend and the development of our own country our number-one objective. In such a world, as the possibility of Chinese purchases of $1.2 trillion in U.S. infrastructure bonds illustrates, there is no reason that the United States and China could not be the best of partners, even cooperating to ameliorate global problems, such as climate change or poverty.

The pressure we should bring on China is for them to follow international norms on intellectual property and state subsidies, to say nothing of the rule of law. China is in transition from a relationship-based society, which is inherently corrupt and inefficient, to a society based on rules that in China's future will be necessary to deal with everything from governance of foreign investment to structuring of a national healthcare system to management of scarce resources. The current endemic lawlessness and official corruption were caught by a friend of mine who recently wrote from Beijing, “A country where people can't trust what they eat, the trains they ride, or the products they buy, can't secure a stable future.” Chinese leaders are acutely aware of those problems and confront them daily. They also often protest international rules such as the accounting and governance requirements
of the New York Stock Exchange or the maritime treaties of the 1860s, but when they agree to join a part of the international system, we have to hold them accountable for abiding by the rules of that system. If we believe they have violated provisions of the WTO, we should use the organization's dispute-settlement mechanism to make our case. That's what it means to have an international system that works. Disagreements will be inevitable. Resolving them with a minimum of chest-thumping will serve all parties.

When certain Chinese officials claim that the South China Sea is a core interest of China's, along with Tibet and Taiwan, some Americans conclude that the comment represents national policy. It is as though every Congressman's utterance were to be taken as national policy. In fact, a phalanx of Chinese generals, diplomats, and academics has said that it is not national policy.
¹³
China is prepared to negotiate its territorial claims in the South China Sea; the only question relates to whether the negotiation will be multilateral or bilateral. Their claims to Tibet and Taiwan are non-negotiable. The real danger zone in Asia is the East China Sea, the body of water that separates China from its longtime Asian rival Japan. A miscalculation there by either side could lead to a military conflict fueled by intense nationalism in both countries.

As for espionage, we should be realistic, not emotional. Blocking Chinese espionage is not war, any more than is our spying on them. The intelligence craft has been a part of international life from time immemorial. When someone waxes indignant about it, I recall the classic line in Casablanca: “I am shocked—shocked—to find that gambling is going on in here!” Yet Chinese espionage has taken on a new form and risen to a new level. We need to be aware of the nature and breadth of hacking efforts coming out of China and take appropriate countermeasures. Our companies, particularly in the high-tech area, are under persistent, withering attack. Many of them have called on the government for help. Economic security and national
security are no longer separate domains. As the secretary of defense's 2010 annual report to Congress states somewhat breathlessly, “The heavy use of outsourcing of computer and consumer electronic production to China, not only by American but also Japanese, Taiwanese, German and South Korean firms has helped create a Chinese cyber threat that now compromises the security of the Western world.” Joel Brenner writes about the nature of cyber war in his book,
America the Vulnerable: Inside the New Threat Matrix of Digital Espionage, Crime and Warfare
, noting that “the objective in warfare would not be killing or occupying territory, but rather paralyzing the enemy's military and financial computer networks and its telecommunications. How? By taking out the enemy's power system. Control, not bloodshed, would be the goal. . . .”
¹⁴
It is unlikely that this possibility will ever become reality with China, but it is better to be prepared than caught by surprise. Money spent on cyberdefense would be money well spent.

In addition, we have to understand the effects of our own actions on China. U.S. ships and airplanes mounting intelligence-gathering operations in international waters at least twelve miles from China's coast fall under the accepted category of espionage. Using that intelligence to execute simulated attacks on Chinese targets in order to assess Chinese defenses and responses in a potential military situation amounts to more than espionage and is needlessly provocative. Imagine how the Congress would react if it learned that the Chinese were just twelve miles off the coast of California running simulated attacks on our mainland. We have to ask ourselves whether the military information we get about a country with which there are no imminent hostilities is worth the political cost. These events, which are known to Chinese authorities, along with the wide television coverage in China given to United States-Japanese-South Korean live ammunition joint naval exercises, send the message to the Chinese people that America sees China as the enemy. If this impression
hardens, there inevitably will be a Chinese reaction.
¹⁵
Is that any way to build a common future? It is to be hoped that those on both sides of the U.S.-China relationship will find cooperation more advisable than conflict. To miss the win/win potential of our relatioship would be a tragedy.

