Lawfare Daily: Arne Westad on ‘The Coming Storm’

[Intro]

Arne Westad: If a world class crisis of the 1914, kind of black swan event, where to come along today with tensions already running high, I really worry about that aspect of, of personalized predominance or, or, or rule. I think that was one of the things that really did go wrong in the summer of 1914, was that a number of these people, because of the personalities, were not able to pull back when they should have seen that it was in their interest to pull back.

Michael Feinberg: It's the Lawfare Podcast. I am Senior Editor at Lawfare Michael Feinberg. And with me today is Professor Arne Westad of Yale University to talk about his book, “The Coming Storm.”

Arne Westad: The important thing I think today is to try to get some more stability into the international system in general. This is true for the ongoing wars at the moment with regard to Ukraine, with the war in Iran. It's also true for what probably in terms of the overall picture, is even more dangerous for, for for great power confrontation, which is the situation with regard to Taiwan or the situation on the Korean pennisula.

Michael Feinberg: Today we will be discussing China's rise, the West's response to it, and what we can learn from prior eras of history about this potential conflict.

[Main Podcast]

You raise very interesting parallels between the era where the world was just on the cusp of what eventually became known as World War I and our contemporary times with a variety of hotspots, mainly in East Asia that you argue could very well without amelioration turn into a similar global configuration.

But what I'd like to do is start actually a little bit before you begin in both eras and examine how our respective societies at those times got to where we are. And I know you think there are a lot of similarities between sort of 1913, 1914 and 2025, 2026. But I'm curious if we could examine the eras that led up to those inflection points.

So I was wondering if you could sort of give an overview of how you see international relations in the period from, let's say the wars for German unification in the mid 1860s, up through 1914, might compare to, let's say 1989 and the end of the Cold War up until today.

Arne Westad: Well, thanks Michael. It's great to be with you for this conversation. This is one of the podcasts I most admire and listen to often myself, so that makes it a double pleasure.

Now, on your question, I think there are, first of all, there are some really striking parallels as I, as I try to bring out in the book. Both in terms of the immediate consequences of what happens, but also in terms of these longer term developments in the late 19th century and in the late 20th and and, and early 21st centuries.

So the key is, of course, as you already alluded to, the rise of new powers. So the international systems starting to become more unstable in the late 19th century, we head towards 1900 and saw the same thing happening in the, in the 1990s and early two thousands because of China's tremendous growth and the, the challenge of, of other great powers to the established international system. So that's the, that's sort of the core of this.

But if we look at it more in depth, I would say that even though what happens from the 1870s on is very much connected to the rise of new powers, first and foremost, Germany, and then of course the United States. But the United States was in a different kind of position because it was an ocean away from what was then the most important continent in the world, namely Europe. Just like East Asia is the most important part of the world in my view today.

So it was Germany that much of decentered on, but within a context of the leading power of the time, Great Britain gradually starting to retreat from the international system that it itself had created, which of course is another similarity. It's not a complete parallel, but it's a similarity with our own time.

Britain had been spending much of the 19th century running around the world telling everyone that free trade was in their own best interest. That's in the interest of the, of the world at large. Of course, at the core of this was that it was very much in Britain's self interest because of its economic status.

And then gradually towards the end of this globalization, the 19th century globalization that Britain had been at the core of, Britain itself, starts to withdraw from that system. It finds that its own interests are not served well enough by, by what takes place that other countries are catching up with it, not just within the system, but, but because of the system of globalization. And that's of course, I, I parallel to what you have seen with the United States, certainly from the early 21st century on.

So it's not, it's not just a story of, of, of what happens in terms of rising power. So that is a very important part of the story. It's also, perhaps more importantly to me in the book, a story about how international systems decay and how they are changed very often because of actions taken by the predominant powers within those systems.

Michael Feinberg: Let's for now focus on the latter part of the chronology and China's rise. And I'm sure we'll illustrate our conversation with more historically focused incidents, but during the first George Bush administration, there was a very widespread belief that getting China to liberalize on the economic front would inexorably somehow lead to political and maybe even sociocultural liberalization, and I mean, it was incredibly widespread.

