In recent months, the U.S. and Chinese diplomatic, academic and intellectual communities have been abuzz with George Kennan’s containment ideas. George Kennan was a prominent American diplomat in the 1940s, whose long telegram from Moscow to the United States in 1946 and his advocacy of Soviet containment laid the foundation for the U.S. strategy toward the Soviet Union at the Time. And the two policy reports on China that came out before and after the Trump administration left office are widely known as Kennan-style reports. These two China Policy reports clearly wanted to lay the foundation for a grand strategy toward China.
Shortly after the end of World War II, the U.S. government held a more positive stance toward U.S.-Soviet cooperation, but Kennan was not convinced. In his long telegram, he pointed out that the Soviet Union was inherently expansionist and intensely insecure, that its governmental interests were at odds with those of its people, that its institutions were rigid, that it lacked innovative dynamism, that its decision-making was misinformed, that it could not compete with the United States in the long run, and so on. He thus concluded that the Soviet Union was not a reliable partner and that U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union should take a third path beyond war and appeasement, i.e., a policy of containment, i.e., limiting Soviet behavior and influence within certain borders in order to consolidate and preserve America’s own strategic interests. This telegram played a major role in the U.S. government’s recognition of the Soviet Union as the greatest threat to the United States and the formation of a policy of containment of the Soviet Union.
The current trough in U.S.-China relations coincides with a change in administration, and the direction of U.S. strategy toward China has sparked collective anxiety not only among Chinese government bureaucrats, but also among U.S. allies and adversaries. And after four years of dealing with Beijing bureaucrats, the hawkish thinkers in the Trump Administration have a lot to say to their successors in the new administration. What’s more, they all agree that it’s dangerous that the United States now has no grand strategy toward China, compared to the depth of Beijing’s understanding of the United States. They want what they think to be the cornerstone that spawns a grand U.S. strategy toward China. Thus, two Kenan-style reports were born in quick succession.
One was a policy study released last November 18 by the State Department’s Office of Policy Planning, entitled “The Elements of the China Challenge,” which took a close look at the “disruptive” behavior of the Chinese Communist Party and The report examines the “disruptive” behavior of the Chinese Communist Party and how the United States and its allies should respond to China’s expansion. The report notes that the Chinese Communist Party’s focus on fundamentally revising the world order to serve Beijing’s authoritarian goals and hegemonic ambitions poses a serious challenge to the United States. To meet the challenges posed by China, the United States must develop strong policies and ensure that its policies transcend bureaucracy, conflicts among government agencies and the election cycle.
Another report, released just a few days ago by the Atlantic Council, is the anonymous China report “The Longer Telegram: Toward A New American China Strategy. American China Strategy. “The Longer Telegram argues that the most important challenge facing the United States and the democratic world in the 21st century is the rise of an increasingly authoritarian and aggressive China under Xi Jinping. It argues that the United States should treat the 91 million members of the Chinese Communist Party differently from the Xi Jinping-led decision-making circle.
The two reports could be considered sisters, if not written by the same people. They have their own focus, but they echo each other. In particular, the “longer cable” reiterates in more detail the call in “The China Challenge in All Its Aspects” that the United States must develop a national strategy toward China with the full support of congressional leadership, a strategy that has bipartisan consensus and can survive multiple elections and administrations, and that is authoritative and takes the form of a presidential directive. It must be long-term, implemented over the next thirty years; and it must work with the G-7, NATO and Asian treaty partners and regularly measure success in achieving the overall goals of the strategy. I think these “musts” are quite Kennanian in their wisdom.
And even more Kennanian in its vision, the “longer cable” states that the U.S. grand strategy toward China should be clear in its objectives: to deter China from establishing a hostile international order to the detriment of the West; to deter China from attempting to expand China’s borders, including through the reunification of Taiwan; and to deter China from attempting to export its political model. “The Longer Wire states that the United States should implement a “red line” strategy, and that the United States should contain the Chinese Communist Party whenever it crosses the red line.
But these reports also have shortcomings and flaws. In particular, the “longer cable” suggests that the U.S. strategy toward China should push the CCP back to pre-2013. This suggests that the authors still have illusions that the pre-2013 Communist Party was more friendly to the West. In fact, there are many similarities between the Hu-Wen era then and the Xi Jinping era now. For example, there is no fundamental difference between their adherence to the Communist regime, their fear of peaceful evolution in the West, and their suppression of civil society. The difference is that the more globally ambitious Xi Jinping has turned Hu Jintao’s idea of changing the international order from theory to reality.
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