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bananax's review against another edition
3.0
I buddy-read this book with my study buddy and we both didn't finish but discussed where we left off, And I like how the book explained the ongoing rivalry between America and China, both economically and geographically.
snarf137's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
qbit99's review against another edition
4.0
VERY instructive book. Learned a lot about the undercurrents of this US vs China story. As well as other historic facts i was not aware of
sandybrady's review against another edition
challenging
hopeful
informative
medium-paced
3.0
Interesting political comparison book. I learned a lot about past conflicts. There isn’t as much depth in the current standoff between the US and China as the title might imply.
lpm100's review against another edition
4.0
Book Review
"Destined for war"
4/5 stars
*******
Of the book:
-10 crisp chapters over 232pps. ≈23pps/chapter
-792 total references between 10 chapters, 1 conclusion and 2 appendices.
Part I: Summary of the rise of China.
Part II: Review of China-US relationships in a 2500 year context
Part III: Do current trends foretell of war?
Part IV: Reasons why war is not inevitable.
Appendix 1: 16 cases from the last 500 years, along with quantitative determination of odds of war.
Appendix 2: (Witty) prebutting of strawman arguments.
*******
The first thought is that this book is so sharply argued and so concise that I must believe that the author wanted non-specialists to read it. (One of the reasons that I avoid Political Science books is because of their interminable expatiation.)
The second thought is that: Even as well argued as this book is and even as mature as the author's understanding is of China, I don't think it will do a damn bit of good--and that's because the relevant people won't do anywhere near this much analysis before there is a war. (Who didn't know that politicians are not historians? After all, it's not their own sons that they're sending off to be killed.)
One single history book read by any president during the Vietnam "incident" *would have* decisively convinced them that Vietnam and China are not friends, never have been and never will be.
Maybe it might take as many as *two* history books to find out that neutrality and non-alignment really is the safest option in all cases.
The third thought is that: there are so many wild cards in these types of situations that prediction is a pretty silly exercise. (Maybe for the same reason that is silly to predict the future cause of death for a random newborn.)
At the time of this writing--before Donald Trump left office and addledJoe Biden became president--the author notes that: Donald Trump was an aggressive nationalist. (But for some reason he didn't get us in any wars.)
A weak and incompetent president (like Joe Biden) might be an even more helpful catalyst for war.
*******
Problems:
Repetitive overstatement of current economic conditions in China.
-Lots of salivating about Chinese high-speed rail. (Actually, as of today the non-performing debt of high speed rail is somewhere between $850 billion and $2 trillion.)
-The author keeps using PPP rates as (opposed to market exchange rates).
-(p.16) Really? China is a leader in education, science, technology, and innovation?
-Talks about how many STEM PhDs / other degrees China has produced. But, the STEM market in the United States has been oversaturated for *decades.* What is he talking about?
Students of the long Chinese history of underachievement have an idea that the world has been here before.
(*This* time, it will be different!)
*******
Second order questions:
1. If decline is a natural thing, then is there really a thesis here?
If there is a Number One, then there must always be a Number Two. Given that Number One cannot perpetually stay that, then at some point (through missteps or degeneration), they become low-hanging fruit for Number Two.
And that's that.
The rest is commentary.
The United States did the cleanup work in both of the World Wars as well as aggressively expanding its "backyard" under Theodore Roosevelt, and a century later is heavily occupying itself with adjudicating legal challenges by men who want the right to use women's bathrooms / compete on women's teams.
Or, hammering out disputes between, um, female impersonators vs men who think they are women. (Even though they're both actually men. It appears that too much comfort / decadence generates its own problems.)
Do you really expect that something like this could turn out well or that such a country could/SHOULD stay Number One forever?
It is my inclination that should China someday become Number One, that will be the beginning of its decline from that position. (And that is exactly what happened after the Tang dynasty, when China really was the center of the world: It became fat, sleek, and kicked.)
2. Why on Earth the obsessive concern with what 3rd world country is in the sphere of influence of China versus the US? (What sane country really wants to have Africa as a "backyard" and therefore have a corridor where Africans bring their problems directly from there to you via immigrations. Don't we have enough to deal with with our current South/Central American infestation?)
