The Avoidable War: The Dangers of a Catastrophic Conflict between the US and Xi Jinping's China

by Kevin Rudd

Overview

A war between China and the US would be catastrophic, deadly, and destructive. Unfortunately, it is no longer unthinkable. 

The relationship between the US and China, the world’s two superpowers, is peculiarly volatile. It rests on a seismic fault—of cultural misunderstanding, historical grievance, and ideological incompatibility. No other nations are so quick to offend and be offended. Their militaries play a dangerous game of chicken, corporations steal intellectual property, intelligence satellites peer, and AI technicians plot. The capacity for either country to cross a fatal line grows daily. 

Kevin Rudd, a former Australian prime minister who has studied, lived in, and worked with China for more than forty years, is one of the very few people who can offer real insight into the mindsets of the leadership whose judgment will determine if a war will be fought. The Avoidable War demystifies the actions of both sides, explaining and translating them for the benefit of the other. Geopolitical disaster is still avoidable, but only if these two giants can find a way to coexist without betraying their core interests through what Rudd calls “managed strategic competition.” Should they fail, down that path lies the possibility of a war that could rewrite the future of both countries, and the world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781541701298
Publisher:	PublicAffairs
Publication date:	03/22/2022
Pages:	432
Sales rank:	211,954
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.70(d)

About the Author

Kevin Rudd is president and CEO of Asia Society and has been president of the Asia Society Policy Institute since January 2015. He served as Australia's 26th Prime Minister from 2007 to 2010, then as Foreign Minister from 2010 to 2012, before returning as Prime Minister in 2013. Rudd graduated from the Australian National University with honors in Chinese studies, and is fluent in Mandarin. He also studied at the National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei. 

Table of Contents

Introduction: On the Danger of War 1

1 A Short History of the US-China Relationship 19

2 The Problem of Distrust 59

3 Understanding Xi Jinping's Worldview: Ten Concentric Circles of Interest 77

4 The First Circle: The Politics of Staying in Power 85

5 The Second Circle: Securing National Unity 95

6 The Third Circle: Ensuring Economic Prosperity 103

7 The Fourth Circle: Making Economic Development Environmentally Sustainable 141

8 The Fifth Circle: Modernizing the Military 151

9 The Sixth Circle: Managing China's Neighborhood 179

10 The Seventh Circle: Securing China's Maritime Periphery-the Western Pacific, the Indo-Pacific, and the Quad 201

11 The Eighth Circle: Going West-the Belt and Road Initiative 221

12 The Ninth Circle: Increasing Chinese Leverage Across Europe, Africa, and Latin America and Gaining an Arctic Foothold 237

13 The Tenth Circle: Changing the Global Rules-Based Order 265

14 America's Emerging Strategic Response to Xi Jinping's China 283

15 Xi Jinping's China in the 2020s: The Politics of the Twentieth Party Congress 307

16 The Decade of Living Dangerously: Alternative Futures for US-China Relations 331

17 Navigating an Uncertain Future: The Case for Managed Strategic Competition 357

Epilogue 397

Acknowledgments 401

Index 405

Editorial Reviews

02/14/2022

Rudd, the former prime minister of Australia, debuts with an incisive analysis of the rising tensions between the U.S. and China. Surveying the cultural, historical, and ideological roots of the conflict, Rudd makes a convincing case that the two sides now regard “some form of armed conflict or confrontation” as inevitable. He contends that recent acts of gamesmanship, including China’s cyberattacks against the U.S. government and construction of naval bases in the Indian Ocean, as well as America’s trade war against China and increased arms sales to Taiwan, will evolve into “sort of Cold War 2.0,” unless a new set of strategic imperatives and norms develop between the superpowers. Though China was “more than happy” to occupy the “political, diplomatic, and financial vacuum” created by Donald Trump’s defunding of the UN and other international institutions, recent diplomatic overtures to the Biden administration signal that Beijing is uncomfortable with the “adversarial strategic environment in which it finds itself,” according to Rudd, and wants “to return to its principle focus on the long-term transformation of its economic model.” Ultimately, Rudd calls for the two countries to become engaged in “managed strategic competition” between their economic development policies and political systems. Shot through with reasoned analysis and evenhanded appraisals of both countries’ strengths and weaknesses, this is a valuable guide to de-escalating a global flashpoint. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

[P]enetrating and sensible… [a] worthy and ambitious intellectual re-creation."—Kevin Peraino, New York Times

“Rudd’s book provides a rich and realistic portrayal of China’s motivations, as well as a stark warning to a world standing on the edge of a conflict potentially far more devastating than Russia’s recent invasion of Ukraine.”—Financial Times

“Rudd directly confronts the growing possibility of war and offers well-thought-out proposals to prevent that catastrophic outcome and the ‘global carnage’ it would cause.”—New York Review of Books

