Strategic Eschatology [Draft]

Our troubles with China are like the path to war with Japan in the 1930s. Can we change tack, or are we destined to fulfill our strategists' prophecies?

'One is struck, in fact, with the similarity of our situation to that of the early Christians. They, as a matter of pure faith, believed in the early end of the world ...' George Kennan, 'The Kennan Diaries, Norton, NY, 2014, p. 457 [Aug 21, 1968]

Professor Sally Paine of the US Naval War College wrote a stellar book detailing the spectacular rise of Japan, from the Meiji Resoration to the bombing of Pearl Harbour. Some think this analogous to China today, though most who do are not military, but civilian neo-conservatives, variously aligned along a once fringe religious spectrum, now mainstream within the US and Australian political establishments.

'The Japanese looked with abject horror on the dismemberment of China by the European powers, and determined - in view, too, of Japanese humiliation under her unequal treaties; unequal settlement of her victories over Russia; and her unequal treatment at Versailles - to drive the Europeans out of Asia forever.'

The Japanese learned from history, as the Chinese now learn from Japan.

Chinese books on grand strategy reveal them to be acute practical historians. With characteristic Asian 'A to B' thinking, simple conclusions are drawn without over-elaboration. China learned from the Japanese Meiji Restoration how effectively state capitalism can bring a country from weakness to strength. They learned the US political machine yields uneven results, but ultimately they can expect democratic imperialism matched with business realpolitik. That they can balance the two, with skill and restraint, to a point.

Military doves, civilian hawks

AB to invite Warren Christopher's former staff to contribute.

Outline:

1. Neo-conservatives have driven the anti-China policy and radically stepped it up after China aligned with Russia.

2. Politics and religion share a core end-point, which is 'eschatology', or a belief in inevitable catastrophe. Each has a story to tell, one that would seem incomplete without some sort of dramatic denouement. With religion, the 'end of times' is the re-creative destruction of the 'end of times, while in geopolitical lore, a war is a fitting end to the tension of opposing forces held at bay for years through diplomacy.

3. Let's deal with (2) offline.