The Avoidable War: The Dangers of a Catastrophic Conflict Between the US and Xi Jinping’s China. Kevin Rudd. New York, NY: Public Affairs, 2022.

Reviewing a book by a current or former world leader is a delicate task—they often fall into the flawed-but-worthwhile category, and accurately representing this duality requires a demanding attention to detail. Kevin Rudd, the former foreign minister and prime minister of Australia, has created such a text with The Avoidable War: The Dangers of a Catastrophic Conflict Between the US and Xi Jinping’s China. Rudd’s desire to add unique value for the reader is overshadowed on numerous occasions by his writing style. Content-wise, Rudd’s work is absolutely worthwhile, due to his detailed knowledge of key events and Xi Jinping’s personality. It is not perfect, however, and suffers mildly from a misleading introduction, a failure to address Rudd’s stated audience, and a lack of explicit sourcing. In terms of its intent, The Avoidable War serves as a high-quality survey of the state of U.S.-China relations, while missing the mark on its nominal thesis that the two nations should adopt his framework of managed strategic competition to move forward. Analysts and students embarking on a more in-depth study of U.S.-China affairs should invest the time to read this book thoroughly.

Rudd writes that the purpose of The Avoidable War is threefold: “[T]o explain, for a mainly American audience, how the worldviews now dominant in China and the United States are pushing the two countries toward war; to outline how such a war could be sparked…and to consider what could be done, in realistic terms, to prevent it.”[1] He approaches the first goal by including histories of U.S.-China relations from both perspectives, as well as examining what drives Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party to act as they do. His thesis, and main contribution to the literature on the potential for war between the U.S. and China, is that war between the two countries is not inevitable, in explicit contrast to Graham Allison in Destined for War. To give peace a chance, Rudd proposes a system of “managed strategic competition” that would allow both sides to compete for ideological and systemic dominance while not actually shooting at each other. This is probably the least-impressive part of the book, because it is sketchily developed and marred by odd misunderstandings of the American foreign policy system. An entire book focused on such a system of managed strategic competition could be worthwhile, but here it is treated as an afterthought. Instead, the book’s strength lies in its summation of U.S.-China relations and Xi Jinping’s worldview, putting it in line with Chen Jian’s Mao’s China and the Cold War, which asserts that Mao—Xi’s very obvious role model—had an outsized personal impact on Chinese foreign policy. In addressing these areas, Rudd leaves his stated audience at the mercy of his opinions, but this does not significantly reduce the value of the text.

To give peace a chance, Rudd proposes a system of “managed strategic competition” that would allow both sides to compete for ideological and systemic dominance while not actually shooting at each other.

How does a worthwhile book fail its intended audience? Within the American audience mentioned above, Rudd writes for the “intelligent general reader…who is not seeking simplistic answers to complex questions.”[2] In Rudd’s construction, this reader needs neither footnotes nor bibliography. This presents issues for the intelligent general reader as well as obvious challenges to an academic or policy-focused audience. As written, Rudd’s opinion is virtually indistinguishable from fact; without sourcing, the entire text is an exercise in trust. The general reader is not necessarily well-served by Rudd’s views of the American decision-making system. On one occasion, Rudd suggests that the national security advisor be appointed the lead figure in creating a new bilateral framework for U.S.-China relations.[3] A general reader might wonder why this hasn’t happened. An informed student of U.S. foreign policy would know that this is an odd choice, as only a handful of national security advisors have ever possessed the kind of close relationship with the president needed to expand their authority to that degree—and those have often gone on to positions like secretary of state after their time in the post. This is compounded by artifacts of style, like saying George W. Bush was Australian politician John Howard’s “best buddy,” which come across as odd, to say the least.[4] A few footnotes could have made Rudd’s arguments easier to follow and less reliant on his characterizations.

This 400-page exercise in trust is, however, redeemed by Rudd’s access to senior Chinese officials and the need to protect sources. This is where the book shines, and this is where Rudd’s decision to forego traditional sourcing is beneficial. A reader familiar with China can spot deviations from what is found in most sources—sometimes through Rudd’s explicit signposting, and other times via inference. The book thus begins to reveal its true audience: those who will engage with China issues, policy, and scholarship more deeply in the future. For these readers, Rudd’s work will likely provide valuable new perspectives and, if nothing else, an easily accessible resource from which to draw a moderately complex narrative of U.S.-China relations.

The book is well-organized. Chapter names and subheadings are clear. Even so, the introduction does not capture Rudd’s project well, offering a variety of simplistic and historiographically questionable statements that he expands upon and rectifies later in the book. Chapter 1 provides a historical overview of U.S.-China relations from the Opium Wars to the present. Chapter 2 explores the perspectives of both sets of national leaders and the reasons each mistrusts the other. Interestingly, Rudd attends to the issue of race, noting that racism is not solely an American issue. He explains that China sees foreign policy through a racial lens, both in that “white” Westerners are trying to prevent Asia’s rise, and in that non-Han ethnicities are racially inferior, with all the complexities that this entails.[5]

