Battlegrounds

by H. R. McMaster

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  AS CHINA protects and promotes its statist economic model, it will be important for the United States and like-minded countries to demonstrate collective resolve. Otherwise, China will take a divide-and-conquer approach. Multinational cooperation will also prove vital to protecting the sanctity and usefulness of international organizations such as the WTO, which the CCP seeks to subvert and bend toward its interests.

  The need to compete within international organizations extends beyond trade and economic practices. China has systematically embedded officials in key high-ranking management positions in major global organizations. In 2016, for example, it used the secretary generalship position of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) to aid in its campaign of diplomatic isolation toward Taiwan. And it has used the United Nations Human Rights Council to advance CCP norms that allow states to justify abuses in pursuit of national interests.

  China’s most egregious abuse of an international organization centers on its membership in the World Trade Organization. When it signed the WTO accession agreement in 2001, Beijing made many commitments that remained unfulfilled nearly two decades later. These included refusing to report state subsidies enjoyed by Chinese firms and continuing the practice of forcing foreign firms to transfer proprietary core technologies as the price for access to the Chinese market. Because China threatens economic retaliation, few firms bring complaints to the WTO. In addition to co-option and coercion, the CCP added concealment, changing its rules to make transfers “voluntary,” although they are still mandatory to gain access to the market. China continues to claim special status as a developing market and argues, essentially, that it should enjoy global market access while failing to adhere to global rules and standards. The United States and other nations committed to free, fair, and reciprocal trade may at some point have to consider threatening China’s removal from the WTO if it does not reform its practices and adhere to the standards met by that body’s other members.

  A natural economic “decoupling” is occurring between China and free-market economies based not only on unfair economic practices, but also on the increasing risk of doing business with an authoritarian regime. The United States might help organize that decoupling in a way that protects against slowing economic growth and disruptions to global supply chains. The most effective countermeasures to CCP policies lie in the private sector. China’s dishonest tactics and abuses have been uncovered, and companies are questioning whether access to the Chinese market is worth the cost. The reduction of investment in the Chinese market and the withdrawal of manufacturing and other industries from China may prove to be the only way to convince CCP leaders that true economic reform is in their best interest.

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  THE UNITED States and other free and open societies should be confident. There are opportunities to compete effectively, counter CCP aggression, and encourage internal change. China’s behavior is galvanizing opposition among countries that do not want to be vassal states to the Middle Kingdom. Meanwhile, inside China, the tightening of control is also eliciting opposition among those who did sense the prospect of liberalization during the reform period. Despite the outward confidence of Li Keqiang and other officials, many Chinese intellectuals, businesspeople, and policymakers are increasingly aware that they have failed to solve fundamental problems in their society and economy. Many feel as if they are sitting on a powder keg of instability. The 2019–2020 protests in Hong Kong accentuated that reality, as did slowing economic growth and public anger over deficiencies and dishonesty in the government handling of the novel coronavirus. Even in the area of technology development and application under programs like Made in China 2025, it is not clear that the party’s bold attempt to create an autarchic economic powerhouse will succeed. The CCP’s obsession with control is not compatible with the academic and entrepreneurial freedom foundational to innovation and competition in the global market. Moreover, the party’s attempt at social engineering under the one-child policy in place between 1979 and 2015 resulted in a rapidly aging population with vast gender imbalances. The implications of that demographic distortion are unclear but are certain to be profoundly negative.

  Still, more important than our recognition of the relative strengths of our system to China’s is our determination to protect those strengths. We might learn from China’s accomplishments in pursuit of “comprehensive national strength.” In particular, the United States and other nations might use the competition with China to galvanize improvements in areas where they are lagging. Those initiatives might include educational reform, improvements to infrastructure, and a sound approach to economic statecraft that better integrates public and private investment consistent with free-market principles.

  SOME HAVE argued that competition with China is dangerous because it is tantamount to a Thucydides Trap. This was coined to express the high likelihood of a military conflict between a rising power (China) and a declining power (the United States), that emerges from a long-term structural change in global power.35 The way to avoid the trap is to neither gravitate toward war nor toward passive accommodation, the most extreme of the potential options, but instead to find a middle way. When engaging with our Chinese counterparts, I explained our need to compete fairly as the best means of avoiding confrontation. Had the United States remained complacent about China’s violations of international law and national sovereignty in the South China Sea (e.g., China’s continued reclamation and militarization efforts), conflict would have become more likely. Had we remained inactive as China used state actors to steal key U.S. technology, their clandestine campaigns would have grown more aggressive rather than have decreased in scale. Transparent competition can prevent unnecessary escalation between the two countries and enable cooperation on pressing challenges where interests overlap. Competition need not foreclose on cooperation on problems such as climate change, environmental protection, food and water security, pandemic prevention and response, and even North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs.

