The Avoidable War: The Dangers of a Catastrophic Conflict between the US and Xi Jinping's China

by Kevin Rudd

The debate was launched by an article titled “The China Reckoning,” published by Kurt Campbell, US assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs from 2009 to 2013 (and, more recently, White House coordinator for the Indo-Pacific in the Biden administration’s National Security Council), and Ely Ratner, deputy national security advisor to then vice president Joe Biden from 2015 to 2017 (and more recently assistant secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs under Biden). In their article, Campbell and Ratner traced a growing disillusionment with America’s previous strategy of engagement with Beijing over the course of the Obama administration. The administration watched as Xi’s centralization of power dashed initial (if always illusory) American hopes of political liberalization; how the BRI and China’s state financial institutions challenged the liberal consensus on development; how Chinese hackers launched a series of major cyberattacks on American targets, including federal government agencies; and how China steadily dredged, built up, and then militarized a total of seven artificial islands in the South China Sea, culminating in Beijing’s brutal dismissal of the landmark summer 2016 ruling by the UN Permanent Court of Arbitration that China’s expansive maritime claims in the region were illegal.