As top U.S. and Chinese representatives bicker in Alaska, a novel hypothesizing war between the United States and China in 2034 had its online debut March 18. Both authors of the novel are former U.S. military personnel, and one is a retired admiral. How do they envision U.S.-China relations more than a decade from now in their book? And what is their message?
Tensions between the U.S. and China have been rising in recent years, and there have been rumors of a war between the U.S. and China, especially in the South China Sea where there are constant military confrontations between the two countries. This recently published book, 2034: A Novel of the Next World War, seems to respond to this folk imagination.
The Imagination of War and Non-War
The novel opens with a description of China causing trouble in the South China Sea on March 12, 2034, by sinking two U.S. guided missile destroyers on a “free voyage” in the waters. At the same Time, a U.S. F35E fighter jet was brought under the full control of Iranian military Hackers. Thus begins a war in which the United States and China are the main adversaries, culminating in a nuclear war that devastates the lives of both peoples.
The book depicts many of the key players in the war, including top officials and ordinary soldiers from the United States, China, Iran, Russia, and India. The book’s co-author, James G. Stavridis, is a retired U.S. admiral whose military experience provides a rich resource for depicting these characters.
Instead, he told a March 18 premiere plus symposium hosted by the Atlantic Council in Washington, D.C., that the book was written to try to avoid war, “You can imagine how terrible the scenario of war would be, if we fell into it in a muddled way, as we did in Europe in the 1940s. So the point is how are we going to reverse the process.”
It’s often said in the U.S. military that the military is the group that wants to fight the least. Twenty years ago, Admiral Stavridis commanded the USS Enterprise carrier battle group in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom in the Persian Gulf for U.S. forces. I’m sure he knows what it’s like to be at war.
Another author, Elliot Ackerman, also served in the U.S. Marine Corps for eight years. What the book is trying to say, he says, is that there is no real winner of the war, “it won’t be the United States, it won’t be China, the only beneficiaries of this conflict will be other countries.
Does China have an advantage?
While the war between the United States and China is portrayed from the perspective of the American soldier, the book emphasizes the military advantages that China has. In the aforementioned beginning stages of the war, it was the use of cyber weapons by China and Iran that made the U.S. military advantage completely dysfunctional before they managed to defeat the U.S. warships and fighter jets.
While this is a hypothetical novel, Stavridis, who currently serves as dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, does not believe that China’s military advantage is empty, “If we are going to compete with China, we have to maintain our technological advantage because they are also rising fast.”
He argues that three pillars are critical for the U.S. to maintain its technological edge, including cybersecurity, Drones and the Marine Corps Raider Corps.
But the novel focuses on the fact that it was a miscalculation by all parties involved in the war that led to the outbreak of war. This is somewhat like this high-level U.S.-China meeting in Alaska. Outsiders assumed that the meeting would be symbolic and that there would be no substantive negotiations. But it turned out that the first meeting between the two sides after the Biden administration came to power was a violent collision.
Stavridis believes there is much work to be done to avoid misjudgment of each other by China and the United States. He questioned whether the so-called U.S.-China summit hotline has worked: “Is there really a so-called hotline between Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Joe Biden? I don’t think so. We had it during the Cold War, you can see that in the movie ‘Dr. Strangelove. I mean we have to test whether this is working.”
He also stressed that the U.S. must be clear about where each other’s red lines are and “must decide exactly where our own red lines are? Confrontation when necessary, but also doing our best to adopt a cooperative posture. We will never compromise with China in this historic part of the South China Sea. But the bad news is that China also sees this very seriously as well.”
It’s the characters that matter
In both reality and fiction, both authors emphasize that the characters are the most crucial.
Stavridis argues that to avoid miscalculation on both sides, the U.S. and Chinese heads should be allowed to establish a personal connection, so that Biden and Xi get to know each other.
Ackerman, on the other hand, said that although the novel is written about characters from different countries, it comes from his training as a soldier because they think about who their opponents are every day. Both authors wanted the novel to leave an impression in people’s minds of those specific characters.
Stavridis, on the other hand, emphasizes that the subjects of the novel are real human beings, “Life is good, and we want to make sure that life goes on. But we put the book down and look out the window and we have to say to ourselves: you want to avoid this war, but how do we do it?”
That may be the very question that all people must face.
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