How the Past Shadows China’s Future

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Arne, wonderful to have you. Thanks for doing this and for the series of essays you’ve written for Foreign Affairs over the last several years.

ODD ARNE WESTAD

Really good to be with you, Dan. It’s always good to have a conversation with you.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

What is so rich and almost singularly valuable, I would say, about your work is that you’ve done some of the most important scholarship on Cold War history and Chinese history. You’ve shaped new approaches to international history more broadly. And yet, you’re also extremely engaged in international affairs and policy debates in the present and able to bring that deep historical learning and perspective to those debates. And I have to say, when I look at your historical work, so much of it is almost eerily relevant to central issues today, not just in the sense of there being echoes, but in the, I guess the Faulkner sense of the past not even being past. We’re still, in some sense, fighting the Chinese Civil War and the Cold War. We’re dealing with the legacies of imperialism and decolonization, and those are all subjects you’ve done pretty authoritative work on.

So with that, I want to start by going back to an essay you wrote in 2019 called “The Sources of Chinese Conduct.” The name was meant to be, in some sense, ironic. That was a moment where we were all kind of grappling with the new paradigm in U.S.-Chinese policy, and there were endless calls to go back to the famous George Kennan article in Foreign Affairs in the early Cold War I, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct.” You, in that essay, both talked about what the aims of Chinese policy were—what the sources of Chinese conduct were—but also cast some doubt on whether that parallel was useful. So I’m curious how you see the parallel now between the Soviet Union and the [Chinese Communist Party] today. And as you try to understand Chinese aims and the drivers of Chinese aims, how do you explain those?

ODD ARNE WESTAD

Well that’s very kind as an introduction, Dan. It’s unfortunate also in terms of how some of my interests in the past are connected to things going on today. It’s also far too accurate. I think there are many of those issues that I’ve been dealing with in my past work as a historian, and for that matter also as a commentator on contemporary affairs, that you see now recycled but in a slightly different format than what we have seen in the past. So much of my work more recently has been to deal with that, to deal with parallels of the past and what they can tell us about the period that we have now entered into.

I think, going back to that 2019 article in the journal—and the title was entirely the journal’s, by the way, and not mine, I should point out—I see some continuities from that. I mean, I do think that the Cold War parallel—more used, I think, back then than what it is now—is still a faulty, and, to some extent, dangerous analogy to use for the Sino-American relationship now, or for that matter any great-power relationship at the moment. One of the points that I made in that article was that from a Chinese point of view the world looked increasingly multipolar, not just because that was something that the Chinese Communist leadership said they wanted, but because that was a reflection of the reality they saw. I think from an American perspective, certainly back then, not so much. But I think that perspective may actually be one of the things that have changed. I think far more people in this country today are talking about facets of a multipolar world than was the case five, six years ago. And I think the most recent election in this country has sort of catapulted us further in that direction. And that’s, of course, an overall sense of development that many people in the Chinese leadership and elsewhere say that they welcome. It’s something that they’ve been striving for. The problem for them is that they have a really hard time dealing with that outcome when they actually find it to be, if not completed, then well underway. It’s difficult, right, to deal with multipolarity, because none of us have actually experienced it in our own lifetimes. We went from a bipolar international system over onto what some people, I think quite correctly, call a unipolar moment in terms of the United States’ global hegemony.

But together these time periods have lasted for a very long time, so going back to true multipolarity is something that we haven’t seen, in my view, since the beginning of the twentieth century, which of course is the reason why I’m now so preoccupied with learning from the past, not just with regard to the Cold War and what came after—now there are important lessons there, as well—but going back to the last time when we had true multipolarity, which in my view was in the early part of the twentieth century before 1914.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Let me linger on the Cold War analogy, and I’ll try to play you off a bit against a colleague of yours and my former advisor, John Gaddis, who wrote a piece in Foreign Affairs a few years ago with Hal Brands arguing that while you can quibble with some of the parallels between the U.S.-Soviet Cold War and the U.S.-Chinese relationship now, that in fact there’s a lot to learn from that dynamic. So I’m curious where you see it as dangerous to overlearn from that experience and then where you see useful lessons. And I would note here that you wrote a piece in 2021 in Foreign Affairs with Li Chen, a Chinese historian, where you do kind of point out that there are some warnings in that history, even if we shouldn’t try to make the parallel too exact.

ODD ARNE WESTAD

No, I think that’s absolutely correct. I think John and Hal have got it right, in the sense that there are some very significant lessons that we should learn from the most recent long-lasting international system, which was the Cold War. Let me return to that in a second.

I think the problem, though, is that the way that the phrase “Cold War” or the term “Cold War” has been used in order particularly to characterize the Sino-American relationship really is not sufficient to describe a very new reality. I’ve already talked about multipolarity, which is one of the issues at stake here. I don’t see the world as turning increasingly . . . even when I wrote that piece back in 2019, I didn’t see the world becoming increasingly bipolar as during the Cold War. I saw it as becoming increasingly multipolar, and I think it’s much further along in that direction now.

