Sebastian Haffner: The Meaning of Hitler. Ewald Osers translation. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979.

Jochen Thies: Hitler’s Plans for Global Domination: Nazi Architecture and Ultimate War Aims. Ian Cooke and Mary-Beth Friedrich translation. New York: Berghahn Books, 2012. (Originally published in Germany in 1976).

 

On Hitler, opinions vary. Many consider him the worst tyrant of the catastrophic twentieth century—worse, even, than Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot. Others say he was no worse than they but nonetheless intended to lead Germany toward a worldwide empire. Others still maintain that he merely wanted a European empire. And then there was the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who claimed that Hitler was a normal German statesman, intending to revive the Kaiser Reich, which, in the Führer‘s estimation, hadn’t lost the Great War militarily but was betrayed by the surrender of the political classes. [1]

Sebastian Haffner was a journalist and contemporary of Hitler, witness to his meteoric rise to power, haunted by the question, ‘How did this happen?’ The man was a failure until the age of 30, having moped through school no real friends, avoiding any real job, winning no wife, producing no children. “Apart from politics and political passion, his was an empty life.” Born in Austria, despising the thought of serving in the army of such a polyglot thing, he fled to Germany, where he eagerly volunteered for military service at the outset of the Great War. “Strange though it may sound, his frontline experience was probably his only education.” And even in politics he wasn’t really political, having no taste for ruling and being ruled, only for ruling; “later he was quite simply the Führer, not answerable to anyone.” In his first and only political office, Reich Chancellor, “his political mode of working was never that of the top public servant but that of an unfettered independent artist waiting for inspiration, seemingly idle for days and weeks on end, and then, when the spirit moved him, throwing himself into a sudden frenzy of activity.” He was “the earliest, most persistent and most passionate devotee” of a cult he formed around himself.

Hitler’s Austrian origin turned out to be decisive, despite his aversion to the place. (The old joke is, ‘The Austrians are the smartest people in Europe; they’ve convinced the world that Beethoven was an Austrian and that Hitler was a German.’) His hatred of Jews probably originated not from Germany, where “antisemitism was on the wane about the turn of the century” as “assimilation and integration of the Jews was desired and was in full swing,” but from Central and Eastern Europe, the atmosphere of Vienna not Berlin. His first public expression of antisemitism occurred after the war, however, when the November Revolution of 1918 and the subsequent victory of the German Democratic Socialists over the Communists allowed a foreigner like Hitler to begin a political career under laws guaranteeing freedom of speech. Hitler nonetheless denounced the revolution as the “November Crime,” given the crucial role played by Marxists in it. He objected to Marxism not because it was socialist but because it was Jewish and internationalist—the Jews being a people or ‘race’ without a country, seeking to dominate national governments everywhere, as per the fraudulent Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which Hitler read around this time. The workers, now pawns of ‘international Jewry,’ must be won over to a new, national socialism, persuaded that the revolution had caused the German defeat in the war rather than having been the result of it. To reverse this catastrophe, Germans needed to effect a new revolution, a new war, and especially a war against the Jews, as outlined in his 1925 book, Mein Kampf. In the meantime, his “breakthrough experience was his own discovery of his power as an orator,” his “ability to transform rallies of the most varied individuals—the bigger and more motley the better—into a homogeneous pliable mass” by a sort of alchemy of “mass hypnotism,” proved that “he could do something no one else could.” He could become Der Führer.

That he gave Germans something they longed for may be seen in the example of poems by Stefan George, a contemporary who prophesied the coming of “the Man” who will found “the New Reich”: “The man! The deed! Thus pine both people and High Council.” Hitler’s oratorical powers made enough Germans believe him to be that Man that he could begin his own party in the Reichstag, a party revolving around himself, a party whose decidedly modest successes at the polls improved only thanks to the weakness of his opponents and the financial disaster of 1929. He also discovered in himself a talent for political organizing, which served him well once he came to power. Haffner reminds his readers that Nazi rule coincided with an “economic miracle”: full employment in Germany after only three years in office. “It is difficult to picture adequately the grateful amazement with which the Germans reacted to that miracle, which, more particularly, made vast numbers of German workers switch from the Social Democrats and the Communists to Hitler after 1933.” Having reversed the November Revolution, ending the Weimar regime, having recouped German economic strength, he could now remilitarize and rearm the country, which became the strongest European power by 1938, poised to invalidate “vital sections of the Versailles Treaty,” thereby achieving “a political triumph over France and Britain, and a radical transformation of the balance of power in Europe.” Germans reveled in it all, and indeed it was “a colossal achievement to have united virtually the entire nation behind him,” “not by demagogy but by achievement.” He had taken the postwar democratization of German society and politics, its “cult of the body and sex,” its emancipation of women and turned them into a “great social transformation that was Hitler’s personal work, what he called the “socialization of people.” That is, he had caused Germans to be “firmly fitted into a discipline from which they cannot escape.” In Haffner’s words, “if the goal of socialism is the liquidation of human alienation, then the socialization of people will attain that goal far more effectively than the socialization of the means of production” advocated by the Marxists.

Hitler intended not only to unite German in Germany but ‘Aryans’ everywhere, with Germans as the elite among that racial elite in a “Greater Germanic” Reich, “an empire to which he did not even set geographical bounds in his mind but only a continually advancing ‘military boundary’ which might perhaps find its final place on the Volga, perhaps along the Urals,  or perhaps only on the Pacific.” Pace, Professor Taylor, but “in that respect there could be no greater contrast than between Hitler and Bismarck” or even Napoleon I—empire builders to be sure, but also institution builders. Hitler wasn’t a constructive statesman but a sort of embodiment of the Heraclitean flux, albeit with the drive for racial domination as its logos. “From 1930 until 1941 Hitler succeeded in practically everything he undertook.” By the end of that time, he ruled Europe. 

Up until then, all his enemies were weak. “All his successes were scored against opponents who were unable or unwilling to offer real resistance.” His primary domestic opponents, the conservatives “who for a while challenged his succession to the Weimar Republic lacked a political concept, were divided amongst themselves and psychologically vacillated between resistance to and alliance with Hitler”; having denigrated ‘civilization’ and valorized ‘culture,’ Germans were no more political than Hitler himself, although far less fanatic. The Weimar Republic’s principal supporters—the “Weimar Coalition” of Social Democrats, Left liberals, and Catholics—enjoyed no parliamentary majority after the regime’s first year. It was a parliamentary regime, with no strong executive, although for most of the Twenties it did have “a capable Foreign Minister” in Gustav Stresemann and a competent bureaucracy, which actually ran the country. By the end of the decade, “even the Catholic Center” wanted a new, “authoritarian regime.” They got a tyrant instead. 

Haffner distinguishes Hitler’s Nazis from Mussolini’s Fascists. “Fascism is upper-class rule, buttressed by artificially manufactured mass enthusiasm”; “nothing is more misleading than to call Hitler a Fascist.” [2] Nazism more closely resembled Stalinist Communism, substituting ‘race’ for ‘class’ in its analysis of politics, society, and economics while taking on its ‘totalitarian’ characteristics. 

Hitler’s foreign rivals were equally ineffective. The European international system framed at the Versailles Conference “suffered from the same congenital weakness as the Weimar Republic”: “just as the Republic suffered shipwreck because, from the outset, it failed either to strip the German Right wing (still the strongest power group and one that was indispensable to the functioning of the state) of its power for good…or permanently to integrate it into the new republican state, so the Paris peace system foundered because it neither stripped the still strongest European power, the German Reich (still indispensable to European stability) permanently of its power, nor permanently integrated it,” as “Metternich had done with France following the Napoleonic Wars.” Instead, they chose a policy of humiliation while “allow[ing] it to keep its unity and independence,” the means by which Germans might take revenge for their humiliation. The Weimar politicians wanted to get out from under “what they had signed under duress” as much as Hitler did, and the other Europeans lacked the military power to stop them. The British policy of “appeasement” began not at Munich in 1938, under Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, but at Locarno in 1925, “under his half-brother, Austen Chamberlain.” Weimar had whittled away at the Versailles impositions and, once in office, Hitler continued to do so (here, Taylor and Haffner agree), although the Brits “could not fail to notice that he was increasingly withholding from them the hoped-for collateral, participation in the consolidation of peace in Europe and shared support for a peace system revised in Germany’s favor.” “He had in reality accepted to increase his strength for a new war.” The war came, and his “greatest success,” the conquest of France, came against the advice of his generals, who “all had before their eyes the specter of the French campaign of 1914,” with its years of paralyzing trench warfare. In all of this, “Hitler invariably only toppled what was tottering and killed what was already dying,” having “less in common with the eye of the eagle than with the nose of the vulture.”

Hitler “wanted to be not only the Lenin but the Marx of Hitlerism.” And indeed, his “mixture of swaggering superiority and intolerance is found equally among convinced Marxists and convinced Hitlerites.” “His doctrine centered on race”—in his words, “the aristocratic basic idea of Nature,” racial hierarchy. Races engage in what Hitler called an “existential struggle” for survival and dominance, a struggle conducted primarily through wars for territory, “living space.” “Ultimately, the perpetual warlike struggle between nations is about world domination”: “Every being,” he wrote, “strives for expansion and every nation strives for world domination.” “We all feel,” he continued, “that in the distant future man will find himself confronted by problems which only a supreme race, a master nation based upon the resources and facilities of an entire glove, can be called upon to solve,” a nation empowered by “a state which, in an age of racial poisoning, devotes itself to the cultivation of its best racial elements.” That race-nation-state “must one day become master of the earth.” Exactly what a race or nation is, and exactly who is an Aryan, stayed a bit undefined, Haffner remarks, but Hitler evidently supposed his notion close enough for government work. That work’s primary aim was to de-toxify the Aryan race by ridding Europe of ‘international Jewry.’ In Hitler’s words, “If the Jew with the aid of his Marxist creed remains victorious over the nations of this world, then his crown will be the wreath on the grave of mankind, then this planet will once more, as millions of years ago, move through the ether devoid of human beings.” Near the end of his life, he told his personal secretary, Martin Bormann, “People will be eternally grateful to National Socialism that I have extinguished the Jews in Germany and Central Europe” because Jews, whether Communists or bankers, weaken the superior races, conspire against them, seek their destruction. For Aryans, it is kill or be killed. This doctrine is what distinguishes Hitler from the Pan-Germans of the Kaiser Reich, who indeed wanted an empire, a ‘place in the sun’ for Germany, but scarcely envisioned genocide or rule of the world following from genocide. 

After conquering Europe, including Russia, and ruling the nations there either directly or as satellites, Germanized Europe would then challenge “America and Japan in a struggle for world domination,” “doing so with good prospects of success.” He failed, in part because he alienated Jews of German origin in the United States and elsewhere. Prior to Hitler, “German Jews in their great majority,” inside and outside Germany, “were positively in love with Germany.” “Jewish influence in the world had predominantly been a pro-German element, a fact which Germany’s opponents in the First World War were only too well aware of”; “in America it had long and effectively opposed the country’s entry on the side of the Entente.” German Jews had “played an outstanding part, during the first third of the twentieth century, in helping Germany—for the first time—to outstrip Britain and France in the intellectual and cultural sphere as well as in science and economic life.” Jews who escaped to America on the whole strengthened America at Germany’s, at Europe’s expense, enabling their new country to defend a Europe weakened by the war Hitler started against the Soviet Russia he hated and failed to crush.

