OPINION — The United States faces a direct existential threat today that has not been matched in severity since the war between our own states – the U.S. Civil War – threatened to kill this nation in its adolescence.
The last time our very existence was at stake was 160 years ago, an experience well outside any living American’s personal memory. It is an important distinction to recognize, and that recognition must produce response.
While the Third Reich and Empire of Japan both had ambitions for vast expansion, neither immediately and directly threatened the existence of the United States. The Cold War was a decades-long wrestling match largely between the United States and the Soviet Union, but the idea of “mutually assured destruction” was so unthinkable that it was not a practical option for either nation. As dark as it sometimes seemed, our existence was not really ever at stake, and it was inevitable that the economic resources produced by capitalism would outlast the lumbering Soviet state.
Today, while Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un each aspires to be the biggest bully in his own neighborhood, none aspires to supplant the United States as the preeminent global power. But Chinese President Xi Jinping and his PRC government do. And they have not been the least bit coy about it. They have declared it openly, and their actions have consistently reflected their intent.
What exactly is in danger of being lost to this existential threat?
What is it that makes us the United States? What gives us our unique place in the world? We are not a nation with an ethnic, racial, or religious foundation; we are a nation of ideals. Those ideals, built on the simple concept of human dignity, resonate with every individual around the world. Not only do we purport that these ideals guide our own governance and societal interaction, but we also hold them as models for mankind, far more cherished than the abundant resources or technical ingenuity or export of pop culture that can be misunderstood as defining us. Founded on these ideals, we also represent, promote, and defend them globally. We compete economically with allies and adversaries alike, equally with Canada and Russia. We have no singular claim to economic power; if we want that, we must earn it just like everyone else. But we do have a unique role of stewardship, set out boldly before the world by our founding fathers and defended through the decades by generations. If the United States is pushed aside by authoritarianism, if we do not hold our position of preeminence, there is no space for nations and governments built on the most fundamental of hard-earned human rights. This is a plain statement of fact, not hyperbole.
The United States is exceptionally good at reacting to crisis. Some of the greatest moments in our American history are response. No force on the planet can compete in head-to-head competition with our military. When we respond to provocation on our terms, we are indomitable. We tend to face all challenges with expectation that this strength will carry the day. But this conflict is not being played out on our terms.
Not only is our reactive mode part of what has gotten us here, but it will not get us out. As it stands today, the PRC is setting their own terms for this struggle, and they are arrayed to compete and win. The Chinese government and society are aligned with and acting on Xi’s intent. In the United States, we are not setting the terms, and we are not arrayed to win either on our terms or theirs.
Across civilizations and over the course of centuries, the rules and norms for diplomacy, espionage, and warfare have evolved through practice. The protocols are well understood, if not always followed. All nations know what is acceptable, what is in bounds and what is not. When a nation cries foul, it is against an accepted set of norms, and they make their claim against a recognized standard. Much of today’s conflict is playing out in the realm of digital and cyber threat and dominance. The associated technologies have developed faster than norms have been able to keep up.
The PRC is comfortable disregarding international convention in the South China Sea, and they are completely indifferent to the concept of propriety in cyberspace. Just as the rules of warfare developed through practice, the PRC is setting the cyber rules though unchallenged practice. If the United States is not actively setting and enforcing boundaries of acceptable behavior, we will continue to see unfavorable conditions set for us.
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The PRC government is working towards a clear objective, consistently over decades and confident in inevitability. Here at home, we are distracted by the four-year election cycle, with political discourse that sounds like kids in the back seat of the car, squabbling over who is going to sit in the middle. There is a significant variation between parties’ foreign policy, and there is a too infrequent connection between policy execution and the long-term strategic interests of the free world. We have let ourselves become an unreliable global partner with even our most steadfast allies. We are lost in domestic debate, argued in cartoon terms to a disaffected public. While we can be momentarily mesmerized by a crisis, we are not talking strategically about the future of American security, publicly and at a national level.
Waiting for the Phone to Ring
The worst-case scenario is that the White House receives a phone call one day from the PRC government, an offer to share good news and bad. The good news is that we are not going to have to go to war with China. The bad news is that they have already won, and they are graciously prepared to present the terms under which we will now be compelled to live.
It is not inevitable, but neither is it unimaginable. It is a potential outcome of the trajectory we are on. The PRC is working deliberately and methodically to understand, penetrate, and hold at risk our critical national infrastructure and diminish our myriad tools of defense. Whether we ignore this reality actively or passively does not matter; the result is the same. Exactly these points have been made by a number of senior national security and defense officials, very credible folks with access to every bit of intelligence we have and the experience to make sense of it, but we as a nation are not taking appropriate action.
If we proceed with business as usual and just assume that we can manage as we have in the past, “America” will go the way of Blockbuster and Kodak. We must collectively recognize and acknowledge not just the scope and nature of the threat but the gravity and implications as well. We know from our own national experience in the Second World War and the Cold War that we can muster the elements of power – government, industry, academia, and our society — and squarely within the bounds of democracy, direct that energy against a global threat. In both those instances, it was well understood by every American what our primary national challenge was, and it was well understood around the globe that we were grimly determined to prevail. The threat today is greater and more directly challenges our right to exist, and we are losing ground. If we do not recognize it and talk about it honestly, we will lose.
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