Also, crucially, because this is really important in terms of policymaking, the great powers of today are competing within the same international economic system. And that’s again something we haven’t had really for a very long time, in terms of the defining aspects of international affairs. I mean, you really have to go back to the early part of the twentieth century to find that kind of integration on a global scale. In fact, we haven’t quite gotten there yet when globalization took a downward turn, but at that point we were almost off to the levels of 1913 in terms of, percentage-wise, global interaction on trade and finance.

The Soviet Union during the Cold War self-isolated. It self-isolated economically for good reasons, because they wanted to overturn the economic system that capitalism had put in place in the twentieth century and replace it with something entirely different. In many ways, as Kennan was fond of pointing out, and as John Gaddis points out in his own work, this meant that the United States, in a way, was in a, if not better, then certainly a simpler kind of position because of that self-isolation that happened from the side of the Soviet Union. Containment was an option that was readily available, whether you actively searched for it or not, with a power that didn’t want to be integrated into a, at that point, very slowly but gradually globalizing international economic order. So these just . . . those two in themselves, Dan, I think are very strong indicators that even though there are things we have to learn from the Cold War, this system is fundamentally difficult. It’s much more complex. It’s much more difficult to handle in many ways, because there are many more parties involved. It’s much more unclear in terms of the connections between economic strategy and strategies in other aspects of state activities. So that, I think, is crucial.

Now, there are lessons to be learned. I mean, I think there are many lessons, particularly in the current moment. I think some of them Li Chen and I pointed to in the Foreign Affairs piece that you referred to. The need for top leaders to meet, and to meet repeatedly, and to get to know each other; the utility of respect, even though you deeply disagree with the policies of another great power; the sense that there is some kind of respect introduced in the Cold War, mainly through the detente process, is important, is really important if there is a big global crisis coming along. And I would also say the need to focus on some degree of combination of strategic deterrence and strategic reassurance in which elements of arms control play some role. All of those are lessons from the Cold War, and they are lessons that point in the direction of the things that didn’t exist in the early part of the century. And therefore, when a real crisis came along in 1914, just made the situation so much more difficult to happen. So, learning from history in that sense is absolutely necessary and possible even though we do not equate one international order with another.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

I want to go back to this parallel to the pre–World War I period that is clearly front of mind for you and that was at the center of your most recent Foreign Affairs piece. But I want to linger first a bit on the Chinese side of this. I think one of the things that’s so striking about your work as a historian is that you spend time and have spent a lot of time in archives and talking to people not just in Washington, but also in Beijing and in Moscow, and trying to understand these strategic interactions from the perspectives of players on all sides. When you look at Chinese strategy in this moment, I think so much of the policy debate really comes down to questions about Chinese aims and how expansive those aims are, how revolutionary or revisionist they are. You’ve written about this in your Foreign Affairs pieces. You’ve written a book about China’s interactions with the world over centuries. How do you understand Chinese aims at this point? If you look at CCP’s both regional and global strategy, how do you understand it?

ODD ARNE WESTAD

So if you think in international terms, I think the current Chinese leadership strategy is pretty straightforward. They want to become the predominant power in Eastern Asia, and therefore also in the western Pacific. I think there is absolutely no doubt about that. That’s how Chinese strategy has been built for the last two decades, gradually at first, and then more intensely as China’s economic potential and power has grown. I see much less evidence, as I pointed out repeatedly, of China having any kind of deliberate or specific set of strategies to become a globally dominant power replacing the United States.

Now, there are two points to be made with regard to those conclusions. The first one is, of course, as we see from the twentieth century, for great powers appetite sometimes increases with eating. The fact that China doesn’t today have a uniform strategy for becoming globally predominant is not the same thing as China wouldn’t move there over time if given the opportunity to do so. The other one is, which is probably more significant, is that just like in the early part of the twentieth century with Europe, today dominating Eastern Asia means being the predominant power within the global international system, because it is by far the most important region. If you think about the whole belt, from India and the Himalayas to Japan, I mean this is where much of the history of the world in the future is going to be decided because of its economic dynamism, because of its significance in terms of other forms of global interaction that we see increasingly in terms of technology, for instance, but also, which is another parallel with the early twentieth century, because of the tensions that already exist within the region itself. This is not just a question of China’s rise. It’s a question of China’s interaction with other powers that jealously guard their sovereignty, that stress their own significance within the region and further afield.

So I think one needs to bear both of those thoughts in mind at the same time. The sense that you sometimes have when people like myself are saying, “I don’t see a Chinese grand strategy for world domination”—it’s not the same thing as saying that what China is doing at the moment couldn’t be highly problematic for itself, for its neighbors, and for the United States.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Do you see consistency or dramatic change in those aims over time? If you look over the last few decades, there are ways in which this looks quite similar to Chinese policies even before the PRC was established and ways in which it looks quite different. So I’m curious how you try to make sense out of that historical arc.

