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China and the United States fell into the trap and were doomed to a war? What are China's means to win without a fight?
Two centuries ago, Napoleon warned the world: Let China sleep, because if he wakes up, he will shake the whole world.
Today China has indeed awakened, and the world is trembling with it.
With the rapid improvement of China's power, the long-standing superiority of the United States has been challenged, so China and the United States are likely to fall into a fatal trap, that is, the "Thucydides Trap" proposed by the ancient Greek historian Thucydides.
Thucydides explained to the war that nearly destroyed the two great greek city-states 2,500 years ago: the real reason for the inevitable war was the growth of Athenian power and the fear of Sparta caused by it.
Compared with China and the United States, China is the Athens that rose in ancient Greece, and the United States is the Sparta of fear.
So, according to the Thucydides Trap, it proposes the necessity of competition and conflict between a rising power and a conservative power, that is, the structural contradiction between the forces of the state will lead to war.
Thucydides
At present, Sino-US relations are in a sensitive period, and some people believe that bilateral relations at this time have fallen to the lowest point since Nixon's visit to China in 1972, and will even continue to fall.
Although China has argued in many places that the pursuit of hegemony by powerful countries is not suitable for China, China does not have the genes to carry out such hegemonic actions.
But we draw on history, and the intertwining and confrontation of national interests, fears and honors between China and the United States is destined for a war, although pessimistic, but not impossible.
Hello everyone, welcome to the Cognitive Pyramid. Today we will analyze whether China and the United States are doomed to a war. Looking back at history, is there any way to prevent the outbreak of a Sino-US war? Like friends also kindly ask you to like and support, but also welcome everyone to express their views in the comment area to actively discuss, thank you.
We look back at the past 500 years of history, and there are 16 cases in which the rise of one great power has disrupted the position of another dominant power. Of the 16 cases, 12 ended in war, and only four were spared.
Of these four cases, the first occurred in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, when the rise of Spain eventually replaced Portugal's maritime hegemony.
The second case is Germany, which emerged from the end of the Cold War, to european dominance.
However, these two cases, with their religious and geographical particularities, are not enlightening. So we're focusing on the remaining two cases.
The first is the United States and the United Kingdom.
We all know that the United States was originally the son of Britain. But in the last 30 years of the 19th century, the United States rose from the ashes of the Civil War to become an economic giant. In 1850, Britain and the United States had equal populations, but by 1900 the Population of the United States was twice as large as that of Britain. The U.S. economy also surpassed Britain in 1870 and grew more than double that of Britain in 1914. In 1880, Britain accounted for 23% of total global manufacturing output, while by 1914, Britain's market share had fallen to 13% and the United States had grown to 32%.
As U.S. power grew, so did its desire to be respected and expanded. In 1895, when a territorial dispute arose between Venezuela and British Guiana, the United States demanded that Britain accept the U.S. Monroe Doctrine of arbitration, acknowledging that "the United States has de facto sovereignty over the continent."
At first, Britain refused the American request, when the British colonial secretary, Neville Chamberlain, insisted that Britain was an American power with a territory larger than the United States.
But when U.S. President Cleveland hinted at war, Britain eventually agreed to the U.S. arbitration.
U.S. President Cleveland
Receiving a message from Cleveland, British Prime Minister Lord Salisbury told the Treasury Secretary that war with the United States is no longer just a possibility in the near future. So he instructed the Admiralty to conduct a budget review and warned that the United States would be a more likely adversary than the Franco-Russian alliance.
Yet in the face of a growing number of challengers and the swamp of war in South Africa, Britain was unable to deal with all threats, and while the United States was its most formidable adversary, Germany and Russia posed a more immediate threat to it. Moreover, in Europe, Britain can act as a balancer among competitive powers, while the Western Hemisphere has no opponents for the United States, so it is difficult for Britain to look for an American counterpart as An ally of Britain.
So everyone has found that the United States today is not like the original Britain? All over the world, conflicts are rife. But unlike the original Britain, Britain could not find allies in the Americas, while the United States had a group of lackeys in Southeast Asia, but the strength of the lackeys could not be put on the table, and this master-servant relationship was beginning to disintegrate.
Britain's situation at the time gave British leaders an adaptive mindset, aimed at avoiding a military conflict with the United States, even at any cost.
The Admiralty was the headquarters of The British National Security Policy at the time. In 1904, the then highest-ranking naval officer, First Secretary of the Navy Jack. Fisher told his superiors bluntly that Britain should avoid such a dispute by all means. He warned that it was almost impossible for Britain to escape defeat and humiliation by the United States.
In addition, the British Admiralty realized that if they did not reduce military deployments in other regions to dump resources on the United States, they could not shake the Dominance of the United States in the Western Hemisphere, so the British Admiralty deliberately ignored the military and repeatedly demanded a battle plan to defend Canada in the war against the United States. Instead, the Admiralty recommended maintaining good Anglo-American relations.