3. Is the purpose of a country to provide for its citizens or to influence other countries?
People who live in Norway don't expect to have any influence on world affairs, but they can purchase anything that they want at home.
Countries learn things as a result of painful consequences. (1950s China only learned that you cannot set nationwide farming conditions in Beibest-- after 32 million people starved to death.)
The best strategy for a country to survive for a long time has been neutrality and non-alignment. (Switzerland!)
So, whatever happens will happen and maybe the result will be that the United States will learn the way forward that trying to be the policeman of the world is an expensive and ultimately futile enterprise. (It might take a lot of economic / military damage, but then these lessons are never easy.)
4. National humiliation, economic crisis, and a bunch of unmarried young men create all the right conditions for something very bad to happen in the Chinese case. They have as many young men to throw away as they want in that conflict and a terrible ax to grind.
5. Who did not know that all wars start because of miscalculation? And that they end because of recalculations in light of new data?
6. A lot of times if you want to make omelets, you have to break eggs. So, someone like Theodore Roosevelt was a warrior, par excellence. But, he did get a lot of things done.
7. Are there really any good guys / bad guys in the struggle for the top spot?
It all depends on who is looking.
Theodore Roosevelt was someone who understood that power comes out of the barrel of a gun, and he wanted to build a nation. (Same thing with Kaiser Wilhelm.)
So, Xi Jinping wants to reclaim Chinese national greatness. And if he can, then he's only a bad guy in the eyes of people who end up on the losing end of his project.
8. I really wonder how plausible is the Chinese selling point to other nations: "We want to go back in the past where you were all vassal states that paid tribute to us and we were the thing to emulate."
*******
Summary and Conclusions:
1. If you want to have number one position, you do have to have enough money/GDP to pay for a military to make that reality.
2. Based on the data set that the author has presented, there is at least a 25% chance that cooler heads could prevail.
3. For the minority outcome to happen, it will take rational people who are skilled at statecraft. (Think Lee Kuan Yew, to whom the author very frequently refers.)
Verdict: Recommended at the price of $3.
*******
Brilliant quotes:
Churchill: "The longer you can look back, the farther you can look forward."
Guha: "The only lesson I have learned from studying the past is that there are no permanent winners and losers."
"Destined for war"
4/5 stars
*******
Of the book:
-10 crisp chapters over 232pps. ≈23pps/chapter
-792 total references between 10 chapters, 1 conclusion and 2 appendices.
Part I: Summary of the rise of China.
Part II: Review of China-US relationships in a 2500 year context
Part III: Do current trends foretell of war?
Part IV: Reasons why war is not inevitable.
Appendix 1: 16 cases from the last 500 years, along with quantitative determination of odds of war.
Appendix 2: (Witty) prebutting of strawman arguments.
*******
The first thought is that this book is so sharply argued and so concise that I must believe that the author wanted non-specialists to read it. (One of the reasons that I avoid Political Science books is because of their interminable expatiation.)
The second thought is that: Even as well argued as this book is and even as mature as the author's understanding is of China, I don't think it will do a damn bit of good--and that's because the relevant people won't do anywhere near this much analysis before there is a war. (Who didn't know that politicians are not historians? After all, it's not their own sons that they're sending off to be killed.)
One single history book read by any president during the Vietnam "incident" *would have* decisively convinced them that Vietnam and China are not friends, never have been and never will be.
Maybe it might take as many as *two* history books to find out that neutrality and non-alignment really is the safest option in all cases.
The third thought is that: there are so many wild cards in these types of situations that prediction is a pretty silly exercise. (Maybe for the same reason that is silly to predict the future cause of death for a random newborn.)
At the time of this writing--before Donald Trump left office and addledJoe Biden became president--the author notes that: Donald Trump was an aggressive nationalist. (But for some reason he didn't get us in any wars.)
A weak and incompetent president (like Joe Biden) might be an even more helpful catalyst for war.
*******
Problems:
Repetitive overstatement of current economic conditions in China.
-Lots of salivating about Chinese high-speed rail. (Actually, as of today the non-performing debt of high speed rail is somewhere between $850 billion and $2 trillion.)