The only international relations scholar I'm aware of who really expressed skepticism at the time was John Mearsheimer. I think there is now a growing consensus, at least in the American political class, if not the academic one, that that view of where things would proceed was mistaken. And I was just wondering, as somebody who has studied how China interacts with the world, you know, your book on the subject, I think started in 1700 or 1750. What's your take on China's rise vis-à-vis actions the West may have taken?

And before you answer, I know this question is posed from a very orientalist point of view. I'm going to get to the other side next, so please don't assume I'm ignoring that. But what, what do you think we can say about how the west hindered or inculcated and reacted to the rise of China?

Arne Westad: So I was not among those who believed that China's opening to the international system, first and foremost in economic terms, would by itself lead to political or you know, more basic fundamental constitutional changes within China itself.

My view has always been that as long as the Communist Party stays in power in China. It'll put its own interest first, and it'll put the main interest that any political party of that kind has, namely staying in power above everything else. So in that sense, the, the, the direction, the overall direction is not a surprise to me.

I think in terms of what United States and its Western allies could and could not have done, I think it is relatively limited. I mean, I think the possibility, even back in the 1990s of putting some kind of conditionalities in terms of political change to China's integration into the international economic system would not have been on, on, on anyone's mind. It was, it was more about what was expected, I think, wrongly expected than about anything that could be done about this.

And the main reason for that is, of course, that that integration of China was undertaken, not primarily for China's own sake. It was undertaken in, in search of the building post Cold War or of a global economic system that served American and Western interests and were built on the values and ideals that had been developed in economic and social terms by those countries over a long period of time with the United States heading up the general direction.

So that's the reason for my sort of lack of surprise. I think if we take this all the way off to today, I think the surprise is rather in how quickly some of those very limited freedoms that had been taken by the Chinese people after the start of the reform process back in the late 1970s, could be rolled back by the X Jinping regime.

And I think that's, that has in many ways been surprising to me in terms of the speed, not the, not so much the direction. I think when Xi came to power in the early 20 teens, there were quite a number of problems that China was facing, that I think most people on the Chinese side, even people who didn't particularly care for the Communist Party thought had to be resorb.

I mean, the power of big companies, the, the, the, the moral dissolution as they would see it, particularly in the cities among young people, the new power that provinces had taken for themselves. All of this stuff that a lot of people didn't particularly like. What Xi then was able to do was to take these concerns legitimate, I think one could possibly call them in the direction of a new form of authoritarianism.

And the, and the speed with which that had happened has surprised me, but not the overall direction that this has taken. That was, I mean, it was never part of the bargain as seen from the CCP side that China would liberalize as a consequence of moving in the, in the direction of a more open international economy.

Michael Feinberg: I didn't plan to make this comparison, but in your answer just now, do you think Xi then was less guiding and dictating policy than he was simply following the natural current of history and taking advantage of it, to bring it back to the 19th century in the way Otto von Bismarck famously said, successful statesmen do. I forget his exact quotes, but I think there's one about grabbing onto the coattails of history as it passes by.

Arne Westad: Listen to the footsteps of God as he passes by and latching onto to his coat. I think that's more or less what Bismark said.

Michael Feinberg: Yeah, so you know, there is a lot of armchair psychologizing in the Western press that Xi can be explained out of a rapacious thirst to see China more powerful on the world stage. Or that we can trace his political beliefs back to the sort of ostracization and persecution of his father in the Maoist era. But it sounds like what you are arguing has considerably more nuance than that more popularized view.

Arne Westad: I mean, nuance in the sense that he, as everyone else, reacted to problems that were visible to large segments of the party elites. And even, as I said, beyond the, the, the people who had their immediate connection to party in the, in the early 20teens. But the way he responded to those challenges, particularly when he had been in power for a few years, I think was beyond what the people who had put him into that position actually expected.

So I think the, the, the sort of hyper centralization of power, the preoccupation with his own personal status, the relentless attempts are trying to undermine potential rivals and, and, and opponents. Even people who would never have identified themselves as such, that is going much further than anyone that I know expected when he became general secretary of the party.

So I think we have to think about those two things at the same time. He got to where he is, and he was confirmed in that position by the party elite, particularly by the party elders because he was seen as offering solutions to problems that they also recognized. But then after a few years in power, this took off in, in, in, maybe not even in the direction, but with a degree of intensity and personalization that these people did not expect or, or very few people expected, including observers like myself. So I think those are the two things that we have to be able to think about.

