Longtime political science professor and Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute John Mueller writes in Foreign Affairs that containment of the Soviet Union did not contribute to the end of the Cold War, and won’t work to defeat China in today’s Cold War. Instead, Mueller writes, the United States should “wait (perhaps for a long time) for China to mellow,” just as the Soviet Union mellowed, he suggests, due to internal problems and weaknesses. “The lesson of the Cold War,” Mueller explains, “is not about the value of persistent containment in breaking your adversary’s will and sapping its power. It is about the wisdom of standing back, keeping your cool, and letting the contradictions in your opponent’s system become apparent.”
China, Mueller asserts, does not pose as great a challenge to U.S. security as the Soviet Union did in the first Cold War. Mueller acknowledges that China is building its military, is in second place in total GDP, and has sought to extend its influence via the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). But, Mueller argues, China does not have the same territorial ambitions (beyond reclaiming Taiwan) that the USSR had, and does not present “the same king of ideological challenge as the Soviet Union.” And like the Soviet Union, China has “endless” domestic problems and difficulties, including corruption, slowing economic growth, environmental problems, an aging population, growing youth unemployment, “restive minorities” who have been deprived of civil liberties, and a “decline in confidence” among the ruling class. (READ MORE from Francis P. Sempa: Joint Force Quarterly Enters Wokeland)
Added to those internal problems is China’s counterproductive “wolf-warrior” diplomacy that has antagonized other regional powers, writes Mueller. And he ridicules the “much-touted” BRI as a debt monster eating away at China’s growth and economic stability.
Perhaps Biden, too, believes that we only need to wait for China to mellow.
The essence of Mueller’s argument is that there is nothing about China’s policies to contain. It doesn’t threaten American interests and security and carries the seeds of its own destruction — just like the Soviet Union in the 1980s. History, apparently, will do the hard work of foreign policy for the United States. We will win the second Cold War by essentially doing nothing.
It is probably no accident that Mueller makes no mention in his article of Ronald Reagan or Reagan’s policies in the 1980s that exploited and multiplied the contradictions that bedeviled the Soviet empire. Richard Nixon’s skillful triangular diplomacy that magnified the Sino-Soviet split is also missing from Mueller’s piece. Mueller does, of course, mention George F. Kennan, who promoted and explained containment in his famous “X” article in Foreign Affairs in July 1947, but only to criticize the early Kennan who advocated “firm and vigilant containment” and praise the later Kennan who gradually distanced himself from his own doctrine. (READ MORE: The Biden Doctrine: ‘I Don’t Want to Contain China’)
Mueller argues that it was containment’s “failure” as a policy that caused Soviet expansionism to mellow. The Soviet Union, he claims, sowed the seeds of its own destruction by going on the geopolitical offensive after the United States pulled back from containment after our defeat in Vietnam. Perhaps Mueller thinks it was Jimmy Carter who won the Cold War.
In truth, Jimmy Carter almost lost the Cold War by abandoning allies in Iran and Nicaragua in the name of “human rights,” cutting important weapons systems in the face of an enormous Soviet military build-up, and pursuing arms control despite strong evidence of Soviet cheating on past agreements. It was only the naked Soviet aggression in Afghanistan that finally convinced Carter that our own defenses needed building-up.
History will do our work for us.
In one sense, Mueller is right — containment did not win the Cold War. Ronald Reagan’s policy of “liberation” or “roll back” won the Cold War. It was a policy outlined in National Security Directive 75 in January 1983, which identified as U.S. foreign policy tasks the following: “To contain and over time reverse Soviet expansionism by competing effectively on a sustained basis with the Soviet Union in all international arenas — particularly in the overall military balance and in geographical regions of priority concern to the United States” and “To promote … the process of change in the Soviet Union toward a more pluralistic political and economic system in which the power of the privileged ruling elite is gradually reduced.” Reagan’s policy included military, economic, and political pressure on the Soviet system that targeted the weaknesses and contradictions of that system. Reagan did not “wait” for the Soviet system to collapse; he hastened its collapse. (READ MORE: China Adds a Dash on Its Map Around Taiwan)
President Biden presumably agrees with Mueller. The president stated recently in Vietnam that he does not want to contain China. Perhaps Biden, too, believes that we only need to wait for China to mellow. History will do our work for us. If only foreign policy were that easy.