In February 1946, the State Department requested from the U.S. Embassy in Moscow “an interpretive analysis of what we may expect in the way of future implementation” of Soviet foreign policy. George F. Kennan, the deputy chief of mission who was running the embassy in the interim between two ambassadors, responded with what came to be known as “The Long Telegram”—a 5000-word synthesis of Soviet strategic thinking and proposed U.S. strategy for dealing with it. This telegram, and a version of its ideas that he published anonymously in July 1947 (the “X” article, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” in the journal Foreign Affairs), made Kennan famous as the author of the doctrine of “containment” of the Soviet Union.

Last week [28 January], “a former senior government official” with the “aspiration to provide a similarly durable and actionable approach to China”—and reportedly with “deep expertise and experience dealing with China”—attempted to replicate Kennan’s feat by publishing anonymously (via the Atlantic Council) “The Longer Telegram: Toward a New American China Strategy.” Its “executive summary” is almost as long as Kennan’s original “Long Telegram.” This new document successfully echoes Kennan’s work in several respects. It correctly warns that China poses a profound and unprecedented strategic challenge to the United States, and that Washington urgently needs a comprehensive and bipartisan national strategy for responding to that challenge. But its diagnosis of the problem is not as accurate—and its proposed strategy is not as realistic—as Kennan’s.

On the plus side, there are key elements of the “Longer Telegram” that are commendably on target in both diagnosis and prescription. It is certainly true that “the rise of China represents the most significant postwar challenge to U.S. leadership of the global political, economic, and security order.” The document provides a very comprehensive outline of Beijing’s strategic priorities. Those priorities start with keeping the Chinese Communist Party in control but encompass all the requirements of sustaining internal stability and prosperity, while maximizing China’s external security and wealth and power and influence. Beijing ultimately seeks a global order that is “more compatible with Chinese interests and values” and “more multipolar and less US-centric.” The report offers a similarly comprehensive balance sheet of the strategic strengths and vulnerabilities that China brings to this pursuit.

The author presents a broad summary of Beijing’s strategy, noting the Chinese emphasis on relative power calculations; emphasizing Deng Xiaoping’s guidance at the end of the Cold War for China to “hide its capabilities and bide its time” until strategic conditions were in its favor; and highlighting how Beijing over the past decade has seized the opportunity to move beyond that stage, based on its assessment of the narrowing gap between Chinese and U.S. power. The report features an inclusive list of policies that Beijing is pursuing regionally and globally to capitalize on its wealth and power and extend its influence.

The report is equally comprehensive in its discussion of the requirements for, and components of, a U.S. strategy for dealing with China. It must be “integrated, bipartisan . . . executed consistently, comprehensively, and at multiple levels . . . [and] implemented nationally, bilaterally, regionally, multilaterally, and globally.” It will require Washington to “establish the machinery of state to develop, agree on, and implement such a strategy across all U.S. agencies with the full support of senior congressional leadership.”

The author states that the goal of U.S. strategy will be to “generate maximum leverage to bring about substantive changes in Chinese strategic decision-making and behavior” and “measurable policy changes in Beijing that force the regime to conform to the principles of the current liberal international order.” Such a strategy will require mobilizing the “four fundamental pillars of American power”: the U.S. military, the U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency, U.S. global technological leadership, and the values of democracy and rule of law. The report highlights that executing this strategy will also require full coordination with U.S. allies and partners, but the author admits that this will be particularly challenging because of diverging international views on how best to deal with Beijing and “the economic pull of China’s market.” Indeed, “the sheer scale of China’s economic weight in the world is of itself the greatest structural challenge to future alliance solidarity in dealing with the China challenge.”

The Longer Telegram outlines the key elements of a recommended U.S. strategy going forward. This includes a list of “major national security concerns”—such as arms control, cyber security, “military or economic belligerence,” and “crimes against humanity”—on which Washington will maintain constant pressure on Beijing. The article also details the many “areas of declared strategic competition” in which the United States must be prepared to compete with China globally for diplomatic influence, economic opportunities, and in military capabilities. In addition, the author recommends a “short, focused, and enforceable” list of “red lines” that Washington must “not allow China to cross under any circumstances” and which must be “unambiguously communicated to Beijing through high-level diplomatic channels.” This list predictably includes any Chinese WMD attack against the United States or its allies, and any Chinese attack on Taiwan or “against Japanese forces in their defense of Japanese sovereignty”; but it also includes “any major Chinese hostile action in the South China Sea to further reclaim and militarize islands, to deploy force against other claimant states, or to prevent full freedom of navigation operations by the United States and allied maritime forces.” Amidst this survey of the spheres of U.S.-China competition, the report acknowledges the utility of and opportunities for U.S.-China cooperation in such areas as climate change, the global economy, pandemics, nuclear arms control, and North Korea.

