“The chief practical use of history is to deliver us from plausible historical analogies.”
—James Bryce[1]
Historical analogies are vital tools to navigate the present and shape the future, particularly given humanity's general lack of clairvoyance. However, such analogies must be carefully chosen; overreliance on a particular historical episode can instill assumptions in the minds of strategists or students of strategy that too often go unexamined. Currently, the Cold War reigns as the dominant analogy in framing U.S.-China relations in the 21st century. This prominence is unsurprising given that conflict’s recent vintage and superficial similarities between contemporary China and the former USSR.[2] Nevertheless, Robert Jervis argues recent history and experience provide powerful, but problematic, “source[s] of beliefs about international relations and images of other countries.”[3] Yet, “individuals as well as institutions [tend] to default to the stories they know, to comfortable and familiar narratives” as they attempt to understand new challenges.[4] Thus, Eliot Cohen writes, “the historical mind cries out for some variety.”[5] Such a lack of analogical variety afflicts current discourse on U.S.-China competition, leading decision-makers and analysts to reflexively interpret events through the lens of ill-fitting precedent.
All historical analogies are wrong, but some are useful. And just as overfitting data is a constant temptation with such models, so overinterpreting current events to historical analogies creates problematic assumptions.
The Commonplace invocation of a “new Cold War” between the U.S. and China among pundits and policymakers can introduce as much confusion as clarity.[6] Examples abound of this analogy’s imaginative hold. Cold War framing lurks behind discussions of the U.S. and China dividing the internet into spheres of influence, not unlike the division of Europe between NATO and the Warsaw Pact.[7] The State Department’s recent attempt to provide the definitive assessment of the Chinese Communist Party frames itself as the spiritual and intellectual descendant of George Kennan’s influential “long telegram.”[8] To paraphrase George Box, all historical analogies are wrong, but some are useful. And just as overfitting data is a constant temptation with such models, so overinterpreting current events to historical analogies creates problematic assumptions. Embracing greater analogical variety provides the antidote, and to find such variety one can always look to that perpetual wellspring of historical analysis: Ancient Rome. The Roman Empire’s deathblow was struck not by a foreign competitor but by one that had been invited into and nurtured within the empire itself: the Goths. Similarly, the United States would be mistaken to assume that Communist China represents a potent external competitor in the same vein as the former Soviet Union, when the true conflict is much messier and unlike any other the U.S. has yet faced. Though the Roman experience has much to commend it, it too has its limits, as do all historical analogies. The aim is to increase analogical variety, not substitute one reigning analogy for another. There is no one analogy to rule them all.
WHAT HAVE THE ROMANS EVER DONE FOR US?[9]
Yet, if there were to be a contender for such a ruling analogy, it might be found in Roman history. There is no end of America-as-Rome analogies. Among the gifts the Romans have left their political descendants are intellectual and imaginative touchstones deployed from the Founding to the present.[10] As just one example, a recent issue of Foreign Affairs obliquely references Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire to frame its discussion of America's role in the world.[11] Every aspect of Roman history has been mined for parallels to contemporary events. The Goths' entry into the empire in 376 is no exception, usually serving as a morality tale for mismanaged immigration.[12] Any great historical event is like a kaleidoscope; you can turn it over to see something new. Turning this event over can challenge stale assumptions of the U.S.-China relationship, and grant insights regarding the rise of a rival power within a broader political system. In this telling, the American-led liberal international order stands in for Rome as what Robert Kaplan has called "the most advanced form of imperialism the world has ever known."[13] Like the Roman Empire, the American-led international system has sought to assimilate nations into its norms and institutions. Hence, the Chinese take the role of the Goths in this tale; after being brought into their respective empires, they developed into strategic competitors despite their continuing interdependence with the hegemon.
Many of the tribesmen that besieged Rome had been members of its legions not long before. The empire never recovered.
Rome had a long history of adding new nations into the empire via a standardized policy known as the receptio. The policy's fundamentally aimed to thoroughly assimilate barbarians (non-Romans) into the imperial system, thereby preventing rival powers from rising within the system while benefiting from their assimilation.[14] However, Emperor Valens voided the receptio with the Goths' arrival in 376; he allowed them to enter the empire en masse, with none of the usual conditions. The Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus maintains that the emperor and his advisors' greed and short-sightedness allowed the Goths' immediate influx.[15] Because Valens had dire need of troops and resources to finance his campaign against the Persians in the East, he allowed an armed, intact barbarian nation to enter the empire. Thus, the Romans short-circuited the assimilation process, carelessly allowing a cohesive, independent power to coalesce within the imperial system.
