Will U.S. public opinion bring on war with China?

Cold War analogies only get us so far

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The U.S.-Chinese relationship is the most important in the world, one which will go a long way to determine the future of the global economy, climate, and security situation. In the past five years, American public opinion has turned sharply against China, driven by concerns over human rights and China’s growing power on the world stage. This isn’t particularly surprising when you consider everything that Beijing has done over the past five years, a partial list of which includes the following:

• Perpetrated a genocide in Xinjiang;

• Cracked down on the autonomy and freedoms of Hong Kong;

• Repeatedly menaced Taiwan with large incursions into its air defense zone;

• Stymied investigations into the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic;

• Arbitrarily detained American citizens;

• Played footsie with Vladimir Putin amid his invasion of Ukraine.

This series of events and the subsequent deterioration in American relations with China has many commentators reaching for an analogy to the Cold War. These analogies tend to be vague, and as a historian I find them unsatisfying, not least because the Cold War took many different forms over the decades. The nuclear instability of the pre-Cuban Missile Crisis era was very different to the détente of the 1970s, or the confrontation of the early 1980s, which historians sometimes call the “Second Cold War”. Unless you’re specific in telling us which phase you’re talking about, an analogy to the Cold War is not very useful.

A specific analogy at last!

That’s why I was intrigued by a recent piece in The New York Times by Ian Prasad Philbrick which puts forward a more precise, testable idea: that the current phase of American-Chinese relations is best compared to the Cold War of the late 1940s, when Soviet-American relations underwent rapid deterioration. America and the Soviet Union had been allies against fascism in World War II, and for much of 1945 a large majority of Americans were happy with relations between the two countries. Then in 1946 the trend suddenly reversed, with nearly three-quarters of Americans disapproving of the Soviet Union by the time of Winston Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech in March. By early 1948, 80% of Americans were willing to go to war with the Soviet Union if doing so was necessary to defend the western sector of divided Berlin.¹

Accepting this specific version of the Cold War analogy raises some difficult questions, including the one in the headline of Philbrick’s piece: “If Biden wanted to ease U.S.-China tensions, would Americans let him?” As the article discusses, if public and elite opinion becomes passionate enough, then it can set foreign policy going down a particular road without much hope of changing course. The 1940s gave way to the 1950s, which brought the Korean War and McCarthyism, creating an atmosphere in which it was extremely difficult for anyone to suggest that America ought to seek improved relations with the Soviet Union. If we are experiencing a 1940s-style slide in American relations with China, then it is likely to be terminal.

Does the analogy hold up?

My view of the China issue in American foreign policy has long been that there are two separate parts to it which people often conflate. The first is China’s actual behavior and intentions, and the second is America’s perception of China’s behavior and intentions. Separating out these two things is analytically important because it allows you to reach nuanced conclusions. You can, for instance, condemn China’s behavior and intentions and view them as a menace to world peace while still being concerned that the state of American opinion is only making conflict more likely.

To return to the 1940s analogy, it is fairly clear that a direct comparison between the behavior of the Soviet Union of the 1940s and the China of today doesn’t really hold water. After World War II, Stalin consolidated his rule across vast swathes of Eastern Europe, suppressing nascent movements for democracy and national self-determination from the Balkans to the Baltics. In 1946, he refused to order his soldiers to leave Iran, sparking a conflict which killed thousands. In 1948, Communists launched a coup in Czechoslovakia, bringing a new government into the Warsaw Pact. It was this string of events which led American public opinion to sour on the USSR so quickly and to create the impression that Communism was on the march and needed to be stopped.

American grievances with China today are different. China has not actually gobbled up Taiwan, or sent its troops into Burma, or started another war with Vietnam. Instead, the issues that divide America and China fall into three basic categories:

1. Beijing’s actions on Chinese territory (e.g. Hong Kong and Xinjiang);

2. Problems arising from interconnection (e.g. Covid, technology theft, economic issues);

3. Expectations of future aggression outside Chinese territory (e.g. Taiwan).²

This is quite a different picture. The second type of issue barely existed between the Soviet Union and America because their economies and societies were hardly connected at all. The first type troubled many Americans, but they had put aside their complaints about Stalin’s purges or the Soviet genocide in Ukraine so long as Stalin aligned himself with the United States on international questions during World War II. Only the third type of issue which affects U.S.-Chinese relations today - expectations of future aggression - was really vital, and even this was of secondary concern compared to the widespread aggression which was actually happening in Eastern Europe and elsewhere.

It’s important to split the issues out in this way to draw our attention to exactly which part of this 1940s analogy we’re living in, if we’re living in it at all. By the time American public opinion turned sharply against the Soviet Union and McCarthyism set in, Moscow was already embarked on subjugating half of Europe, and the two superpowers were doomed to competition. China has not yet begun any comparable campaign in Asia, and its bid for regional power may anyway look very different. That means there is still potentially time to turn things around and lower the risk of conflict.

This brings us to the second part of the U.S.-China conundrum, which is American perceptions. The sharp turn American opinion has taken against China in recent years risks inhibiting sensible policymaking. Opposition to China is one of the few things that elites in both parties now agree on, meaning they outbid each other in an attempt to be tougher than the other. Trump’s flailing has given way to a much more systematic attempt to contain Beijing under Biden. The next president will feel the need to be even tougher, and the next tougher still, and on and on. The space for rational debate about how to handle Beijing is closing, and the chance that America will help precipitate the very conflict it is seeking to avoid is growing.

This is important because of another reason in which the 1940s analogy is incomplete. Taiwan, which is presumed to be the first intended target of Chinese aggression, has an American defense guarantee, whereas Iran and Poland did not. American public and elite opinion was shocked and outraged by Soviet conquests, but they didn’t intend to actually fight to stop them. In Asia today, it is much easier to see how a miscalculation could lead directly to war between America and China, a war that could involve the use of nuclear weapons (something the Soviet Union of the 1940s lacked). Maybe that war is worth fighting. But if it is then it has to be based on an accurate assessment of risks and rewards, not because of a kind of McCarthyism.

This is why, in the end, I find an analogy to the 1940s Soviet Union to not be particularly helpful when we ponder what American policy towards China should be today. The exact state of affairs is different, which means the balance of risks and opportunities is different as well. We shouldn’t be naive about Xi Jinping’s China, but we should also keep in mind the ways it is different to Joe Stalin’s Soviet Union. Historical analogies like Philbrick’s help us think through the issues, but ultimately we have to make our own history in the circumstances of our own time.

1. This figure is from Gabriel A. Almond, The American People and Foreign Policy (New York, 1950), p. 99.

2. China’s incursions into the maritime zones of other countries in the South China Sea are in a grey area here, which is why they haven’t invited the sort of American response that an invasion of Taiwan or Vietnam would.