In the meantime, he did a lot of damage. The 1938 Munich Agreement not only solemnized “the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia, which had relied in vain on its alliance with France,” but it effectively “mean Britain’s and France’s political withdrawal from the Eastern half of Europe and the recognition of Eastern Europe right up to the Russian frontier as a German sphere of influence,” exactly as Hitler had envisioned things, years earlier. Had Hitler taken the time to “consolidate this new Greater German East European empire,” he or his successors might well have been able to take Russia. But that would have taken “constructive statesmanship…and patience,” and Hitler “lacked just these two qualities.” He moved into Poland, rightly calculating that neither France nor Great Britain was prepared for war, then took France down. Once again, however, he pushed ahead, touching off his futile air war against the British and then, even more catastrophically, invading Soviet Russia, which appeared weak because its troops had performed poorly against Finland in 1939. (As early as the 1920s, in Mein Kampf, he had deemed “the giant empire in the east” to be “ripe for collapse.”) He lacked “the constructive imagination of the statesman, the ability to build enduring structures,” because for this modern Heraclitean, war was the norm, not peace. Insofar as peace was possible or desirable, it meant the annihilation of the enemy. Once understood by his enemies, this intention stiffened resistance against him. His “crowning mistake” was to declare war on the United States, a few days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. “There is to this day no comprehensible rational explanation for what one is tempted to describe as an act of lunacy.” Japan had just diverted American attentions away from Europe, and the Triple Alliance of Germany, Japan, and Italy committed the parties only to a defensive alliance. “Moreover, he could do nothing to give Japan any kind of active assistance.” As it happened, he couldn’t give adequate assistance to himself, either, as the (now) two-front war loomed.

No matter? Late in 1941, told a pair of foreign visitors, “If one day the German nation is no longer sufficiently strong or sufficiently ready for sacrifice to stake its own blood for its existence, then let it perish and be annihilated by some other stronger power.” Germans were failing him. 

He could still succeed in one thing, however: the mass murder of Jews. “Hitler’s mass murders were committed during the war, but they were not acts of war” or, more accurately, not acts of war against the Allies. Jews, Gypsies, invalids (he killed 100,000 of these “useless eaters”), Poland’s educated classes (3 million non-Jews, along with 3 million Polish Jews), Russians (another 3 million): all of them deserved to die, in the Führer’s estimation, and he persecuted merciless war against them. In effect, he sacrificed his dream of world empire in order to concentrate on his dream of genocide. If race is the ultimate driver of ‘History,’ and Aryan victory is ‘History’s’ ultimate prize, then the lunacy (and the evil) serves as a pragmatic means to winning the prize of racial purification, since a Germany that cannot yet dominate the world will at least be ‘Jew-free.’ Even while losing to the Allies, “he was now able to indulge the delights of the killer who has shed his last restraints, has his victims in his grip and deals with them as he wishes”: “Who would reach his goal sooner, Hitler with his extermination of the Jews or the Allies with their military overthrow of Germany?” 

Hitler’s “Final Solution to the Jewish Problem” thus entailed a three-stage end game. From August to October 1944 “he successfully prevented the discontinuation of the lost war and made sure there would be a fight to the finish”; from November 1944 to January 1945, “he made a surprising last sortie” not to the east but to the west in the Ardennes offensive; from February to April 1945, “he pursued the total destruction of Germany,” which deserved to be ruined, given Germans’ failure to live up to the demands he had placed upon them. This contrasts with the policy of Paul Ludendorff in the fatally weakened Kaiser Reich, who made peace in 1918 by uniting with his political opponents and requesting an armistice in order to preserve Germany from further destruction. (This policy was so successful that many Germans, including Hitler, couldn’t understand how it could be said that they’d lost the Great War.) Hitler did the exact opposite, arresting as many former Weimar officials as he could find. “His determination never again to allow a November 1918 [surrender] to happen was the main original impulse that drove him to become a politician.” By these last months of World War II, “the force of Hitler’s hatred, the homicidal drive in Hitler which had raged for years, against Jews, Poles and Russians, was now quite openly turning against Germans.” In March 1945, he issued an order to destroy all “material assets” within the Reich “which the enemy might in any way whatever make use of for the continuation of his struggle, either now or in the foreseeable future.” When his most-favored architect, Albert Speer, ventured to remark that this would injure Germans, Hitler explained, “If the war is lost then the nation will be lost also. There is no need to show any consideration for the foundations which the German nation needs for its most primitive survival. On the contrary, it is better to destroy those things ourselves. Because this nation has shown itself the weaker, and the future belongs exclusively to the stronger nation from the East. In any event, what remains after this struggle are only the inferior, for the good have died in battle.”

Jochen Thies cites the work of his former teacher, Andreas Hillgruber, who regarded Hitler’s intention to rule the world as “the only logical consequence of Hitler’s biological thinking process, which was fueled by overpopulation and, the resulting need for more living space as well as continued population growth” among Aryans. Hillgruber eventually discovered documents showing that Hitler regarded 1941 as the decisive year, the year in which he planned to conquer the Soviet Union in three to four months; destroy Great Britain’s empire in the Middle East and occupy Afghanistan in preparation for pressuring the Brits out of India, later, in connection with Japan’s occupation of Singapore, approaching India from the east; taking Gibraltar and, subsequently, part of Northwest Africa “to create a war front position against the United States”—somewhat like the goings-on portrayed in the contemporaneous Hollywood movie, Casablanca. Hillgruber suspected that Hitler’s met with the Germanophile Japanese ambassador and Imperial Army general Hiroshi Ōshima in July 1941 in order to plan coordinated military efforts against the Allies. 

Well before that, Hitler gave a speech in 1930 before faculty and students at the university in Erlangen, Franconia, proclaiming that Germany was “destined for global supremacy.” Earlier still, he had argued in Mein Kampf that Jewish internationalism, whether capitalist or socialist, required a worldwide movement by the “Aryan core races” to defeat it. Jewish guilt went back to Paul the Apostle, whose call for Christian missionary work led eventually to the destruction of the only genuine world empire, Rome. The Germans rose up to meet this threat the Holy Roman Empire, in fact a Teutonic empire originating in the meeting of Roman imperial rule with strong German blood, might have continued its sway, had it not been for the Thirty Years War, in which Christianity, that product of Judaism, “had robbed Germany of its chance to claim world supremacy” by shattering the empire into more than thirty mostly petty states. But this crime can be, must be, reversed, so that (as Hitler writes) “the highest form of human specimen has conquered and subjugated the world in which a way that he is sole ruler of the Earth.” Since the western democracies are controlled by Jews, this worldwide racial struggle is also a regime struggle. Thies makes the important point that “it is futile to analyze his possible plans based on the military potential that actually existed,” since one of his principal tactics was to undermine the political will of his enemies by the use of quislings and psychological warfare. “We can find men of this sort” in “every country,” Hitler calculated, men whose “ambition and illusion” bring them to aid the Nazis. “It is our strategy…to destroy the enemy from within to let him destroy himself.” In Czechoslovakia, he bragged to journalists, “the key to success was propaganda.”

Similarly, those who say that German lacked the manpower to rule such an empire, even if it could obtain it, overlook the contemporary British and Soviet empires: “England with her few million people rules one-fifth of the world,” he complained but carefully noted, thanks to its nationalism, racial unity, and the political brilliance of its ruling class. Communist power and influence were equally pervasive. “Strength does not lie in the majority,” a democratic principle, “but rather in the pureness of will to make sacrifices!” The Bolsheviks enjoyed the advantage of “hordes of people possessed by a fanatical belief,” a fanaticism that must be matched by the Aryans, the Germans above all. Repeatedly, “Hitler demonstrated his idea of the world as a ‘challenge cup’ which Germany could win forever.” German quality can defeat the sheer quantity marshaled by Soviet dictators and American democrats, with the help of temporary coalitions with foreign countries. Of these, he regarded Americans as the more formidable, the country having been supplied with sound Aryan stock from the Europe it now rivals. But that stock had been corrupted by Jewry, and so can be defeated, eventually, by racially purer Germans, although nothing is certain. The choice, Hitler insisted was between “world supremacy” and “decline.” “The Nordic race has a right to rule the world, and we must make this right the guiding star of our foreign policy”; instead of the proletarian vanguard of Bolshevism, there must be an “Aryan vanguard.” “All of National Socialism would be worth nothing if it were limited only to Germany and if it didn’t seal its rule over the whole world for this highly valuable race for at least one to two thousand years,” a world in which the remaining populations would survive as helots.

One of the main propaganda tools Hitler deployed in Germany and elsewhere was architecture, which lasts so much longer than any newspaper or radio broadcast. Thies emphasizes its importance. “Architecture enlarges and completes the area of constant influence.” In Nazi Germany, Hitler himself took the position of “master architect.” In this as in so much else, Hitler publicly explained his view of the importance of architecture as a crucial component of regime politics. And once again, his model was Rome, inheritor of Greek culture. Rome was no unheroic commercial empire, Jewish in spirit, like Great Britain but one, as he put it, “founded on the blood of Roman citizens.” In Hitler’s telling, “there is an ‘eternal’ form of art: the Greek-Nordic type.” Squabbles over artistic ‘styles’ bespeaks the decadence of Paris and Weimar Berlin, not the nobility of “Nordic and National Socialist” beauty. 

Accordingly, “all government buildings were to be built in granite so that they could be expected to last from three to four thousand years.” Churches must be replaced with Nazi Party buildings, assembly halls, massive squares and long, wide avenues for parades. Such grand architectural gestures would impress the idea of “the German people [as] the world’s master race,” first of all upon the Germans themselves. They would buttress the authority of the Nazi Party at home and make it seem more formidable to foreigners. Intended to span ten thousand by six thousand meters, the Nazi Party convention complex at Nuremberg embodied national unity against foreign envy. “The important point, both in Nuremberg and other places, was Hitler’s pseudo-religious role: despite the enormous dimensions, the architecture always emphasized the spot where Hitler would be,” giving him “the aura of the ‘Übermensch.'” As for Berlin, in Mein Kampf Hitler had already proposed that it be rebuilt to exert “the magical charm of Mecca or Rome”—the new “capital of the world.” Second only to Hitler as Germany’s master architect, Albert Speer described the world war as a struggle “being waged in order to gain world supremacy,” first prefigured and finally to be symbolized by its monumental edifices.

Early in his reign, Hitler delivered an address to the highest-ranking army and navy commanders, outlining a two-step strategy. The first task was to defeat the Marxist regime in Russia, “one of the largest empires in the world” and “the most immediate threat to Germany and the world.” Thies recalls that this followed from his public speeches in the previous decade, with their theme of “an Aryan raiding party, representing the rest of the world, at war with Marxism.” In this stage, Germany would invite allies among the liberal democracies or, at the minimum, attempt to gain assurances of their neutrality. Once Bolshevism had been defeated, it would be the democracies’ turn. “We must simply hope that this conflict will not happen today, but that it will take years before it comes. The later the better.” But come it will. In a 1938 speech to army generals, he expressed his hope that the “unified bloc” of German people “in central Europe will one day own the world.” In Germany, he told the German press late in 1938, “there are 80 million people of one race, and surrounding us another eight million who from a racial point of view belong to us,” whereas there are only 60 million Anglo-Saxons in America (among a much larger overall population), 46 million in the British Empire, 37 million “real Frenchmen” (mostly in northern France), and 55 million “real Russians.” [3] Eighty million united Germans concentrated in one area, strategically crucial Central Europe, can defeat some 200 million ‘racially pure’ types scattered over thousands of miles, some of them in the Marxist regime that threatens the others. And fortunately, America was distant from Europe, so those 60 million potential enemies, likely kept neutral during a European war, raised no immediate concern. Once consolidated, Europe under Nazi rule would have a population of 500 million facing off against 230 million Americans—an even more advantageous ratio than that enjoyed by the Germans against the French in 1870 and the world wars. One of Hitler’s ambassadors in the United States looked to the future with confidence: “I am sure that the low morale in America sooner or later will settle among this politically stupid people,” with “far-reaching consequences.”

Thies remarks the dissimilarity between the Bismarck policy and Hitler’s. “In the place of the Prussian officer…Hitler had offered the model of the ideological ‘fighter,’, a trusting functionary who would always obey the party in military questions and who would always be ready to follow his Führer.” [4] “One can do anything with a German soldier. It has to be determined who will dominate Europe and thus the world.” And again, now in 1940, “The Earth is there for whoever will take it for his own,” a “challenge cup that is snatched from those who become weak.”