Perhaps most importantly, the report fully acknowledges that the primary prerequisite for U.S. competition with China will be rebuilding America’s economic and military strength. The author highlights the need for Washington to reinvest in national infrastructure, STEM education, technological innovation; and to confront the “long-term budgetary trajectory of the United States” and “the severe divisions now endemic in the political system, institutions, and culture.” If the United States and its allies “get their own liberal-democratic-capitalist houses in order,” they can meet the ideological challenge from the Chinese model—and, as the author observes, “may the best side win.”

Notwithstanding the reasonable and laudable elements of the “Longer Telegram,” however, the document contains several problematic analytical judgments and policy recommendations that undermine its aspirations to comparison with Kennan’s 1946 precursor.

There are two fundamental flaws with the document’s analysis of the China side of the equation. The first is that even though Beijing’s strategic intentions and ambitions are extensive and global in scope, the author nonetheless overstates them. China is seeking to maximize its global wealth and power and influence—and the appeal of its governance and development model—relative to those of the United States, and will be ruthless and relentless in this pursuit. But it is not seeking to “destroy liberal values,” “replace democratic capitalism with authoritarian capitalism as the accepted norm in the developing world,” and “become the center of a new global order.” Beijing would settle for peaceful coexistence with democratic capitalism, and for a—as opposed to “the”—leadership role in the world order. This is because Chinese leaders almost certainly calculate that a Sino-centric authoritarian world order is not achievable and that pursuing it would be unsustainable and counterproductive.

The second fundamental error in the report’s analysis of China is its singular focus on Xi Jinping. According to the author, the challenge the United States faces today from China is almost entirely attributable to the personal leadership and ideological mindset of Xi. “China, under all five of its post-Mao leaders prior to Xi, was able to work with the United States. Under them, China aimed to join the existing international order, not to remake it in China’s own image… In short, China under Xi, unlike under Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, is no longer a status quo power.” Moreover, Xi has “returned China to an older form of Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy that is different from not only Deng, but also Mao.” Under Xi, the CCP “is an avowedly Leninist party with a profoundly Marxist worldview. This has often been forgotten over the last forty years as the world became accustomed to Deng, Jiang, and Hu offering a form of ‘Leninism lite.’” Finally, “Xi has sought to build a new pillar of legitimacy for the party beyond ideology, through more assertive forms of Chinese nationalism, projecting the party as the true defender of traditional Chinese civilization against the United States, the West, and the rest.”

Every one of these assertions is inaccurate. Virtually all of the current strategic drivers of U.S.-China tensions already existed under Xi’s predecessors and imposed limits on Beijing’s readiness “to work with the United States.” Xi is not seeking any more than his predecessors did to remake the international order in China’s image. Under his predecessors, China was already an avowedly Leninist party with a profoundly Marxist worldview, and this was never forgotten. And all of Xi’s predecessors used nationalism as a key pillar of party legitimacy.

The author asserts that Xi has fundamentally changed China’s U.S. strategy since he became CCP leader in 2012. He “formally abandoned the deliberate gradualism of Deng’s ‘hide and bide’” strategy; “accelerated the timetable for a number of major preexisting national policy missions”; “sought to reduce China’s international economic vulnerabilities”; and demonstrated “a new willingness to take much greater political risks in order to force certain strategic outcomes.” It is certainly true that Chinese foreign policy has evolved and become more assertive during Xi’s tenure. But this overlooks or understates the forces that were previously driving it in that direction, and thus risks exaggerating the difference—however significant—that Xi personally has made. Beijing under Hu Jintao was already retreating from Deng’s “hide and bide” strategy in response to changes in the international environment, including the perception of greater external challenges to China’s territorial sovereignty claims, and the geostrategic impact of the 2008-9 global financial crisis. This generated the initial foreign perceptions of greater Chinese assertiveness, and the acceleration of many Chinese foreign policy initiatives that came to fruition or were expanded after Xi took charge.

