Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This book is really about the rise of China. America is facing its first serious economic competitor since it overtook Britain in the 19th century. The US has also been the dominant power in Asia since 1945. It has fought in Korea and Vietnam and protected Taiwan, Japan, Philippines, and the sea lanes in the region. When President Xi became China’s leader in 2012, he announced that his aim was to make China great again. This has meant a more assertive China. The book is a little disappointing because it points out that both countries are on a collision course but it does not present any good options for the US. Graham Allison is a professor at Harvard. He reviews history and observes that when a new superpower emerges the reigning hegemonic power feels threatened and often (but not always) decides to crush the upstart before it gets too powerful. Often this results in a catastrophic war. Allison calls this the “Thucydides trap” after the ancient Greek historian. He starts with the Sparta-Athens war (431 BC - 404 BC). Sparta decided that it had to defeat Athens before it became too powerful. Thucydides tells us that war between the cities was more or less inevitable. Allison picks sixteen similar examples of great power conflicts over the last 500 years, only four ended peacefully. Allison describes the behavior of the US after it became the world’s leading economic power in the 1890s. This sets a worrying precedent should the Chinese choose to follow our example. America started to apply the Monroe Doctrine and regarded the Western Hemisphere as its backyard. Teddy Roosevelt made it clear to the Europeans that the US would not tolerate interference in the Americas and it would fight to protect its interests. The US threatened Britain and Germany with war. Fortunately, the Europeans backed down. China now regards the South China Sea as its backyard and has started to flex its muscles. Xi talks of “Asia for the Asians” and wants the US to withdraw its military from the region. It is not clear what happens next if we try and maintain the current status quo. Foreign policy experts such as Ian Bremmer and Robert Kaplan have advised appeasement and suggested that we should terminate our obligations to Taiwan and Japan. John Mearsheimer is a history professor at the University of Chicago and he has also written about China and America. Mearsheimer believes that once countries become economically dominant they seek to dominate their region militarily. He calls this “offensive realism.” The neo-cons who worked for the first President Bush wanted the US to become a global hegemon and they created the Wolfowitz Doctrine, which Allison does not mention. The doctrine wanted to prevent any new rising power becoming a rival as powerful as the Soviet Union. This is the "Thucydides Trap" as foreign policy. Mearsheimer predicts that China will attempt to dominate Asia so that conflict with the US is probably inevitable. This is the crucial foreign policy problem of our age, what happens in Syria is irrelevant by comparison. Allison believes that both America and China assume that they are special and inherently superior to other nations. They expect other countries to follow their lead and be submissive. This could present problems in Asia for the US. China has made it clear it does not want be part of a world order dominated by the US and its liberal democratic values. Like the US, it wants to lead. Allison believes that there will soon come a time when the US would probably lose a military confrontation in the South China Sea. The Chinese have developed land-based missiles that could sink America’s carriers if they get too close to the Chinese mainland. Does that mean we should respond like Britain in the early part of the 20th century and back-off? What would that mean for Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea? Allison does not offer any real answers. Some of Allison’s chosen historical lessons were not particularly relevant to the coming conflict with China and I often disagreed with his analysis. Allison describes WW1 primarily as a struggle between Britain and Germany. Germany’s decision to go to war in 1914 was mainly about its rivalry with Russia and maintaining hegemony over the European mainland, something Britain never had any interest in. Germany was concerned about protecting its backyard, which meant its long border with Russia. Moltke, the head of the German army, wanted to crush Russia before it was too late. The Tsar had a huge army and the country was rapidly industrializing. Russia had always been an expansionist power. A modern Russian army would have been a real threat to Germany. Allison's list of key players in 1914 (e.g., Churchill, Edward VII, Bethmann Hollweg, and the Kaiser) is also wide of the mark. He focuses on Churchill, who was Britain’s navy secretary at the time. On the British side, Asquith (prime minister), Sir Edward Grey (Foreign Secretary) and David Lloyd George (Chancellor) called the shots. Grey hated the Germans and wanted to help France. Lloyd George became prime minister in 1916 and his support was needed before war was declared, the party would have split without his backing. Lloyd George sat on the fence until Germany attacked Belgium. The German chancellor (Bethmann Hollweg) did not control the army or foreign policy, the Kaiser did. The Kaiser just wanted to fight Russia. However, Moltke, who was head of the army, sidelined the Kaiser. The main objective of the German army's Schlieffen Plan was to remove the Russian threat by first attacking France and Belgium. The German army believed they could defeat the French easily, as they had in 1871, and then turn and face the Russians. Moltke was not worried about Britain’s tiny army. Britain entered the war only because Germany invaded Belgium. The Germans feared the growing power of Russia, for them, it wasn't about Britain at all. Overall, the book is easy to read and very informative. What Allison makes clear is that we don't have any good options. By 1905, Britain had no economic interests in the Western Hemisphere that it was prepared to fight over, apart from Canada. It may be different for the US in Asia. If we choose to withdraw from Asia, it would raise fundamental questions about the global role of the US. We would no longer need to spend $700 billion annually on defense. This is a difficult and risky call for the US. We need a book that can hopefully explain the pros and cons of the various options.