While the army would extend German rule in Europe, to extend it further would obviously require a much-expanded navy. Hitler detailed Speer to design and build a huge naval base at Trondheim; with a planned population of 300,000, it would make Singapore “look like a ‘toy town.'” From there, “super warships” could extend their range into a network of German colonies in Africa and to naval bases in the north Atlantic, a move “which would entail the complete suppression of North, Central, and West European countries to Germany.” “Germania” would provide the base for “Aryan global rule in the form of a colonial regime that would spread throughout the second half of the twentieth century, similar to British rule in India,” which it would replace. The Aryan emigrants to North America would return to their homeland, eager to rejoin the new land of opportunity.

Overall, while Hitler held his intention throughout, he was capable of altering his plans readily, and he kept them fairly broad (Thies calls them “scenarios”) in keeping with his ‘Heraclitean’ sense of historical flux. By the 1940s, he envisioned a Germany ruling Europe directly or through satellites. Most of Africa would belong to Germany, as would the former Soviet Union. With those territories in hand, Germany would move into the Caucasus and the Middle East. Finally, “with the help of the system of naval bases in the Atlantic,” Germany would be “able to take the war to the coast of North and South America” with the naval forces augmented by long-range bombers then under development. Great Britain and its powerful fleet stood in the way; eventually, the battle for the Atlantic Ocean sea lanes would be on. In April 1941, he told the Japanese Minister for Foreign Affairs of this intention “to wage an ‘energetic war’ against the U.S.,” which would be considered in the autumn. That never happened, largely as a result of Germany’s loss of the Battle of Britain; Hitler had to settle for sending submarines to prowl America’s Atlantic coast. A year later, he admitted to his admirer Ōshima that he “did not yet know how to beat the United States,” but preparations for an air war against the enemy continued, with hoped-for targets ranging as far inland as the Great Lakes. He finally gave up only in 1944, when more pressing concerns piled in on him. By then, he dreamed of “miracle weapons” that would somehow reverse Germany’s fortunes, but the German-Jewish physicists who were developing the atomic bomb had fled to America, years earlier.

In the event, the democracies sided with the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany, not with Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union. The hoped-for rift between the Americans and the British (“the second-largest core of the Aryan race in Europe”) never occurred, either, nor did the conquest of the British Isles or of Russia. He grossly underestimated U. S. capacity for weapons manufacturing, both in terms of quantity and (especially) of quality. His planned counterstrikes with long-range bombers on American cities, “in order to teach the Jews living there a ‘lesson,'” proved infeasible in the time frame he needed but miscalculated. 

Had his war plans succeeded, how could Germany expect to rule a global empire? An engineer like Herbert Hoover wanted to see a real plan, devils being in the details. [5] But Hitler didn’t ‘think like an engineer,’ didn’t plan things out in detail before taking his first steps. He had intentions but thought more like the architect he had aspired to be, leaving the plumbing to less visionary minds. And that was when he engaged in anything resembling planning at all. Race above all, but also the cult of the heroic death and the Übermensch: Thies writes, “Hitler’s thought were dominated by myths right up to his death.” “The lack of a war plan against the United States or Japan is not surprising” (emphasis added) and the lack of “plans in the traditional sense” for the invasion of Soviet Russia, should come as no surprise, inasmuch as “even the war of 1939 had the character of something that was improvised.” 

“The motto ‘world power or defeat’…didn’t mean the fulfillment of the goals of Germany under Kaiser Wilhelm, but as Hitler had clearly stated in public long before his seizure of power, meant either world domination or the demise of the German people,” all or nothing.

 

Notes

1. A. J. P. Taylor: The Origins of the Second World War. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1961.
2. See “Fascists” on this website under the category, “Nations.”
3. The concentration of ‘Nordic’ Frenchmen in the north of France may explain why the Nazis ruled that region directly, leaving the ‘inferior’ racial stock of southern France under the rule of the puppet government at Vichy.
4. For a similar assertion of strict ruling party control over the military, see “The Comprehensive Strategy of Xi Jinping,” on this website under the category, “Nations.”
5. See Herbert Hoover: Freedom Betrayed: Herbert Hoover’s Secret History of the Second World War and Its Aftermath, reviewed on this website as “Herbert Hoover’s Despairing Verve,” under the category “American Politics.”

 

Xi Jinping: The Governance of China. Volume I: November 2012-June 2013. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 2019.

Xi Jinping: The Governance of China. Volume II: August 2014-September 2017. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 2017.

 

Now President of China and, more importantly, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and Chairman of the Central Military Commission, Xi Jinping spent his first five years as General Secretary explaining and implementing a comprehensive strategy for his country, the goal of which he identified in a press conference in November 2012 as “a happy life” for the people of China (I.3; see also Speech at a ceremony marking the 95th Anniversary of the Founding of the Chinese Communist Party, 7/1/16, II.40-41)). “A happy life comes from hard work” (I.4), and he unhesitatingly put himself, his Politburo colleagues, the Chinese Communist Party rank and file, and the people of China to work, so that “China can stand firmer and stronger among the world’s nations and make a new and greater contribution to mankind” (I.4). He singled out corruption as his most immediate target for attack and “maintain[ing] close ties with the people” as the CCP’s most urgent constructive task (I.5). These tasks were related, inasmuch as “we will work for the satisfaction of the people and correct any of our practices they are not happy about” (Speech at the Central Conference on judicial, procuratorial, and public security work, 1/7/14, I.163). However, he soon elaborated a “Four-Pronged Strategy,” consisting of a goal—to “complete a moderately prosperous society in all respects,” to be realized by the year 2020, and three “measures”: to “further reform, to advance the rule of law and to strengthen Party discipline” (Speech to Provincial Officials, 2/2/15, I.23). 

To pursue this strategy, he emphasized the character of China’s regime, founded in 1949 by the Chinese Communist Party, then ruled by Mao Zedong, who had founded the party in 1921. In a phrase that he would make famous, Xi called this regime a “socialist system with Chinese characteristics” (Speech to the first study group session of the Political Bureau of the 18th CPC Central Committee, 11/17/12, I.6). He emphasized that “only socialism can save China” and that “only Chinese socialism can lead our country to development” in a manner that keeps the populous nation of numerous ethnic groups unified (ibid. I.7)—a perennial Chinese concern, given the history of conflicts between the emperor and regional warlords. Socialism “consists of a path, theory and system,” both a theory and a practice animated by the “scientific” methods of Marxism (ibid. 9). The “Four Cardinal Principles” of Chinese socialism are “the people’s democratic dictatorship,” leadership of the people by the CCP, Marxism-Leninism, and “Mao-Zedong Thought” (ibid. I.19 n.17). “Belief in Marxism and faith in socialism and communism are the political soul of Communists,” the “marrow of their faith” (ibid. I.16). The “path” governed by the Four Cardinal Principles has “economic development” along socialist lines as its “central task,” among many others (ibid. I.9). Because China is only at “the preliminary stage of socialism” (“socialist modernization…will take at least 100 years to take shape from the completion of the socialist transformation of the private ownership of the means of production in the 1950s” to its completion), the CPC, as “the core leadership for the cause of Chinese socialism,” has “shoulder[ed] a great responsibility.” To meet that responsibility “we must first run the Party well, and to run the Party well we must run it strictly” (ibid. I.15).  Corruption, inertia, incompetence, and separation from the people must be eliminated. This is because “the future and destiny of a political party and government depend on popular support,” the maintenance of which requires the Chinese Communist Party to “organize our people, communicate with them, educate them, serve them, learn from them, and subject ourselves to their oversight” (ibid. I.17). “Socialist democracy,” “consultative democracy,” the “people’s democratic dictatorship” must always be “led by the working class,” however, firmly upholds “the leadership of the CPC”; “we must remain committed to the Party’s core role in exercising overall leadership and coordinating the efforts of all” (Speech to the 60th Anniversary of the National People’s Congress, 9/5/14, II. 18 and II.314; Speech at the 65th Anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee, 921/14, II.318). Since “socialism with Chinese characteristics is a cause for all Chinese people,” always “under the Party’s leadership,” what Western political scientists, following Tocqueville, call civil associations require particular attention, inasmuch as they might interfere with the direct control of the central government, ruled by the CPC. “We must maintain and enhance the political nature of the Party’s work with social groups,” which “should always place themselves under the leadership of the Party and be consistent with the CPC Central Committee in politics, thought and action,” “guid[ing] the people to implement the Party’s instructions and follow the Party’s leadership, and unite their own people around the Party in the closest and most extensive way” (Speech to the CPC Central Committee conference on the Party’s work with social organizations, 7/6/15, II.335-336). For their part, the “social groups” should “learn work at the grassroots to learn about the people’s living conditions, becoming practitioners of the Party’s principle of serving he people, executors of the Paty’s mass line, and experts in the Party’s work for the people” (ibid. II.337).

That is, the regime of Communist China is an oligarchy, the rule of the few who are rich, but an oligarchy of a kind first seen only in the previous century, in Soviet Russia. Whereas previous oligarchies consisted of persons already wealthy, the new, Russian Communist oligarchy consisted of persons who had seized the wealth of the wealthy, deploying it as the means to end the old oligarchy. In order to do so, a new oligarchy needed to be established, one that deployed the institutions of the modern, centralized state in order to end private property and, eventually, lead all societies to communism. In Lenin’s formula, the socialist state will “wither away.” But it didn’t. The Russian Communists confronted two problems: in the economic field, socialism failed to deliver prosperity; in the political field, it failed to deliver equality. They lost whatever popular support they may have enjoyed. As a result of these failures, pressured geopolitically by the prosperous and (relatively) egalitarian commercial republics, the Soviet Union eventually collapsed. Xi is acutely aware of these failures, seeing that they are endemic to socialist oligarchies—unless, as he urges, Communists discipline themselves and make the people “moderately prosperous” and thus “happy.” Chinese Communists must undertake to square the Leninist circle, winning the continuous support of the people while keeping their party firmly in power.

To do this, the ruling body or politeuma must itself be united. “We have to unify the thinking and will of the whole Party, first in order to unify the thinking and will of the people of all China’s ethnic groups so that everyone works together to advance our reform.” In terms of the ruling institution or politeia, this will require “a complete set of closely connected and coordinated systems of the state.” Because the Soviet Union and its several Eastern and Central European satellites failed, “how to govern a socialist society, a completely new society, has not been clearly addressed by world socialism so far” (Speech at the Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee, 11/12/13, I.101). Marx and Engels “had no practical experience in the comprehensive governance of a socialist country, as their theories about a future society were mostly predictive”; Lenin died before he could “explore this question in depth”; and the subsequent rulers of the Soviet Union “made serious mistakes and failed to resolve the problem” (ibid. I.101-102). This has left the task to “our Party,” which “has accumulated rich experience and achieved great success in improving our governance system and enhancing our governance capacity,” in “striking contrast to many regions and countries” today “that suffer constant chaos” (ibid. I.102). There are nonetheless substantial economic and political reforms remaining to be undertaken, given “the basic fact that China is still in the primary stage of socialism and will long remain so” (ibid. I.105). While the party has “a good blueprint” in hand for accomplishing these tasks, “what we should do is follow it through to the end and make it a success”; continuing his architectonic metaphor, Xi advises his colleagues, “we need to have a ‘nail’ spirit,” inasmuch as “when we use a hammer to drive in a nail, a single knock often may not be enough” (Speech to the second full assembly of the Second Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central  Committee, 2/28/13, I.446). “If a blueprint is good, factually based, scientifically sound [i.e., Marxist] and well-received by the people we should keep working on it, one administration after another, and the outcome of our work will be real and appreciated and remembered by the people” (ibid. I.446). Then, “as socialism progresses, our institutions will undoubtedly mature, the strengths of our system will become self-evident, and our development path will assuredly become wider.” “Marxism will not remain stagnant,” and it has not (Speech to the CPC Central Committee, 1/5/13, I.24); Chinese Marxism had its first stage under Mao, its second initially under Deng Xiaoping beginning in 1978, when China effectively adopted its own version of Lenin’s New Economic Policy in an attempt to ensure that socialism, state ownership of the means of production, did not suffocate economic growth and, in foreign policy, ended its geopolitical isolation. These latter-day policies might threaten firm Party rule over the country (as they did in 1920s Russia, a threat met with supreme force by Stalin, and again in the 1990s under Gorbachev, who did not meet the threat and lost the regime). 