In 378, Valens's imprudence was repaid when he fell in the Battle of Adrianople to a Gothic army he rashly engaged based on faulty intelligence and overestimating his own legions' abilities.[16] A stalemate following four years of war confirmed the Goths' autonomy within the empire: A barbarian nation was allowed to live within the empire, nominally under the emperor's rule but functionally self-governing. Thus, "the traditional integrity of the Roman state had been breached."[17] With that toehold in the empire, Roman sovereignty eroded until a Gothic army sacked the city of Rome itself in 410. Many of the tribesmen that besieged Rome had been members of its legions not long before. The empire never recovered.
THE CALL IS COMING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE
Just as Valens could only see the Goths as a reservoir of military talent and tax revenue, so U.S. policymakers and business leaders saw China's market potential as part of the global trading order. Yet, like the Goths, China has proved an exception to assimilation precedent. According to precedent, greater political liberalization was supposed to accompany increased economic growth as China became a "responsible stakeholder" in the international system.[18] Yet, a growing consensus holds that, despite its entrance into the liberal empire, China has not evolved into a responsible stakeholder. Rather, "the liberal international order has failed to lure or bind China as powerfully as expected," presenting a threat to the health of the system itself.[19]
The Romans would not adapt to changing conditions, leading them to an ultimately disastrous war.
Like the Goths, the Chinese have emerged as a competitor from "inside the system," dramatically complicating U.S. strategy and policy-making. Just as the Goths grew to power within the Roman Empire, the Chinese have participated in the liberal order’s institutional and economic arrangements to drive their dramatic growth. Their continued participation in the liberal order even as they contest U.S. leadership has created a set of circumstances more akin to the Roman-Gothic entanglement than the confrontation with the former USSR. American decision-makers must not recapitulate the Romans' failure to question their assumptions: The Romans would not adapt to changing conditions, leading them to an ultimately disastrous war. Even after the crushing defeat at Adrianople, it was quite literally unthinkable that the Goths would not assimilate as every other nation had done. They could not understand that the conflict had evolved beyond any previous tribal uprising. While the Romans focused on the Goths, they neglected the blocking and tackling of imperial governance. This neglect allowed the Goths to gain allies among other previously assimilated tribes, even as they inspired other uprisings in frontier regions like Britain.
Like Rome, the United States is susceptible to negligence in maintaining its broader political order. As Robert Kagan argues, despite the perennial temptation to retreat to its shores, the U.S. neglects the global order it has built at its peril.[20] This maintenance work starts with re-engaging and strengthening multilateral institutions. For example, reasserting leadership in the World Health Organization will improve America’s ability to respond to future pandemics.[21] Likewise, just as the Goths were able to co-opt smaller tribes, the Chinese have proven eager to expand their influence in Latin American countries, undermining U.S. leadership in the Western Hemisphere.[22] Retreat from the liberal international order would have deleterious consequences similar to Rome's withdrawal from its frontiers, shattering the stability that enables commerce in a global economy.
U.S.-CHINA ECONOMIC ENMESHMENT
Participation in the global economy underpinned by American power has richly rewarded the Chinese. Yet, the Chinese Communist Party has declared its intention for China to achieve “national rejuvenation” by taking a leadership role in the global international order.[23] Thus, the Chinese present a similar conundrum as the Goths; both benefited from the prevailing order that they later endangered. Accordingly, conflict with China is not primarily ideological, but a natural outgrowth of the country’s growing power.[24] The CCP has been perfectly willing to embrace the global market in goods and services, despite its official ideology of Marxism-Leninism. In 2018, China accounted for 12.4% of global trade, making it the world's largest trader.[25] And the country has become the third-largest U.S. trading partner, totaling $634.8 billion in 2019.[26] These facts put the U.S. in a tight spot; the American and Chinese economies are symbiotically linked, and decoupling them is a tall order.[27]
Confronting the prevailing nationalist tendencies in Chinese foreign policy without undermining domestic liberalizing elements will require nuance and imagination.
