Dim view of "small yard, high fence"
That horse has left the barn
By now my complaint on US strategic thinking has grown chronic:
We are still ruled by Cold War baby generations (Boomers, Xers)
They were conditioned by that history to view the world in East-West terms (and we’re living in an increasingly North-South world)
When challengers arise in the East, they know what to label them: enemy
They also know how to manage them: sanctions, embargoes, containment, Cold War 2.0, and — if necessary but certainly for force planning purposes — World War III (it’s already begun in case you missed the calendar invite)
And they know what game we’re playing: high-stakes poker where every single hand could spell the END OF THE US-LED WORLD ORDER!
Except … none of that thinking makes sense, because it has America using 20th century techniques and strategies against a decidedly 21st century competitor (okay, even opponent, if you must).
But here’s the problem I keep mentioning: America abandoned its market-making role about 15 years ago, following the Great Financial Crisis of 2008. Since then we’ve elected nation-building-at-home presidents (Obama, Trump, Biden), and none of them have gotten the new competitive environment correct. Obama was too dismissive of both Russia and China, while Trump was too submissive. Lately, with Joe, it’s been a rather unimaginative ramping up of Cold War constructs while continuing to disregard any market-making duties (like treating the WTO with some respect because, after all, we invented it).
FOREIGN AFFAIRS: The World Is Abandoning the WTO — And America and China Are Leading the Way
The underlying arrogance of it all is telling: We assume that simply denying some state access to our market will bring them to heel. Or, if that doesn’t work, we seek to deny them our technologies — a bone-headed hoarding strategy for an interconnected, digitalized world if ever there was one.
Meanwhile, we maintain this huge worldwide military footprint on the basis of being the world’s great protector of state sovereignty (because that’s how you prevent WWII from repeating). And so we are quasi-pinned down today by an re-imagined Axis of Evil that includes Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran. We known they’re all in cahoots because, in our sanctions and embargoes and containment efforts, they naturally turn to one another in defense and that proves they’re all aligned — existentially, mind you — against THE US-LED WORLD ORDER!
Tell me how this is an improvement on George W. Bush’s you’re either with us or against us!
Where’s the breakthrough strategic thinking of today? I can tell you straight up that it’s not found here in America. Our apps all prompt us to the same answers.
What choice do we have? We live in a “world of war” where we’re not actually named combatants in any of the real or potential wars (Israel v. Iran, China v. Taiwan, Russia v. Ukraine).
Do we have allies in each instance? Definitely. But we’re approaching each problem-set like it signals the end of … wait for it … THE US-LED WORLD ORDER!
Now we’re talking a big military build-up and rapid modernization to address all the “gaps” out there (mostly just drones because we’ve been so long addicted to super-expensive platforms, thanks to our military industrial complex). We’re locking down technologies, putting together new clusters of military alliances … all the familiar stuff.
The Quad is going to fix all this!
Meanwhile, while we sanction and embargo the East, that East is aggressively wiring up the South with Belt and Road, Safe Cities, and other, truly system-administrator-style offerings that see Beijing play market-connector and market-maker while we keep reaching for various balls to grab so we can go home.
Who’s America’s biggest enemy right now?
Well, it’s Russia, of course!
But surely you mean Iran, you anti-semite!
Well then, certainly you’re a globalist ignoring China’s rise!
And you’re an idiot for not realizing that this is still all about the nukes, meaning we can never take our eye off the ball that is Pyongyang.
Obviously! Because you know they’re all working together in lock-step fashion!
All of this “strategic” dialoguing falls on deaf ears with our younger generations (Millennials, Zs), who naturally crave an extended progressive era at home (to regrade an economic landscape tilting decidedly against them) and are becoming almost frantic in their desires to see America get serious on climate change.
How can you expect me to focus on that when I’m taking on both the Chinese and the transgenders! Seriously! Get your head in the game!
So I’m thinking maybe the Europeans can wake us up here.
HINRICH FOUNDATION: Fenced In — The Need to Move Beyond America’s New Containment [You likely have to register to download]
New? Hardly. More like regurgitated.
Let’s us begin to learn …
The growing United States-China geopolitical competition has inspired a return of “Cold War” rhetoric. This rhetoric – especially without alternative, updated frameworks – has also resurrected Cold War tactics. Washington is deploying a “small yard, high fence” strategy toward China; that approach amounts to a re-branded version of “containment”. And this approach risks translating to an ineffective US approach toward competing with Beijing, particularly in competition for control over critical technologies and, more broadly, the global economy.
