From President Harry Truman to President Trump’s second administration, the White House too often exaggerated or ignored the real degrees of danger posed by perceived major threats of the time.
The former Soviet Union was a textbook case. After World War II, in which the Soviet Union had been critical to destroying Hitler and the Nazi war machine, benign views of it persisted until the Iron Curtain descended from the Baltic to the Adriatic.
Lyndon Johnson was determined to fight communism on the Mekong and not the Mississippi. He fed into the myth of a monolithic Communist threat, when in fact China and Russia were at each other’s throats. The Reagan administration mounted a military buildup against the Soviet evil empire. Shortly after Reagan left office, the Soviet Union imploded. From Barack Obama’s presidency until Trump’s second term, China was the “pacing” threat. And Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, four years ago this month, has resurrected the Russian Federation as a smaller reincarnation of the old USSR. But consider the possibility of a failure to understand the actual threat.
Suppose China and Russia are in or are about to enter into a period of substantial decline. In the case of China, that would appear to be a metaphorical bridge that’s miles too far. China’s economy is among the world’s largest. Its military challenges are those of the U.S., and with its Belt and Road Initiative, “wolf warrior diplomacy” and growing overseas presence, it, in some ways, is more ubiquitous than America.
Russia, however, is in far worse shape. Its economy has been battered by a war with more than a million casualties, if estimates are correct. In 1917 and 1989, after Russia withdrew from World War I and the Soviet Union from Afghanistan, respectively, the government of the time collapsed. Will that happen when or if the war in Ukraine ends? Obviously, no one knows.
Succession can be existential in autocracies. No apparent successor to Putin has been identified. Khrushchev’s replacements ultimately became a gerontocracy. Leonid Brezhnev lingered too long, and Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko lasted barely a total of two years before dying. This prompted Mikhail Gorbachev’s elevation.
Back then, there was a Politburo with known members implementing policies. Not so much today.
Xi will not fall into Gorbachev’s trap of applying “openness” and “restructuring,” which led to the Soviet Union’s collapse.
China is more interesting. Certainly, across generations, it has endured revolutions and leadership changes. Few earlier dynasties were as entrenched as today’s Communist Party. Regime change often took time to develop. But consider some of the “what-ifs” that challenge conventional wisdom about China’s short-term and long-term future and the inherent difficulties of governing 1.4 billion souls.
Of these 1.4 billion, estimates show hundreds of millions still live in poverty, mostly concentrated in rural and non-urban locales. Men outnumber women by a substantial number, even as the population declines. Many of the 16 to 24-year-old male cohort live at home and are not seeking work.
China’s real estate and property markets are unbalanced, with large numbers of buildings and homes empty. Debt is huge. Although savings rates are high, China suffers deflationary pressures. And perhaps most significantly, its economy depends on foreign exports that have led to a $1 trillion trade surplus, hurting its currency.
Xi Jinping has decapitated the People’s Liberation Army’s senior leadership. Dozens of generals and admirals have been purged and arrested, including ministers of defence and a vice-chair of the Central Military Commission.
Why? Some argue that Xi is doing what Stalin did when he shot his top generals in the 1930’s to stave off possible rivals. However, if China is truly in decline, perhaps there are alternative explanations.
Xi has reportedly set 2027 as the year in which the People’s Liberation Army must be prepared to act against Taiwan, a charge that he denies. Note that former U.S. Pacific Commander Admiral Phil Davidson has interpreted this as a window for invasion.
But perhaps Xi set 2027 as an accounting date in which the Chinese Army would be measured for its performance and not necessarily be ordered to invade. Maybe the firings were a signal of Xi’s seriousness. Given the massive corruption that seems to have infected the senior ranks of the military’s leadership, Xi might be seeing the same incompetence and corruption that Gorbachev had once observed across Russian society. Xi will not fall into Gorbachev’s trap of applying “openness” and “restructuring,” which led to the Soviet Union’s collapse. Instead, Xi is employing the old-fashioned method of putting in his team. We shall see if that works, and whether China faces real decline.
The writer is a senior advisor at Washington, DC’s Atlantic Council and a published author. He can be reached on Twitter @harlankullman.