That is why “officials must be strict with themselves in self-cultivation, in the exercise of power, and in self-discipline” Speech to the Leading Group for Further Reform under the CPC Central Committee, 5/5/17, II.111). These are “Three Stricts,” outlined by Xi at a session of the Anhui delegation of the Second Session of the 12th People’s Congress in March 2014. Strictness in self-cultivation means a strong “sense of Party awareness,” firm “support of the ideals and principles of the Party,” and a certain high-mindedness, distant from “vulgar interests,” “unhealthy practices and evil influences.” Strictness in the exercise of power means exercising power “in the interests of the people” (very much as defined by the CCP Central Committee) according to the Central Committee’s “rules and regulations,” keeping power “within the confines of systemic checks” designed by the Central Commitee and never seeking privileges or abusing power “for personal gain.” Strictness in self-discipline means the willingness of “leading officials” to “always be ready to apply the rod to themselves,” prudently examining themselves in accordance with “Party discipline and state laws.” The Three Stricts must be supplemented by the “Three Earnests”; earnestly taking “facts as the basis of work planning, ensur[ing] that all ideas, policies, and plans are in line with actual conditions, objective laws, and scientific principle,” lest officials become “overly ambitious and divorced from reality”; earnestly being “down-to-earth” and “pragmatic in work” when undertaking new policies, facing and solving problems as they arise; and earnestly “upholding personal integrity,” by which he means loyalty to the Party, the people, and to Party colleagues. (Anhui delegation speech, I. 421-422). Such “internal Party scrutiny” “is the first and most fundamental means among all forms of scrutiny for the Party and the country,” but “it cannot work as a joint force without being integrated with scrutiny by state agencies, other political parties, the public, and public opinion.” Accordingly, “officials should invite scrutiny from all sides, showing both breadth of mind and confidence.” (Speech to the Sixth Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee, 10/27/16, II.206).

During his years in Yan’an, after the Long March, Mao “put forward the idea of breaking the historical cycle of gaining political power only to lose it because of corruption that had often happened in Chinese history” (Speech to the Second Full Assembly of the Sixth Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee, 10/27/16, II.203). This task remains. “Discipline and rules are indispensable for political parties, especially for Marxist parties,” which rule in the name of the people (Speech to the Fifth Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, 1/13/15, II.164). This means not only obedience to the Party Constitution and other state and party laws and policies but also “the traditions and working practices developed by our Party over the years” (ibid. II.164). The latter, unwritten rules are indispensable because the Party’s “very large membership” makes self-governance by rules alone impossible; no set of rules could be so detailed and pervasive as to govern such an organization effectively (ibid. II.164). And so, Party officials must avoid forming cliques of mutual self-promotion, oligarchies within the oligarchy; they must never make “careless and groundless remarks,” including gossip, rumors, and “inappropriate jokes” (ibid. II.165). Some kinds of grounded remarks are also forbidden, such as disclosing confidential information. In this vein, “some high-ranking officials have even compiled a coded language, which they use when speaking with their families and those close to them” (ibid. II.167). All of these practices subvert “the authority of the Central Committee” and “the unity of the Party” (ibid. II.168). Officials must “rein in our relatives and immediate staff,” not favor them (II.168). This bears on Xi’s anti-corruption campaign. Party members need “the moral fiber to denounce and rectify violations of Party discipline” (Speech to the Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, 1/14/14, I.440), building “a complete system of combating corruption through both punishment and prevention, strengthen[ing] education on combating corruption and upholding integrity” while “promot[ing] a culture of clean government” (Second Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee, 1/22/13, I.429; see also Speech at the Sixth Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee, 10/27/16, II.197-200; and see also Speech to the Sixth Plenary Session of the 18th Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, 1/12/16, II.176-184). 

In addition to the “social groups” or civic associations, the regime has a more formal institutional structure that reaches down to the people, namely, the units of the CPC organized on the level of the counties. At the beginning of 2015, Xi announced that all county party secretaries would be trained at the Central Party School, a “strategic move with long-term significance” aimed at “help[ing] Party secretaries better to understand and hence better to implement the decisions made” by the Central Committee by studying “theories of Chinese socialism” along with theoretical and practical problems faced in the counties (Speech at the Central Party School, 1/12/15, II.151). “Counties are a key link in our Party’s set-up and state power, an important basis for developing the economy, ensuring people’s well-being, and maintaining and promoting the enduring peace and stability of our country” (ibid. II.152). Although “not a high-ranking post,” the county secretaryship can also prove a stepping-stone to higher office; “looking back, quite a few well-known figures started their political careers at county level” (ibid. II.152). Apart from Marxist faith, there are opportunities for career advancement within the oligarchy, if a County Party secretary acts well. For a party secretary, “loyalty [to the CCP] is central,” “the greatest virtue” (ibid. II.154). “County Party chiefs are an easy target for all kinds of temptation, plots, flattery and excessive praise with an aim to topple you” (ibid. II.154). To avoid this, they “must always follow the correct political direction,” remember that they “are part of the organization,” think of themselves as “someone who belongs to the Party” as a person “genuinely committed, persistent and faithful to Marxism” (ibid. II.155). County Party secretaries must “address the most pressing and relevant problems that are of the utmost concern to the people, especially the problems that the people complain about, and address them promptly” rather than “indulg[ing] in wasteful showcase projects to prop up your own image” (ibid. II.156-157). “We must act conscientiously as if we were treading on thin ice, and standing on the edge of an abyss,” the abyss of popular discontent (ibid. II.161). 

Overall, Party officials at all levels are subject to “discipline inspection” by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the Ministry of Supervision Work under the Administrative Supervision Law (Speech to the Sixth Plenary Session of the 18th Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, 1/12/16, II.185). These agencies will coordinate “discipline inspection tours” of the country, a Chinese tradition dating ack to the fourteenth century. While “our discipline inspectors are not ancient circuit inspectors…they must be authoritative,” being “vital to the development of the country and the Party,” both of which must minimize corrupt practices and ideological deviation in order to survive and to thrive (ibid. II.186). Regarding ideological deviation, Party members and prospective members are to study the Party Constitution and rules, along with Xi Jinping’s speeches, to practice the interaction between themselves and the people described above, and cultivate the virtues of honesty in thought, words, and deeds. “In strengthening the Party, the priority is to enhance its political philosophy, and the key is to ensure discipline among Party members and officials” (Directives on the “Two Studies, One Action” education program, 2/4/16, II.189). In selecting and training officials, the Party needs to have a clear understanding of “what a good official is, how to become a good official, and how to use the right officials for the right job” (Speech at the National Conference on Organizational Work, 6/28/13, I.461). The definition of a good official has changed over several historical stages of the Party. In the revolutionary war period, “good officials needed to be loyal to the Party, brae and skillful in battle, and unafraid to sacrifice their lives”; during Mao’s socialist construction period, “good officials needed to be politically and professionally competent”; in the early, Deng Xiaoping period of “reform and opening up,” good officials needed to “have professional knowledge and be determined to carry out reforms”; now, in the Xi Jinping period of reform and opening up, “we require that good officials be politically reliable, professionally competent and morally upright, and…trusted by the people” (ibid. I.461). That is, prior to the 1949 founding, the Party needed warriors; in the first decades of the regime, Communists whose loyalty had been proven in revolutionary war but lacked experience in government needed to learn how to rule; the first stage of reform and opening up also required such knowledge but also willingness to put some of the practices of the Mao period aside and implement the Chinese version of a New Economic Policy; once the increase of prosperity had taken hold, however, a more comprehensive set of characteristics is needed, characteristics that practice good government not only in terms of technical expertise but in moral and political virtues, “cherish[ing] the lofty ideal of communism” while following the precepts of Marxism, the practice of socialism with Chinese characteristics, serving the people in a “realistic and pragmatic manner,” never shirking responsibilities, and exercising power cautiously, “keeping it under control in a bid to sustain their political life” (ibid. I.462). Xi knows that “some Party officials…fail to meet these qualifications,” being “skeptical about communism, considering it a fantasy that will never come true,” believing not “in Marxism-Leninism” but in “ghosts and gods,” seeking divine advice”; some (horror of horrors) “even yearn for Western social systems  and values, losing their confidence in the future of socialism” (ibid. I.463). In a socialist regime, in any regime, “the most dangerous moment is when one wavers or begins to show doubt about one’s ideals and convictions” (ibid. I.464). Look at the fall of the Soviet empire: “I have long been wondering if we were confronted with a complex situation such as a ‘color revolution,’ would all our officials act resolutely to safeguard the leadership of the Party and the socialist system?” (ibid. I.464). Most would, but vigilance is still needed: “The exercise of power without supervision will definitely lead to corruption,” endangering the regime by weakening the popular base that underpins all regimes (ibid. I.468; see also Speech at the Fifth Group Study Session of the Political Bureau of the 18th CPC Central Committee 4/19/13, I.433-435). Assuredly, “if we tailor our practices to western capitalist values, measure our national development by means of the Western capitalist evaluation system, and regard Western standards as the sole standards for development, the consequences will be devastating” (Speech at the National Conference on Party Schools, 12/11/15, II. 356).

Xi understands that Marxism is a materialist form of historicism. “Time is the origin of thought, and practice is the source of theory” (Speech at opening ceremony of a study session on the guiding principles of Xi Jinping’s speeches, 7/26/17, II.66). Therefore, the “ideological progress” that must be “one of [the CP’s] top priorities” will emphasize the unity of theory and practice in time (Speech at the National Meeting on Publicity and Theoretical Work, 8/19/13, I.171).  “It is the requirement of materialistic dialectics to promote work in all areas by focusing on and tackling key issues” (Speech at a Study Session on the Guiding principles of Xi Jinping’s Speeches, 7/26/17, II.64). “To consolidate Marxism as the guiding ideology in China and cement the shared ideological basis of the whole Party and the people,” additional “efforts should be made to enhance the awareness of socialism with Chinese characteristics among the people of all ethnic groups, so as to inspire the people to strive for Chinese socialism” (ibid. I.172). This task takes on special urgency because the CP has “opened its door wider to the outside world,” exposing the people to non-Marxist ideas and beliefs (ibid. I.172). Xi takes care to explicate Marxism as adapted to China, first by Mao Zedong, then by Deng Xiaoping. Mao took Marx’s scientific socialism (“seeking truth from facts,” not abstractions) and Marx’s “mass line” (Party interaction with and leadership of the people) and added “independence”—that is, a refusal to follow directives from the Soviet Union, whose Communist Party under Lenin and especially Stalin attempted to direct Mao’s policies before and after the Chinese Communist revolution (Speech at the Symposium Marking the 120th Anniversary of Mao Zedong’s Birth, 12/26/13, I.27). Although facts obey the dialectical laws of history, which are “universal truths with eternal ideological value,” “classical Marxist authors did not exhaust truth but blazed a trail to seek and develop truth” (ibid. I.28); this, Mao understood. The “mass line” is what “enables our Party to maintain its vitality and combat capability” (one of Mao’s tracts is indeed titled, “Combat Marxism”); the mass line “translates the Party’s policies into the people’s conscientious action” (ibid. I.29). It “encapsulates the basic tenet of Marxism that the people are the creators of history” (ibid. I.29), and Mao likened the Communists to the “seeds” and the people to the “soil” (ibid. I.30). As for independence, in Xi’s paraphrase, “We should always rely on ourselves when seeking our national development and defending our national pride and confidence,” given our status as “an Eastern country with a large population and backward economy” (ibid. I.31). “The diversity of historical conditions determines the diversity of the development paths, chosen by various countries” (ibid. I.31). 

