![]() The “danger zone” framing is a good one, and other analysts and scholars should be thinking hard about making it through the next decade.Īt the same time, though, I feel like there’s a big piece of the puzzle that deserves a longer and more detailed treatment than Danger Zone gives it - the issue of longer-term economic competition with China. And many of the remedies Brands and Beckley suggest - especially building an economic bloc that excludes China, gathering allies, and maintaining technological leadership - seem eminently reasonable whether or not China’s leaders manage to frighten themselves into acts of aggression. has become far more belligerent in recent years, and we don’t necessarily need a theory of conflict to tell that there’s the possibility of a war in the next decade. China’s approach toward its neighbors and toward the U.S. It does, however, seem extremely prudent to worry about this. (Of course, the main competing hypothesis, the Thucydides Trap, also deserves to be similarly tested.) I will suggest this to my friend Paul Poast. In this case, it should in principle be possible for someone with a good data set on historical conflicts to test the idea that countries are most inclined to launch aggressive wars when a long period of ascendance reaches a peak. As readers of this blog know, I am inherently skeptical of historical theories, and I would like to see them tested whenever possible. That said, I am not yet ready to accept all of the book’s conclusions at face value. It is a very good book, and you should read it if you’re at all concerned about these issues. #Danger zone series#Danger Zone therefore represents the maturation of the “Communist China threat” series of books. It is far more measured in its conclusions, and rests them on a more solid foundation, than earlier books like The Hundred Year Marathon and Destined for War, while its policy recommendations are more actionable than The Long Game. This is a coherent, cogently argued case. and its allies are ultimately well-positioned (though far from guaranteed) to win. After that, the authors foresee a less intense conflict that the U.S. will start to bite ever harder, just as the U.S. ![]() China’s disadvantages - aging, resource limitations, etc. If these strategies succeed in preventing Communist China from toppling the existing global order, Brands and Beckley argue, things will get a bit easier after that. Protecting democracies against China’s attempts to encourage autocracy Gaining control of global technology standardsĭenying Communist China key technologies it needs allies but partially excludes China, limiting China’s participation to lower-value goodsīuilding an overlapping system of alliances and partnerships that hardens opposition to Chinese expansionism might be at maximum disadvantage.īuilding an economic bloc that includes U.S. So if Communist China chooses this next decade to attack, the U.S. To compound matters, the authors argue that the U.S.’ military modernization - which was undertaken to meet the Chinese threat - won’t bear fruit until the 2030s. This would, they argue, be similar to the way Wilhelmine Germany eagerly embraced World War 1 out of fear that if they were to wait longer, Russia would industrialize fully and become too powerful for them to overcome. from its position of global importance, and to establish regional and possibly global hegemony. ![]() have an incentive to strike now - to take Taiwan and the South Communist China Sea, to displace the U.S. Realizing that their country is fast approaching the peak of its might relative to its rivals, Xi Jinping & co. They cite five weaknesses:Īccording to Brands and Beckley, these long-term weaknesses mean China’s leaders see the writing on the wall. Their basic argument is that Communist China has long-term weaknesses that will ultimately put it in a weaker position relative to the U.S. That’s what Brands and Beckley try to answer. as the world’s leading power - it does - but rather a question of how the U.S. It’s no longer really a question of whether Communist China intends to displace the U.S. The authors don’t spend a lot of time convincing you that China’s leaders are bent on conflict - that task was already carried out by earlier authors, such as Rush Doshi’s The Long Game. Hal Brands and Michael Beckley’s Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict With China is definitely in the second category. Most of these can be roughly categorized into two groups - backwards-looking books describing the economic, political, and social conditions that prevailed in Communist China during the 2000s and 2010s, and forward-looking books about the possibility of geopolitical competition and conflict between Communist China and the U.S. I’ve been reading a lot of books about Communist China lately. ![]()
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