782 { China’s Quest
in 1895, Russia in 1905 and again in 1917, Germany in 1918, France in 1940, and
Argentina in 1982. Defeat in war, inability to defend the nation, is immediately
understandable evidence of terminal ineptitude. Were China to get involved
in a military clash with, say, Japan over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands and lose
to a technologically very potent Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force, the
result could be large and highly emotional protests across China against the
apparent inability of the CCP to defend China’s interests. In such a situation,
escalation might be preferable to conceding defeat. This would only further
increase the stakes for the CCP. That regime might conclude it had a choice
between a full-scale war with the United States and Japan that it might lose,
and confronting a powerful domestic nationalist movement determined to
oust it from office for being too weak. In such circumstances, a lost war with
the United States might appear the lesser of two evils. CCP leaders might cal-
culate their regime could survive an all-out but losing war with Japan and the
United States, but could not survive the internal challenge that would result
from backing away from such a war out of fear.
Defeat of China in war with Japan and the United States could lead to even
worse outcomes for the twenty-first century. Very probably, an even more en-
raged nationalistic China would prepare for the next round, determined not
to lose again. An extreme form of Chinese nationalism could develop that
sees the CCP regime as an obstacle to China’s rise and realization of its true
historic destiny of greatness. A Chinese attempt at political liberalization that
produced not stability but instability could also push China in a more radical
nationalist direction. Here again we return to the sad German paradigm, not
of the Wilhelmine but of a later period.
At the end of the nineteenth and in the early twentieth century there
arose in Germany a form of radical nationalism that argued that the aris-
tocratic and capitalist duumvirate that had dominated Germany since 1871
prevented Germany from mobilizing the full strength of the German people,
thereby keeping it from achieving its rightful place of eminence in the world.
Bourgeois political parties squabbled with one another and thwarted strong
leadership. Aristocrats kept out of office nonaristocratic Germans of greater
capability and merit. A dynastic monarchy feared the people and could not
rouse and harness their full emotional passion. Big capitalists and financiers
kept many German workers in poor health and privation. Divisions over
class, religion, and region that pitted Germans against one another, rather
than uniting them to reach their common destiny of greatness, needed to
be overcome. The preachers of division—the socialists, communists, political
parties—needed to be banished. What was needed was not liberal democ-
racy, but strong, firm leadership. What was needed was a new culture, a new
national revolution that would create a true national community and mobi-
lize the energies of the entire German people, and lead them to their destiny
of greatness. This was the cultural soil upon which German fascism, National