Nostalgic for Cold War realism

Abstract

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine confirmed that revived great-power competition has heightened the prospect of global conflict, while restoring the concept of deterrence to centre stage. The stakes in a conflict in East Asia, however, would be even higher than those in Ukraine. A war over Taiwan could bring the United States and China, the world’s two greatest powers, into a direct military conflict which would represent a contest for regional or global leadership and would be likely to draw other powers into the fight. Such a war – in which the nuclear question would be ever-present – can currently be described as ‘possible, avoidable, but potentially catastrophic’.

In this Adelphi book, Bill Emmott evaluates the diplomatic and deterrence strategies that countries in and outside the Indo-Pacific region are using to try to reduce the risk of that conflict occurring. This book examines these strategies in the light of the lessons of the Ukraine war and identifies yardsticks with which to gauge their potential effectiveness and sustainability. Our goal, Emmott argues, must be for all sides to regard such a US–China conflict as ‘inevitably catastrophic and therefore inconceivable’.

Notes

1 See John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War (London: Penguin, 2005).

2 Lawrence Freedman, Deterrence (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004).

3 See Iskander Rehman, Planning for Protraction: A Historically Informed Approach to Great-power War and Sino-US Competition, Adelphi 496–497 (Abingdon: Routledge for the IISS, 2023).

4 Gaddis, The Cold War, p. 262.

5 Some examples of work considering these various aspects of strengthening strategic stability, including its political and diplomatic elements, include Michael J. Mazarr et al., ‘Stabilizing Great-power Rivalries’, RAND, 29 November 2021, https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA456-1.html; ‘China’s Emergence as a Second Nuclear Peer: Implications for US Nuclear Deterrence Strategy’, Center for Global Security Research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Spring 2023, https://cgsr.llnl.gov/content/assets/docs/CGSR_Two_Peer_230314.pdf; Ankit Panda, ‘Indo-Pacific Missile Arsenals: Avoiding Spirals and Mitigating Escalation Risks’, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 31 October 2023, https://carnegieendowment.org/2023/10/31/indo-pacific-missile-arsenals-avoiding-spirals-and-mitigating-escalation-risks-pub-90772; and William Leben, ‘Escalation Risks in the Indo-Pacific: A Review for Practitioners’, Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 23 February 2024, https://ad-aspi.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/2024-02/SR201%20Escalation%20risks%20in%20the%20Indo-Pacific.pdf?VersionId=Ec1JMi.G8DGKlGvD_w6Qf3B.rEYCW393.

6 Chelsey Wiley and William Alberque, ‘Meagre Results from the US–China Meeting on Arms Control’, IISS Missile Dialogue Initiative, 21 November 2023, https://www.iiss.org/online-analysis/missile-dialogue-initiative/2023/10/meagre-results-from-the-us-china-meeting-on-arms-control/.

7 Fiona S. Cunningham, ‘The Unknowns about China’s Nuclear Modernization Program’, Arms Control Association, June 2023, https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2023-06/features/unknowns-about-chinas-nuclear-modernization-program.