  But it seems likely that an economic slowdown will heighten the CCP’s fears and encourage more draconian means of ensuring its exclusive grip on power and greater efforts to blame the United States and others for China’s problems. The unsound economic policies that the CCP pursued to catch up to and surpass the United States and the free world may, paradoxically, prevent its leaders from delivering on the triumphant narrative encapsulated in the China Dream.36 Possessing neither democracy’s ability for the people to administer correctives from within the system nor the tolerance for peaceful expression of discontent, China could see the possibility of active opposition to the party. The CCP’s slow response to the coronavirus outbreak in early 2020, as local officials initially tried to cover it up and then used ham-handed censorship to stifle criticism of the party, were indicators of the system’s weakness. In anticipation of potential opposition, the party is racing to perfect its technology-enabled police state. It will likely intensify these efforts. And as economic growth slows and party leaders’ anxiety grows, China’s foreign policy and military strategy could lead to dangerous confrontation in flashpoints such as the South China Sea, the Taiwan Strait, and the Senkaku Islands. The Chinese have a saying for what could occur: “to shoot accidentally while polishing a gun” (cā qiāng zǒu huǒ (擦枪走火). That is why the United States and its allies must possess the will and military capabilities to convince the CCP that it cannot accomplish objectives through the use of force.

  The United States and other nations must counter the party’s narrative that any accusations are meant to “keep China down” by containing it. Competing effectively with China diplomatically and economically as well as militarily should be understood as the best way to avoid confrontation. In 2019, at an event in the Chinese embassy, Chinese ambassador Cui Tiankai delivered a speech during which he portrayed the new U.S. approach to China as an effort to arrest China’s rise and deny its people the promise of the China Dream. Matt
Pottinger responded in Mandarin with an explanation of the shift in language from cooperation and engagement to competition. He quoted Confucius’s doctrine of the rectification of names: “If names cannot be correct, then language is not in accordance with the truth of things. And if language is not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success” (míng bùzhèng, zé yán bù shùn; yán bù shùn, zé shì bùchéng 名不正, 则言不; 言不顺, 则事不成).33 Competition should aim to convince Chairman Xi and party leaders that they can achieve enough of their dream without doing so at the expense of their peoples’ rights or the security, sovereignty, and prosperity of other nations’ citizens.

  Part III

  South Asia

  SOVIET BUILDUP SEEN AT AFGHAN FRONTIER . . . ZIA DENIES PAKISTAN BUILDS NUCLEAR BOMB AND URGES U.S. TO RESUME AID . . . KABUL PEACE TALKS FAIL, AND SHELLING GOES ON . . . India is now a nuclear weapons state . . . PLANE CRASHES COLLAPSE WORLD TRADE CENTER TOWERS . . . THE AMERICAN OFFENSIVE BEGINS . . . AFGHAN LEADER IS SWORN IN, ASKING FOR HELP TO REBUILD . . . If we deliver, this will be a great day. If we don’t deliver, this will go into oblivion . . . MASSACRE IN MUMBAI . . . America, it is time to focus on nation-building here at home . . . OSAMA BIN LADEN KILLED . . . Al Qaeda leadership is a shadow of itself . . . AFGHANISTAN’S SUCCESS STORY? ITS YOUNG LEADERS . . . America’s combat mission in Afghanistan came to a responsible end . . . PESHAWAR SCHOOL ATTACK LEAVES 114 DEAD . . . “PROBABLY THE LARGEST” AL QAEDA TRAINING CAMP EVER IS DESTROYED IN AFGHANISTAN . . . AYMAN AL ZAWAHIRI PLEDGES ALLEGIANCE TO THE TALIBAN’S NEW EMIR . . . I immediately cancelled the meeting and called off peace negotiations . . . AT U.S. URGING, PAKISTAN TO BE PLACED ON TERRORISM-FINANCING LIST . . . India is a democracy; it is in our DNA . . . RECORD-HIGH NUMBER OF CIVILIAN CASUALTIES IN AFGHANISTAN . . . Countries do not fight endless wars . . . INDIA BOMBS PAKISTAN IN RESPONSE TO KASHMIR TERRORIST ATTACK . . . PROTESTS OVER THE CITIZENSHIP ACT ARE RALLYING INDIANS AROUND THEIR COUNTRY’S FOUNDATIONAL PRINCIPLES . . . We have done Gandhi’s bidding . . . A U.S. TALIBAN DEAL HINGES ON REDUCING VIOLENCE . . .

  Chapter 5

  A One-Year War Twenty Times Over: America’s South Asian Fantasy

  Every principle must have its vanguard to carry it forward, while forcing its way into society, endure enormous heavy tasks and costly sacrifices . . . Al-Qaeda al-Sulbah [the solid base] constitutes the vanguard for the expected society.