Michael Feinberg: We've been talking about China's rise and its leadership from the Western perspective. Let's turn the telescope around. What is the narrative in China, in Chinese public opinion, both among political elites and sort of the general populace about what China's rise signifies and how the West has reacted to it?

Because the narrative, at least when I was in government, was one where China was somewhere between 90 percent and a hundred percent to blame for any burgeoning conflict or deterioration in relations. I'll confess, I still hold to that view somewhat, but I'm willing to entertain other points of view and you know, be open to changing my mind if that's not the case.

Arne Westad: So I think I see a lot of similarities again, a lot of parallels with what happened with regard to Germanist right in, in, in Europe, in the late 19th century. So it wasn't that Germany wasn't throwing its weight around in economic terms or in political or, or, or even military terms. Unsettling all of its neighbors, just like China in terms of its race, has unsettled many, certainly most of its, its Asian, its Asian neighbors.

But it was on the other hand also the inability back then of the establishment powers to try to figure out what would a sensible role for Germany actually be at the, at the, at the core of this most important continent in the world back then. And they were never able to resolve that problem until it was too late. I think we have faced a little bit of the same situation with China.

So China's foreign policy as it moved out of the, the early- and mid-reform era, if we now are in the late-, late-reform era, possibly are, was that many of its leaders all the Jinping generation concluded that China had already risen to a point of great influence within its own region and aiming just like Germany did back in the late 19th century for becoming the predominant power within that region.

Now, there is nothing wrong in that aspiration. I mean, China has been the predominant country in Eastern Asia for a very, very long time. The question is, how it happens, right? And, and, and, and, and the, the trajectory through which it happens. And of course, equally important, how it then interacts with what is today the predominant power in East Asia, which is the United States of America. So that's the, that that is the, the, the, the transition with regard to it.

What if we turn this to the Chinese side today? I mean, what, what I sense that I was in Beijing last week. What I very often sense is that we are now at the point when there is now coming together among Chinese, CCP elites and ordinary Chinese, that United States is somehow out to contain constrained China in terms of its natural growth.

And that of course comes in addition to those, in my view, mainly self-imposed constrictions that China has with regard to its neighbors. But of course, the, the, the CCP view, the Chinese government's view is that all of these are in, in a way created by the United States. China's bad relations with Japan, with South Korea, et cetera, et cetera, just like German leaders before World War, I believed that it somehow was all ‘perfidious albion,’ it was all the British fault that other countries objected to the, to the manner in which, in which German power, power arose.

But of course, these also matters in the broader sense. So if you, the one thing that we have to avoid, in my view, certainly slightly more long term–and there are people on this side, as you know, I mean, even within the current administration who are thinking seriously about this–is that we move from a series of conflicts between the United States and China coming out of the kind of developments that we have already talked about to a situation where ordinary Chinese believe that United States forever will be out to prevent them from the kind of growth within their own country that they expect that they would be able to foresee.

It, it is particularly important when you think about the average income in China per family still being somewhere between one seventh and, and one sixth of that of the United States. China has a lot of growing yet to do just like Germany had in the early, early 20th century, and it's when you get to the situation that ordinary Chinese, ordinary German back then believe that someone is out to prevent them from doing so that you are in real trouble.

I think my, my Yale colleague, Paul Kennedy, puts this really well in his book about the rise of Anglo-German antagonism. When he says that, you know what Britain back then was telling the Germans basically was, you know, little Hans, if you could just stop growing then everything would be fine. You know, if you went back to, to your lederhosen and, and, and, and, and, and behaved as you have before, there wouldn't be a problem.

And I feel for, to some extent, particularly in the period between the mid 1990s and, and, and, and the early 20teens that, that's what we were telling China instead of, instead of creating some kind of, of formula by which China's aspirations as it grew, could be incorporated in a better form within an East Asian framework.

Michael Feinberg: The German parallel really intrigues me because I'm actually torn personally, whether I see more of Wilhelmine Germany in China's rise, or in what I will just bluntly call America's newfound antagonistic attitude to the rest of the world, including some of our oldest and closest allies.

