It's unfair, but war stories tend to be more exciting than peace stories.
The same is true, perhaps more so, of warnings ofcoming wars against guarantees of goodwill.
John Kerry, U.S. special presidential envoy for climate, speaks during a press briefing in Beijing, China, Wednesday, July 19, 2023. Photographer: Andrea Verdelli/Bloomberg
The dire scenarios of risk and escalation are almost always more captivating than the dissenting voices explaining how to avoid a fight.
It's a narrative advantage enjoyed by hawks over pigeons, realists over idealists, and nightmare-believers over those who dream of the alternative.
The 360-degree rivalry between the United States and China has given rise to a barrage of recent books on the possibility of armed conflict, with plenty of advice on how to avoid it.
If "Who lost China?" was an early Cold War American concern, "Who lost to China?" threatens to become its contemporary variant.
After five decades of confrontation between Washington and Beijing, a period characterized by both unipolar triumphalism by the United States and China's rise to economic superpower status, the two countries are now on a "collision course" toward war, many of these books claim, although the reasons are varied and sometimes contradictory.
In these works, the antagonists are doomed to the contest because China has become too strong or because it is weakening; because America is too arrogant or too insecure; Because leaders make bad decisions or because the forces of politics, ideology and history prevail over individual will.
A sampling of its titles – "Destined for War", "Danger Zone", "2034: A Novel of the Next World War" and "Avoidable War" – reveals the scope and limits of the debate.
I don't know if the United States and China will end up at war.
But in these books, the battle is already underway.
So far, war stories are winning.
The U.S.-China Book Club is insular and self-referential, and the one work all authors seem compelled to cite is "Destined for War: Can the United States and China Escape Thucydides' Trap?" (2017), by Harvard political scientist Graham Allison.
It discusses the war between ascendant Athens and ruling Sparta in the fifth century B.C. and echoes Thucydides, the ancient historian and ancient Athenian general, who argued that "it was the rise of Athens and the fear this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable."
Let's put Athens instead of China and Sparta instead of the United States.
Allison, best known for "The Essence of Decision," his 1971 study of the Cuban Missile Crisis, does not consider a war between the United States and China inevitable.
But in his book he does consider it more likely than not.
"When an emerging power threatens to displace a dominant power, the resulting structural stress makes a violent clash the norm, not the exception," he writes.
Review 16 encounters between dominant and rising powers – Portugal and Spain fighting for trade and empire, the Dutch and British fighting over the seas, Germany challenging twentieth-century European powers and other clashes – and discover that in 12 of them the result was war.
As China continues to accumulate economic and political weight and the U.S.-led world order looks less sustainable, it is "terribly easy to develop scenarios in which U.S. and Chinese soldiers kill each other," Allison warns.
When there is distrust at the top, when worldviews are irreconcilable, and when each side considers its own leadership to be predestined, any push is good.
"Could a collision between U.S. and Chinese warships in the South China Sea, a push toward national independence in Taiwan, the struggle between China and Japan over islands no one wants to live on, instability in North Korea, or even a spiraling economic dispute be the trigger for a war between China and the U.S. that neither wants?" he wonders.
(In "Destined for War," this is a rhetorical question.)
These kinds of stories are the lifeblood of literature about the U.S. and China.
Hal Brands and Michael Beckley, fellows at the American Enterprise Institute, begin their 2022 book "Danger Zone" with a surprise Chinese invasion of Taiwan in early 2025.
U.S. forces in the western Pacific are too dispersed to respond effectively, and soon an ailing President Joe Biden is weighing a low-yield nuclear attack on Chinese forces at mainland Chinese ports and airfields.
"How did the United States and China get to the brink of World War III?" Brands and Beckley ask. Too easily.
In "The Avoidable War: The Dangers of a Catastrophic Conflict Between the US and Xi Jinping's China," Kevin Rudd, former prime minister of Australia and a longtime China scholar, imagines 10 distinct plots, many of which revolve around the fate of Taiwan.
For example, what if China tried to take the island by force and Washington chose not to respond? It would be America's "Munich moment," Rudd writes, and it would destroy any American moral authority.
Worse still would be for the United States to react with military force but then lose the fight, which would "signal the end of the American century."
Half of the scenarios in his book, Rudd notes, "involve one form or another of large-scale armed conflict."
And he is the most pessimistic of all.
Other views
An expanded war story is found in "2034," a work of fiction written by Elliot Ackerman, a novelist and former Marine special operations officer who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and James Stavridis, a retired four-star admiral and former NATO supreme allied commander.
