With the war in Ukraine, the U.S. is replacing efforts to avoid World War with plans for how to fight one.

(Originally published March 7 in “What in the World“) The Wall Street Journal today published a troubling analysis of mounting concern that the West isn’t prepared militarily for the global conflict its leaders are squaring off to fight.

Focusing largely on an interview with Lt.-Gen. S. Clinton Hinote, whose job as Deputy Chief of Staff for Air Force Futures is to worry about worst-case scenarios, the Journal’s piece assumes the worst-case scenario—that the U.S. must brace for a two-front war with China and Russia. In a nutshell, the U.S. and its global allies spent the last 20 years focused on fighting small groups of terrorists in remote corners of the planet and didn’t work on their ability to fight two massive modern militaries in the same terrain they once battled Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Not surprisingly, the article then assumes—like its source—that the scenario for which it is planning is inevitable and that the solution to this particular nail is the hammer.

This despite growing evidence that Russia is exhausting its arsenals in Ukraine as fast as the West. Like the latest “wave” of 15 slow-moving Iranian drones of which 13 were shot down by Ukrainian forces. Or that Russia is being forced to dig up 60-year old tanks to replace newer ones destroyed in Ukraine. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s ability to counterattack is growing, prompting it to take credit this week for a drone strike inside Russia after refusing to admit to cross-border attacks last December that presaged a U.S. decision to provide it with Patriot anti-missile batteries.

As troubling as U.S. military unpreparedness might be, more troubling is this inexorable march of misunderstanding and machismo between Beijing and Washington towards enmity and conflict. It’s exhausting to argue who’s at fault or who started it. No side is blameless. But it is worth pointing out how easily it would be to reach a very different concern simply by reading the Journal’s article as if it was written in Beijing. From China’s capital, the U.S. seems determined to not only contain and undermine China’s continued progress, as Chinese President Xi Jinping said in an announcement this week, but ultimately to weaken and depose its government.

If you’ve read Jonathan Spence’s excellent book To Change China, first published in 1969, you know that a long list of Westerners, Americans in particular, have worked to impose regime change and favorable trade balances on China for roughly 400 years. That China today is the People’s Republic and not the Republic of China is in part a reaction to that. Yet today China has no military bases in the Caribbean or Canada’s Maritime provinces to enforce trade lanes or ensure Puerto Rico’s continued self-determination.

Washington now interprets any Chinese move to defend its claims to disputed islands, atolls, or the “renegade province” that Washington agreed in 1979 was part of “One China,” as evidence of its growing aggression. And to prove it, U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is planning to meet Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen in California; reprising the visit in 1995 to the U.S. by then-Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui that prompted China’s military feints around Taiwan.

In recent years, Washington and the American media have attributed China’s aggression to the personal ambitions and autocratic rise of Xi Jinping. But the U.S. was casting China as its archrival and nemesis long before Xi became president in 2012. As early as July 2002, only six months after China won admission to the World Trade Organization and while Xi was but a provincial official, the U.S. Congress received its first annual report from the U.S.-China Economic Security Review Commission. It immediately depicted China as a determined foe and threat.

Rather than delve into that report’s conclusions and recommendations, which read as if they could be written today, read instead the trenchant and prophetic remarks by the Commission’s dissenting member at the time, William Reinsch. A former undersecretary for commerce in the Clinton Administration, Reinsch left the Commission in 2016 and today writes on trade policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Like the report they criticize, Reinsch’s comments ring as true today as they did almost 20 years ago. (NB: Apologies in advance for any typos or misquotes, as this report was only available as a photocopied PDF and so Reinsch’s comments have been transcribed):

The Report ignores progress made over the past twenty years, adds to the level of paranoia about China in this country, and contains recommendations that could make that paranoia a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In fairness, the Chinese provide ample incentive for a negative Report. They are far from democracy and a market economy and are making little progress toward the former and irregular progress toward the latter. Market access problems and failures of intellectual property abound. An accurate description of China is that it is a work in progress. Unfortunately, this Report ignores the progress, holds the Chinese to a higher standard than we hold others, fails to understand that U.S. and Chinese geopolitical interest in the region will inevitably diverge regardless of what kind of government China has or what kind of economic policies it pursues, and assumes a static U.S. policy incapable of taking the initiative in the relationship. The Report spends all its space describing Chinese past actions that have damaged our relationship and future actions that would make it worse and only rarely focuses on the more important question of how we can make it better.

The Report’s tilt is embodied in its perspective and tone. It consistently implies the Chinese deserve blame for acting in their own interest rather than ours. It is ironic that the Report implicitly criticizes the Chinese for viewing the U.S. as a hegemon at the same time it presents a view of U.S. interests in Asia that can only be described as hegemonic. The Commission majority has bent over backwards to avoid describing the Chinese as a “threat;” yet the belief that they are permeates every chapter. At the same time, the Commission majority implicitly but clearly would abandon the policy of engagement that has characterized the last five administrations in favor of a policy of suspicion driven by preparation for a variety of worst-case scenarios. In doing so, the Report ignores or denigrates the positive role of American business in bringing free market principles and American democratic values to China. Ironically, the Report criticizes China’s efforts to prevent these influences from spreading, thus acknowledging their significance, while it discourages American companies from expanding their activities.

The truth is our bilateral relationship is doomed to be difficult. We vie for influence in the region. This is neither unnatural nor unusual and should not be justification for demonizing China and turning our relationship into a struggle between good and evil.

One of the main reasons for our concern—barely noted in the Report—is the sheer size of the Chinese economy. The Western market system has no experience absorbing a new entrant of such enormous productive capacity. Instead of looking at that seriously, the Report attempts to blame China for virtually every economic problem the U.S. has, ignoring the fact our manufacturing base has been eroding; the trade deficit has been growing; and the dollar has been too strong for a long time for reasons that have little to do with China. In fact, China is pursuing policies that Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, and others have pursued for years. The difference, again, is not policy but the size of the economy. The U.S. has spent very little time analyzing the problem from that perspective and is largely unprepared to deal with rapid Chinese growth.