ODD ARNE WESTAD

I think over the past two decades since China’s economy got into high gear towards the end of the last millennium, I see a lot of consistency and development over time rather than any significant breaks. What many of us, myself included, got wrong was the capabilities and how quickly the development of the opportunities for China to act in the direction that I’ve already described, how quickly that would actually happen. We thought, if not in terms of generations then half-generations, and we should really be thinking about decades, and in some cases even less than that. I’m thinking here about China’s military transformation, which is, in many ways, quite remarkable and faster than what many of us assumed. I’m thinking about the growth of Chinese technological capabilities, and maybe especially, as we are seeing right now, the ability to innovate, which is something that I think we got entirely wrong as late as half a decade ago. So I do see consistency, but in an intensifying kind of way.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Has Xi Jinping changed that trajectory in any essential ways? He’s obviously loomed so large both in Chinese debates and in our debates about Chinese strategy, but to what extent are we overly focusing on the individual here?

ODD ARNE WESTAD

I think we are, to some extent, overfocusing on Xi Jinping as an individual. I mean, there are aspects of China’s foreign policy, in terms of presentation, in terms of how Xi is much more preoccupied with underlining the global significance of China’s growth than what his predecessors were, and probably what other alternatives in terms of being general secretary of the party back in the early 2010s would have done. Has it changed the overall trajectory of Chinese foreign policy? I don’t think so, at least not all that much. I think when we’ve had tests of the directions that Xi wants to go in in the past, I think he’s opted for something that is relatively consistent with what you see his predecessors doing, but of course, under circumstances in which China just has so much more power within the international system than any of his predecessors have had, or indeed any Chinese leader has had since the late eighteenth century.

So this is not just about what has happened during the period of Chinese communism. And these comparisons between Xi and Mao Zedong, I sometimes find a little bit ridiculous. They are both communists of a sort, but beside that what they have in common is relatively limited. But if you go a little bit further back in China’s very, very long history, of course you would find people who are basing themselves on Chinese capabilities being significantly improved with regard to the rest of the world and then acting on it. And that’s what you see from Xi Jinping.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

If Mao is not the right model there, who do you look to? Who sheds light on Xi Jinping in the world?

ODD ARNE WESTAD

So I think Xi has a lot in common, both for good and bad, with the Qing era emperors, particularly probably the two that are most well known in the West, Kangxi and Qianlong, their reign names. I see some of the challenges that both of those two had to deal with in terms of domestic development, which happened very quickly during that time period. But also dealing with China’s near abroad, with countries around their borders. And one of the lessons, I think, coming out of that particular comparison is that as your power grows, it’s not necessarily easier to handle relations with foreign powers within the same region who are quite insistent that they should be able, in spite of some degree of subservience to China in terms of expansions, to handle their own affairs. And I’m pretty sure that these are history lessons that Xi and the people who work with him are quite aware of and quite interested in in many ways, even though they probably would, publicly at least, strongly disagree with my comparison.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

The Qing parallel doesn’t bode very well for the CCP. It wasn’t long after that period that the Qing fell. How do you think Xi understands that history and what warnings does he take from that?

ODD ARNE WESTAD

It lasted for quite a long time, though, and much, much longer, of course, than the CCP regime has lasted up to now. I think there are two lessons from that era that all Chinese leaders of today draw. One, I’ve already alluded to: that you have to manage your rise as a great power carefully within the region that you actually operate. You have to find some kind of system that would serve you well and which would be durable over a reasonable period of time.

The other one is, of course, what happened at the end of the Qing, this long outdrawn Qing decline from the early mid-nineteenth century and up to the early twentieth century, which was that if you didn’t modernize, if you didn’t improve your military capabilities, if you didn’t signal, as the earlier high Qing emperors had done, a certain level of not just willingness to defend what was there, but a certain aggression towards the outside world, you would be taken advantage of. You would be overwhelmed by other empires that were stronger and more interventionist than what you yourself were. So it is perfectly possible to learn, I hope, those two lessons in conjunction. They, in many ways for China’s past, even its deeper past, go together quite well.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

It’s striking from afar watching how much the CCP seems to think about and talk about history. Some of this is looking at the Soviet experience and perhaps the Qing experience, as well, and taking lessons for themselves about their own prospects. But also the way they use history publicly, whether it’s this kind of notion of the Chinese civilizational state and creating mythology around that, or we saw just recently Xi Jinping’s celebrations of the end of World War II in a kind of not entirely accurate retelling of the communist role in the victory over the Japanese. How have you understood Xi and the CCP’s use of history as you’ve watched them deploy those kinds of messages?

ODD ARNE WESTAD

This is actually one of the things that is interesting with Xi Jinping, is that he is quite consistently stressing a much longer period of fulfillment, as it were, in terms of Chinese history—that the CCP coming to power in the mid-twentieth century and then his own taking power in the early 2010s is the fulfillment of a long arc of Chinese history. I don’t know that there is any other Chinese leader, including Mao Zedong, who has been that preoccupied with linking what he is doing to the Chinese past. I mean, Mao tried to do it at times, but his own, I think, political radicalism and his need to entirely redo the kind of China that he had inherited from the past made it a very difficult argument for the CCP of that era to put forward. But Xi has no such qualms. There is a reinvention, reimagination of imperial China that connects it directly to the regime that he represents today. And that’s relatively new in terms of CCP affairs. You look at the relationship with national minorities, for instance; you look at border management issues; you look at the whole sort of position taken by China in terms of international affairs—it harks back to that earlier era when China was indeed predominant within its region. Much more than to anything that comes in between.