Published in 2021, "2034" is basically a beach read about how we got to nuclear war.
The authors imagine a seemingly fortuitous confrontation in the South China Sea between a flotilla of American destroyers and a Chinese fishing vessel loaded with high-tech intelligence equipment, which in a matter of months turns into a world war that leaves major cities in ashes, tens of millions dead and neither Washington nor Beijing in command.
One of the main characters, a Chinese official with deep ties to the United States, recalls attending a class at Harvard, "a seminar pompously titled 'The History of War' taught by a Hellenophile professor."
If it's a hint to the ubiquitous Allison, it could also function as a tribute, because in "2034," China and the United States are trapped by Thucydides.
In "The Avoidable War," Rudd warns that incentives for Beijing and Washington to escalate hostilities, whether to save lives or save face, "could prove irresistible."
Ackerman and Stavridis follow that script.
In his novel, a recklessly warmongering American national security adviser – with the perfect surname of Wisecarver – and a cocky and overconfident Chinese defense minister press on until cities like San Diego and Shanghai cease to exist and India emerges as a world power, both for its military capabilities and for its mediating authority.
(The UN Security Council even moves from New York to New Delhi.)
"This conflict has not felt like a war – at least not in the traditional sense – but rather like a series of escalations," declares an influential former Indian official near the end of the novel.
"That's why my word is 'tragic,' not 'inevitable.' A tragedy is a disaster that could have been avoided."
In this sense, the prognosis of tragedy is favorable.
Allison sees the rise of Chinese nationalism under President Xi Jinping as part of the long-term project to avenge China's "century of humiliation," from the First Opium War to the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949, and restore the country's top rank.
Both the United States and China see themselves in exceptional terms, Allison explains, as destination nations. Washington aspires to maintain Pax Americana, while China believes that the so-called rules-based international order is nothing more than a code for the United States to set rules and Beijing to follow orders:
an oppressive plan to contain and sabotage China's repressed national greatness.
The extent and durability of that greatness is the subject of disagreement in these books.
Allison argues that the balance of economic power "has tilted so sharply in China's favor" that U.S. claims to maintain hegemony are unrealistic.
But Brands and Beckley, writing five years later, see a mediocre Middle Kingdom, a nation that, despite its "saber-rattling" (a mandatory activity in foreign policy tomes), is threatened by enemies abroad and by an aging population and faltering economy at home.
"China will be a declining power much sooner than most people think," Brands and Beckley declare.
"Where others see rapid Chinese growth, we see massive debt and Soviet-level inefficiency. Where others see gleaming infrastructure, we see ghost towns and bridges to nowhere. Where others see the world's largest population, we see a demographic catastrophe looming."
Looks
Except that those interpretations don't make China any less dangerous to U.S. interests or security.
Quite the opposite, argue Brands and Beckley.
As China sees its window of opportunity closing quickly, it could decide to move chips now in pursuit of its goals: take Taiwan, expand its sphere of influence, achieve global preeminence.
Thus, the 2020s are the decade in which the competition between the United States and China "will reach its moment of maximum danger."
Note how Allison believes war is possible because China is on an inexorable path of growth and influence, while Brands and Beckley worry about conflict precisely because Chinese power may be waning.
This is the occupational risk of thought leadership in national security:
Once it has been decided that conflictis likely, any set of conditions can credibly justify that belief.
La noción del sueño americano es inseparable de la identidad nacional de Estados Unidos, sin importar que pueda significar cosas diferentes para distintos estadounidenses.
Pero también existe un sueño chino, articulado, de forma un tanto amorfa, por un individuo:
Xi, que también es secretario general del Partido Comunista Chino y presidente de la Comisión Militar Central.
Los libros sobre Estados Unidos y China dedican mucha atención a los motivos y las intenciones del líder chino.
Allison describe el sueño chino de Xi como una combinación de poder, prosperidad y orgullo, "a partes iguales la visión musculosa de Theodore Roosevelt de un siglo americano y el dinámico New Deal de Franklin Roosevelt".
Rudd dedica 11 capítulos de su libro a las ambiciones y la visión del mundo de Xi, incluyendo su implacable enfoque en retener el poder; su impulso por la unidad nacional, particularmente en lo que respecta a Taiwán; su necesidad de mantener la expansión económica de China; su impulso por modernizar el ejército, especialmente la fuerza naval de China; y su esfuerzo por desafiar las normas liberales de estilo occidental.
