Learning the Right Lessons from the Cold War

Editor’s Note: The following is adapted from Countering China’s Great Game: A Strategy for American Dominance by Michael Sobolik with the permission of the publisher. 

On May 26, 2022, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced the Biden administration’s long-awaited China strategy. “Under President Xi,” Blinken asserted, “the ruling Chinese Communist Party has become more repressive at home and more aggressive abroad.” He went on to name the CCP’s offenses: mass exportation of digital surveillance technology, violating international waters in the South China Sea, exploiting American companies, and oppressing its own people. The secretary was equally clear about the entity with the most to lose from the CCP’s actions: —the international order: “China is the only country with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do it.”

It is an odd thing for the chief diplomat of a sovereign nation-state to elevate the health of global institutions above the interests of his or her own government. Blinken couched his remarks not in terms of the United States’ history as a great power, nor its ideological heritage from the eighteenth century, but in relation to the establishment of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Throughout his remarks, Blinken’s references to the international order outnumbered his mentions of U.S. vital interests. The subtext was unmistakable: the Biden administration’s top priority in its relationship with Beijing is perpetuating the liberal international order. Secretary Blinken is far from alone. President Biden insisted in his remarks at the United Nations in 2021, “All the major powers of the world have a duty, in my view, to carefully manage their relationships so they do not tip from responsible competition to conflict.”

To be sure, President Biden has taken a number of steps within the international system to shore up America’s advantages against the CCP. His administration’s investments in the quadrilateral security dialogue with Japan, India, and Australia are commendable, and his Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity could potentially offer U.S. partners and allies economic alternatives to Beijing’s overtures. Even so, liberal internationalism is naive triumphalism. It is a Pollyannaish miscalculation of how the world works. If nations forego the marginal gains they could accrue by competing in the short run, everyone enjoys larger returns in the long run.

Washington’s Appeasement of Beijing

This outlook has led the Biden administration to downplay competition with the CCP in favor of cooperating with Beijing on multiple occasions. In February 2021, Biden officials were unwilling to admit that the CCP’s genocide of Uyghurs and other groups in Xinjiang was ongoing. That summer, Climate Envoy John Kerry worked to limit the number of Chinese companies that received an effective import ban for slave labor. In September, the Biden administration cut a deal with Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou and allowed her to return to China—a demand Chinese diplomats had officially registered with U.S. officials. In October, Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman lobbied Congress against critical human rights legislation. Administration officials subsequently declined to sanction key Chinese entities after that bill became law. The following month, reports emerged of the State Department scrubbing the use of the phrase “malign actions” in its description of the CCP’s behavior. In December, U.S. officials cut the video feed of Taiwan’s digital minister during the Summit of Democracies for sharing a map that colored the PRC and Taiwan differently.

In January 2022, American diplomats reportedly urged Lithuania to refrain from upgrading its de facto Taiwan embassy. In July 2022, President Biden sought to spike Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s planned trip to Taiwan to protect the cooperative momentum Washington and Beijing were building. In early 2023, the Biden administration allowed a PRC spy balloon to enter American airspace and sail across the continental United States. The administration initially sought to hide the balloon’s existence from the public to protect diplomatic overtures with Beijing. Months later, senior State Department officials traveled to Beijing to run advance for Secretary Blinken’s trip and landed in Beijing on June 4, the thirty-fourth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. The ill-timed arrival gifted a propaganda boon to the CCP. That same month, Secretary Blinken traveled to Beijing. A condition of his trip was not publicizing the FBI’s report into Beijing’s spy balloon. To secure the visit, the State Department also froze human rights sanctions on Chinese officials and delayed export controls on Huawei.

Viewed in context, “responsible competition” seems deeply irresponsible. The problem at hand rests largely with the administration’s belief in liberal internationalism. The objective is not defeating adversaries but co-opting them into global institutions that supposedly transform them over time. Biden administration officials start from this reference point and insist that great power adversaries can coexist peacefully. For evidence, they turn—ironically—to the Cold War.