And the constant emphasis on the “century of humiliation”—actually more than a century in Xi’s telling of the story—is a very important part of that. It completely overlooks anything that happened in China that actually transformed the country, sometimes for the better, in the period between the time when the Qing got into trouble and the CCP coming to power. So that’s a new telling of history that Xi stands for. My impression also, talking to people who, at least in the past, have worked closely with Xi, is that that is something that he is really preoccupied with. He sees himself and the CCP today as the fulfillment of a very long period of Chinese history.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

I want to get to the pre–World War I period and this disquieting parallel. But I think it’s worth taking a brief conceptual detour before we do that. As you know better than anyone, the use of history to make sense of contemporary debates and risks is an incredibly perilous thing. You have stellar credibility as a historian, but also I think probably do that a little bit more readily than some of your colleagues. What’s the right and wrong way of doing that? What’s the case for using history in the way you do? And how do you see the pitfalls and risks when you do so?

ODD ARNE WESTAD

There is only one way of doing it, Dan, and that is very, very carefully. And you have to be aware that, even though . . . if you want to discuss outcomes, lessons from history, with people who do not spend their daily day reading a lot of history, you have to be fair both to the past and to the needs of the present in doing so. You have to present to the best of your ability an image in terms of parallels from the past that actually makes sense. It can never be accurate. It can never be 100 percent or even 70 or 80 percent. There are always differences. But I think some of my colleagues go too far in making that an almost debilitating factor in terms of trying to deal with current affairs in light of the past.

So that’s the second thing that you have to do, particularly today, is that you have to try to convince people—because it is really, really important—that the past matters. I mean it matters in people’s minds, as we just talked about Xi Jinping. We could talk about other leaders in the same direction. But it also matters in terms of trying to find ways out of situations that could get really, really dicey, not by saying, “Oh, we’ve been exactly here before,” because we haven’t, but that there are structures, and there are decisions, and there are elements of human agency that can remind us very much of the kind of challenges that we’ve had in the past. And I spend quite a bit of time trying to think that through, maybe especially after I wrote those two pieces for Foreign Affairs around the end of the last decade. How could one try to do that in ways that would make sense and would get, at least to some level, people’s attention but also would have in them something that could be really important trying to point forward to, if not solutions, then at least ameliorations of the kind of situation that we are in today?

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

I will remember being struck when I was in government and continue to be struck, in talking to policymakers and politicians since then, that they use historical analogies all the time. They also use kind of theoretical constructs. Often those are . . . it’s bad history, rather than really careful history of the kind you’re doing, and so in some sense I’d rather have people grappling with these explicitly rather than just letting people making decisions use half-remembered history from their college days.

ODD ARNE WESTAD

I think that’s true. I mean, you know, the old saying, “Beware of historians bearing false analogies.” I think there is a lot to be said for that. But also, I remember my late and much valued colleague at the Harvard Kennedy School when I was there, Ash Carter, former U.S. secretary of defense, always used to say that in the corridors of power there is only one language that really matters, and that is the language of history. You can try to speak political science, you can try to speak economics, and you wouldn’t get many people to listen to you unless you simplify it to an extreme degree. But history is something that, particularly an angle that people haven’t thought through, is something that can be immensely powerful.

But as you already pointed out, I think that’s true both for good and bad. I mean it’s not given, which you often hear, that any situation in which you have to believe you have to stand tall could potentially be another Munich, or that every American intervention, however much you want to resist them, would be another Vietnam. So you have to be very careful with how we actually use these and they have to be built on some kind of understanding of actual parallels, not just overall political argumentation.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

And you could add to those Versailles or the Concert of Europe or plenty of other parallels that are misused all the time.

ODD ARNE WESTAD

Absolutely. And maybe especially today, when we see these dramatic changes in the international system. Going back to Ash’s point, that’s exactly the moments when people are grasping for some kind of parallel that might make sense and very often, of course, makes sense in the policy direction that that individual wants to move in.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

So with those cautions let’s go into the period of history that you find most resonant and important to consider at this moment. I think a lot of people have, as we discussed, spent time looking at the Cold War parallels. There’s been plenty of consideration of the 1930s and the period of American isolationism before World War II. You see more value in looking at the period before World War I, especially as a look at the mix of rising powers and incumbent powers and how those dynamics play out. What’s the case for looking at that period? Why does that stand out so much to you?

ODD ARNE WESTAD

I think there are many reasons for this, Dan. I think, again, we have to warn here there are no exact similarities between that period and our own, and there are significant challenges in terms of applying it, in any kind of mechanical way, on the situation today. But there are also very striking parallels. Multipolarity, coming out of the nineteenth century that had seen Great Britain as a world-leading power, not always predominant in the same ways as the United States has been, but the central balancing power in the continent that was most important at the time, meaning Europe and sometimes even further afield—that role was receding. Multipolarity was the order of the day. Globalization, which in the late nineteenth century had been tremendously successful on a global scale in part because Britain was, as the center of that system, upholding free trade as the only possible way of economic interaction. By the early twentieth century all of this came under pressure, not least from within Great Britain itself, where many British leaders claimed that other countries had taken advantage of Great Britain because of the spread of globalization. Difficulties that had to do with terrorism, with nationalism, with the rise of racism in terms of international relations—all of this is something that our own time, it seems to me, has in common with that time period. So these are, in my view, sort of structural elements that existed in the world that came out of the 1890s and existed in the world coming out of the 2010s, which have a lot in common. And I think it’s important to think in those terms.