Estos objetivos pueden parecer más alcanzables para Xi gracias a la "teoría del declive estadounidense" que ganó adeptos entre las élites de la política exterior china durante los años de Obama, escribe Rudd, especialmente tras las guerras posteriores al 11-S y la Gran Recesión.
El corolario de esa teoría, por supuesto, es que ha llegado el momento de la primacía de China.
En "2034", la misma opinión cobra vida en un melodramático monólogo del ministro de Defensa chino.
"Nuestra fuerza es la que siempre ha sido: nuestra juiciosa paciencia", declara, en contraste con los estadounidenses, que "cambian de gobierno y de política tan a menudo como las estaciones" y que "se rigen por sus emociones, por su alegre moralidad y por la creencia en su preciosa indispensabilidad".
Dentro de 1.000 años, Estados Unidos "ni siquiera será recordado como un país", afirma.
"Simplemente se recordará como un momento. Un momento fugaz".
En la novela, China aprovecha su momento para intentar acabar con el de Estados Unidos.
En lugar de ello, ambos momentos llegan a su fin.
En "Party of One: The Rise of Xi Jinping and China's Superpower Future", Chun Han Wong, corresponsal de The Wall Street Journal, señala que el presidente chino no siente una profunda animadversión hacia Estados Unidos y que, de hecho, siente cierto afecto por la cultura estadounidense.
Cuando Xi era vicepresidente, escribe Wong, envió a su hija a estudiar a Harvard, y ha compartido su afecto por películas estadounidenses como "Salvar al soldado Ryan".
Por supuesto, la fascinación de un presidente chino por una película sobre la brutalidad, el heroísmo y la pérdida en una guerra mundial pasada puede ser señal de algo menos alentador que la fuerza del poder blando de Estados Unidos.
Wong explica cómo Xi ha endurecido su control sobre el Partido Comunista Chino con purgas anticorrupción y ha desplegado la seguridad y la vigilancia del Estado para suprimir cualquier amenaza a la estabilidad de China y, más concretamente, a su poder.
El presidente es un "ardiente nacionalista", escribe Wong, que está "avivando un sentimiento de orgullo civilizacional chino" entre los dirigentes y el pueblo de su país. Xi ha hecho de un ejército más robusto "una pieza central de su sueño chino, exigiendo que las fuerzas armadas estén 'preparadas para luchar y ganar guerras'".
"No hace falta ser muy perspicaz para imaginar quién podría ser el adversario en esas guerras. Las afirmaciones de Xi sobre un Oriente en ascenso y un Occidente en declive "se han convertido en un artículo de fe dentro y fuera del partido", escribe Wong.
"Cuestionar esas opiniones equivale casi a deslealtad".
Brands y Beckley están menos obsesionados con Xi; consideran que el proyecto revisionista de China es muy anterior al último líder de China.
"Estados Unidos tiene un problema con China, no con Xi Jinping", escriben.
Pero podrían encontrar validación en el informe de Wong.
Al centralizar tanto poder y control en sí mismo y al gobernar a través del miedo, Xi "puede haberse convertido en el eslabón más débil en su intento de construir una superpotencia china", escribe Wong.
Temerosa de decepcionar a Xi, la burocracia estatal se paraliza, mientras que el partido está tan animado por una sola personalidad que cualquier sucesor potencial podría tener dificultades para dirigirlo.
"La China de Xi es audaz pero frágil, intrépida pero insegura", concluye Wong.
"Es una aspirante a superpotencia con prisas, ansiosa por enfrentarse al mundo a la vez que recelosa de lo que pueda venir".
Visiones
A lo largo de estos libros sobre China y Estados Unidos abundan los escenarios de guerra, mientras que los caminos hacia la paz son menos obvios.
Allison añora la era de los sabios de Washington, como George Kennan, George Marshall, Paul Nitze y otras luminarias de la Guerra Fría.
Estados Unidos no necesita una "estrategia china" más, advierte Allison, sino una reflexión seria sobre los objetivos norteamericanos en un mundo con un rival que podría llegar a ser más poderoso que Estados Unidos.
"Is military primacy essential to securing vital national interests?" Allison wonders.
"Can America thrive in a world where China makes the rules?"
We need great thinkers, he writes, because "fate deals hands, but men play cards."
Brands and Beckley are right to point out, contrary to Allison's Thucydides trap, that countries can be rising and declining at the same time and that moments of great geopolitical peril occur not only when a country is on the rise, but also when ambition and despair converge.
Unfortunately, their practical proposals are obscured by the self-help buzzwords of the national security whole.