Misremembering the Cold War

In 2021, Rush Doshi, Biden’s former China Director at the National Security Council, published an impressive tome, The Long Game: China’s Grand Strategy to Displace American Order. It is an exhaustive and measured articulation of the CCP’s plans to unset America as the global superpower. Yet, after three hundred pages of explaining the CCP’s world-sized ambitions, Doshi throws a wrench into his own argument: “China is the necessary partner of the United States on virtually every transnational challenge from nonproliferation to climate change…In the period ahead, the United States will need to delink [cooperation and competition] and hold fast to the rule that there will be two tracks in U.S.-China ties: one focused on cooperation and one on competition.” According to the Biden administration’s own track record, such a feat is easier said than done. But Doshi pointed to a time when America had apparently done this before: “The US and Soviet Union managed to collaborate in a far more existential competition than this one on a host of issues ranging from ozone to polio vaccination to space.” Looking at each example, however, reveals a more complicated story. 

Joint ozone efforts between Washington and Moscow, while impressive in their longevity, owed their success less to aligned political elites in Washington and Moscow and more to the issue’s low political priority at the time. A 1988 academic study put it rather bluntly: “The environmental concerns do not involve strategic issues; there are no national security secrets to be divulged…The low priority accorded the environmental exchanges may also have made them not worth canceling as a pawn in the political rivalries of these superpowers.” Today, however, the dynamic is categorically different. Biden places a high premium on climate policy, and China’s diplomats have exploited it to the detriment of America’s human rights agenda.

At first glance, the polio analogy is compelling. In the midst of an ongoing arms race, the scientific communities in America and the Soviet Union somehow found a way, with help from the World Health Organization, to join forces in vaccine research to blunt the polio epidemic. This ray of sunshine, however, only began to break through the clouds in the mid-1950s—more specifically, after the death of Joseph Stalin. Beyond that, the Soviets were painfully aware of the ways American science could help them combat polio. In the words of one historian, “It was costly socially and economically not to take advantage of the great breakthroughs in American biomedical research vis-à-vis polio.”

These conditions do not exist today. Unlike polio, the health crisis of our time, COVID-19, started because of America’s great-power adversary. The CCP initially concealed the virus’s existence, then punished foreign governments that sought information about its origins. Moreover, Xi rebuffed American-developed vaccines and opted instead for Chinese-produced solutions. Given this recent behavior, the Biden administration’s assumption that the CCP could behave as a good-faith partner on public health policy strains credulity.

Finally, Doshi’s claim of U.S.-Soviet space cooperation is especially odd. In 2008, Roald Sagdeev, the former head of the Russian Space Research Institute from 1973 to 1988, published his first-hand account of U.S.-Soviet space cooperation—or lack thereof: “Both countries gave primary emphasis in their space efforts to a combination of national security and foreign policy objectives, turning space into an area of active competition for political and military advantage…Only in the late 1980s, with warming political relations, did momentum for major space cooperation begin to build.”

This, of course, does not negate the rare moments of substantive collaboration between Washington and Moscow throughout the Cold War, particularly the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project docking mission in the 1970s and jointly photographing Halley’s comet in the 1980s. However, the Soviets regularly linked space cooperation with geopolitical concerns, from Kruschev’s demands for Eisenhower to remove forward-deployed nukes from Europe to Gorbachev’s insistence that Reagan back off of missile defense investments. It wasn’t until 1987, when Moscow formally dropped its linkage of space cooperation and arms control, that the two powers were able “to take steps toward actual cooperation.”

Great power cooperation didn’t just “happen” during the Cold War. It was the product of conditions that do not exist between Washington and Beijing today. That is the failure of liberal internationalism: it presupposes an outcome—peace—that is often the result of the successful exercise of unilateral state power—the very thing it seeks to limit and control.