Now, in addition to that, obviously we also have to look at the individuals who are in charge at the top. And very often we find that some of their thinking is strikingly parallel to what you find today in terms of thinking about the policy outcomes of this change that they are observing with regard to alliances, with regard to military strategies, with regard to how to react if their great power comes under pressure by others.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

The parallels between China and Germany that you sketch out in the piece in Foreign Affairs, “Sleepwalking Toward War,” and then the book that you have forthcoming that expands that, when you look at Germany and China, that seems like, in some ways, the echo that is most concerning, both in the sense of—the German sense at the time, Chinese sense now—that the incumbent powers really set out to contain them and nothing will change that, and then also the failure of the rising power to effectively reassure the world—perhaps in China’s case it doesn’t really want to—but no kind of effective reassurance to the rest of the world that it doesn’t have dramatically revisionist aims. That, in some ways, seems like the most worrying element of this, as I look at it.

ODD ARNE WESTAD

Yeah, it is. Although I have significant worries on the other side as well, where I see striking similarity, in many ways, between positions taken by Great Britain back then and the United States now. Maybe first and foremost, the speed with which Great Britain was willing to undermine an international system that itself had set up and at which it had served as the center for a very, very long time, compares quite well to what you see, particularly in the second Trump administration, in terms of American attitudes.

But on the Chinese side, yeah, I think there are a lot of parallels with imperial Germany. So this is where our history gets a little bit dicey, particularly when I discuss these things in Beijing or in China because most people in China, being somewhat removed from European history, when I make a German parallel they think Nazi Germany and they think the 1930s, which, of course, is not the case and very far from the kind of parallel that I draw.

What I’m seeing is, in the German case, a European power, a new power, the center of Europe, that grows much more rapidly in terms of its influence and power than anyone had expected, including inside that country itself, and, as you said, really has trouble from within finding a role within that system that always exists. Now, not all of the reasons for that are on the German side. There was also a complete failure of imagination, particularly when you get to the very latter part of the nineteenth century, for the establishment powers, if you could call them that, to find some kind of role for Germany, to have ideas about what Germany could do within a European setting and within a more global setting. The answer far too often seemed to be toward Germany, as my colleague Paul Kennedy wrote in his wonderful book, he talked about what the British were saying was, “Little Hans, if you stop growing everything will be okay. That’s what you have to do.” And that was what Germany was told very often, that the problem was Germany’s growth. It was not something inherent with finding a place for Germany within the international system.

So I think there are problems here on both sides, issues that we can learn from Germany’s rise. The key though in the end, what led from these structural conflicts and resentments over on to actual war, as I outline in the book, The Coming Storm, is that Germany started moving politically in a direction which almost foresaw some kind of military conflict with other great powers in Europe. It was a slow process. I think China has, to some extent, been going through part of that same process. And then, a world-class crisis that no one could foresee, a black swan event, really, in the summer of 1914 comes along and no one is able to retreat from that most existential fear that the positioning, including the military plans then of the great powers, lead to.

So we have to be aware of both of these. We have to be aware both of the structural elements in creating a world of potential conflict leading up to [World War I], but also the actual decision-making. And even on that, I see difficulties with regard to our own time that point in similar directions. We’ve just been very lucky that we haven’t had a crisis of that kind come along.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

You say in the essay, the Foreign Affairs essay, that Taiwan is a prime candidate to be the Balkans of the 2020s. We spend plenty of time thinking about a crisis in the Taiwan Strait, of course. It’s far from a black swan. If you play out a scenario that alarms you, how does that crisis spread into something much worse? How do you see that risk?

ODD ARNE WESTAD

So Taiwan is, if you want to use the parallel with [World War I], Taiwan is a little bit like Alsace, Bosnia, and Belgium rolled into one. It has the territorial issues that connect to Alsace, the idea being that this is something that is national territory and therefore cannot be bargained away. It is a bit like Bosnia in the sense that it is a situation in which it’s quite likely at some point that something is going to happen connected to that particular country in a particular place that could create a great-power crisis. And it is like Belgium in the sense that on the German side back then, and I think on the Chinese side now, the basic calculation that the leaders have to make is whether a military operation against that country is something that could be undertaken without an international constellation of great powers allying against you, and particularly without the intervention of the strongest military power, back then Great Britain and now the United States.