You had me at Cold War!
I’m also not crazy in my thinking.
The problem, in a nutshell:
The Cold War competition was one against a local ..zed adversary in a pre-globalization world. Thanks in large part to information technology, today’s geopolitical landscape is defined by global supply chains and markets.
The US might be facing off against an adversary in China, but China’s influence is pervasive, extending even into the US itself. Containment, in this dynamic, is not an option. If Washington’s strategy does not update for that, the US is likely to fail. And that failure will have ill effects for the global trading system.
To remind from America’s New Map:
With Taiwan looming as the mother of all Cold War triggers, the temptation here will be for America to reflexively demonize China, pursue an unrealistic containment strategy that costs more than it gains, and enlist New Delhi in unrestrained rivalry with Beijing. Americans must resist this impulse for both its strategic shortsightedness and its capacity to trigger Pyrrhic victories beyond our imagination. We need to shelve our Cold War reflexes with forward- leaning China—no matter their residual utility with retrograde Russia.
And …
Blame it on our Cold War containment strategy, which turned America into a status-quo-protecting power, in turn gnarling our historical roots. Thanks to 9/11 and the Cold War babies (Boomers, Gen Xers) still in charge, we have grown obsessed with defending our borders while the rest of our superpower competitors plan and act bigger.
Of course, anybody planning or acting bigger in this world of our creating is NATURALLY our existential enemy because … that’s just how it has to be.
Back to our European instructors:
Further compounding this problem, even updates to America’s competitive toolkit are based on a framework ill-suited for contemporary US-China competition: These updates have primarily leveraged the economic statecraft logics of America’s counter-terrorism campaign. The “first resort” that emerges from that logic is a search for decisive competitive advantage in financial sanctions and technology export restrictions. That approach can certainly work in delivering punitive and deterrent effect against isolated economic actors. The same is not true of highly diversified and globally integrated economies – let alone those, like China, that account for nearly as much international trade volume as any other actor.
I smell the coffee, or maybe it’s burnt toast.
But wait, we have a new slogan for it!
Bipartisan consensus in Washington appears to be coalescing around the continuous and incremental escalation of “containment” tactics. These tactics have been summarized under the label of a “small yard, high fence” approach.
Fences for a rapidly digitalizing globalization … brilliant!
China’s distortive, state-backed industrial policy requires a more systemic response. A full-throated American defense of free trade and economic prosperity would better mobilize the private sector and American allies if it were paired with an affirmative vision for the future – as opposed to an approach that relies solely on tactical restrictions on trade and investment.
Both for America’s competitive edge and for the sake of the global trading system’s future, Washington needs a strategic refresh.
Back to America’s New Map:
Today, America insists on bringing a knife to the gunfight that is the superpower brand war—a game China is winning stone by stone. Oblivious to Beijing’s strategy, Washington frames the contest along familiar lines—namely, the poker-like military showdown over Taiwan. While Washington dutifully marshals its defense budget to prepare for the next generation of high-tech warfare (knife), Beijing calmly executes its Belt and Road Initiative to lock in its stealthy access to local police and security systems worldwide (gunfight). Both imagine a path to supremacy playing different games: America hunkers down while sharpening the pointy end of its military spear, while Beijing methodically maximizes its worldwide political, economic, and security presence, seed- ing work-arounds for feared disruptions to come.
With globalization becoming increasingly digitalized, ask yourself which strategy seems more appropriate.
Ask, indeed.
The Soviet Union never integrated itself economically with the world beyond its bloc. China has, thus my “horse leaving barn” complaint.
Damnit man! I lived the Cold War and I know what I’m doing!
The Europeans here disagree:
This reflexive complacency may well be strategic malpractice. Today’s “small yard, high fence” dovetails, in both means and objectives, with the tactics adopted by the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls (COCOM) during the Cold War. Those worked for that era. Today, these measures are an ill-timed refutation of contemporary market forces. They yield a near-certain path to ceding strategic advantage in critical technology fields and the economic and security competitions that depend on them.
First, the impossibility of the defensive side – the technology and capital restrictions aimed at containing China. In today’s globalized environment, goods and capital move quickly and in patterns that can be difficult to detect or monitor. That creates an obstacle to restricting their flow without changing the overall system in which that flow takes place.
We’re throwing out the baby (liberal international trade order) with the baby (China’s challenge).
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