The Sources of Chinese ConductSeptember/October 2019 95
The United States also needs to help create a more benign environ-
ment beyond Asia. At a time when China is continuing its rise, it makes
no sense to leave Russia as a dissatis¿ed scavenger on the periphery o
the international system. Washington should try to bring Moscow into a
more cooperative relationship with the West by opening up more oppor-
tunities for partnership and helping settle the conÇict in eastern Ukraine.
I Washington refuses to do that, then the strategic nightmare that
haunted U.S. ocials during the Cold War yet never fully materialized
may actually come true: a real Sino-Russian alliance. Today, the combina-
tion o Russia’s resources and China’s population could power a far greater
challenge to the West than what was attempted 70 years ago. As Kennan
noted in 1954, the only real danger to Americans would come through
“the association o the dominant portion o the physical resources o Eu-
rope and Asia with a political power hostile to [the United States].”
One o Kennan’s greatest insights, however, had nothing to do with
foreign aairs; it had to do with American politics. He warned in his “X”
article that “exhibitions o indecision, disunity and internal disintegra-
tion” within the United States were the biggest danger the country faced.
Kennan also warned against complacency about funding for common
purposes. Like 70 years ago, to compete today, the United States needs
to spend more money, which necessarily means higher contributions
from wealthy Americans and corporations, in order to provide top-
quality skills training, world-class infrastructure, and cutting-edge re-
search and development. Competing with China cannot be done on the
cheap. Ultimately, Kennan argued, American power depended on the
United States’ ability to “create among the peoples o the world generally
the impression o a country which knows what it wants, which is coping
successfully with the problems o its internal life and with the respon-
sibilities o a world power, and which has a spiritual vitality capable o
holding its own among the major ideological currents o the time.”
Although one might phrase it dierently, the challenge is exactly
the same today. Will the competition with China focus, to use one o
Kennan’s favored phrases, “the American mind” to the point that the
United States abandons domestic discord in favor o consensus? I
some unifying factor does not intervene, the decline in the United
States’ ability to act purposefully will, sooner than most people imag-
ine, mean not just a multipolar world but an unruly world—one in
which fear, hatred, and ambition hold everyone hostage to the basest
instincts o the human imagination.∂