So I think those are the sort of parallels that are there. In terms of scenarios, I could easily give you a hundred scenarios with regard to Taiwan where all of this, in one form or another, could play itself out. That’s why I’m so worried about it, though I think it is also important to underline that it’s not just Taiwan. I mean, there are other potential conflicts within Eastern Asia that could easily set off the kind of situation that we saw in 1914. I should also mention that one of the parallels that I see, and I spent a bit of time on in the book in terms of China, is Germany, up to World War I, was allied very closely with Austria-Hungary. Indeed, it was the only real important ally that Germany had, not because they loved the Austrians—far from it—but because it was the only ally that was available. Just like in that situation, China is moving closer and closer to a de facto alliance with a decrepit empire on its own doorstep, namely Russia—and not just an empire that’s in internal decline, but also that has quarrels with almost all of its neighbors, just like Austria-Hungary had. Many of those quarrels, just like for China and Ukraine, many of those quarrels back in the early twentieth century were not Germany’s quarrels. But there was this sense that they had to keep that alliance together or there would be bigger trouble in a strategic sense.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

I want to go back to the Sino-Russian relationship in a bit, but just to linger on Taiwan for a moment. You spend time talking to people in Chinese policy circles about Taiwan. And you’ve also, of course, written the best book out there about the Chinese Civil War, Decisive Encounters, and in some sense, Taiwan is just the unfinished business of the Chinese Civil War. How do you assess the risks there, and if you look back at that history, how does this fit into CCP thinking about its own legitimacy and its own future at this point?

ODD ARNE WESTAD

I think the risks are very high, and I think they’re increasing. I think there is a general sense in Beijing, and for that matter elsewhere in China, that the PRC does not have unlimited time to reunify Taiwan with the motherland, as they would put it, for two main reasons, which was presented to me very clearly last time I was in Beijing. One is the changes taking place on the island itself. The fact that younger Taiwanese feel much less Chinese than what their parents’ generation, not to mention their grandparents’ generation, actually does, and that this is a real problem. I had one recently retired general pull me aside and said, “This is really the issue. If we do not act towards reunification before it is impossible to carry out for reasons that have to do with identity and general sentiment within the island, then we wouldn’t be able to make this happen even if we used all the military force in the world." So that’s one issue.

The other issue, I think, is connected to CCP perceptions of China’s international stature. And I get this more and more often played back, Dan, that if you are going to be a predominant power within your region and you can’t even reunify your own country, then you would never have the kind of position that Chinese, now for a very long time, have been striving towards. And I think both of those arguments, I think they’re very bad arguments, but they are arguments that you hear fairly often in terms of saying that the idea of letting this go on forever is simply not acceptable from a Chinese point of view.

On the PRC side, those kinds of ideas worry me more than anything else, because you see some of the parallels that are there, not just with regard to Taiwan, but with regard to China’s overall position, compared to some of the German thinking in 1914, which was that if war were to come, it might actually be better for Germany if it happened then than if it happened later. Because some—not all, but some—German leaders had started to think that given the exceptional growth, strengthening that Germany had had in the past, you know, no tree grows into heaven. There were signs of stress, there were signs of retreat, particularly with regard to the German economy in 1914. There was the fear that other powers were strengthening themselves, particularly Russia, in ways that would make it more difficult for Germany to achieve its overall aims in eastern Europe. And when the crisis then hit, there are people within the German system who were saying, “Maybe this is what they call the maximum moment. Maybe this is the best opportunity that we have for achieving our aims.” So this is what I’m afraid of on the Chinese side. There are many things I’m afraid of on the U.S. side, as well, in terms of triggering conflict. But on the Chinese side, these are the parallels.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

In my own search for optimism one thing that seems different than in the pre–World War I period, at least in this particular moment in the U.S.-Chinese dynamic, is that, as you point out in the piece and the book, both English and German policymakers before World War I thought that their position was eroding, that things were getting worse, and so they needed to act sooner rather than later. I think you detect a degree of optimism on both the Chinese and American side right now, the sense that they have the upper hand, that things are moving in their direction and that there’s in some ways some reassurance of that.

ODD ARNE WESTAD

I’m not sure that’s true, Dan. I mean, I see some elements of that. But I also see a lot of uncertainty and even fear, both on the U.S. and on the Chinese side, with regard to these kinds of issues, particularly somewhat more long-term. I think on the American side, the fear of an even more complete political dysfunction coming out of the divides within the country, a fear that the United States might be overtaken by other countries, particularly in terms of technological development—not shared by everyone, but I see some signs of that that are pretty strong.

And on the Chinese side, likewise, I think you do find, particularly last time I was in China, some striking parallels that people are concerned that some of the power of the economic model that has carried China as far as it has now are actually starting to give way. And that the relative position of China in the future, especially regionally, might not be as strong as it is at the present. Now, none of these are reasons to go to war, and I think probably never will. But they do underpin a certain sense of reality that may play a role if the right crisis comes along.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

When you talk to both Chinese historians and people in Chinese policy circles about Taiwan and about the history of the civil war and how we got to this point, where do you disagree on the history? Where are there different pictures of what has happened in the past that in some ways contribute to dynamics now?

ODD ARNE WESTAD

I think there is very little in terms of the CCP version of the history of Taiwan that is actually historically correct. But that doesn’t matter all that much as long as it’s very strongly held on the CCP side. So I think that’s what we really should concentrate on. I mean, in reality, of course, Taiwan has never been a part of the People’s Republic of China. It was a part of the Qing empire. It was a part, though very briefly, of the mainland-based Chinese Republic. And there’s always been a strong sense in Taiwan of a certain separateness. But nothing of that actually matters in terms of the public perception in China today, where the idea is very strongly held, including by people who are not particularly fond of the domestic directions that the Communist Party has moved in over the past decade and a half, who also believe very firmly that for China, Taiwan is unfinished business, and that the emphasis is that this is not something that we can leave to later generations to deal with.