Deng, who studied in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, “never faltered in his faith in the scientific nature and truth of Marxism or in the bright future of socialism and communism” (Speech at Seminar Commemorating the 110th Anniversary of the Birth of Deng Xiaoping, 8/20/14, II.3). His “firm faith in communism” and “unshakeable belief in socialism with Chinese characteristics” led him to policy departures, not departures in principle, from Mao (ibid. II.3). “His lofty revolutionary ideals and charisma will always be an inspiration to us on our path towards the Two Centenary Goals”—a “moderately prosperous society by 2021, the centenary of the CPC’s founding—and the full consolidation of the regime as “prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, and harmonious” by the centenary of the founding in 2049 (II.15 n.1). Like Mao, he endorsed Marxism as scientific socialism, “seeking truth from facts” and following the laws of historical/dialectical materialism, which, as he put it, “govern the development of human society” (ibid. II.4). But, as he also said, “The world changes every day, and modern science and technology in particular develop rapidly”; as a consequence, “anyone who fails to carry Marxism forward with new thinking and a new viewpoint is not a true Marxist” (ibid. II.8). This is why he “took another historic step in adapting Marxism to China’s conditions after Mao Zedong Thought” (ibid. II.8). While retaining Mao’s insistence on Chinese Communist “independence and self-reliance,” he opened China to the world because “the problem of development…concerns all mankind” and must be “stud[ied] and solv[ed] on that level,” most especially in reaching out to the Third World (ibid. II.10)—effectively following the strategy that had been recommended by Frantz Fanon, implemented clumsily by the now-failed Soviet empire.

Such worldwide outreach makes sense to Xi because “no theory in history can match Marxism in terms of rational truth, and spread, and no theory has exerted such a huge influence on the world as Marxism”; Marxism therefore has an “irreplaceable role in understanding, reshaping, and advancing the world” as a synthesis of theory and practice (Speech at the 43rd Study Session of the Political Bureau of the 18th CPC Central Committee, 9/29/17, II.68). Marxism “must show the way to the people in modern times” and it can do so, if we Chinese Communists “upgrade Marxism on the basis of the realities of modern times” (ibid. II.69). Capitalism, too, has proved highly adaptable; “we need to enhance our research on modern capitalism” in order to “acquire a better understanding of the law governing the profound and complicated changes in capitalism and international political and economic relations” (ibid. II.69). Know your enemy. Learn from him even as you move to defeat him. Although “history will move forward,” Chinese Communists “should always retain the spirit of the Communists at the time of the founding of our Party,” continuing “to hold Marxism as our guiding philosophy” (Speech at a ceremony marking the 95th Anniversary of the Founding of the CPC, 7/1/16, II.32). Indeed, Engels himself wrote that Marx regarded Marxism as “not so much a doctrine as a method” providing “not so much ready-made dogmas, as aids to further investigation and the method for such investigation” (ibid. II.33). Mao acknowledged this, insisting that such ‘bourgeois’ practices as accounting should be adopted without hesitation by Chinese Communists, now that they had a state to run. Today, “we must neither follow the old path of a rigid closed-door policy” as set down by Mao, “nor an erroneous path” of “abandoning socialism” by accepting not merely some capitalist techniques but capitalism and republicanism as a regime (ibid. II.39). The right path is to undertake “a new ‘Long March,” differing from, but just as arduous as the one Mao led, in its own way (Speech at a ceremony commemorating the 80theAnniversary of the Victory of the Long March, 10/21/16, II.49). “The victory of the Long March proved that belief in our hearts gives strength to our legs” (ibid. II.51). The new Long March will bring China to realize “a great national rejuvenation,” “building China into a strong, democratic and harmonious modern socialist country” (Speech at Beijing University Commemorating the 95th Anniversary of the May 4th Movement, 5/4/14, I.189).

In terms of institutions, Marxist doctrine will be taught at the Party Schools. In them, “Marxism and communism come above all else,” Marxism as “the guiding thought of the Party,” communism “the lofty ideal,” the egalitarian social condition of humanity at the end of ‘history’ (Speech at the National Conference on Party Schools, 12/11/15), II. 354). As in any form of historicist thought, an ‘ideal’ for a Marxism means not an abstraction from material reality but the culmination of the evolution of that reality. “The CPC is a Marxist political party under a unified central leadership”—unity in “political stance, homogenized theory and practice” being “critical to the development and growth of the Party’s cause” (Speech at the National Conference on Party Schools, 12/11/15, II.171). Stance, theory, and practice should “always keep in line with the CPC Central Committee,” but “alignment in political stance, theory and practice is not as easy as correction of the physical formation” seen in a military drill (ibid. II.171). Xi again cites Mao’s efforts in the 1940s, which aimed at “reaffirm[ing] the practice of applying the basic theories of Marxism to the actual conditions of China’s revolution” (II.174 n.2). While criticism of Party and state policy is “welcome,” “no matter how sharp it may be,” “academic research does not justify impulsive remarks any time or remarks made for the sake of being different and seeking notoriety”—evidently as judged by the Party (ibid. II.173). Again, the “mass line” of the Party, “linking theory with practice” by maintaining close links with the people, undertaking criticism and self-criticism, exhibiting tenacity in work, pursuing the truth, and being pragmatic, has “underpinn[ed] one victory after another for the Party and the people” (Speech at the Program of Mass Line Education and Practice held by the CPC Central Committee, 6/18/13, I.401). Based on Marxian “dialectical and historical materialism,” the mass line remains “an essential requirement for the Party to maintain its progressive nature and its integrity” (ibid. I.403-404). Following the mass line will prevent the “Four Malfeasances”: going through the motions, excessive bureaucracy, self-indulgence, and extravagance, which “run contrary to our Party’s very nature and purpose”—which, as a form of historicist progressivism, must avoid anything that ossifies, anything that interferes with ‘history’s’ dialectical advance—and “are the problems that the public hates the most,” giving them reason to overthrow the regime (ibid. I. 411). 

“Teachers are the engineers of the human soul, who undertake the essential mission of molding minds” (Speech to the National Conference on Education in Political Philosophy at Institutions of Higher Learning, 12/7/16, II.409). Beyond the Party Schools, all Chinese elementary and secondary school students shall be taught to “act conscientiously to foster and practice” the “thoughts of the ancient sages, the aspirations of public-spirited people, the ideals of the revolutionary martyrs and the expectations of ordinary people” (Speech at the Minzu Primary School, Beijing, 5/30/14, I.201). “Schools should attach greater importance to moral education and work hard to enhance the school spirit and teachers’ professional ethics” (ibid. I.202). At the university level, “education in political philosophy” also requires the integration of “moral and political education,” thereby serving “the people, the CPC’s governance of China, the development of socialism with Chinese characteristics, reform and opening up, and socialist modernization”—in sum, adhere to “the correct political direction” (Speech at the National Conference on Education in Political Philosophy at Institutions of Higher Learning, 12/7/16, II.406, 407). By political philosophy, Xi of course means “the scientific theory of Marxism,” with its understanding of “the historical necessity of social progress and Chinese socialism” (ibid. II.407). With that foundation, university students can then achieve “an accurate understanding of Chinese socialism in comparison with other social systems in the world,” thereby enhancing “their awareness of China’s historical mission” in the world (ibid. II.408). Chinese higher education shall “firmly uphold CPC leadership” and shall be guided in that task by local Party secretaries and by party committees at the universities and colleges, which will “enforce Party leadership and discipline” (ibid. II.409, 410). 

Xi therefore emphasizes the need to “develop philosophy and social sciences with Chinese features” (Speech at a Seminar on Philosophy and Social Sciences, 5/17/16, II.366). “Our standing in the areas of academic ideas, thought, viewpoints, and standards, and our voice in international academia, are still incommensurate with our overall national strength and international status” ibid. II.366). To remedy this disparity, in a sense a disparity of theory and practice intolerable to a Marxist, Chinese philosophy and social science should “bear three hallmarks”: they should “encompass all resources and legacies and retain their Chinese identity” (ibid. II.366); they “must display originality and zeitgeist” (ibid. II.370); and they “must be systematic and professional” (ibid. II.372). The resources include “the best of Chinese culture,” “the philosophy and social sciences of other countries,” selected according to Chinese Marxist criteria (ibid. II.367). “We should make the past serve the present, and the foreign serve China” for the sake “of the development trends of Chinese socialism” (ibid. II.367). The theory and practice of Chinese socialism can then be extended (according to “the law of evolution from particularity to universality”) from “domestic practices” to “suggestions and solutions for global issues” (ibid. II.369). “Originality and zeitgeist” refer to “the requisite of social, practical and historical progress” in philosophy and social science (ibid. II.370). All theories, “unexceptionally,” are “the product of their times and the result of pondering over and delving into prominent conflicts and problems of a given society at a given time,” as Marx contends (ibid. II.371). Recent examples include efforts to “strengthen the Party’s governance capacity” and to “build stronger armed forces” (ibid. II.372). “Systematic and professional” refers “an all-encompassing system of learning”: “strengthen[ing] Marxist subjects; improving “pillar subjects” (i.e., philosophy and the various social sciences); paying “great attention to important subjects in which we are strong”; “give priority to emerging and interdisciplinary subjects of great practical significance” while not neglecting “more marginal subjects that are of high cultural value or bear on Chinese heritage” (ibid. II.372-373). The main point is to promote and teach “Marxist theory,” to establish and fortify “centers of research into Chinese socialist theories, to academies of Marxism, and to newspapers, periodicals, websites and other platforms for ideological and theoretical work,” nationally and internationally (ibid. II.376).

Party rule also applies to the “rule of law,” the laws being framed and enforced by the Party. The supreme law of the land, the Party Constitution, was adopted by the Party in 1982, following the first such constitution, which had been adopted in 1954 and its forerunner, the Common Program of 1949. The 1982 constitution set down the legal framework for Deng Xiaoping’s reform and opening-up policy, intended to help the country recover from the excesses of Mao’s “Cultural Revolution,” begun in 1966 and ending in exhaustion ten years later. Deng sought stability, writing, “To ensure people’s democracy we must strengthen our legal system…so as to make sure that institutions and laws do not change whenever the leadership changes or whenever the leaders change their views or shift the focus of their attention”—as had happened under Mao who, rather like Stalin, ordered not only mass killings of class enemies but, far more concerning for Party members, purges of the Party. (quoted in Speech at a meeting of the People from all Walks of Life to Commemorate the 30th Anniversary of the Promulgation and Implementation of the Current Constitution, 12/4/12, I.150). (Xi’s father was the victim of such a purge, and he himself was sent to a remote part of the country, from which he worked his way back, and up.) In this, Deng was a sort of Chinese Khruschev, and Xi is careful to show that he remained a Marxist, quoting him as saying “I am convinced that more and more people will come to believe in Marxism, because it is a science” (Speech at the Seminar on Philosophy and Social Science, 5/17/2015, II.358). Xi approves of the Constitution while calling for its “comprehensive implementation” of the 1982 Party Constitution in order to build “a law-based socialist country,” a “democratic dictatorship”—democratic in the particular sense of Communist oligarchic rule in order to achieve an egalitarian society which eventually will need no state apparatus at all (ibid. I.152). In the meantime, “law is written morality, while morality is conscious law” (ibid. I.157), meaning that the morality of socialism with Chinese characteristics must pervade the hearts and minds of all Chinese, backed by the Constitution, “a legal weapon to safeguard [the] rights and interests” of the Chinese as those rights and interests are defined by the Party as it monitors the people, prudently attentive to their complaints (ibid. I.157). “Upholding the Party’s leadership is fundamental to socialist rule of law” (Speech at the Fourth Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee, 10/23/14, II.120). As leaders, “we need to motivate the public to actively involve themselves in the practice of the rule of laws” as “devoted advocates, conscientious observers, and resolute defenders of socialist rule of law,” “integrat[ing] the rule of law with the rule of virtue” (ibid. II.122), considering that “law is a set of virtues in writing” and “virtue represents the law in one’s inner world” (Speech to the 37th Group Study Session of the Political Bureau of the 18th CPC Central Committee, 12/9/16, II.144). Given the historical progress anticipated by Marxism, Chinese laws, including the supreme law, will continue to be amended, a process which the CPC’s “Leading Group for Further Reform” will oversee. (See also Xi’s Speech to the National Conference on Law and Order, 9/19/17, II.416). 