And I'm gonna make another comparison of personalities, so you don't have to, but if you want to respond, I will more than welcome it. Wilhelm II was very famous for a mercurial, personality based, transactional foreign policy. He had this weird love-hate relationship with his various cousins, including the Czar and some of the leadership of Great Britain. I, I think there was a period where Wilhelm insisted on sending paintings he made to the Czar on a regular basis that were very, they looked like something outta one of Robert E. Howard's, Conan the Barbarian novels where like the two of 'em are on a cliff with soaring eagles or what have.

And frankly I see a lot of that sort of attitude in how the United States is approaching the globe. And it gives me some, some basis for amusement, just 'cause we all need that. But it also worries me that we could have two countries that are taking on different aspects of Prussia and then Germany's rise at odds with each other. That is a very volatile combination.

Arne Westad: That's a really good point. I mean, I, I have never thought of  Kaiser Wilhelm and Xi Jinping as being identical or even similar in terms of, of the personal qualities or even personal behavior. One of the fun things about this is that when I did an article in Foreign Affairs that was many ways the basis for this book about a year and a half ago, and they had an illustration to that article of President Xi gradually morphing into Wilhelm II, which as you can imagine, went down like a ton of lead in China. Didn't make me the man of the day in, in, in Beijing.

And it, it, it is, in a way doubly unfortunate when I discuss this with people in, in, in Beijing, because I do not actually make that, that specific comparison. I mean, I, I, I, I think they are very different in terms of personalities. But going to your point, I think personality matters to a, to, to a, to a great deal. And I think one should look at this in terms of the combination of what you could call strongman rule that we had a tendency to move toward before 1914 with what is happening today.

Michael Feinberg: So I have to apologize. I may not have fully articulated my point my concern was that I see Xi as a sort of Bismarkian figure, whereas I see Trump as a sort of Wilhemian.

Arne Westad: No, I got that and I, I, I think. I think that's to some extent true. I wouldn't quite, I mean, I think if we want to stay in the world of, of, of comparisons, and my, my students of course love this.

China's Bismarck in many ways is Deng Xiaoping. I mean, he's, he's the one who was able to plan for the future thinking strategically about where China's interests were. Xi Jinping is not like that. I mean, his approaches remind me much, much more of, of some of those, not necessarily just in Germany, but political leaders that came after the Bismarckian era who were trying to deal with, as we already talked about conflicts and issues that were real and were there, but couldn't quite find a way of doing so.

Donald Trump, on the other hand, had some, you know, it certainly has some of the impulsiveness. He also, in my view, has some of the striking lack of thinking strategically over the long term that Wilhelm II also had. I mean, and, and this is part of what worries me, so I mean, if, if a world class crisis of the 1914 kind, sort, the black swan event, where to come along today with tensions already running high. I really worry about that aspect of, of personalized predominance or, or, or rule.

I think that was one of the things that really did go wrong in the summer of 1914 was that a number of these people, because of the personalities, were not able to pull back when they should have seen that it was in their interest to pull back.

Michael Feinberg: If you look back at some of the more robust in depth treatments of that summer, whether we're talking popular history like Barbara Tuchman or some of Christopher Clark's later work that is, I would argue a bit more academic and rigorous, but that's very much an ongoing theme, is how personality driven a lot of this was. And an inability to, for the leaders to step out of themselves. And even attempt to see things from another person's point of view, not as a matter of empathy or grace, but simply as a means of coming up with a better strategy for themselves. It seems to have never occurred, and I very much worry that that could lead to a Black Swan event.

So I, I wanna address something in a region that you deal within your book, but not as in depth with China. I was hoping I could pull some more out of you about it. And you know, shortly after your book came out, the United States launched a war against Iran. And I can very well see a world in which a distant war in a far away land, as one of the less illustrious British prime ministers would say, become something considerably more in the same manner that the assassination of a single Habsburgian official led to a conflagration that utterly unmade the world as it was then known.

And I was just wondering, should we be concerned about this conflict in Iran, a country which in many sense is integrated into the sort of international ecosystem that Russia and China also belong to expanding into something that does resemble eras in history we would prefer not to go back to?

Arne Westad: There is certainly a risk of that. I mean, clearly in my view, particularly with how the war has developed over the last couple of weeks, I, I think there is a definite possibility. Not that this in itself I think could lead immediately to a greater configuration, but that it could come together with other issues, right, in creating a kind of situation that it would be really, really hard to get out.