So it is clear that Britain did not see the war as a viable means of limiting the rise of the United States, which was the key to everything that followed.
The German Navy of World War I
Germany chose to put independence, the development of its navy and military power above all other objectives, and because it was closer to the British mainland, its intention in developing a navy was clearly to stop or strike at Britain.
Faced with such a challenge, Britain chose the necessary choice to make concessions to the United States in every dispute and to give the United States enough respect.
So, The British leadership has found the skills to meet the unreasonable needs of the United States without sacrificing the interests of the Core British Nation. Historians call it "great reconciliation," but it was such a textbook diplomatic skill that bridged the long-standing hostility between Britain and the United States. Thus, when war broke out in 1914, Britain could count on the United States as a key source of war materiel and funding. As German submarines began attacking American ships, Washington joined London in the war. Until the outbreak of World War II, Britain and the United States fought side by side and cemented a "special relationship" between the two countries.
So, from this case, we can see that it is not difficult to obtain peace, and the first method is that a shrewd politician is to do what is "supposed" and to be able to distinguish between needs and desires.
From the dispute over Venezuela to the battle with Canada over Alaska, Britain could pick a war to start, but Britain knew the cost of a war was enormous and the chances of victory were slim. In addition, it faces other, more important strategic threats in its immediate vicinity. So Britain wisely made the best choice, to find a way to meet America's needs without sacrificing its own core interests. Britain's move left the impression that the two countries could share benefits together, while minimizing their differences in interests, thus paving the way for greater cooperation in the future.
On the other hand, today's United States, externally, in constant strife, looks around the world, and is an enemy. Internally, the social rift is severe, and different classes are complaining. If it were not for the skinny camels who were bigger than horses and had a thick family foundation, they might have long been out of the country.
And even under such tragic circumstances, US politicians are still full of greed and try to use hegemonism to influence the direction of the world. Instead of calming down and thinking, what exactly is needed in the United States today? What do the American people need today?
As we all know, China has had the arrogance of a wide range of rivers since ancient times, and as long as the United States is willing to give up its arrogant and hegemonic face and walk to the negotiating table in a friendly manner, China will certainly come up with the etiquette that has been precipitated for five thousand years and warmly welcome it. And we can also imagine how good the world would be if China and the United States really held hands in each other's hearts and minds sincerely.
However, people's hearts will change, and just judging the hour and sizing up the situation and just having sincerity is not enough to stand in an invincible position, let alone maintain world peace. Then, we need to find more answers in the second case.
The second case is between the Soviet Union and the United States.
You may be wondering, the contest between the United States and the Soviet Union, is that not the world's most dangerous decades? What reference can it have for world peace and for avoiding war between China and the United States?
Indeed, those decades were indeed dangerous, but did war break out? Did World War III start? Not really!
So why didn't the fight start? There are, of course, reasons for his uniqueness here.
The 20th century was marked by a series of world wars, the specters of World War I, World War II and World War III, the latter of which, if ever, would probably be the last war of mankind.
In the last war, both the United States and the Soviet Union were prepared to risk millions of human deaths to defeat another country.
After 40 years of struggle, the Berlin Wall collapsed in 1989, the Warsaw Pact disintegrated in 1990, and the Soviet Union fell apart on Christmas Day 1991.
The Cold War ended with the lamentations of the Soviet Union, not with the last nuclear war that both sides had envisioned. This is a rare victory for the United States since World War II.
In World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union defeated Hitler. But only nine months after the anniversary of the victory in Europe in World War II, George Kennan, then chargé d'affaires ahead of the U.S. Embassy in the Soviet Union, sent a long telegram from Moscow to the United States in which he warned that soviet communism, which embraced expansionism, was a fanatical political force that believed there would be no permanent peace with the United States. Kennan said that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union believed that if the Soviet Union's power was to be preserved, then it was necessary to destroy American society, abandon the traditional American way, and destroy American international authority.
Therefore, the United States believes that in the face of such an opponent, it can only survive by destroying it or transforming it.
In 1949, the Soviet Union test-detonated the first atomic bomb, breaking the Monopoly of the United States on "Absolute Weapons." Moreover, in the first decade after The end of World War II, the Soviet Economy doubled and in half in the next decade. The new wealth from the Soviet economy's economic growth was mainly spent on military spending. As Robert Gates, who later served as U.S. Secretary of Defense, said, the Soviet Union, in its 25-year history, carried out the largest military construction in history, which had a profound impact on the international balance of power.
If such a threat had been before the nuclear age, it would have sparked all-out war, but after the Soviets had tested the first atomic bomb, U.S. strategists began to think hard about new ways of competing with the Soviet Union, knowing that the familiar methods of warfare were no longer suitable for the present.
So in just four years, the biggest leap in the strategic imagination in the history of U.S. diplomacy has emerged. From Kennan's long telegrams, to the Marshall Plan, to Paul Nietzsche's National Security Council Document No. 68, all american politicians have developed a comprehensive strategy for a new type of war.