Xi’s socialism is doggedly Marxist, but what are its “Chinese characteristics”? “Imbued with the national spirit of patriotism, we have launched the great cause of rebuilding the country” (Speech at “The Road to Rejuvenation” exhibition, Beijing, 11/29,12, I.37). As a place and as a people, China and the Chinese people have suffered from “backwardness,” the failure to modernize which has “left us vulnerable to attack” by Western powers and by Japan. “All Party members” must “bear in mind” this lesson, fostering “the Chinese Dream” of “national rejuvenation” (ibid. I.38). Consider, then, that “the Chinese nation has an unbroken history of more than 5,000 years of civilization,” “creat[ing] a rich and profound culture” that has made “an unforgettable contribution to the progress of human civilization” (Address to the First Session of the 12th National People’s Congress, 3/17/13, I.41). The Chinese spirit,” a “national spirit with patriotism at its core” is also “the spirit of the times with reform and innovation at its core” (ibid. I.42). That is, patriotism can be artfully blended with Marxism (hardly a Chinese doctrine at its origin) by claiming, in the same sentence, that “patriotism has always been the inner force that binds the Chinese nation together, and reform and innovation have always been the inner force that spurs us to keep abreast of the times in the course of reform and opening up”—the spirit not only of Chinese Communism but of contemporary, Deng-Xi Communism at that (ibid. I.42). 

This spirit should be made to saturate social institutions that might otherwise resist the Marxist state—families, ethnic groups, and religious denominations. Patriotism or nationalism holds the nation itself to be one big family. Therefore, “we must enhance civility in Chinese families and make it an important foundation for the country’s development, progress, and social harmony” by “combin[ing] the love we have for our families with our love for our nation and integrate our family dreams with the dream of the nation,” “work[ing] together with one heart to weave the wisdom and enthusiasm of our 1.3 billion people from 400 million families into a powerful force” that can realize “the Chinese Dream” (Speech at the First National Conference of Model Families, 12/12/16, II.382-383). Families should encourage “family members, especially he younger generation, to love the Party, the motherland, the people, and the Chinese nation” (ibid. I.384). After all, “traditional Chinese ethics,” taught in families, such principles as “”respecting the elderly and loving the young, gender equality, marital harmony, frugality, and neighborhood solidarity, while promoting loyalty, responsibility, family affection, learning, and public welfare” can surely reinforce a socialist regime, if not in all instances the regime of communism, far in the future (ibid. II.384). And as for ethnic groups, if they respect “the principle of equality” in relation to one another, they can “work together and achieve common prosperity,” thereby “consolidating the ideal that the Chinese nation is a community formed by all ethnic groups,” living in harmony under the rule of the Party (Speech at the Central Conference on Ethnic Affairs, 9/28/2014, II.328). Finally, in regard to religion, “the Party’s basic guidelines on religion result from its adherence to Marxist views on religion”—atheism being the leading one, discreetly unmentioned by Xi—guidelines that acknowledge the facts “prevailing conditions in China and the realities of religion in China” (Speech at the National Conference on Religion, 4/22/16). “The prime purpose and ultimate goal in implementing policies on freedom of religious belief is to unite believers and non-believers to the maximum extent” by “encourag[ing] religions to adapt to our socialist society,” “lead[ing] believers to love the country and the people” and to “embrace the leadership of the CPC and the socialist system,” endeavor[ing] to integrate religious tenets with Chinese culture, “participat[ing] in reform and opening up and socialist modernization” by “contribut[ing] to the realization of the Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation” (ibid. II.329-330). To put the matter in plainer terms, over time religions in China will be coopted by the Party. 

Patriotism can also be deployed to counter foreign influences among Chinese who have studied abroad or emigrated to other countries. Xi tells scholars who have returned from foreign countries, “I hope you will adhere to patriotism” “remember[ing] that wherever you are you are a member of the Chinese family; the country and the people back home always care about their sons and daughters, and your homeland is always a warm spiritual land for you” (Speech at the Centenary Celebration of the Western Returned Scholars Association, 10/21/13, I.63, 64). As for the emigrants, they should “forward the Chinese nation’s fine traditions of diligence and kindness, and contribute to the development of the country and friendship between the Chinese people and the people in their host countries” (Speech at the 12th National People’s Congress, 3/17/13, I.45). “In the best of Chinese traditions, generations of overseas Chinese never forget their home country, their origins, or the blood of the Chinese nation flowing in their veins” (Speech at the Seventh Conference of Friendship of Overseas Chinese Associations, 6/6/14, I.69). Chinese living in other countries should “serve as a bridge for wide-ranging exchanges and cooperation between China and their new home countries” wielding Chinese ‘soft power’ (ibid. I.70).

Whether in families, ethnic groups, religious congregations, or Chinese living oversea, “cultural soft power depends on the vitality, cohesion and appeal of the core values of a nation” (Speech at the 13th Study Group Session of the Political Bureau of the 18th CPC Central Committee, 2/24/14, I.181). In order to “cultivate and disseminate the core socialist values we must take traditional Chinese culture as the base” while “mak[ing] the past serve the present,” treating tradition with “a critical approach,” “eliminat[ing] the false and retain[ing] the true while “put[ting] forth new ideas” (ibid. I.182). “As spring drizzle falling without a sound, we should disseminate the core socialist values in a gentle and lively way by making use of all kinds of cultural forms,” whether literary works or “artistic images” (ibid. I.183). The gentle and lively ways must nonetheless be supplemented by “laws and regulations,” which “should act as a driving force for the spread of the core values” (ibid. 183-184). That is, the Party should “transform and boost traditional culture in a creative way,” as Xi urges in a September 2014 speech (II.341), even as we “carry forward the spirit of hard work and plain living,” a spirit not in the least inconsistent with Marxism (Speech to the fourth group of nominees and winners of national ethical model rewards, 9/26/13, I.177). This, he frankly contends, is a “strategic concept”; “deal[ing] with the relationship between material progress and cultural and ethical progress in a dialectical, comprehensive and balanced way, pursu[ing] progress in all aspects of social life in our reform, opening up, and modernization,” standing in the forefront of the times” as the Marxist vanguard with Chinese characteristics (ibid. I. 353). In literature, writers should “speak for the people” by “serving the socialist cause,” “firmly upholding the Marxist view” (Speech at the Forum on Literature and Art, 10/15/14, II.343). “Writers and artists should artfully tell Chinese stories, spread the Chinese spirit,” “giving foreign audiences a better understanding of China through their works, “introduc[ing] foreign audiences to the charm of Chinese culture” while taking care to follow Lenin’s exhortation to appeal to the workers (ibid. II.344-345). “Whether an artist can produce excellent work depends on whether he or she can stand for and speak for the people,” a characteristic with which, Xi assures his listeners, “all classics of Chinese literature are suffused” in their “humanistic vision” (ibid. II.345). As for Party members, so for writers and artists: “To bring down any invisible wall between you and the people, you should not only approach them physically but also empathize with them emotionally” (ibid. 347). And, consistent with Marxist historicism, one must understand that “each era has its unique art and literature as well as its unique spirit,” a spirit “epitomiz[ing] the social life and spirit of that era with coincident traces and features” (Speech at the 10th National Congress of China Federation of Literary and Art Circles and Ninthe National Congress of China Writers Association, 11/30/16), II.379). 

Extending soft power is also the responsibility of the media, necessarily controlled by the CPC for the sake of “the governance and stability of the country,” inasmuch as “we must uphold the leadership of the Party, keep the correct political orientation, maintain a people-centered work ethic” in the dissemination of news (Speech at the Seminar on the Party’s Media work, 2/19/16, II.359). To “adhere to the Marxist view of journalism” the “fundamental prerequisite is the Party’s leadership over publicity” (ibid. II.360). The media “must represent the Party’s will and advocacy” (ibid.360). This extends not throughout China but to “international audiences,” as it can give the Party “a stronger voice in the international community,” “greater international influence” (ibid. II.362).

And then there is the internet. Xi finds “two groups of people” using it: “new media professionals and social media ‘opinion leaders'” (Speech at the Central Conference on the United Front, 5/18/15, II.354). Because “cyberspace is a major domain for publicity,” “we must take the initiative in this field and win over these two groups,” “work[ing] to enlist the most prominent figures among them in the United Front”—since the 1930s, the term for a Communist strategy for a coalition with other Leftists against a common enemy—establish “regular contact, strengthen online and offline interaction, and seek a common political understanding” (ibid. II.354). In this case, “hostile forces at home and abroad constantly try to undermine our Party, attempting to make us abandon our belief in Marxism, communism and socialism” (ibid. II.355). More specifically, “Western political dogma,” including “Western capitalist ideology,” have seeped into the minds of some Chinese, even Party members, who “cannot see the underlying dangers of accepting the ‘universal values’ that have developed in the West over hundreds of years” (ibid. II.355). Since these dogmas include Marxism, this argument is an obvious smokescreen for fears of regime change in China, and indeed Xi goes on to say that “since the end of the Cold War, some countries, affected by Western values, have been torn apart by war or afflicted with chaos” (ibid. II.356). By 2016, he was prepared to impose restrictions. Since the internet “influences the way that people view the country, society, their jobs and also their lives,” and since “a society that lacks common ideals, goals, and values and that finds itself in disorder all the time will never achieve success,” the Chinese regime “will need to form concentric circles online and offline” (Speech at the Seminar on Cyber Security and IT Application, 4/19/16, II.363). Seeing that “netizens” are the new “grassroots,” the people the Party must listen to in order to ‘lead’—that is, rule—and seeing that “if members of the public go online, so does public opinion,” the Party must also “go online regularly, observing, charting, and posting their comments” (ibid. II.363). But more than that, “the internet cannot be a lawless place”; “the use of the internet to advocate the toppling of the government, preach religious extremism, or incite separatism and terrorism must be resolutely prevented and punished” (ibid. II.364). While continuing to “strengthen positive publicity” about the regime, the Party must also prevent netizens from “caus[ing] trouble” by “overstep[ping] the boundaries of the Constitution and other laws” (ibid.365). Although the CP began its “Golden Shield Project” (nicknamed the “Great Firewall” by an Australian journalist) in 1998 and had established the Cyberspace Administration of China in 2011, under Xi a new, stricter Cyber Security Law would be enacted in 2017. In a speech to the Second World Internet Conference in December 2015, Xi advised the attendees to observe “respect for cyber sovereignty”; if “cyberspace is not beyond the rule of law” and “greater efforts should be made to promote ethical standards and civilized behavior in cyberspace,” then China, as a sovereign lawgiver, ruled by the Chinese Communist Party, enforcer of ethical standards, is entitled to make its cyberspace conform to the laws and ethical standards of the CP regime (Speech to the Second World Internet Conference, II.12/16/15).