How America Won the Cold War

Net assessments identify an adversary’s vulnerabilities. Competitive strategies exploit them. Three questions guide this process: 

1. What game is the United States playing?

2. What game is our adversary playing?

3. What are their relative strengths and weaknesses?

During the latter half of the Cold War, this framework empowered policymakers to move past détente and actually compete with the Soviet Union by capitalizing on America’s unique advantages over the Soviets—namely, its free political system, market economy, and technological edge. In other words, the United States practiced strategy as a bottom-up exercise, not only as a top-down endeavor.

What did this look like practically? Three successful episodes are worthy of brief study and imitation: air defense, nuclear targeting, and defense spending.

In the late 1970s, Andy Marshall and the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment examined the various legs of America’s nuclear triad, which still to this day consists of land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), and heavy bombers. Whether from land, sea, or sky, Washington and Moscow had multiple ways to annihilate each other. Marshall noted Joseph Stalin’s strange obsession with heavy bombers, which stemmed from the USSR’s fear of America’s firebombing runs targeting Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan during World War II. This history, coupled with America’s regular reconnaissance overflights of Soviet territory, predisposed Moscow to invest heavily in air defense. The Pentagon tested this hypothesis with the B-1 bomber. It wasn’t even slated for production until 1982, but “the concept of a low-flying supersonic bomber played to Soviet fears,” explains London School of Economics visiting professor Gordon Barrass, “and the Soviet air defense forces leaped to the bait. The Soviets spent billions on developing the MiG-25, new surface-to-air missiles, and radar to counter this threat.” From Marshall’s perspective, every ruble spent on defense was one less ruble available for first-strike nuclear weapons.

Military technology is one thing; political decision-making is another. Even if we scrambled the Soviet’s investments, America still needed to address the amorphous issue of perception. In the final years of the Carter administration, the United States sent an unmistakable message to the Kremlin: we know where your secret bunkers are, and our missiles can reach each of them. Carter approved the deployment of two hundred MX missiles (each with multiple nuclear warheads) in secret bunkers throughout America and also signaled Washington’s intent to deploy Pershing II intermediate-range missiles in Europe in the coming years if Moscow didn’t agree to arms control measures. Especially clever were selective leaks from Presidential Directive 59 in July 1980, which outlined Carter’s decision to target Soviet command and control centers if the USSR attacked the United States first. Too many leaders in Washington today have forgotten the stabilizing effect of prudent brinkmanship. 

It wasn’t until the 1980s, however, that America gained an irreversible advantage over the Soviet Union. It wasn’t until the 1980s, however, that America gained an irreversible advantage over the Soviet Union. After his landslide victory and inauguration in 1981, Ronald Reagan indicated his belief that the time was ripe for delivering a death blow to the regime in Moscow:

I learned the Soviet economy was in even worse shape than I’d realized [during the 1980 presidential campaign]. I had always believed that, as an economic system, Communism was doomed…Now, the economic statistics and intelligence reports I was getting during my daily National Security Council briefings were revealing tangible evidence that Communism as we knew it was approaching the brink of collapse, not only in the Soviet Union but throughout the Eastern bloc…You had to wonder how long the Soviets could keep their empire intact. If they didn’t make some changes, it seemed clear to me that in time Communism would collapse on its own weight, and I wondered how we as a nation could use these cracks in the Soviet system to accelerate the process of collapse.

This excerpt from President Reagan’s autobiography is a prime example of a net assessment: identifying a weakness in your adversary ripe for exploitation. Washington had something Moscow lacked: a strong economy. Ronald Reagan leveraged that advantage with devastating effect. From fiscal year (FY) 1980 to FY 1985, America’s defense spending increased by nearly fifty percent. The Pentagon also outpaced the Soviets technologically, particularly with the development of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), Reagan’s gambit for space-based missile defense. The program was young and had years of development to go, but the United States successfully duped Moscow into thinking otherwise. By 1986, the Soviet economy was sputtering, and Moscow couldn’t keep up with the competitive pace America set. 

