For decades, the United States has underestimated the threat from the People’s Republic of China (PRC). In doing so, it has left our country vulnerable to their devious plans—a profound, strategic miscalculation. As a result of this carelessness, the United States is at risk of losing its dominant position in global politics. But how did this happen? How was it possible that the US could lose its dominant position after its Cold War victory and allow the rise of a peer enemy over a short period of time—about thirty years? In Embracing Communist China, authors James E. Fanell and Bradley A. Thayer get to the bottom of this heinous miscalculation. Broken down into three central arguments, Fanell and Thayer lay out not only the reason for China’s rise in power, but how the United States could have prevented it. Due to failures on the parts of the national security commission, strategists, military personnel, and the intelligence community, a historical case of “threat deflation” caused our country to refute all supplied information of China’s growing power. By not taking this seriously, the PRC has risen with the goal of usurping the US as a global superpower. US business interests and financiers trumped strategy. Seeing China as a source of cheap labor for manufacturing, investment, and intellectual labor—including for research and development—the mighty dollar’s influence reigned supreme, overlooking the big picture. With their advancements, China used its political warfare strategy to promote threat deflation under Deng Xiaoping. As such, the PRC—learning key lessons from the Soviet Union’s mistakes in the Cold War—focused on elites from all aspects of US and other Western societies, enriching them and shaping their perception of China and of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) while using the enticement of a growing market to influence their behavior. As Americans, we can no longer think of China as a secondary power, but one that is looking to remove the US as the most powerful country in the world. By understanding the profound strategic failures made by the US are we are able to correct them and so defeat the PRC as the we did the Soviet Union.
In this short, accessible book Layne and Thayer argue the merits and demerits of an American empire. With few, if any, rivals to its supremacy, the United States has made an explicit commitment to maintaining and advancing its primacy in the world. But what exactly are the benefits of American hegemony and what are the costs and drawbacks for this fledgling empire? After making their best cases for and against an American empire, subsequent chapters allow both authors to respond to the major arguments presented by their opponents and present their own counter arguments.
Han-centrism, a virulent form of Chinese nationalism, asserts that the Han Chinese are superior to other peoples and have a legitimate right to advance Chinese interests at the expense of other countries. Han nationalists have called for policies that will allow China to reclaim the prosperity stolen by foreign powers during the “Century of Humiliation.” The growth of Chinese capabilities and Han-centrism suggests that the United States, its allies, and other countries in Asia will face an increasingly assertive China—one that thinks it possesses a right to dominate international politics. John M. Friend and Bradley A. Thayer explore the roots of the growing Han nationalist group and the implications of Chinese hypernationalism for minorities within China and for international relations. The deeply rooted chauvinism and social Darwinism underlying Han-centrism, along with China’s rapid growth, threaten the current stability of international politics, making national and international competition and conflict over security more likely. Western thinkers have yet to consider the adverse implications of a hypernationalistic China, as opposed to the policies of a pragmatic China, were it to become the world’s dominant state.
This volume analyzes the nature andlimits of the covert NBC threat and proposes a measured set of policyresponses, focused on improving intelligence andconsequence-management capabilities to reduce U.S. vulnerability. Nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) weapons delivered covertly by terrorists or hostile governments pose a significant and growing threat to the United States and other countries. Although the threat of NBC attack is widely recognized as a central national security issue, most analysts have assumed that the primary danger is military use by states in war, with traditional military means of delivery. The threat of covert attack has been imprudently neglected. Covert attack is hard to deter or prevent, and NBC weapons suitable for covert attack are available to a growing range of states and groups hostile to the United States. At the same time, constraints on their use appear to be eroding. This volume analyzes the nature and limits of the covert NBC threat and proposes a measured set of policy responses, focused on improving intelligence and consequence-management capabilities to reduce U.S. vulnerability.
This book examines the contours of the Sino-American confrontation and its future trajectories. It delineates the two major causes of the friction in Sino-American relations—change in the balance of power in China’s favor and the conf licting ideologies of the two states—and emphasizes why it is imperative for the U.S. to hold on to its ideological principles. It demonstrates the ultimate and irreconcilable gap in the visions the two competitors have for international politics and consequently why conf lict—certainly cold, and very possibly hot—is inevitable. The authors also suggest measures which the U.S. can adopt to sustain its leadership and deter China’s ideology and vision for the future of global politics. A significant contribution to the study of Sino-American relations, the volume will be of interest to scholars and researchers of international relations, foreign policy, and U.S. and Chinese politics. It will be of great interest to think tanks, public policy professionals, and the interested general reader.
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