Tackling the China Challenge in a World on the Brink
BOOK REVIEW: World on the Brink: How America Can Beat China in the Race for the 21st Century
By Dmitri Alperovitch with Garrett M. Graff
Reviewed by Martin Petersen
The Reviewer — Martin Petersen is a CIA veteran, Asia expert, and a Cipher Brief Expert. He is the author of City of Lost Souls, which will be published later this year.
REVIEW — In the best CIA Directorate of Intelligence tradecraft, the bottom line goes up front: World on the Brink: How America Can Beat China in the Race for the 21st Century is an important book that stands apart from much of the current writing (and posturing) on China by its lack of hype, a clear exploration of the challenge China poses, and practical and well considered policy options. Dmitri Alperovitch is former CTO of CrowdStrike, an advisor to the Department of Homeland Security, and a member of the U.S. government’s Cyber Safety Review Board. Garrett Graff wrote one of the most heart wrenching books on 911, The Only Plane in the Sky.
The book is in two sections but really three parts. The first is history, specifically of the US-China relationship and how we got into the situation we currently find ourselves. This history is important. I’ve back benched more than a few meetings where it was clear that the US side, despite its preparation, did not know the bilateral interactions going back to Kissinger as well as our Chinese interlocutors, who not surprisingly got more out of the meeting than we did.
The authors assert that we are in Cold War II. This has been debated in US national security circles, but Alperovitch and Graff state that regardless of what we choose to call it, China’s current leaders are approaching the competition with the US as a Cold War. They stress, however, that this Cold War is significantly different than the last one. China’s economic and integration into the global economy is just one difference.
It’s not just for the President anymore. Cipher Brief Subscriber+Members have access to their own Open Source Daily Brief, keeping you up to date on global events impacting national security. It pays to be a Subscriber+Member.
More fundamental—and more threatening to US standing—is that while the Soviet Union focused on expanding its power by changing governments, China is striving to change the rules of the game that have existed since the end of WWII, rules based on Western democratic values. The authors quote Rob Joyce, the head of cybersecurity at the National Security Agency: “Russia is a hurricane. China is climate change.” Rush Doshi makes the same case in his book, The Long Game: China’s Grand Strategy to Displace American Order.
The authors lay out a strong case for supporting Taiwan and not just because of its importance in the design and manufacture of advanced microchips. They correctly see the security of Taiwan as a key to the security of Asia and to US credibility. They examine Putin’s thinking behind his invasion of the Ukraine and how Chinese President Xi could decide to invade Taiwan, even after observing the Western response to Russia’s aggression. They are not predicting this, but they make a strong case that leaders do talk themselves into bad decisions. I’ve long argued that a root cause of many intelligence failures is thinking that “it makes no sense for them to do that.” That is a sure indication you do not understand how the other fellow assesses the situation and his options.
The second part of the book is a scorecard of sorts. In two chapters the authors make the case that China is weaker than it appears and that we (and the West) are stronger than we seem. I think they are right about the challenges China faces and the difficulties it will have in dealing with them. Perhaps because I am an analyst and therefore the glass can only be half empty, I also suspect that China will find many work arounds, including sanctions on high end technology—the strategy National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan calls “small yard high fence.” For the same reason I am less sanguine about US strengths and how they will hold up over time. I hope I am wrong on both counts.
Looking for a way to get ahead of the week in cyber and tech? Sign up for the Cyber Initiatives Group Sunday newsletter to quickly get up to speed on the biggest cyber and tech headlines and be ready for the week ahead. Sign up today.
The third section and the second half of the book is something rare: an intelligent discussion of policy options. The authors argue that there are four requirements to meet the China challenge. They call the first step “Enable Innovation,” and semiconductors are the key. They point out that the center of gravity in cutting edge chip design and fabrication has moved from the US to Asia. They stress that some of this capability needs to return to American shores, and the US must do all it can to slow China’s gains in this area for they are significantly behind us at present. We also must stop being our own worst enemy as when in the late 1990s IBM tutored Huawei on management and operations. The attraction of the best minds through immigration is also necessary, and we need to have a “whole of government strategy” to foster investment in AI, biotech, aerospace, and green technology.
They call the second step “Defend Innovation.” Here the authors are especially critical of how the US procures its weapons. The Pentagon, they claim, has failed to assemble the mix of weapons necessary to fight “a peer adversary” like China. “Simply put, America has become addicted to exquisite expensive weapons platforms, manufactured in small numbers, while neglecting simpler and cheaper ones we would need in volume.” One need only look at the way the fighting in the Ukraine has evolved to see the saliency of this point. Hand-in-hand with this is doing a much better job of protecting intellectual property from Chinese cyber-attacks.
The third and fourth steps are “Say Yes to Our Friends” and “Say No to Distractions.” They make the point that everyone does about the necessity of building our alliances and supporting our allies when they are bullied or threatened by Beijing, whether militarily—like China’s aggressive actions in the South China Sea—or economically when China tries to punish our friends for actions Beijing objects to. To this end the authors propose a Treaty of Allied Market Economies (TAME) of European and Asian-Pacific open market economies, the “Article 5” of which “would trigger a combination of trade barriers, sanctions, and export controls….to equalize pressure and retaliate against any aggressor unfairly singling out a member of the alliance.” As for distractions, the authors state, “Most importantly of all, we must also reevaluate and view our engagement with Russia through the lens of countering China.” Russia is too big to ignore and we must identify our long-term interests and work toward them, they say.
The authors make a case that the United States lacks a strategy and a sense of urgency. Perhaps because I am an “old man,” I feel the same. In any case, in the upcoming election, regardless of who wins, there will be changes (perhaps wholesale) in the national security team and whoever those people are – they would do well to spend time reading this book and Graham Allison’s 2017 book Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap.
World on the Brink earns a prestigious 4 out of 4 trench coats
The Cipher Brief participates in the Amazon Affiliate program and may make a small commission from purchases made via links.
Interested in submitting a book review? Send an email to [email protected] with your idea.
Sign up for our free Undercover newsletter to make sure you stay on top of all of the new releases and expert reviews.
Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief because National Security is Everyone’s Business.