Having established the happiness of the Chinese people as the purpose of the regime and considering “the ultimate purpose of economic development” to be “to ensure and improve people’s well-being,” Xi devotes substantial attention to political economy (Speech at the Sixth Plenary Session, 18th CPC Central Committee, 10/27/16, II.404). “It is the essential requirement of socialism to eradicate poverty, improve the people’s livelihood and achieve common prosperity” (Speech in Fuping County, Hebei Province, 12/29-30/12, I.209). As of 2015, some 70 million Chinese lived in poverty according to “our standards,” 200 million by World Bank standards (Speech at reception in Seattle, Washington, 9/22/15, II.30). This notwithstanding, he regarded the country as on track to become “a moderately prosperous society in all respects” by the CP centenary, a few years later, although, admittedly, some regions, usually the rural ones, will not have achieved this status by then (ibid. II.30; see also Speech at the Fifth Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee, 10/29/15, II.73-75, 83). Rural areas need increased job opportunities (particularly in jobs that improve the Chinese ecosystem such as reforestation, relocation of many residents to the cities, improved education, state-sponsored investment, and “social security,” including public services and healthcare, with all of these initiatives ruled by “Party committee secretaries and Party governors,” themselves supervised by the higher authorities (Speech at the Central Conference on Poverty Alleviation and Development, 11/27/15, II.91 and Speech at a seminar on eliminating poverty, 6/23/17, II.96, 98). 

“Key to realizing a moderately prosperous society” is “expanding the middle income group” by offering property rights, including rights to intellectual property (Speech at the 13th Meeting of the Leading Group for Financial and Economic Affairs under the CPC Central Committee, 5/16/16, I.397). But such prosperity, including the existence of a middle income group—dare one say a ‘bourgeoisie’?—brings its own problems. “In the past, we tended to think that the conflicts and problems afflicting the people resulted from a low level of economic development and low income; if only we could develop the economy, and if the people lived a better life, social conflicts and problems would consequently decrease. Now it seems that problems always exist whether the economy is undeveloped or developed, and that the problems arising when the economy is developed are no fewer than those arising when the economy is undeveloped—they can become more complicated.” (Speech at the Fifth Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee, 10/29/15, II.85; see also Explanatory Notes on the “Decision to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Some Major issues Concerning Comprehensively Continuing the Reform” Third Plenary Session, 18th CPC Central Committee, 11/9/13, I.78). Such complexity may be seen in Xi’s term for the Chinese political economy: “the socialist market economy of China” (Speech to the Political Bureau of the 18th CPC Central Committee, 12/31/12, I.73). What might a “socialist market economy,” this “key breakthrough in theory,” be? (Explanatory Notes, op.cit. I.82).

“The pivotal part of the socialist system with Chinese characteristics” is a policy whereby “public ownership is dominant” but “diverse forms of ownership develop side by side” with it (Speech at the 4th Session of the 12th CPPCC National Committee, 3/4/16, II.281). The public sector will guide the development of the private sector, as “it is imperative that all sectors work in unison” (ibid. II.283). Entrepreneurs must “maintain a positive social image,” with Party officials “build[ing] a gentlemen’s relationship with them,” unlike the relations “between feudal bureaucrats and entrepreneur holding official posts or between financial consortiums and politicians in Western countries” (ibid. II.288). Similarly, Xi’s version of “supply-side economics” centers not on tax cuts for private businesses but for state-supervised efforts to “ensure that the supply structure is more adaptive and flexible to changes in demand” by reducing “overcapacity and excess inventory” (Speech at Fifth Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee, 1/18/16, II.277). Such state supervision is necessary because “allowing people to share the fruits of reform and deployment is the essence of socialism,” “demonstrat[ing] the superiority of socialism and the Party’s whole-heartedness in its mission of serving the people” (Speech to the Second Fall Assembly of the Fifth Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee, 10/29/15, II.220)

That is, the regime shall remain firmly in control as the proletarian vanguard. “We must make sure that the working class is our main force,” since “the working class is China’s leading class,” representing China’s advanced productive forces and relations of production,” serving as “the Party’s most steadfast and reliable class foundation” (Speech at discussion session of “model” national workers, 4/28/13, I.47-48). “Model workers are the cream of the country and role models for the people” (ibid. I.49). Accordingly, “we need to give leverage to the superiority of our socialist system, and let the Party and government perform their positive functions” (Explanatory Notes, op.cit. I.85). “We must put the interests of the state first when making deliberations” (ibid. I.98). While “the proposal to let the market play the decisive role in allocating resources is a breakthrough in our Party’s understanding of the laws governing the development of socialism with Chinese characteristics as well as a new achievement in the sinicization of Marxism,” this “does not mean that the market can replace the government’s functions,” which are primarily administrative, indirect, the exercise of “overall leadership” and the coordination of “all efforts” (Speech to the 15th study Session of the Political Bureau of the 18th CPC Central Committee, 5/26/14, i.128-129). Further, the CP “should strengthen and improve the Party’s leadership” of its state-owned enterprises, “with a goal of making them the most reliable force of the party and the country and a major force in implementing the decisions and plans of the CPC Central Committee,” a “material and political foundation for socialism with Chinese characteristics” (Speech to the National Conference on Party Development of SOEs, 10/10/16, II.191). SOEs constitute a “modern corporate system with Chinese features…because it incorporates the party’s leadership into all aspects of their corporate governance and Party organizations into the corporate governance structure” (ibid. II.193). Such “democratic management” makes the “workers congress” its “basic element,” listening “to the views of workers in major decision-making” by including them in the SOE boards of directors (ibid. II.194). The Party committees that rule the SOEs with “strict discipline” “must take political philosophical education as a regular and basic task,” along with “resolving concrete problems” (ibid. II.195-196). The same kind of political structure characterizes financial institutions (Speech at the National Conference on Finance, 7/14/17, II.304-308).

The “growth pattern of our country,” which “is evolving from an extensive economy to an intensive economy”—that is, from an agricultural and manufacturing economy to a technology- and innovation-driven economy—provides a major source of the complications which the “socialist market economy” is intended to address (Speech at the Central Conference on Economic Work, 12/18/15, II.261). Such an evolution “is an objective law, and we cannot go against it no matter what we think” (ibid. II.261). “We should see the Chinese economy dialectically” as good Marxists, understanding that the CPC’s promotion of industrialization has succeeded, now ranking “first in the world,” but that the world economy has itself moved forward technologically, animated by the spirit of the ‘information economy’ (Speech at the Fifth Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee, 1/18/16, II.262, 270). “The world’s major countries are seeking to make new scientific and technological breakthroughs and gain competitive edges in future economic as well as scientific and technological development,” and China “must catch up and then try to surpass others” (Speech at the 17th Assembly of the Members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, 6/9/14, I.132). As of 2014, “the foundation of our scientific and technological innovation [was] not solid enough,” as “we still have to depend on others for core technology in key fields”; “we cannot always decorate our tomorrows with others’ yesterdays” (ibid. I.135). Such dependence undermines Chinese sovereignty, especially in such areas as the combination of robotics with IT. “The most urgent thing in this regard is to remove institutional barriers so as to unleash to the greatest extent the huge potential of science and technology as the primary productive force” (ibid. I.134), by which he means that industry should be more tightly coordinated with the university research laboratories, all within “a national innovation system within which experts in all fields can interact and collaborate to achieve high efficiency” (ibid. I.139). The Party will grant scientists “freedom to experiment, always careful to set the goals for such experimentation (Speech at the Joint Session of the National Conference on Scientific and Technological Innovation, 18th Meeting of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, 5/30/16, II.301). 

Xi summarized his economic policy in a speech delivered at the Fifth Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee on January 18, 2016. “Despite being the world’s second largest, China’s economy is obese and weak” because “China has lagged behind” since “the advent of modern times,” having “missed the great development opportunities brought by the scientific and industrial revolutions of the 18th and 19the centuries” (II.223, 224). Innovation is “the primary driving force for development” (II.221). “According to the materialist dialectics” of Marxism, “things are universally related”; “the world is an interrelated whole and also an interactive system” (II.225). Recognition of this point has led to, among other things, the initiation of the Belt and Road Initiative, a transportation network intended to the prosperous east coast of China to the western hinterlands. Such development can be undertaken according to a “harmonious coexistence of humanity with nature,” as explained by Friedrich Engels in The Dialectics of Nature (II.228). “Only by respecting the law of nature can we avoid setbacks in developing and utilizing nature” (II.230). [1] He acknowledges “four difficulties” in doing so in China: inadequate supervision by the central government over actions taken by local governments and other central government departments; persistent “local protectionism” of polluting industries, which interferes with “the monitoring and scrutiny of law enforcement”; inadequate management of “cross-region and cross-basin environmental issues”; “difficulty in regulating and strengthening local environmental protection bodies” (Speech to the Fifth Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee, 10/26/15, II.423). That is, the solution to environmental protection is the implementation of stronger central rule by the regime. In addition to the need for technological innovation and “green development,” Xi calls attention to “economic globalization” (Speech at the Fifth Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee, 1/18/16, II.232). Globalization began with Western imperialism, made possible by modern technology in Europe and North America. It continued after World War II, with “two parallel world markets,” capitalist and socialist (ibid. II.232). Globalization “quickened its pace” in the years following the end of the Cold War, but today Western dominance declines, the effects of the worldwide financial crisis have abated, and China’s share of the world economy and of “global governance” increases rapidly (ibid. II.232-235). Xi presents China as “the biggest driver of global trade liberalization and facilitating, resisting various forms of Western protectionism” (ibid. II.233). He leaves unmentioned the fact that the Chinese economy itself is largely illiberal, state-owned and state supervised, which means that international trade liberalization with Chinese characteristics embeds the Chinese Communist Party in every country with which it trades and in every foreign corporation it allows to enter its territory. [2]

Xi describes all of this as “the people-centered philosophy of development” (ibid. II.235). “It displays the CPC’s fundamental purpose of serving the people wholeheartedly, and the materialistic historical view that the people are the primary force for propelling development,” “shared prosperity” being “a primary goal of Marxism” and even “a basic ideal of the Chinese people since ancient times” (ibid. II.235). “According to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, communism will eradicate the opposition and differentiation between classes, between urban and rural areas, between mental labor and physical labor; it will adopt the principle of distribution from each according to his ability to each according to his needs, so as to achieve shared of development of society and the free and well-rounded development of individualism in the real sense,” rather than the false, ‘bourgeois’ sense (ibid. II.235-236). Of course, “there will be a long historical trek through history to reach this goal,” and in the meantime socialism, the regime of the dictatorship of the proletariat led by its vanguard, the Communist Party, must prevail (ibid. II.237). 

“As China has increased its dependence on the world and its involvement in international affairs, so has the world increased its dependence on China and had greater impact on China.” Given both this new interdependence and “China’s development as a major country,” “we should uphold the CPC’s leadership and Chinese socialism” with an “independent foreign policy of peace,” of “promot[ing] democracy,” and of “uphold[ing] international justice,” especially as regards “developing countries” (Speech to the Central Conference of Foreign Affairs, 11.25/14, II.481-482). Accordingly, “we should abandon the Cold War mentality in all its manifestations, and foster a new vision of common, comprehensive, cooperative, and sustainable security” (Speech during the General Debate of the 70th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, 9/28/15, II.572). [3] To be sure, “we should respect the right of all countries to independently choose their social systems and development paths and the diversity of civilizations,” at least insofar as commercial republics might penetrate China and its allies; “promoting democracy” evidently means promoting socialism with local characteristics (Speech to the Fifth BRICS Leaders Meeting, 3/27/13, I.356). Assuredly, “no matter how strong its economy grows, China will never seek hegemony, expansion or spheres of influence” (Speech at the United Nations Office in Geneva, 1/18/17, II.597). You can depend on that because “to abolish war and achieve peace has been the most pressing and profound aspiration of the Chinese people since the advent of modern times” (Speech to the Third Group Study Session of the Political Bureau of the CCP 18th Central Committee, 1/28/13, I.271). To do so, under Mao China established the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence: “mutual respect for each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, mutual non-aggression, mutual non-interference in each other’s internal affairs, equality and cooperation for mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence” (Speech to the Symposium Marking the 120th Anniversary of Mao Zedong’s Birth, 12/26/13, I.32). I.33 n.6). To those who might suspect otherwise, he insists that “China’s pursuit of peaceful development is not an act of expediency, still less diplomatic rhetoric. Rather, it is the conclusion drawn from an objective assessment of China’s history, its present and future.” (Speech to the Körber Foundation, Berlin, 3/28/14, I.293). More, China “present[s] the world with a major country meeting its responsibilities and upholding international humanism” (Speech to the National Health Conference, 8/19/16, II.402). 