And of course, problem in the summer of 1914 was that Kaiser Wilhelm had been on his annual sailing vacation in the Norwegian fjords and was called back to Potsdam in in July 1914. And when told that this was because of a Balkan crisis, he exploded as he often did, and said, you know, why did you call me back here for another Balkan crisis? I've had 13 of these in my reign and we all always been able to contain them.

And then there are those terrifying 36 hours after that. But it dawns on him and everyone else that this time is different, that this time it might be much more difficult to pull back. I worry about that with regard to the current war in Iran, because you know, usually through the Cold War, even before the Cold War, we had plenty of conflict in the Middle East.

And to use that term, you know, usually the conclusion among great power leaders was what happens in the, in the Middle East stays in the Middle East, but that's become less and less true. I mean, since the Iraq war especially, or since 9/11, right. I think we are now in territory where because of the nature of this U.S. war against Iran, the chances for an international spillover are far greater than we've ever seen with any kind of U.S. involvement in the Middle East.

And that's one of the reasons why I think it is so important to pull back because we do not know in which direction this is heading, and I think the consequences could be very severe.

Michael Feinberg: So let's get to sort of the latter third of your book, then how do we effectively walk ourselves back from that cliff's edge?

And I'll speak from the American's perspective, like how do you walk back from that precipice that could lead to horrible conflict? And I don't think there is anybody who has ever studied, for example, the PLA and the U.S. military and the buildup in the South China seas or goings on the Taiwan straits, who would argue that war would not be horrific.  Even a short war would have unimaginable casualties that have been unseen for almost a century.

How does a nation, whether the United States or China, walk back from that edge and do so in a manner that doesn't look like self humiliation to their constituencies?

Arne Westad: Look, the, the important thing I think today is to try to get some more stability into the international system in general. This is true for the ongoing war at the moment with regard to Ukraine, the war in Iran. It's also true for what, probably in terms of the overall picture is even more dangerous for, for for great power confrontation, which is the situation with regard to Taiwan or the situation on the Korean Peninsula.

And I think, you know, we, we are still in territory where it's quite possible to move back from the level of confrontation that we can see now with regard to these regional conflicts. We, we have a summit between President Xi and Trump coming up in Beijing now, we are told in May, almost certainly, if that goes reasonably well, further meetings between the two during the course of the year. This provides an opportunity, at least on those kinds of issues, to try to find ways in which you can infuse a little bit more stability into the situation.

 So I think it has to be thought of in two parts. The first part is what is ongoing already. I mean, there's a desperate need to end the military phase of the conflicts in Ukraine and, and in Iran. You know, we, we need to do much more than what we are doing at present to try to find some kind of, of stability in those kinds of situations.

But in addition to that, we also have situations such as the ones with regard to Taiwan. I'm of the view that I'm, I'm, I'm pretty sure that President Xi and President Trump are going to start in the conversations dealing with, with economic and technology and narcotics issues. This piece that just came out a couple of days ago in, in Foreign Affairs where I argue along those lines.

But I also think it's incredibly important to make use of this opportunity then to move on to these other territorially based strategic issues, and this is the reason why I'm a limited optimist. I mean, I think there is room, at least for temporary compromise on some of these issues.

I mean, if you take Taiwan, I think the problem is that both sides, it's as if you know, you pull on a string and from two ends and you just make the not harder and harder and tougher and tougher to resolve. Right? Everyone, you know, with any sense knows that the best that can be achieved from either side at the moment with regard to Taiwan is status quo, right?

And yet, we know, moved ourselves into a situation where, where both sides behave as, as that is not the case, right? That they could achieve in some undefined way something more. I think one of the and I've said this in, in other contexts as well, and I I, I go into it in the book to some extent, I think if the United States were to declare that it would under no circumstance support Taiwan independence (which is not a departure from what American policy has been in the, in the past, but needs desperately needs to be restated by the president under the current conditions) that could go a long way in terms of dealing with some of the aspects of the situation, particularly if it's followed up, which it's much harder, but not unthinkable by a PLC statement in some form or another that they regard it as, as unthinkable that they would take mild reaction against the island unless it declare independence.