The military scientist Crowitz said that war is an extension of other means of international politics. When foreign policy, diplomacy and negotiation have made every effort to ensure the interests of the country, the navy, air force can continue to exert influence by other means. But if the military intervenes directly in the first place, it could lead to the risk of national demise. So in this case, alternatives must be explored. Therefore, they invented the "Cold War" as a new means of warfare, finding ways to reduce direct firefights between major combatants.
In this new form of war, both sides believe that cold conflicts can easily turn into hot conflicts, so in order to prevent this risk, they temporarily accept many unacceptable facts. In addition, the two sides also compiled an intricate restrictive network around the competition between the United States and the Soviet Union, which Kennedy called "unstable rules about the status quo", such as improving transparency through arms control negotiations in order to reduce the risk of a sudden nuclear strike; in order to avoid accidental exchanges of aircraft or ships, the two sides agreed on precise rules in the air and at sea; and over time, the two sides also tacitly unified the "three noes principle": do not use nuclear weapons, do not directly attack each other's armed forces. Do not intervene militarily within the other side's recognized sphere of influence.
Kennedy
Now, although U.S. policy has changed at both ends of the three days, and the two parties have been tearing each other apart all day. But during the Cold War, the United States actually had a 40-year-long, coherent, bipartisan grand strategy, that is, the United States' "containment" strategy. In fact, the United States has a complex Cold War strategy, which is based on three major ideas.
One idea is that the United States has shifted its historical aversion to alliances. For its survival and well-being, a new international order needed to be established, so the United States began a long-term project.
The United States realized that the cold war cause was based on an economic and strategic center of gravity, and the strategic center of gravity was mainly Europe and Japan. So American politicians created the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, NATO and the U.S.-Japan Alliance, and the United Nations. Step by step, they tried to spend decades building a global order in order to defeat the Soviet Union and achieve their own global hegemony.
Then, the United States would rather spend decades and spend a lot of manpower, material resources, financial resources and time costs, but it is not willing to directly fight with the Soviet Union.
The reason is simple, there is nothing new under the sun except nuclear weapons.
Politicians are well aware that today's arsenal of nuclear bombs is more powerful than all the bombs used in all wars in history, and that a full-blown nuclear war can truly wipe out life on Earth. Any leader considering launching a nuclear attack on a country with a second nuclear strike capability must face the murder of hundreds of millions of people in their own country. So, rightly so, that's enough to force them to reconsider their decisions.
After testing the first atomic bomb in 1949, the Soviet Union rapidly developed a vast and complex arsenal of nuclear weapons and created a strategy of "mutually assured destruction" that nuclear strategy experts agree. This means that neither the United States nor the Soviet Union can destroy all of its opponent's nuclear weapons with its first nuclear strike before the enemy launches a deadly nuclear counterattack. Under such conditions, the decision of one country to defeat another is a suicidal choice.
So to this day, both the United States and Russia retain the nuclear arsenals of the superpower era. So no matter how dangerous Russia is and how much it should be strangled in its infancy, the United States must strive to find a way to coexist with it or face a common death.
So what should we do with China?
China has not disclosed the number of existing nuclear weapons, but some time ago, some media people commented that a big reason why the United States is so unscrupulous at present is that it has no fear of Relying on China's superiority in the number of nuclear weapons.
Therefore, China must increase the construction and reserve of nuclear weapons. Whether it is the previous strategy toward the Soviet Union or the current strategy toward China, the United States must clearly realize that once the two countries have unassailable nuclear arsenals, hot war is no longer a viable choice. This means that both sides must compromise and, if they find it intolerable, limit themselves and their allies to actions that could escalate to all-out war.
Paradoxically, however, supernuclear leaders must still be prepared to risk a war that may not be won. No country can win the war under the constraints of the "strategy of mutually assured destruction", but this is not the end of the problem. Paradoxically, every country must show a willingness to risk losing the war or become a loser in the game. For if any country is unwilling to risk starting or losing a nuclear war, then the adversary can achieve anything by creating conditions that force a more responsible power to choose between compromise or risk escalation into war.
In addition, close economic interdependence also increases the cost of war.
The current economic relationship between China and the United States has created a situation similar to "mutually assured destruction". The United States is China's largest export market, China is the largest creditor of the United States, and if the war prevents the United States from buying Chinese goods and China does not buy dollars, the economic and social impact on both sides will almost certainly exceed any gains from the war.
So, are China and the United States really destined for a war? From the mirror of history, we can basically see that this possibility is very small. What hatred and resentment do you have that you must end up together?
Talking about the hustle and bustle of the world is for the benefit of the future, and the world is all about the benefit of the future. Therefore, there is no "benefit" in war, and only when everyone shakes hands and speaks in peace and treats them sincerely can we achieve a win-win situation of "benefit".
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