But in reality, of course, particularly in terms of avoiding the dangers that we are talking about, that is exactly what they should do, because there really isn’t any kind of solution, beyond military action, than some version of the status quo. And of course, the clearer that’s understood on all sides, including in Taipei, but also crucially in Washington, D.C., the better it will be for all of us. That’s what I meant with one of these pressure points, where one tries to change only a relatively small aspect of what has come out of more recent history, and that that could have disastrous results. And I think there is a healthy realization of that among people who provide advice to leaders both sides of the Pacific and in Taipei, as well. But it’s not as clear as I would have liked to see. I mean there are constantly people—you know this better than me—in Washington and elsewhere who are playing around with some kind of resolution to the Taiwan situation that would benefit democracy in Taiwan or the interests of the United States more than the current situation. There isn’t. Any attempt at trying to change that in this kind of situation would be doubly dangerous.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

You cited the relationship between Russia and China, which has been developing extremely rapidly, I think surprisingly rapidly over the last few years, as one of the disquieting parallels between the pre–World War I period and now. You’ve done some of the most important work on the Sino-Soviet relationship going back to the 1940s or perhaps before. Have you been surprised by the extent of development in the relationship between Russia and China now?

ODD ARNE WESTAD

Yes, I have, I mean, by the speed of it, and how totally the Russian leadership is willing to be subservient to China, first and foremost on economic matters. I don’t think we have another example from history, at least I can’t think of one, where one great power so willingly hands away economic advantages to a near neighbor, even if that near neighbor is a de facto ally. So I think that is quite unique.

I think from the Chinese perspective, likewise, I think China—and this I think is President Xi’s own decision—China has been willing to move more quickly in terms of building the relationship with Russia than what I expected, given how often that relationship between the two countries [has] gone wrong in the past. And for [Xi] I think this is a very important part of his legacy. He sees the two countries, in ways that not everyone else in China does, as natural allies going forward. And he’s willing to stake a significant part of what will remain after him on that situation continuing.

So I think there are surprises here in both directions, but I think the answer to your question is yes. I mean, I’m surprised with the speed that it has happened, and I can see some real reasons why over the slightly longer term that, particularly under different leadership in one or both countries, that this relationship could get into some level of trouble.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

You argued in 2022 in our pages that this would be bad for China in the long run, that linking itself to at least this version of Russia would not be good for it. If you were making that case to Xi Jinping now, what would you tell them?

ODD ARNE WESTAD

I would make exactly the same argument. I think it is very, very bad for China. And I think there is a certain short-term gratification in this, particularly with regard to access to Russian resources, which is the only thing that Russia has that China is interested in at the moment, and also showing to the rest of the world that China has a big ally that is willing to link with it. But in the longer term, there is no end of trouble with regard to this. And even after the current war in Ukraine is over, Russia is going to have a very difficult relationship to almost all of its neighbors. It’s going to have a disastrous relationship to the European Union, which influences, to an extent that I don’t think is quite understood in Beijing, China’s relationship with Europe, which has been in freefall to an extent that has really surprised me over the past several months.

So I think the long-term consequences of this for China are not good. I’m also worried that—not maybe so much immediately, and certainly not with regard to Ukraine, but thinking a little bit further—that it could pull China into conflicts in which China has very little interest, and where it also would, in an immediate sense, not really be able to steer Russian positions and Russian actions in spite of the immense priority that China now has in terms of Russia’s international affairs. As the United States has learned, that preponderance of power is not necessarily enough in itself to prevent allies, even quite close allies, to do things they shouldn’t have done. And I think China is just about starting to think about that more long term, but I don’t think they’re quite there yet and there are some real dangers with regard to that.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

What’s a scenario where you can imagine Russia pulling China into a conflict if it’s not Ukraine?

ODD ARNE WESTAD

I think there are many, many situations with regard to that. I mean, I think with regard to the Middle East, I think there are possibilities there for conflict that would involve Russia. I’m thinking about the Russian-Turkish relationship over time, which is filled with conflict and potential for clashes. I also see Russian actions with regard to North Korea as being really ominous, not that Russia in itself is in a position or has an interest in starting a war on the Korean Peninsula, but that through some of their actions, including supplying North Koreans with stuff that they really, really shouldn’t be having, Russia plays a role that would lead—I think would is better than could here—to more tension on the peninsula and potentially war. On this latter point it seemed to me, again coming out of my most recent visit to Beijing, that the Chinese are aware of this. But they can’t really act on it very much, in part because of their own relationship with North Korea, which, of course, has been developing very quickly, but also because any kind of Chinese public displeasure over Russian actions with regard to North Korea is something that the North Koreans would see as a very negative aspect of Sino-North Korean relations.