Given China's thorough enmeshment in the global economy, axes of future conflict will be economic, as well as military and cultural. An American strategy recognizing this reality will prioritize economic statecraft alongside military gamesmanship. However, the United States "too often reaches for the gun instead of the purse in its foreign policy.”[28] The Chinese to date have displayed no such compunctions and have been quite willing to wield their economic power for geopolitical ends.[29] A high level of economic competition introduces additional complexity because engagement with China has led to both increased liberalization and nationalism, creating a "diversity of interests driving China's massive economy.”[30] Confronting the prevailing nationalist tendencies in Chinese foreign policy without undermining domestic liberalizing elements will require nuance and imagination. Therefore, any competition with China must operate on many levels while taking place in a sort of twilight space complicated by the symbiotic relationship of "Chimerica."[31]
ANALOGICAL REASONING AND THE STRATEGIC IMAGINATION
The Romans failed to clearly understand the contours of their conflict with the Goths, assuming the conflict would follow familiar patterns. Blinded by their experience and lack of imagination, their failure serves as a negative example of one of Clausewitz’s core maxims: “The most far-reaching act of judgment that the statesman and commander have to make is to establish...the kind of war on which they are embarking.”[32] Like the Germanic tribes, China has become thoroughly enmeshed in American life, setting up a more complex paradigm than traditional great-power conflict in which two peer competitors and their rival spheres of influence go toe-to-toe. Some current strategic models embrace this entanglement as an unchanging fact, such as Competitive Co-Existence or Cooperative Rivalry.[33] Others, like Envelopment, argue for a reassertion of American primacy, flexibly confronting China with a whole-of-society approach.[34] However, warmed-over Containment strategies assume conflict with China will mirror the Cold War and should be jettisoned.[35] Such simplistic confrontation narratives and their attendant assumptions offer as little insight as those that naïvely predicted assimilation.
Overgeneralizing America- as-Rome reincarnate results in defeatist, declensionist assumptions.
The human mind longs for Manichean simplicity; hence, the desire to see the emerging conflict with China as another grand battle between democracy and dictatorship. Yet, the Roman struggle with the Goths cautions us that such a mindset can too easily result in catastrophically mismanaged conflict. The Romans made the mistake of compromising their imperial integrity, either from political and economic expedience or force of circumstance, then compounded that mistake by misjudging the nature of the Gothic threat. The United States would be wise to heed their failure. However, the warning against overfitting applies to this analogy, as well. Overgeneralizing America- as-Rome reincarnate results in defeatist, declensionist assumptions. Replying to America-as-Rome jeremiads, the historian Tom Holland wrote, "There is nothing written into the DNA of a superpower that says that it must inevitably decline and fall. This is not an argument for complacency; it is an argument against despair."[36] Just because Rome could not successfully manage its complex, multi-layered conflict with an enmeshed competitor does mean the U.S. is doomed to do likewise.
Joel Benedetti is an economic consultant and an incoming Presidential Management Fellow of the Class of 2021. He conducted doctoral research in History at the University of Chicago and holds additional graduate degrees from the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Cincinnati.
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Header Image: The Roman Forum, Rome Italy, June 2, 2016 (Tyrell Mayfield).
Notes:
[1] Quoted in David Hackett Fischer, Historians’ Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought. (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1970), 243.
[2] E.g., The one-party rule of the Communist Party, Marxism-Leninism as the official state ideology, both countries’ lengthy historical and imperial pedigrees, and a certain cultural distance from Western democracies, among others.
[3] Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics: New Edition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017), 193.
[4] Eliot A. Cohen, “The Historical Mind and Military Strategy,” Orbis 49, no. 4 (September 1, 2005): 584.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Gideon Rachman, “A New Cold War: Trump, Xi and the Escalating US-China Confrontation,” Financial Times (London, England), October 5, 2020, https://www.ft.com/content/7b809c6a-f733-46f5-a312-9152aed28172; Mike Gallagher, “Opinion | Yes, America Is in a Cold War With China,” Wall Street Journal, June 7, 2020, sec. Opinion, https://www.wsj.com/articles/yes-america-is-in-a-cold-war-with-china-11591548706.
[7] “The Internet, Divided Between the U.S. and China, Has Become a Battleground - WSJ,” accessed May 2, 2021, https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-internet-divided-between-the-u-s-and-china-has-become-a-battleground-11549688420.
[8] The Policy Planning Staff, Office of the Secretary of State, The Elements of the China Challenge (Washington, D.C: State Department, November 2020), https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/20-02832-Elements-of-China-Challenge-508.pdf.
[9] Monty Python, What Have The Romans... - Monty Python’s Life of Brian, 2009, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc7HmhrgTuQ.
[10] Thomas E. Ricks, First Principles: What America’s Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country (Harper, 2020).
[11] Gideon Rose, “Decline and Fall,” Foreign Affairs 100, no. 2 (April 3, 2021): 8–9, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/issues/2021/100/2.
[12] Annalisa Merelli, “1,700 Years Ago, the Mismanagement of a Migrant Crisis Cost Rome Its Empire,” Quartz, May 7, 2016, https://qz.com/677380/1700-years-ago-the-mismanagement-of-a-migrant-crisis-cost-rome-its-empire/; Brian E. Frydenborg, “Immigration, Diversity, Inclusion: Strategic National Security Assets From Antiquity Through Today,” Small Wars Journal, April 15, 2018, https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/immigration-diversity-inclusion-strategic-national-security-assets-antiquity-through-today; Niall Ferguson, “Paris and the Fall of Rome,” The Boston Globe, November 16, 2015, https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2015/11/16/paris-and-fall-rome/ErlRjkQMGXhvDarTIxXpdK/story.html.