The report summarizes the differences between Xi’s approach and that of his predecessors as twofold: “First, the gap between Chinese and U.S. power, both in reality and perception, is now much smaller; and second, Xi’s political nature is to force the pace wherever possible in areas where more traditional Chinese strategists would have preferred to see evolution over time. In short, Xi is a man in a hurry; his predecessors were not.” But the first variable here is not attributable to Xi; it has been developing for the past two decades—and is probably the more decisive driver of the recent shifts in Chinese foreign policy. The second variable, however, may persuasively capture the key difference that Xi has made: he has certainly been a more decisive and ambitious leader that Hu Jintao. In any case, the author of the report concludes—somewhat surprisingly—that “Xi’s calculus is likely to remain broadly consistent with the long-term, underlying strategic logic of the Chinese system in the past: China should continue to accumulate military, economic, and technological power as rapidly as possible, but do so without risking outright economic or military conflict with the United States until such time as the balance of power has swung more decisively toward Beijing.” This bottom line reinforces the notion that there has been at least as much continuity in Chinese foreign policy under Xi as there has been change; and that even many of his changes flowed from earlier trends.

Perhaps the most problematic aspect of the report’s emphasis on Xi—“All U.S. political and policy responses to China therefore should be focused through the principal lens of Xi himself”—is the author’s conclusion that Washington should be seeking to escape from, and even try to effect the removal of, Xi’s leadership because that could restore U.S.-China relations to a potentially constructive path: “its pre-2013 path—i.e., the pre-Xi strategic status quo.” Washington should do this by directing its strategy “at the internal fault lines of domestic Chinese politics” because “the party is extremely divided on Xi’s leadership,” and particularly on his foreign policy assertiveness: “Xi’s critics contend that [his] ‘forcing of the pace’ has resulted in Beijing taking unnecessary risks by bringing about a fundamental change in U.S. strategy toward China much earlier than was either necessary or desirable.” One of the author’s central premises is that “if leadership change were to occur, it would be more likely to move in the direction of a more moderate collective leadership” that would be easier for Washington to work with, and presumably less assertive and confrontational toward the United States. “If leadership change does not occur, then the objective is to maximize internal political pressures on Xi to moderate Chinese policy of his own volition or to roll back various of his international initiatives.”

This is a profoundly misguided if not dangerous approach. First, it almost certainly miscalculates (by exaggerating) the potential differences between Xi and any alternative leadership on the core issues in U.S.-China relations, or on the overall direction of Chinese foreign policy. As noted above, Beijing’s growing assertiveness and confidence and nationalism in its posture toward the United States and the rest of the world have more to do with strategic trends and power calculations that were discernible prior to Xi’s leadership than to the impact of his personality and mindset. Although Beijing could conceivably be somewhat easier to deal with under a leader other than Xi, it is highly unlikely that China’s strategic ambitions and objectives, its bottom line on core bilateral and multilateral issues, or its perception of U.S. policy toward China will substantially change. This document attributes to Xi the view that “the U.S. and Chinese political systems are fundamentally ideologically irreconcilable” and that the United States and China are “on a collision course” with “one form of conflict or another as unavoidable.” This may or may not be true about Xi; but either way it is not a view that is unique to him in Beijing.

In addition, it would be a hazardous venture for Washington to attempt to exploit the internal fault lines of Chinese politics and play one faction or leader off against another. This is precisely the kind of “intervention in China’s internal affairs” that fuels the visceral nationalism of Chinese leaders—and generates huge risks and liabilities for any Chinese politician or group that is perceived as an advocate or an agent for Washington’s interests and preferences. (When the Chinese engage in comparable activities in the United States, it becomes a matter for the FBI.) Such a venture almost certainly is more likely to be counterproductive than to yield the desired result of accommodation to U.S. goals.