Chapters 3-13 are focused on Xi Jinping, his worldview, and his priorities. Rudd arranges these into ten concentric circles of value to Xi and China. After chapter 3 briefly examines Rudd’s argument that Xi’s priorities drive the CCP’s priorities, chapter 4 moves into the first of these circles: Xi’s immediate need to remain in power. From there, Chapter 5 explores the questions of territorial sovereignty on which the CCP has staked its political legitimacy: Taiwan, Xinjiang, Tibet, Inner Mongolia, and Hong Kong. Chapter 6 discusses the other part of the grand bargain between the Party and the populace: economic growth in exchange for giving up most freedoms. Rudd’s economic bent is on full display here, and his understanding of finance offers a novel perspective for those primarily focused on security. Chapter 7 reveals how Xi has been forced to modify this bargain to include environmental reforms and an attempt to project leadership abroad in this arena in order to maintain domestic legitimacy. Chapter 8 switches gears to discuss Xi’s efforts to modernize the Chinese military into a force capable of power projection far away from China proper. Chapter 9 explores how Chinese policymakers feel they must manage all fourteen of their neighbors to ensure security. Rudd helpfully includes general overviews on China’s relationship with the most significant of these neighbors (Bhutan, shockingly, is not included in this overview). Chapter 10 concerns the Chinese view of their maritime periphery and the drive to control as much of it as possible, complemented by Chapter 11’s examination of the western periphery and the Belt and Road Initiative. Chapter 12 seeks to explain not only China’s view of the developing world as a useful base of support, but also to caution that many in the developing world truly do see China as  helpful and act accordingly. Finally, Chapter 13 warns of China’s efforts to rewrite the global rules-based order to suit itself. Taken together, this part of the book is an excellent and easily-digestible overview of the view from Zhongnanhai.

Chapter 14 shifts back to a U.S. perspective on the last several years, noting that America could certainly stymie China’s ambitions for dominance of the international system—if the U.S. can summon the domestic political will to do so. Chapter 15 addresses the potential paths of the now-past 20th Party Congress and Xi Jinping’s prospects for retaining control of the CCP. Chapter 16 covers a variety of scenarios for the 2020s and early 2030s, ranging from optimal outcomes for each side to stalemates.

Chapter 17 addresses Rudd’s proposed framework of managed strategic competition. The whole idea can be boiled down to the concept that America and China together should bilaterally agree on what is and is not off-limits for competition in various arenas, with short shrift given to essentials like enforcement mechanisms and penalties beyond “large-scale retaliatory action.”[6] Rudd challenges detractors to come up with a better framework, which is fair, but even in the most generous reading, he does not satisfactorily address one key question: how does this end? Rudd does not account for the CCP’s relationship to historical study, with its Marxist objectivist notion that events, including military campaigns, proceed certain ways via identifiable scientific laws—and the danger posed when such laws point to CCP victory.[7] Navigating a fraught period is one thing, but Rudd never explicitly says what he thinks will happen to U.S.-China relations after Xi Jinping’s death or retirement. If this framework were truly the point of the text, an answer, as well as an evaluation of the moral costs to the US of maintaining peace with an actively genocidal and territorially aggressive regime, would greatly enhance the book’s meaning. Overall, this chapter feels tacked-on, and, unlike the rest of the book, suffers when Rudd adds detail.

This leads to a discussion of the weakness inherent to all books on current events in China: timeliness. Everyone who has studied modern China knows that books are often lagging indicators, and that the latest research is often obsolete within months of publishing. In this case, Rudd has—through no fault of his own—come on the scene after two major changes: the Shanghai lockdowns and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Much of Rudd’s assessment of China’s appeal to the broader international community is built on the apparent superiority of its system in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. In the eyes of the international community, this illusion was dashed on the rocks of last spring’s lockdowns in Shanghai and continued deteriorating, especially for the CCP’s domestic audience, through the end of “dynamic zero-COVID” policies. Meanwhile, China’s close relationship with Russia has become a greater liability post-Ukraine, especially in the context of Taiwan. Again, these oversights are hardly Rudd’s fault—but they alter the reader’s perspective on the text’s predictive aspects and make the historical elements seem more appealing by contrast.

All told, Kevin Rudd’s The Avoidable War is very much worth the time and effort. Through a series of missteps in execution, it takes Rudd a while to get the reader onboard with his topic. Once there, however, the information provided is valuable, and Rudd’s perspective from personal experience does give his words an air of authority in these matters. For those starting out on their journey to understand what is arguably the world’s most important contemporary competition, this book is a fine place to begin.

Ian Boley is a doctoral candidate at Texas A&M University, where he studies the nuclear strategy debates surrounding the Strategic Defense Initiative. He is a co-host of The Joint Geeks of Staff, a podcast featuring national security professionals who explore military, legal, and diplomatic lessons through the lens of science fiction. He holds an MA from Fudan University in Shanghai, China, and a BA from Marietta College, in Marietta, Ohio. He currently works for a component of United States Space Command. The views expressed are the author’s alone and do not reflect those of the U.S. Space Force, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

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Header Image: National Flag of China, Daliang, China 2022 (Arthur Wang).

Notes:

[1] Kevin Rudd, The Avoidable War: The Dangers of a Catastrophic Conflict Between the US and Xi Jinping’s China (New York, NY: Public Affairs, 2022), 398.

[2] Rudd, The Avoidable War, 17.

[3] Rudd, The Avoidable War, 15.

[4] Rudd, The Avoidable War, 44.

[5] Rudd, The Avoidable War, 62.

[6] Rudd, The Avoidable War, 365.

[7] See for example the China Aerospace Studies Institute’s translation of the PLA’s Science of Campaigns. Microsoft Word - 2020-11-23 Chinese Military Thoughts- In their own words Science of Campaigns (2006) ebook.docx (af.edu)