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Another report on how to better compete with China from a D.C. think tank. I wonder how all those great powers managed to compete with each other in centuries past without think tank reports to tell them how? They must have been really clever. Thread... https://twitter.com/AEIfdp/status/1349025720471867392
Maybe great powers don't need help in competing & increasing the opportunities for conflict. They do that quite well on their own. Perhaps we need some more work on strategies for managing or even (gasp!) avoiding competition between nuclear-armed great powers?
Instead, we get report after report on how to compete the best like the one above. And this one: https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/charting-a-transatlantic-course-to-address-china
And this one: https://www.brookings.edu/research/democracy-first-how-the-us-can-prevail-in-the-political-systems-competition-with-the-ccp/
And this one: https://asiasociety.org/center-us-china-relations/meeting-china-challenge-new-american-strategy-technology-competition
And this one: https://chinasurvey.csis.org/policy-recommendations/
Oh, you're still here? Well have another then: https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/security/reports/2019/04/03/468136/limit-leverage-compete-new-strategy-china/
When the debate over US-Sino relations is narrowed to 'how' rather than 'whether' or 'when' to compete, do we not lock ourselves into self-fulfilling prophecies that security dilemma & power transition theorists have warned of for decades?
Maybe - just maybe - there are all sorts of structural & historical forces that lead great powers to compete without any help. Perhaps the smart folks in influential think tanks could spend some time on how to mitigate rather than encourage this? End thread.
