Seth D. Kaplan
AS THE United States counters the rise of China, it is taking steps to meet the challenge to its global leadership, boosting investment in technology and infrastructure, shifting military assets toward Asia, and strengthening alliances. But its efforts are defensive; they shore up its existing position and react to Chinese attempts to weaken it. There appears to be no clear idea of how to go on the offensive—how to sufficiently weaken support among the Chinese people and within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) so the regime falters from within. Such an offensive strategy was key to ending the Cold War.
This strategy undermined the Soviet regime at its most vulnerable point—its legitimacy at home. A robust military and set of alliances deterred direct aggression, but they were at best defensive measures that provided time and space for concepts like capitalism, the rule of law, democracy, and human rights to win the hearts and minds of people behind the Iron Curtain. These ideas gradually won over elites and populations in the Soviet Union as differences in what the two systems could deliver became more apparent. Eventually, belief in the communist system eroded, dissolving the regime from within.
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