ESSAY: HELLO, SLEEPWALKERS? TIME TO WAKE UP!

“Both China and the United States seem to be sleepwalking toward a cross-strait confrontation at some point within the next decade.”

By Philip Cunningham

“Both China and the United States seem to be sleepwalking toward a cross-strait confrontation at some point within the next decade.”

So concludes Yale professor Odd Arne Westad in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs. In “Sleepwalking toward War,” he argues that current U.S.-China relations have worrisome parallels to the missteps of the Germans and the British in the lead-up to World War I.

“China should remember that one of Germany’s major mistakes before World War I was to stand by as Austria-Hungary harassed its neighbors in the Balkans even as German leaders appealed to the high principles of international justice. This hypocrisy helped produce war in 1914. Right now, China is repeating that mistake with its treatment of Russia.”

“Sleepwalkers” is a powerful meme because it springs from the sorry example of World War I, one of the most futile, and arguably avoidable, wars ever fought.

As Harvard professor Joseph Nye wrote in “The China Sleepwalking Syndrome” in 202…