So if you look at the, the, this secession law on, on the Chinese side, they have this, this, this very unhealthy lack of clarity between de facto and de jure independence for Taiwan. It's in China's own interest to be very clear about this and it, that it is de jure. And it wouldn't cost very much politically for Xi Jinping to move in that direction.

So there is room for compromise here. The question is whether people are actually going to seek it and, and make use of it, because if they don't believe me, this is going to get much worse. It's problematic at the moment, but it could get much worse than what it is today.

Michael Feinberg: So what worries me about that, and I don't have a better answer. Let me be very clear about that to begin with, but the world in which you're describing, in which we seek consensus on the things that we can seek consensus for, whether because there are easier problems or because there is a domestic constituency for them in both countries.

I don't know that, you know, it doesn't solve the problem. It moves it down the road. And what it puts me in the mind of, to bring it back to the other part of your book, is the concert of Europe. You know, the sort of post-Congress of Vienna consensus.

It worked for a bit. But it didn't stop the revolutions of 1848. It did not stop the wars of German unification. There were countless other smaller conflicts. It definitely postponed things. And I guess this makes me in contrast to you, a limited pessimist. You used the analogy of a knot before, I will use another trope, and what worries me is that so many people in power in both countries see the only way to untie that knot as to cut it with a sword.

I don't want that to happen obviously. It would be immensely destructive, not just for the United States and China, but for the entire world from an economic and trade perspective, to say the least.

So I'm gonna sort of peel back the curtain on something I noticed when I was still in government working on PRC matters and ask you a question that I hope you have not been asked before.

And one thing I noticed always when it, when I was representing the country was this horrible tendency among people in charge of policy to buy important rigorously analytic books and draw entirely the wrong conclusion from them. So I, I'm thinking in particular of when Graham Allison came out with his book, which was an expansion on an earlier Atlantic article.

And the book was actually a fairly quantitative, nuanced discussion of what happens when a rising power confronts a declining one on the global stage. And he went through close to two dozen examples throughout history and offered a prescription very close to years about seeking consensus where we can in the recognitions that some things are intractable now, but the consequence of trying to resolve them militaristically is so huge that punting them is a good idea. Even if fault does, is move it down the road.

And what everybody in government took from that was conflict between China and the United States is inevitable. There's this old Greek guy, Thucydides, who talked about it, and we just need to prepare for war, which I think is precisely the opposite point of Allison's book.

So, you know, the last question I really have for you is, what is the main point you hope practitioners of diplomacy and military policy can draw from your work? And what is the biggest fear you have that they may draw from It mistakenly?

Arne Westad: Really good set of questions and I would respond as almost anyone I think of, of, of my age would, what is most important in life is time to have enough time available to do the things that you think you would want to do, not just in, in, in, in terms of the, the, the specifics of, of the conflicts that we've been talking about, but in general.

I mean, the world leaders have a lot of issues on their agenda in terms of things they want to achieve. And the only thing we know for sure is that Great Power War would do away with all of those, right? So paying for time, going back to, as you said, that 19th century precedent, which wasn't perfect, but was good enough for almost a hundred years to avoid cataclysmic great power war, that is, I think in our own time, also the best we can hope for because with that long postponement, let's call it that there is a chance for other developments, other changes like the ones you alluded to, to take place, if not peacefully, but without a world configuration.

That's the key. I mean, we must not have an order, and I think that's the 19th century lesson from this. One of those who point out better than anyone else is Henrik Kissinger. That couldn't stand in the way of economic and social change, but allow that change to play out over time and therefore reduce the risk of great power war. That is the situation I think that we are, we are facing at the moment.

So the, the recommendations that come out of my book are all in that direction that we really need to think about our own situation today. As a situation in which tensions are already running very, very high in many ways, higher among great powers than what they were in the spring of 1914, where the risk of conflicts if a world class crisis kind of black swan event that we, we, we can't even imagine at the moment, could be a terrorist act, could be a lot of things comes along. We are not in a position to handle it. So that's why we have to start now.

And I, I, I echo much of what my friend and, and, and colleague Graham Allison has, has said in, in his book, but I emphasize probably more how Thucydides ends his great book. He ends it, and Thucydides was a military man for most of his life, and he end it by saying, why did war come? War came because everyone thought that war could solve their problems.

