🇺🇸🇨🇳🌐 The US ‘Domain Awareness Gap’ Goes Way Beyond Balloons, by Niall Ferguson
If a major conflict breaks out with China, America’s once-vaunted defense industrial base will be exposed as a comatose geriatric, not a sleeping giant.
▪️In an essay in Foreign Affairs last year, Michael J. Mazarr summarized a recent RAND Corporation study commissioned by the US Defense Department’s Office of Net Assessment on the age-old question, “What Makes a Power Great?”
▪️“The United States ultimately prevailed over the Soviet Union in the Cold War,” Mazarr argued, “because it was more energetic, innovative, productive, and legitimate.” But can the same be said of the United States by comparison with China today?
▪️ Here’s the RAND answer: The United States displays some of the characteristics of a once dominant power that has passed its competitive prime: by some important measures, it is complacent, highly bureaucratized, and seeking short-term gains and rents rather than long-term productive breakthroughs. It is socially and politically divided, cognizant of the need for reforms yet unwilling or unable to make them, and suffering a loss of faith in the shared national project that once animated it.
But, what of China?
▪️China clearly benefits from a potent national will and ambition, both domestically and internationally, and a unified national identity among much of the population. It has an active state that is pouring resources into human capital, research and development, high technology, and infrastructure.
So, what does this mean?
In his classic book The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, Paul Kennedy laid special emphasis on manufacturing as a source of power, for the simple reason that in time of war there is no substitute for having an economy that can mass-produce weapons. In the 20th century the United States was unrivaled in its industrial capacity. That has ceased to be true in the past 20 years.
As recently as 2004, US manufacturing value-added was two-and-a-half times larger than China’s. But China overtook the US by this measure in 2010. In 2021 Chinese manufacturing value-added was nearly double that of the US.
This is not 1941. The idea that the United States was a “sleeping giant” on the eve of Pearl Harbor is a myth that understates America’s preparedness for war. The program of construction that gave the US mastery of the sea in World War II began with the Naval Expansion Act of 1938. In our time, by contrast, we have been shrinking our military-industrial base.
In 2013 the Environmental Protection Agency shut down the 121-year-old Doe Run lead smelting plant in Herculaneum, MO — the last primary lead smelting plant in the country. And that’s just lead. According to a 2021 report from the Department of Energy, “of the 35 mineral commodities identified as critical … the United States lacks domestic production of 14 and is more than 50% import-reliant for 31.” No doubt great from an ESG perspective. But what about the WWIII perspective?
If a major conflict breaks out with China, America’s once-vaunted defense industrial base will be exposed as a comatose geriatric, not a sleeping giant.
▪️In an essay in Foreign Affairs last year, Michael J. Mazarr summarized a recent RAND Corporation study commissioned by the US Defense Department’s Office of Net Assessment on the age-old question, “What Makes a Power Great?”
▪️“The United States ultimately prevailed over the Soviet Union in the Cold War,” Mazarr argued, “because it was more energetic, innovative, productive, and legitimate.” But can the same be said of the United States by comparison with China today?
▪️ Here’s the RAND answer: The United States displays some of the characteristics of a once dominant power that has passed its competitive prime: by some important measures, it is complacent, highly bureaucratized, and seeking short-term gains and rents rather than long-term productive breakthroughs. It is socially and politically divided, cognizant of the need for reforms yet unwilling or unable to make them, and suffering a loss of faith in the shared national project that once animated it.
But, what of China?
▪️China clearly benefits from a potent national will and ambition, both domestically and internationally, and a unified national identity among much of the population. It has an active state that is pouring resources into human capital, research and development, high technology, and infrastructure.
So, what does this mean?
In his classic book The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, Paul Kennedy laid special emphasis on manufacturing as a source of power, for the simple reason that in time of war there is no substitute for having an economy that can mass-produce weapons. In the 20th century the United States was unrivaled in its industrial capacity. That has ceased to be true in the past 20 years.
As recently as 2004, US manufacturing value-added was two-and-a-half times larger than China’s. But China overtook the US by this measure in 2010. In 2021 Chinese manufacturing value-added was nearly double that of the US.
This is not 1941. The idea that the United States was a “sleeping giant” on the eve of Pearl Harbor is a myth that understates America’s preparedness for war. The program of construction that gave the US mastery of the sea in World War II began with the Naval Expansion Act of 1938. In our time, by contrast, we have been shrinking our military-industrial base.
In 2013 the Environmental Protection Agency shut down the 121-year-old Doe Run lead smelting plant in Herculaneum, MO — the last primary lead smelting plant in the country. And that’s just lead. According to a 2021 report from the Department of Energy, “of the 35 mineral commodities identified as critical … the United States lacks domestic production of 14 and is more than 50% import-reliant for 31.” No doubt great from an ESG perspective. But what about the WWIII perspective?