So these are the kinds of binds that it is so easy to get into when you have this kind of relationship with a power that in reality—and many people in Beijing would agree with me on this—is remarkably irresponsible when it comes to its own international affairs, and is now trying, not just because of Ukraine but because of Putin’s policies overall, to just hit back at the West in whatever way it can internationally, not thinking very much about the direction that these things could actually take.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

And certainly American policymakers have spent lots of time worrying about entanglement over the last several decades. I can imagine Chinese policymakers starting to grapple with that, as well. Just on the American policy piece, though, it’s been a fixation of American policymakers in the last few administrations that there should be some opportunity to split or sow tension between Moscow and Beijing. There’s, of course, the “reverse Kissinger” idea, that we should make an ally of Moscow, or at least tamp down tensions with Moscow, in order to be able to focus on China. I think there are people in the Trump administration who think that way. There’s also an argument, and we heard this on the podcast recently from Robert O’Brien, Trump’s first term national security adviser, that it makes sense to establish a degree of calm in the U.S.-Chinese relationship so that the United States can deal with other problems. Do you see policy opportunities here, or does that kind of overstate the degree of American influence here, and it’s in some ways beyond our ability to really control one or another?

ODD ARNE WESTAD

I think one has to be careful with calling them opportunities, Dan. I mean, do I think that this country ought to improve its relations both with China and with Russia when that is possible? Absolutely yes. Do I think that there is a possibility at the moment for some kind of “reverse Kissinger” with regard to Russia? Absolutely no. I mean I think when this war ends—and it will end at some point, the war in Ukraine—I think there will be a relatively slow process of resetting U.S.-, and for that matter probably also Chinese-Russian, relations. But I don’t see that as being a possibility at the moment. I think if we were to try a way of reaching out to Russia as the war in Ukraine comes to an end, I think the end result of that would just be to encourage Russia further on the kind of behavior that Russia has shown already and which is, in many ways, to the detriment both of China and ourselves.

When it comes to China, I do register attempts to decrease tension, which I welcome. I think the Trump administration has acted well on a number of issues that have come up, whether it’s a possibility of moving towards some kind of stabilization of relations with China. Whether it’s going to last is very difficult to say. I think if you think about interest here in a sort of narrower sense, I think both of the two countries now have an incentive, a strong incentive, to reduce the tension between them, which probably would mean, both for Beijing and Washington, an ability to focus in on where the real conflicts between the two countries actually are, instead of having this spillover onto everything. But even if that were to happen as an outcome of this, I would welcome it. I mean, part of the problem in 1914 was this absolute conflation of everything in terms of resentments, in terms of fears, in terms of actual policy conflicts, in terms of strategic military doctrine, that helped create a situation where war could become a reality. So any step we take away from that I think should be welcomed and seen as positive.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

We spend a lot of time assessing the China policy debate here in the United States. How do you assess the America policy debate in China as you interact with your Chinese colleagues?

ODD ARNE WESTAD

I think there has been a lot of change in Chinese perceptions of the United States going back to the first Trump administration. I think at the moment, particularly after the re-election of President Trump, I think there has been a sense on the Chinese side of uncertainty, of drift in terms of U.S. foreign relations, maybe particularly the relationship with allies, including in the eastern Asian region, a lack of certainty in what the United States might do in terms of a crisis. And some of this worries me. Some of it is incredibly exaggerated. I mean, the idea that we are now seeing some kind of acute power shift situation, which not everyone at the top levels in Beijing hold, but some people hold them pretty strongly, that this is, in a way, the culmination of a longer process of American decline—I think one has to be very, very careful with those postulations because they’re almost certainly wrong. But that doesn’t mean, as in the case of Taiwan that we talked about earlier, that they are not strongly held on the Chinese side.

So the idea that you find in this country, certainly among his supporters but also a little further away, that President Trump is a strong foreign policy leader who is able to take U.S. international affairs in a new direction more positive for the United States, I don’t think that view overall is shared, certainly among Chinese policymakers.

I think among the Chinese population in general, there is a certain admiration for President Trump because he’s seen as being decisive and he’s seen as being a strong leader. There’s always admiration in China for strong leaders. But among policymakers, I sense more danger than opportunity in terms of looking at this. And the danger then would be, from a Chinese perspective, that if a crisis comes along, even a crisis that is not of Chinese making, the decision-making of the current administration in the United States could be very difficult to foresee, very difficult to come up with a clear conclusion about what direction the White House would want to move in. And that’s a danger. I mean, that could easily lead to conclusions on the Chinese side that might be erroneous, in terms of both the president’s policy overall and in terms of the general political situation in the United States. And that’s something I’m trying to warn against when I deal with Chinese colleagues, is that one shouldn’t have this idea that what is happening now in the United States is an overall sense that the United States would be less involved, in terms of international crisis in Asia, because I don’t think it is true, and I think it’s even . . . it has some dangers in it, in terms of the Chinese thinking.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

This is a conversation that we probably have to end on a note of warning and danger despite my attempt to find some source of optimism, so we will stop there. Thank you so much for doing this. I noted, in going back through your work, that since I came to Foreign Affairs you’ve done essentially one piece a year, so I think we’re due for another one soon.

ODD ARNE WESTAD

It would be a pleasure, Dan. It’s always a pleasure to discuss these things with you.