-The author keeps using PPP rates as (opposed to market exchange rates).
-(p.16) Really? China is a leader in education, science, technology, and innovation?
-Talks about how many STEM PhDs / other degrees China has produced. But, the STEM market in the United States has been oversaturated for *decades.* What is he talking about?
Students of the long Chinese history of underachievement have an idea that the world has been here before.
(*This* time, it will be different!)
*******
Second order questions:
1. If decline is a natural thing, then is there really a thesis here?
If there is a Number One, then there must always be a Number Two. Given that Number One cannot perpetually stay that, then at some point (through missteps or degeneration), they become low-hanging fruit for Number Two.
And that's that.
The rest is commentary.
The United States did the cleanup work in both of the World Wars as well as aggressively expanding its "backyard" under Theodore Roosevelt, and a century later is heavily occupying itself with adjudicating legal challenges by men who want the right to use women's bathrooms / compete on women's teams.
Or, hammering out disputes between, um, female impersonators vs men who think they are women. (Even though they're both actually men. It appears that too much comfort / decadence generates its own problems.)
Do you really expect that something like this could turn out well or that such a country could/SHOULD stay Number One forever?
It is my inclination that should China someday become Number One, that will be the beginning of its decline from that position. (And that is exactly what happened after the Tang dynasty, when China really was the center of the world: It became fat, sleek, and kicked.)
2. Why on Earth the obsessive concern with what 3rd world country is in the sphere of influence of China versus the US? (What sane country really wants to have Africa as a "backyard" and therefore have a corridor where Africans bring their problems directly from there to you via immigrations. Don't we have enough to deal with with our current South/Central American infestation?)
3. Is the purpose of a country to provide for its citizens or to influence other countries?
People who live in Norway don't expect to have any influence on world affairs, but they can purchase anything that they want at home.
Countries learn things as a result of painful consequences. (1950s China only learned that you cannot set nationwide farming conditions in Beibest-- after 32 million people starved to death.)
The best strategy for a country to survive for a long time has been neutrality and non-alignment. (Switzerland!)
So, whatever happens will happen and maybe the result will be that the United States will learn the way forward that trying to be the policeman of the world is an expensive and ultimately futile enterprise. (It might take a lot of economic / military damage, but then these lessons are never easy.)
4. National humiliation, economic crisis, and a bunch of unmarried young men create all the right conditions for something very bad to happen in the Chinese case. They have as many young men to throw away as they want in that conflict and a terrible ax to grind.
5. Who did not know that all wars start because of miscalculation? And that they end because of recalculations in light of new data?
6. A lot of times if you want to make omelets, you have to break eggs. So, someone like Theodore Roosevelt was a warrior, par excellence. But, he did get a lot of things done.
7. Are there really any good guys / bad guys in the struggle for the top spot?
It all depends on who is looking.
Theodore Roosevelt was someone who understood that power comes out of the barrel of a gun, and he wanted to build a nation. (Same thing with Kaiser Wilhelm.)
So, Xi Jinping wants to reclaim Chinese national greatness. And if he can, then he's only a bad guy in the eyes of people who end up on the losing end of his project.
8. I really wonder how plausible is the Chinese selling point to other nations: "We want to go back in the past where you were all vassal states that paid tribute to us and we were the thing to emulate."
*******
Summary and Conclusions:
1. If you want to have number one position, you do have to have enough money/GDP to pay for a military to make that reality.
2. Based on the data set that the author has presented, there is at least a 25% chance that cooler heads could prevail.
3. For the minority outcome to happen, it will take rational people who are skilled at statecraft. (Think Lee Kuan Yew, to whom the author very frequently refers.)
Verdict: Recommended at the price of $3.
*******
Brilliant quotes:
Churchill: "The longer you can look back, the farther you can look forward."
Guha: "The only lesson I have learned from studying the past is that there are no permanent winners and losers."
bananabeanx's review against another edition
3.0
I buddy-read this book with my study buddy and we both didn't finish but discussed where we left off, And I like how the book explained the ongoing rivalry between America and China, both economically and geographically.