To be sure, the United States still responded to Soviet movements and stratagems throughout the Cold War, just as the Soviets responded to American decisions. But the reaction was tied to a larger competitive rubric. Caught in an existential deathmatch with the Soviets, policymakers in Washington had no choice but to compete on dual planes that simultaneously defended their core interests while also understanding—and sabotaging—Moscow’s game. Instead of thrashing about, the United States acted deliberately, baiting the Kremlin into decisions that favored Washington’s strengths.

What Winning Looks Like

Net assessments and competitive strategies will be more difficult in this second Cold War than it was in the first, for America’s competition with the CCP is not only military in nature but also economic, political, and technological. Beijing’s foreign policy is multidimensional and, as such, is complicated to target. Even so, Washington has left multiple flanks untouched. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), for instance, is intrinsically connected to the systemic human rights abuses of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang because half of its land routes run through the territory and over the backs of oppressed minorities. Economically, the BRI relies on corruption—and, in large part, the U.S. dollar—to grease the skids of construction. Militarily, its global scope could quickly overextend the People’s Liberation Army.

Each of these openings stems from weaknesses that are particular to the PRC and its ruling Communist Party. China has adeptly exploited America’s strategic complacency, but its brittle political system, totalitarian ideology, and fear of its own people all serve to complicate the BRI. The entire plan has multiple weaknesses at key nodes that, if pushed, could jeopardize the entire project. By harnessing the tools of net assessment and competitive strategies, U.S. policymakers could initiate targeted campaigns to exploit these vulnerabilities, atrocities, and illicit activities and sabotage China’s “great game,” one step at a time.

What exactly, though, does winning look like? How will Washington strategists know if their net assessments are accurate and their competitive strategies are working? Economically, sanctions on corrupt, BRI-affiliated SOEs should weaken China’s commercial advantage abroad. Specifically, Washington should expect to see Beijing winning fewer contracts in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Eurasian trade routes that run through Xinjiang would also collapse as countries withdraw from the project altogether and de-risk their supply chains. Over time, the United States should expect these competitive actions to materially impact China’s economy. Xi Jinping refuses to liberalize China’s market and continues to leverage SOEs for political control. A successful competitive strategy would further depress China’s economic growth forecast. America should not apologize for pursuing this outcome. International politics, to quote former Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI), is not a “polite tennis match.”

Informationally, successful policies would shift perceptions and media narratives within host countries and force the CCP to defend its record of exploitation. Over time, fewer heads of state from the Global South would make the pilgrimage to Beijing because doing so would imperil them politically at home. These optics would be embarrassing for Xi, but it would also suggest that the “Middle Kingdom” does not, in fact, rule over “all under heaven.” Losing the Mandate of Heaven in the eyes of the Chinese people is more than a public relations problem; it goes to the heart of the CCP’s legitimacy.

That external reality, combined with dedicated and persistent U.S. operations to weaken the CCP’s internal censorship apparatus, should yield higher spending on internal security. Counterintuitively, that resource allocation could be a positive sign for America, provided that increased attention at home distracts Xi and the Politburo Standing Committee from focusing on Taiwan. A more objective measure of success would be an uptick in political protests throughout China that question the party’s efficacy and legitimacy.

No doubt, some may balk at such brinksmanship as destabilizing and dangerous. Mindless hawkism, after all, is no less a betrayal of prudent statesmanship than pacifist appeasement. Even so, the Chinese Communist Party, not the United States of America, terrorizes its own people and exports its internal instability around the world. Healthy governments do not behave this way. It is not incumbent on representative democracies like the United States to make allowances for the CCP’s pathologies. Doing so would amount to strategic codependency. Nor is it America’s responsibility to change China politically; only the Chinese people can do that. What Washington can do, however, is distract Beijing from its dangerous agenda, lull it into stagnation, and, hopefully, head off the CCP’s rise.

Michael Sobolik is a senior fellow in Indo-Pacific studies at the American Foreign Policy Council and the author of Countering China’s Great Game: A Strategy for American Dominance (Naval Institute Press). Follow him on X: @michaelsobolik.

Image: Hung Chung Chih / Shutterstock.com.