And it turned out to be exactly the wrong conclusion that what war did was to undo the world that they lived in totally. Not just with regard to, to, to military affairs, but also with regard to social and economic affairs and, you know, destroyed the Greek world just like we destroyed the European world in, in 1914 and set up for almost a century of conflicts coming out of that disaster of, of 1914.

There is another point in this which I want to get across to our listeners, and that is, and you alluded to that quite rightly, is that great power war is different from other kinds of wars. I mean, we've seen a lot of war and, and conflict and killing and dying in our own time, and all of that is terrible. Some, sometimes for reasons, sometimes not.

Great power war is of a different dimension with regard to this. As many soldiers were killed in the first two weeks of the Battle of the Somme in the summer of 1916, as in all great power wars combined between 1815 and 1914. So throughout the, throughout the 19th century.

And of course the, the, the suffering didn't stop when that war ended. It went on for another generation through the disasters of the inter-war years, the second World War, and to some extent the Cold War. This is what people have to think about. Right? And, and, and that I think is the message of the book.

I'm, you know, I'm not a pacifist. I, I don't believe that we can abolish war. I don't even think we should attempt to abolish war, but we have to think about what the consequences of great power war would be. And the only way we can do that meaningfully is by starting now to look at the individual conflicts that already exist and see how we can reduce the tension in them so that we get enough time to move in, in these kinds of directions, thinking about how we cannot, I mean, we can't resolve over these conflicts. I, my guess is that the Taiwan conflict is gonna be unresolved for a very, very long time. What we can do is to move it away from the brink of war and, and, and that is what is needed, and that is what the book is calling for.

Michael Feinberg: I agree with almost everything you said. I just have a concern that when we talk about time, at least with respect to the Chinese government and the United States government, their domestic political systems are set up to deal with different lengths of time.

It is very difficult for the United States to form in this partisan era, a foreign policy that lasts for more than two to four years, whereas China, with a lack of concern about domestic elections, can do 5, 10, 15 year plans. And yeah, it seems to me thinking while you were talking, it's almost like the last great power war provides a momentary, by which I mean decades long, if not a century, inoculation against the next one. But like many vaccines, it eventually loses its efficacy, and I very much fear that we are hurdling to that point without thinking about it.

Arne Westad: I worry about that too. I mean, I, I, when I was writing this book, I was acutely aware that there was only about 0.01% of the world's population today who actually experienced great power war. I mean, that was the situation in the early 20th century as well.

And there are all of these people on all sides. I mean, not just in the United States and in China, but everywhere who are actually thinking, mad as it may seem, that war might be part of resolving their problems. So, I mean, much of that comes out of the, the lack of, of understanding and experience with, with great power war.

I don't think China in many ways it's better placed for this than what United States is. I mean, there are so many weaknesses within the Chinese decision-making system because of the way that it is set up, especially at the moment. There is so little continuity in terms of many aspects of Chinese policymaking. Think about what has been happening within the PLA of late, that this idea that China really would be able to, to, to plan for the long term, at least at the moment, I don't see very much of that.

And, and that's not a good thing. I mean, I would like China as I would like the United States to be able to plan better for the future. In, in the United States, as you say, although there were circumstances, which of course haven't always been the case in the 20th century and up to up to now, it makes it harder to plan.

But on the Chinese side as well, I mean, I, I, I do think that if you think about planning, I mean, if you compare the kind of planning that in terms of international affairs that the current Chinese government is able to do, compared to, for instance, Deng Xiaoping, China's Bismark, how he was able to think about these things in terms of generations, you know, there's a huge difference.

So short-termism you find everywhere and it is, it is scary and, and we have to try to find our way out of it, but we also have to recognize like, like you have said, that it exists and it's there and it's something we have to deal with.

Michael Feinberg: Well on that note, which is I will take an implicit argument for policymakers to study more history, and I would expand that to the general population of both countries as well. I think we will leave it. And I will thank you for joining us today and wholeheartedly recommend your book “The Coming Storm” to our audience. I think it is probably the next best thing those of us who did not go to school in New Haven can get to taking the famous grand strategy seminar. So thank you again.

Arne Westad: It has been a great pleasure, wonderful conversation. Thank you.

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