"The key is to take calculated risks and avoid reckless ones," they advise.
And "the danger zone strategy is to get to the long game – and make sure you can win it."
Brands and Beckley even call on Washington to deploy a "strategic MacGyverism – using the tools we have or can quickly invoke to defuse geopolitical bombs that are about to explode." (Translation: Improvise and wait for someone super-intelligent to step in to solve any crisis.)
Adding "strategic" to any foreign policy jargon immediately gives it a higher air, of course, and Rudd is a master of this approach.
In "Avoidable War" he invokes strategic perceptions, strategic adversaries, strategic equations, strategic logic, strategic thinking, strategic community, strategic direction, strategic deviations, strategic language, strategic literacy, strategic red lines, strategic cooperation, strategic engagement, strategic temperature, and a joint strategic narrative, and that only in the introduction.
Rudd's plan to avoid this avoidable war is something he calls "managed strategic competition."
It involves close and continuous communication between Beijing and Washington to understand the "irreducible strategic red lines" of the other side, thus reducing the chances of conflict by misunderstandings or surprises.
(Rudd compares it to efforts by Washington and Moscow to improve communication in the wake of the Cuban missile crisis.)
With controlled strategic competition, both sides could channel their competitive impulses toward economics, technology, and ideology, and their cooperative needs toward areas such as climate change and arms control.
Washington may be employing some form of Rudd's playbook.
Antony Blinken, Secretary of State, and Janet Yellen, Secretary of the Treasury, have visited China recently, and John Kerry, special envoy for climate change, arrived this week.
"We believe the world is big enough for our two countries to prosper," Yellen told a news conference after their meetings.
But thriving is no longer the only goal of either side.
To prosper under whose leadership and under whose conditions?
The Biden administration has imposed restrictions on the sale of semiconductor technology to China and is planning additional measures, while Chinese hackers recently penetrated the email account of Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, who has been critical of Chinese business policies, a reminder that economic tensions have ways of spilling over into the purely commercial realm.
Even Rudd admits that his preferred approach can only temporarily prevent a potential conflict.
It also acknowledges that controlled strategic competition would require an "unprecedented bipartisan consensus" among the American political class to ensure continuity regardless of the party in power.
Normally, the need for bipartisanship only guarantees the failure of any Washington initiative, but China has been one of the few areas of some coherence between the Trump and Biden administrations.
In a recent and much-discussed Foreign Affairs essay titled "The China Trap," Jessica Chen Weiss, former senior adviser to the State Department's policy planning staff in the Biden administration, notes that the current U.S. president "has endorsed the assessment that China's growing influence must be reined in" and that on Capitol Hill "vehement opposition to China may be the only thing Democrats stand on." and Republicans can agree."
The trap Weiss foresees is not that China tricks the United States into entering into conflict, which is what happens in "2034."
Rather, it is for Washington, understanding nothing but a zero-sum world, to accept that conflict with China is inevitable or necessary.
In other words, bipartisanship may be necessary for peace, but it can also lead to war.
Weiss proposes meaningful discussions between the United States and Chinese leaders, not only about how best to communicate during a crisis, "but also about the plausible terms of coexistence and the future of the international system, a future in which Beijing will necessarily have some role."
He calls for "an inclusive and affirmative global vision," which sounds good but is never explained in detail.
"The United States cannot cede so much influence to Beijing that international norms and institutions no longer reflect American interests and values," Weiss argues.
"But the biggest risk today is that overzealous efforts to counter China's influence undermine the system itself."
It is the kind of distinction that can only be analyzed in retrospect:
Make sure you go far enough, but don't go too far.
In one of the disquisitions on world affairs and national character that appear throughout "2034," a Chinese official concludes that the United States does not suffer from a lack of intelligence about the intentions of other countries, but from a lack of imagination about how those intentions translate into actions.
However, judging by these various books, it seems that American and Western thinkers are perfectly capable of exercising their imagination.
That could be part of the problem.
In an article recently published in the journal Liberties, Ackerman wonders whether a new world war is more likely when the generation remembering the last one goes extinct.
"Without memories to contain us, we depend on our imagination," he writes.
So far, however, the imagined scenarios for war are more persuasive than those for peace.
They don't have to be the only stories we tell.
"China is like that long book you've always wanted to read," a U.S. intelligence official tells Brands and Beckley, "but you always end up waiting until next summer."
This is the summer I finally picked up that book.
I hope there will be more in the future, books in which peace stories have at least a fighting chance.