“[O]ne of the best primers on US-China relations.”—The Telegraph

“Rudd has become one of the most influential Western commentators on relations between China and the West. He correctly takes the prospect of a war between the US and China very seriously and comes up with a plan to avert disaster.”—Gideon Rachman, Financial Times, best summer books of 2022

“[A] probing analysis of the risks of war between China and the United States.”—Irish Times

“Rudd, the former prime minister of Australia, debuts with an incisive analysis of the rising tensions between the U.S. and China. Surveying the cultural, historical, and ideological roots of the conflict, Rudd makes a convincing case that the two sides now regard ‘some form of armed conflict or confrontation’ as inevitable…. Shot through with reasoned analysis and evenhanded appraisals of both countries’ strengths and weaknesses, this is a valuable guide to de-escalating a global flashpoint.”—Publishers Weekly

“An exploration of one of the world’s most significant and fraught international relationships… An accessible primer on the evolving China–U.S. rivalry.”—Kirkus

 “A lifelong student of China, Kevin Rudd has become one of today’s most thoughtful analysts of China’s development. The Avoidable War focuses on the signal challenge posed by China’s evolution to America and to world order. Can the US and China avoid sleepwalking into a conflict? Rudd offers constructive steps for the two powers to stabilize their relations.”—Henry A. Kissinger

“Wise counsel from a seasoned statesman who recognizes the real risk of catastrophic war and illuminates a promising path the US and China could take to avoid it.”—Graham Allison, Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at the Harvard Kennedy School, and author of Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?

“An extraordinary tour de force that analyzes the most important geopolitical relationship of the twenty-first-century. Organized, like Dante’s Inferno, into concentric circles that describe in brilliant detail the challenges ahead and a timely prescription to avoid a catastrophe. Let us truly hope that we can indeed avoid a war that looms upon us like a dark tower, threatening all the progress we have made.”—Admiral James Stavridis, 16th supreme Allied Commander of NATO, former dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University

“Based on a lifetime of observation and experience of China and America, Kevin Rudd has produced a rare book of wisdom and a detailed roadmap for how the two countries can manage their strategic competition and avoid a disastrous war.”—Joseph S. Nye, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor, Emeritus

“This is an important book and Mr Rudd, now president of the US-based Asia Society, makes his case powerfully.”—The National (UAE)

“Kevin Rudd has written the year’s best China book…With thoroughness and precision, Rudd has assembled a wide array of information and historical background… it is one of the best single-volume surveys of the China issue available to the public.” —Claremont Review of Books

“The Avoidable War is a deeply impressive work, and it is to be hoped that it will have a formative influence on the ‘China debate’ in the United States and other countries. Indeed, it may be that, decades hence, Rudd is remembered as a sort of successor to George Kennan—a powerful thinker who, early in the course of a titanic struggle, laid out a broad strategic outline marked by foresight, prudence, and careful assessment of the strategic culture and goals of a totalitarian superpower.”—Comparative Strategy

From the Publisher

2022-01-12
An exploration of one of the world’s most significant and fraught international relationships.

Rudd, CEO of Asia Society and the former prime minister of Australia, employs his considerable diplomatic experience to analyze Xi Jinping’s aggressive approach toward the world stage. The author sets out a readable cautionary tale, warning of the dangers of mutual distrust between China and the U.S. as well as the follies of the “Thucydides Trap,” described by historian Graham Allison as “the natural, inevitable discombobulation that occurs when a rising power threatens to displace a ruling power.” As Rudd amply demonstrates, Xi, as a kind of neo-Mao, is actively stoking the “depressingly familiar, ancient alchemies of xenophobia, nationalism, and political opportunism.” The author calls for new “rules of the road” for the two powers to navigate, and he shows the roots of the conflict in China’s suspicion of foreigners, regarded as culturally inferior and irrelevant, and the stance of the American government, which, despite its avowed anti-colonialism, has often disregarded China as an equal trading partner and pursued aggressive, patronizing policies toward China. After World War I, for example, “America’s status, in the eyes of China’s emerging political class, collapsed overnight from national savior to spineless hypocrite.” Rudd surmises that Beijing sees the relationship as a transactional one while the U.S. has viewed it as “transformational, carrying with it the deeper objective of changing the fundamental nature of Communist China itself.” This has not happened, of course, and the author walks us through Xi’s “ten concentric circles of interest,” which include the widespread consolidation of power, national unity, unfettered economic growth, “securing China’s maritime periphery in East Asia and the west Pacific,” and even “rewriting the global rules-based order.” Where Xi is perhaps most vulnerable is in environmental policy or a situation in which cracks develop in the seemingly endless economic expansion plan.

An accessible primer on the evolving China–U.S. rivalry.

Kirkus Reviews