[13] Robert D. Kaplan, “The Afterlife of Empire,” National Interest, no. 170 (December 11, 2020): 21–25, https://nationalinterest.org/feature/afterlife-empire-170803.
[14] P. J. Heather, The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians (Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 159.
[15] Ammianus Marcellinus, History, Volume III: Books 27-31. Excerpta Valesiana, trans. J.C. Rolfe, vol. 331, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1939), 403.
[16] Ammianus Marcellinus, History, 463-483.
[17] Heather, The Fall of the Roman Empire, 189.
[18] Evan A. Feigenbaum, “China as a Responsible Stakeholder? A Decade Later,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, March 23, 2016, https://carnegieendowment.org/2016/03/23/china-as-responsible-stakeholder-decade-later-pub-63115.
[19] Kurt M. Campbell and Ely Ratner, “The China Reckoning,” Foreign Affairs 97, no. 2 (April 3, 2018): 60–70, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2018-02-13/china-reckoning.
[20] Robert Kagan, “A Superpower, Like It or Not,” Foreign Affairs 100, no. 2 (April 3, 2021): 28–38, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2021-02-16/superpower-it-or-not.
[21] White House, National Security Memorandum on United States Global Leadership to Strengthen the International COVID-19 Response and to Advance Global Health Security and Biological Preparedness (Washington, D.C.: White House, 2021), https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/01/21/national-security-directive-united-states-global-leadership-to-strengthen-the-international-covid-19-response-and-to-advance-global-health-security-and-biological-preparedness/.
[22] Statement of Admiral Craig S. Faller, Before the Senate Armed Services Committee, 117th Cong, 5-7 (2021) (Statement of Admiral Craig S. Faller, Commander, United States Southern Command), https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/hearings/21-03-16-united-states-southern-command-and-united-states-northern-command.
[23] Xi Jinping, “Secure a Decisive Victory in Building a Moderately Prosperous Society in All Respects and Strive for the Great Success of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era,” transcript of a speech delivered at the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, Beijing, October 18, 2017, http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/download/Xi_Jinping's_report_at_19th_CPC_National_Congress.pdf.
[24] Elbridge Colby and Robert D. Kaplan, “The Ideology Delusion,” September 4, 2020, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2020-09-04/ideology-delusion.
[25] “Is China the World’s Top Trader?,” ChinaPower Project (blog), March 28, 2019, http://chinapower.csis.org/trade-partner/.
[26] “The People’s Republic of China | United States Trade Representative,” accessed February 2, 2021, https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/china-mongolia-taiwan/peoples-republic-china.
[27] Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman, “The Folly of Decoupling From China,” September 18, 2020, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2020-06-03/folly-decoupling-china.
[28] Ambassador Robert D. Blackwill and Jennifer M. Harris, War by Other Means: Geoeconomics and Statecraft (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press, 2016), 1.
[29] Blackwill and Harris, 53-151; Vida Macikenaite, “China’s Economic Statecraft: The Use of Economic Power in an Interdependent World,” Journal of Contemporary East Asia Studies 9, no. 2 (July 2, 2020): 108–26, https://doi.org/10.1080/24761028.2020.1848381.
[30] Yeling Tan, “How the WTO Changed China,” Foreign Affairs 100, no. 2 (April 3, 2021): 90–102, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2021-02-16/how-wto-changed-china.
[31] Niall Ferguson and Xiang Xu, “Trump and the ‘Chimerica’ Crisis,” Wall Street Journal, May 6, 2018, sec. Opinion, https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-and-the-chimerica-crisis-1525635323.
[32] Carl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. Michael Eliot Howard and Peter Paret, Revised edition (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1989), 88.
[33] Andrew S. Erickson, “Competitive Coexistence: An American Concept for Managing U.S.-China Relations,” The National Interest, January 30, 2019, https://nationalinterest.org/feature/competitive-coexistence-american-concept-managing-us-china-relations-42852; Li Huiru and Li Xiaohua, “China, US Not in ‘Cold War’, but Cooperative Rivalry” (Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center, January 11, 2019), https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/china-us-not-cold-war-cooperative-rivalry.
[34] Wilson VornDick, “America Must Have a Grander Strategy for China,” The National Interest, March 16, 2020, https://nationalinterest.org/feature/america-must-have-grander-strategy-china-133677.
[35] Deborah Welch Larson, “The Return of Containment,” Foreign Policy, no. 239 (Winter 2021): 61–64, https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/01/15/containment-russia-china-kennan-today/.
[36] Tom Holland, “America Is Not Rome. It Just Thinks It Is,” The New York Review of Books (blog), August 6, 2019, https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/08/06/america-is-not-rome-it-just-thinks-it-is/.