Adjusting to the reality of Chinese economic power may prove difficult, given our current assumptions about how to operate in the world. For example, when the Palestinians applied for admission to UNESCO, the education and cultural arm of the United Nations, a law passed in another era required a cutoff of U.S. support for UNESCO. The premise of the law was that thanks to our economic clout (we supply more than a fifth of UNESCO's budget), we could prevent UNESCO from admitting the Palestinians. The threat failed and the Palestinians took their place in the organization. In a world with growing Chinese power, such action, like a clumsy martial arts move, could backfire. China could simply fill the void anytime we backed out, enhancing its soft power and making us look like the spoiled child who picks up his marbles and goes home when he doesn't get his way. The time has come for us to wake up and start playing the geopolitical game of the twenty-first century, not the one of the last half of the twentieth.

None of this means that America should become isolationist. We have genuine economic interests in the world. There are also people who want to kill us. But anti-terrorism should be as much a political strategy as a military challenge. You can't influence the Muslim world primarily with military action. You need to be consistent in your ideals, steadfast in your commitments, strategic in your approach. You need to understand the history of Muslim societies and the depth of the demographic, economic, and educational challenges
they face. You have to determine how best to encourage the influences of moderate Islam in various countries. You have to acknowledge the role of Islam in the lives of more than a billion and a half people and seek to find common ground on a spiritual level, which will help us on the political level. You have to invest in such a strategy for the long term, with the knowledge that it might take a decade to show results. Sometimes, objectives clash. The policy we follow to ensure our access to oil might be different from one for dealing with al-Qaeda. Clarity about our central objectives will facilitate our decision-making.

We need a strong defense against the real security threats of the twenty-first century—cyberwar and bioterrorism as well as nuclear proliferation—and against the unforeseen: developments in ethnic strife; alliance shifts; technological breakthroughs; and availability of natural resources such as water, oil, and arable land. We won't have the wherewithal to counter those real threats if we perpetuate the old military structures of the Cold War or seek to right every wrong in the world. The most important geopolitical fact, and one central to the reach of our economy, is that since 1945, the United States has controlled the seas. We can monitor, stop or sink any ocean-going vessel whether it is carrying oil, food or nuclear components. In a world increasingly dependent on trade, such capacity is critical to our power. To secure our military position, we must keep a modernized global navy, along with the associated space systems. And we need to create adaptable land forces—speed and flexibility will determine the winner in many future conflicts—able to rapidly convert vast quantities of information into action and equipped with hypersonic weapons, the drones of today on steroids. The defense budget should be used to counter the threats we face, not (as Eisenhower might have observed) to produce a jobs program in congressional districts across America or (as George Kennan
might have observed) to remake other cultures and spread the gospel of democracy around the globe.

Our democracy is blessed in many ways. One of them is that we have a dedicated and loyal military and a skilled intelligence community. Each has an important role in national security, but they are directed by our political objectives, which are set by our president and the foreign policy team he chooses. The real judgment and leadership come in setting those objectives. If you ask the generals responsible for fighting the war in Afghanistan for their opinion on whether we should leave, their answer would almost always be no—an answer you want from can-do, patriotic soldiers. Tell them to run through a wall, and they will try. Tell the generals that you have decided, from your perspective as president, that the war is not in our interests and seek their counsel on how to get out. They will salute and say, “Yes, sir.” That is the difference between policymaking and combat readiness. To protect our country we need both, but in our democracy the policymaker is rightly primary.