The discussion in the “Longer Telegram” of the U.S. side of the equation also contains two fundamental flaws. The first emerges from its characterization of the strategy’s “overriding political objective”: “to cause China’s elite leadership to collectively conclude that it is in the country’s best interests to continue to operate within the existing US-led liberal international order rather than build a rival order, and that it is in the party’s best interests, if it wishes to remain in power at home, not to attempt to expand China’s borders or export its political model beyond China’s shores.” This theme is echoed in the report’s discussion of the areas where Washington would be receptive to strategic cooperation with Beijing, where it is linked to the preference for a post-Xi leadership: “the United States would provide a clear signal . . . to more moderate elements in China that if Beijing ceases its operational efforts to overturn U.S. leadership of the current rules-based order, then Washington would welcome China’s full participation in the institutions of global governance, as in the past. In other words, if China under a post-Xi leadership decided to return to a more moderate course at home, and worked within the existing international system abroad, then the scope for strategic cooperation with the United States and its allies would increase rapidly.”

This is highly problematic, partly because it is based on invalid premises identified earlier, including the assumption that China is seeking to “build a rival order” or that the “type of global great power envisaged by Xi” is his vision alone. Nor is it likely that Washington will score points in trying to tell CCP leaders what is “in their best interests” if they “wish to remain in power at home.” In addition, this approach implies that Washington would only consider substantive strategic cooperation with Beijing if Xi was gone. The key problem with this “overriding political objective” is that it almost certainly overestimates both China’s strategic intentions and the United States’ leverage over Chinese behavior and decisions. Such potential miscalculation also raises questions about the credibility and enforceability of the U.S. “red lines” that the author proposes communicating to Beijing.

The second fundamental flaw in the report’s proposed U.S. strategy is in its definition of underlying American vital interests. The document explicitly affirms that “the United States’ core objective must be the retention of U.S. global and regional strategic primacy for the century ahead” because “U.S. leadership remains the only credible foundation for sustaining, enhancing, and, where necessary, creatively reinventing the liberal international order.” The author also specifies that this must include “maintaining U.S. global conventional military dominance over any other adversary… conventional U.S. military predominance in the Indo-Pacific region… the United States’ status as the largest national economy globally… U.S. global leadership in all major categories of critical emerging technology… [and] the current rules-based liberal international order and associated multilateral system built by the United States since 1945.”

The problem here is that much of this is objectively unsustainable if not already obsolete. The United States, unfortunately, no longer enjoys “global and regional strategic primacy” because of historical shifts in the global balance of power that predated the Trump Administration, but which Trump greatly accelerated. And the “liberal international order built by the United States” is not currently functioning, at least not under U.S. leadership. It is certainly possible for Washington to reclaim and reinvigorate its role in international leadership, and this should definitely be pursued by the Biden Administration. But global and regional primacy is probably no longer achievable, and thus probably should not be defined as a core interest. Instead, a central challenge for the United States going forward will be that of finding and adjusting to its place in the post-post-Cold War world. This will require the United States to think hard about whether it is possible to maintain global military, economic, and technological dominance “for the century ahead”—or whether it will be necessary to recalibrate both U.S. ambitions and the definition of what U.S. interests are truly vital. The author asserts that Washington must retain “confidence that the United States can and will prevail, with U.S. underlying strengths and values still providing the stronger hand to play in what remains an open, competitive, international environment.” Confidence in U.S. strengths and values will be crucial. But for the first time in fifty years, Americans need to examine the implications of the possibility that the United States may not always and everywhere have “the stronger hand to play.”

The “Longer Telegram” concludes with a metric for the success of its strategy: “That, by midcentury, the United States and its major allies continue to dominate the regional and global balance of power across all the major indices of power; that China has been deterred from taking Taiwan militarily, and from initiating any other form of military action to achieve its regional objectives; that the rules-based liberal international order has been consolidated, strengthened, and expanded, rolling back against the growing illiberalism of the present time; that Xi has been replaced by a more moderate party leadership; and that the Chinese people themselves have come to question and challenge the Communist Party’s century-long proposition that China’s ancient civilization is forever destined to an authoritarian future.” Some elements of this scenario are eminently plausible, such as a peaceful resolution of the Taiwan dilemma and political liberalization in China. But other elements have a sense of “back to the future” that seems less likely. It may be time to explore other options and metrics for success, including the possibility of mutual understanding with China.

Paul Heer is a Distinguished Fellow at the Center for the National Interest and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. He served as National Intelligence Officer for East Asia from 2007 to 2015. He is the author of Mr. X and the Pacific: George F. Kennan and American Policy in East Asia (Cornell University Press, 2018).

Image: Reuters.