“When I was a little girl,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in Japan last week, “I was told when at the beach that if I dug a hole deep enough, we would reach China. So we’ve always felt a connection there.”
The speaker was sadly misinformed. If Pelosi kept on digging, she would not pop out the other side, bucket and spade in hand. She would be immolated in the Earth’s molten core. This is not a partisan observation, just a fact. It might prompt a mental image of Pelosi being melted like the Nazi archaeologist in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, but I know you’re better than that. The same goes for the mental image of Pelosi’s mortal remains, her false teeth, floating on a sea of fire.
A sea of fire is what the Taiwan Strait will look like if the Democrats keep going like this. “We’ve done nothing different than what we’ve been doing previously,” Pelosi said about her visit to Taiwan. “And we will continue to do the same.” This is the problem. The United States is doing the same as before, but the world has changed.
In 1980, China’s GDP per capita was less than that of most African states, and rush hour in Beijing was a bicycle race. The U.S. still leads China in nominal GDP, which is calculated using current prices and excludes inflation. But China overtook the U.S. in 2017 if you measure GDP by purchasing power parity. We are, as Adm. Rachel Levine can attest, in an age of transition.
Levine may not be a real admiral or a real woman, but you don’t have to be the officer commanding the Good Ship Lollipop to know that since 2021, the Chinese navy has fielded more vessels than the U.S. Navy. On the other hand — and you can always tell by looking at the hands — the U.S. Navy’s vessels are much larger. This will make them easier to hit when they cram into the Taiwan Strait.
Military historians talk of “ways of war” and how each country fights in a style that reflects its culture. The British, for instance, are snobs on a budget, so they go for peripheral strategies and commando raids led by toffs who clear minefields by sending their personal bagpiper in first. The Russians love their motherland and have infinite manpower, so they set fire to everything in sight, retreat in the general direction of Asia, wait for winter, and then send in the human waves. One of the reasons that a European Union army will never work is that it requires the French and the Germans to agree. The French see war as a path to personal glory. The Germans see it as their national sport.
The American way of war, as theorized in 1973 by Russell Weigley, prefers annihilation over attrition, ideally by projecting heavy-duty industrial pulverizing across vast spaces: William Sherman’s march to the sea, Colin Powell’s shock and awe, Ronald Reagan’s ruthless conquest of Grenada. More recently, Americans have developed a second mode, counterinsurgency operations, in which highly trained special forces chase Islamist amateurs through the bushes. The U.S. military now excels at this, but it will be no use at all in the Taiwan Strait.
American businessmen like to quote Sun Tzu’s The Art of War at each other, so we’ve always felt a connection there. If America’s leaders are serious about defending Taiwan, they should consider the emphasis on deception in the Chinese way of war. The strategy is asymmetric and contrary to appearances. The blow seizes the initiative, and it will be delivered fast and early. A lumbering, literalist America won’t know what hit it.
Then again, if America’s leaders are serious, they would admit that every time their generals and admirals war-game a fight with China over Taiwan, the U.S. loses. Instead, President Joe Biden and Pelosi make promises the military can’t keep, and the Republicans compete to sound tougher. As ever, the greatest weapon in China’s arsenal is the self-deceit of America’s ruling class. But delusion is a luxury the U.S. can no longer afford.
The most famous living American admiral is not a sailor at all — but a hormone-popping pediatrician in fancy dress. The Democrats can order Americans to salute the uniform, not the man, but as the relative decline of America’s power accelerates, fewer countries will indulge its follies, and fewer still will rally to its adventures. Our leaders should admit that the U.S. is in a hole and that America is blundering into simultaneous proxy wars on Russia’s and China’s doorsteps. Time to stop digging.
Dominic Green is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Follow him on Twitter @drdominicgreen.