  —ABDULLAH AZZAM1

  WHEN I arrived at the White House in February 2017, the reluctance to discuss Afghanistan reminded me of the reluctance to discuss Vietnam when I was a cadet at West Point about three decades earlier. Vacancies across the government in positions with responsibility for Afghanistan seemed to reflect America’s lost interest in its longest war. Few Americans understood what our soldiers were still doing in that remote, mountainous landlocked country. Other issues took precedence, such as determining what to do about North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs and the need to frame a China strategy in advance of Chairman Xi’s upcoming visit to Mar-a-Lago. And why prioritize Afghanistan given President Trump’s predisposition to withdraw? Those in favor of getting out did not want to provide the president with alternative options. Those who wanted to correct deficiencies in our strategy and continue supporting Afghan forces in their fight against the Taliban and other terrorist organizations were afraid to bring up the topic because it might trigger the president to order a precipitous disengagement. Would it not be preferable to let the war muddle along as it had for the previous sixteen years rather than ask for a presidential decision that might cut against U.S. interests?

  To help the president fulfill his wartime leadership responsibility to the American people, we needed to develop options on Afghanistan that fit into a comprehensive strategy for South Asia. The region encompassed two nuclear powers, India and Pakistan, that viewed each other as enemies. India, the world’s largest democracy, presented tremendous opportunities. But mainly because of the hostility between India and Pakistan, South Asia was the least integrated region in the world economically. Twenty foreign terrorist organizations were active in Afghanistan and Pakistan alone.2 South Asia contained vast potential, grave dangers, and daunting challenges that were important to American security and prosperity.

  Decades of war had traumatized Afghan society. American policy makers and strategists failed to appreciate how protracted conflict had divided and weakened the country. After the military successes of 2001, a complex competition ensued with an unseated, but not defeated, Taliban; an elusive Al-Qaeda; new terrorist groups; and supporters of those terrorist organizations, including elements of the Pakistan Army, a supposed ally. Plans did not anticipate political drivers of the violence in Afghanistan, especially how enemy organizations would capitalize on tribal, ethnic, and religious competitions. Paradoxically, a short-war mentality lengthened the conflict. The war had lasted nearly two decades, but the United States and its coalition partners had not fought a two-decade-long war. Afghanistan was a one-year war fought twenty times over.

  By 2017, the Afghan war effort seemed like a plane crashing on autopilot. No one was paying attention. Years of incoherent policy and ineffective tactics had left our troops vulnerable while the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and other terrorist organizations, often with the assistance of Pakistan, had become resurgent. I viewed the absence of a viable strategy in Afghanistan as more than a practical problem; it was an ethical failure. As in the Vietnam War, our nation’s soldiers were taking risks and making sacrifices without understanding how those risks and sacrifices contributed to a worthy outcome. If the objective was withdrawal, why were soldiers still in harm’s way? In the thirteenth century, Saint Thomas Aquinas wrote that to be just, war had to meet the criterion of right intention—that is, it must aim to reestablish a just peace.3 Based on our fundamentally flawed and constantly shifting strategies, the Afghan War, I believed, no longer met that test. I thought it important to get the president options before the United States lost the war by default.

  I planned a trip to South Asia for April to hear assessments of the situation and use what we learned to inform those options. Representatives from the relevant departments and agencies, including the Directorate of National Intelligence and the Departments of State, Defense, and Treasury, traveled with me and members of the NSC staff to foster collaboration and common understanding of problems and opportunities in the region. I had just hired a new senior director for South Asia, Lisa Curtis, a regional expert with an impeccable reputation, who would join us on the Pakistan leg of the trip. I would come to rely heavily on Lisa, who had two decades of experience on South Asia as a diplomat, intelligence officer, and think tank analyst. She had served in India and Pakistan where, in her mid-twenties, she met Jalaluddin Haqqani, whom the United States called a freedom fighter during the Soviet-Afghan War in the 1980s and who would later turn his organization against the United States and the Afghan government. The acting senior director for South Asia and director for Afghanistan was Fernando Lujan, an Army Special Forces officer. Lujan, a graduate of West Point with a master’s in public policy from Harvard, had the combination of education and experience needed in that job during a period of transition between administrations. As an acting senior director on the national security staff, Fernando sometimes ran afoul of hierarchy-minded officials in the Department of Defense who resented a lieutenant colonel convening meetings with military and civilian officials more senior in rank. Fernando had been due to leave the White House and depart for Afghanistan, but I asked him to stay until Lisa took over the effort.

  Since 2009, the Obama administration and Department of State had been trying to negotiate an acceptable peace agreement with the Taliban while executing an announced withdrawal. As I read my background papers on the plane, I concluded that some officials in Washington had convinced themselves that the Taliban was a relatively benign organization that, with the promise of power sharing in Afghanistan, could be persuaded to renoun
ce support for jihadist terrorist organizations. It was an extreme case of strategic narcissism based in wishful thinking and a false premise that the Taliban was disconnected from terrorist organizations and open to a power-sharing agreement consistent with the Afghan Constitution. As usual with strategic narcissism, policy makers had created the enemy they wanted in Afghanistan and Pakistan.