“Because different countries and nations have different historical traditions, cultural accomplishments and basic conditions, their development paths are different” (Speech to the National Meeting on Publicity and Theoretical Work, 8/19/13, I.174). Xi can thus appeal to diversity, the principles of the Peace of Westphalia, and so on while simultaneously praising China and working to advance the Marxist cause, now guided by the CCP, globally, upholding international humanism. “We should make the past serve the present and foreign things serve China,” as the ancient Chinese made Buddhism, imported from India, into “Buddhism with Chinese features” (quite literally, on the temple statues) (Speech at UNESCO Headquarters, 3/27/13, I.286). Or, as he puts it more plainly to his CP comrades, “Under the guidance of Marxist and socialist ethics, we should make the past serve the present and put forth new ideas on the basis of eliminating the false and retaining the true for the creative transformation and progress of traditional Chinese ethics, so as to lead the people on the way to yearning for and aspiring to life-long learning, respecting and obeying moral standards, so that every one of the 13 billion Chinese citizens can be part of a team to disseminate Chinese identify and culture,” “popularize our cultural spirit across countries as well as across time and space, with contemporary values and the eternal charm of Chinese culture,” “tell[ing] the rest of the world about the new Achievements of modern Chinese Culture,” thereby “strengthen[ing] our soft power” in the world (Speech to the 12th Study Session of the Political Bureau of the 18th CPC Central Committee, 12/30/13, I.178-179, 180). A well-known instance of this strategy has been seen in the ‘Confucius Institutes’ established on numerous college and university campuses in the West.

Where acknowledgment of cultural diversity actually counts is in crafting geopolitical strategies in different regions of the world. In these early years of Xi’s rule, he was careful to emphasize economic development. In the Asia Pacific, he proposed a “modern Maritime Silk Road,” a trade route financed by the China-ASEAN Maritime Cooperation Fund, which just happens to have been “set up by the Chinese government” (Speech to the People’s Representative Council of Indonesia, 10/3/13, I.321). Similarly, “cast[ing] away the Cold War mentality,” Asian countries should cooperate with one another for “common security” while cultivating “mutual understanding and friendship” (ibid. I.322) among members of “the Asia Pacific family” (Speech at the APEC CEO Conference, Bali, Indonesia, 10/7/13, I.384). All of this, in an effort to push the Americans out of the region without being so crude as to say so.

In its immediate neighborhood on land, Xi tells the CPC that “China and its neighbors are full of vigor and vitality, and show obvious strengths in development and high potential, with regional stability and a willingness among the smaller states to foster “cooperation with China” (Speech at the Seminar on the Work of Neighborhood Diplomacy, 10/24/13, I.326). “We must appreciate the situation to the full, devise appropriate strategies, and plan carefully, to perform better in our diplomatic exchanges with our neighbors” (ibid. I.326).  will see the land version of the modern Silk Road, again for improving transportation infrastructure, fostering “unimpeded trade,” enhancing monetary circulation, and “increas[ing] understanding between our peoples” (Speech at Nazarbayev University, Astana, Kazakhstan, 9/7/13, I.318), always “driven by…and serv[ing] the Two Centenary Goals and our national rejuvenation” (Speech at the Seminar on the Work of Neighborhood Diplomacy, op. cit. I.326). Eurasia will see the modern Silk Road on land as well as the one at sea under the auspices of the Shanghai Cooperative Organization, again dominated by China (Speech to the Council of Heads of Member States of the Shanghai Cooperative Organization, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, 9/13/13). [4] The Road would extend not only to the member states but to Mongolia, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. “China is the initiator and propeller of the Belt and Road Initiative, but the initiative is not China’s business alone,” as China “welcomes other countries to board China’s express train of development and help them realize their own development objectives” (Speech to the 31st Group Study Session, Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, 4/29/16, II.547). The Road will not be function only as a travel route but as a comprehensive geo-economic program for “mutual learning” and “mutual benefit,” complete with “people-to-people contacts,” science and technology “exchanges,” and “green development” (ibid. II.558, 564). While it is evident that geo-economic cooperation with China is also geopolitical, Xi deprecates “outdated geopolitical maneuvering” (II.563). He does not rule out updated geopolitical maneuvering. 

Both the Maritime Silk Road and the land-based Silk Road figure prominently in his approach to the Arab states. Invoking the centuries of “peace and cooperation, openness and inclusiveness, mutual learning, and mutual benefit” between “the Chinese and Arab peoples,” including Chinese “support [for] the cause of the Palestinian people,” Xi proposes the “1+2+3” program for cooperation. The “1” refers to “cooperation in energy,” which is the “core” of the program; “2” refers to the “two wings” of infrastructure and trade/investment; “3” refers to using three advanced technologies, nuclear energy, space satellites and “new energy” as “breakthrough levers in an effort to raise the level of pragmatic China-Arab cooperation.” (Speech at the Sixth Annual Ministerial Conference of the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum, 6/5/14, I. 348-349). Knowing that Chinese persecution of Muslim Uighurs has increased tensions with the Arab states, he calls for “a consensus in the fight against terrorist and extremist forces” and exchange visits by “100 eminent religious leaders” under the auspices of the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum (Speech at the Arab League Headquarters, 1/26/16, II.503).

China’s most important ally is in northern Eurasia. Xi emphasized that Russia was his first stop on his first overseas trip since becoming the Chinese president. “The relationship between China and Russia is one of the most important bilateral relationships in the world” as well as “the best relationship between major countries,” a relationship that “not only serves the interests of our two countries but also provides an important safeguard for maintaining the international strategic balance as well as peace and stability in the world”  (Speech at the Moscow Institute of International Relations, 3/23/13, I.301).”China and Russia enjoy a high complementarity in development strategy,” he tells the Russians (ibid. I.301), and he is pleased to remark the Fifteenth Anniversary of the Treaty of Good-neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation Between the PRC and the Russian Federation, three years later (II. 509). As for the rest of Europe, Xi treats it with anodyne pronouncements about “peace and stability,” “growth and prosperity,” “reform and progress,” and “common cultural prosperity” (Speech at the College of Europe, Bruges, Belgium, 4/1/14, I.309-310). In an invocation of Mao’s “Thousand Flowers” campaign, he intones, “Let us work together for all flowers of human civilization to blossom together” (ibid. I.310).

Africa, a continent of greater opportunity for China, rates more attention than Europe. “Unity and cooperation with African countries have always been an important foundation of China’s foreign policy” since the founding of the Communist regime (Speech at the Julius Nyere International Conference, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, 3/25/13, I.337); he refers to the policy of supporting Marxist movements in the Third World, including that of Julius Nyere himself. Stirring any lingering resentment of European colonialism, he tells his audience that “China upholds justice and opposes the practice of bullying the small, the strong lording over the weak, and the rich oppressing the poor, just as it opposes interference in other’s internal affairs” (ibid. I.337)—a claim that might fall rather flat in, say, the Philippines. The line about interference in others’ internal affairs signals that China will not let human rights violations in African countries interfere with Chinese investment and financing there, or with the establishment of 18,000 “government scholarships” in the coming years (ibid. I.338). He erects “five major pillars” of Sino-African relations: political equality and mutual trust; mutually beneficial economic cooperation; mutually enriching cultural exchanges; mutual assistance in security; and solidarity and cooperation in international affairs (Speech at the Johannesburg Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, 12/4/15, II.496-497). 

Regarding the one formidable enemy, the United States, Xi treads lightly in these early years. He establishes inroad in Latin America, telling journalists from Mexico, Costa Rico, and Trinidad and Tobago that “although there is a vast ocean between China and Latin America, we are connected heart and soul,” in “the common pursuit of beautiful dreams,” and China stands “ready to work with Latin American and Caribbean countries hand in hand, supporting one another and cooperating sincerely on the path to realizing the great dream of development and prosperity”  (Interview, May 2013, I.62). In the United States itself, he assured journalists that “bilateral cooperation” can be enhanced, thanks to the establishment of “more than 90 mechanisms for high-level dialogues on strategy, economy, culture and humanities (Remarks at a press conference with President Barack Obama, 6/7/13, I.307-308). These initiatives include the presence of some 190,000 Chinese students on American campuses and more than 20,000 U.S. students in China. He also praised efforts at cooperation in cyber security, “eschewing mistrust” (ibid. I.308). With President Donald Trump, he emphasized “pragmatic cooperation” in business dealings and “world peace, stability and prosperity” (Press conference, 4/6,17, II.534), exhibiting some awareness of the difference in the preoccupations of the two American presidents.

Finally, there is the unusual category of foreign relations with areas the CCP refuses to recognize as foreign. Macao, Hong Kong, and Taiwan have (or for some time had) non-communist regimes. Regarding them, the CCP has leaned heavily on the nationalist side of things, announcing a “one country, two systems” formula for incorporating the two smaller places into the ‘People’s Republic (Summary of “talks” with chief executives of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and the Macao Special Administrative region, 12/20/12, 3/11/13 and 12/18/13, I.247). “Our compatriots in Macao are masters of their own house, entitled to broad freedoms and democratic rights in accordance with the law,” which means that they are “upholding and developing socialism with Chinese characteristics” and “realizing the Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation,” understanding “that the destiny of the future of Macao are intricately bound with the mainland” (Speech at a meeting celebrating the 15th anniversary of Macao’s return to China, 12/20/15, 459, 463). Xi uses similar language regarding Hong Kong, which “has joined us on our journey towards the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” (Meeting celebrating the twentieth anniversary of Hon Kong’s return to China, 7/1/17, II.471). According to him, “Hong Kong has retained its capitalist system and way of life, and its laws have remained basically unchanged,” with “more extensive democratic rights and freedoms than at any other time in its history” (ibid. II.472). It ought also be noted that the Communist regime took care to arrange the election laws in such a way that a pro-Beijing majority would be assured in the Hong Kong legislature. After all, “it is imperative to always act in accordance with the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China” (ibid. II.474).

The Republic of China on Taiwan has been the much larger prize, since Chiang Kai-Shek retreated there, defeated by Mao on the mainland. Xi offers “the same treatment to Taiwan enterprises as to mainland enterprises in the fields of investment and economic cooperation,” which of course means CCP control of those enterprises (Main points of talks with Vincent Siew, honorary chairman of the Cross-Strait Market Foundation of Taiwan, and his delegation, 4/8/13 and 10/6/3, I.253). “We must increase political trust between the mainland and Taiwan and reinforce the common political foundation of the two sides,” although Xi doesn’t specify what that common political foundation might be, except to stipulate that negotiations must proceed “within the framework of ‘one China'” (ibid. I.254). Additionally, “we must handle cross-Straits relations on the basis of a clear understanding of the trend of history,” a trend Xi has often identified as a combination of Marxism and nationalist revival (ibid. I.257). “Forces and activities for ‘Taiwan independence’ remain a real threat to the peace of the Taiwan Straits,” he states, ominously. “It is therefore incumbent upon us to oppose and contain any rhetoric of move for ‘Taiwan independence’ without any compromise.” (ibid. I.258). “It is a simple truth that blood is thicker than water,” which is why the PRC and the Republic of Taiwan “share the same destiny” (Speech receiving Lien Chan, Honorary Chairman of the Kuomintang of China, and delegation, 2/8/14, I.261, 262). A footnote helpfully adds that a 1992 meeting between the two sides resulted in an agreement “that both sides would follow the one-China principle, each with its respective interpretation” (I.265 n.3). No doubt.

With respect to threats to peace, Xi has presided over a substantial military buildup, already outlined in these early years of his tenure. Political power, Mao famously aphorized, grows out of the barrel of a gun, and the expulsion of Japan from Chinese soil during World War II was “the first complete victory won by China in its resistance against foreign aggression in modern times,” a triumph that “re-established China as a major country and won the Chinese people the respect of all peace-loving people around the world” (Commemoration of the 10th Anniversary of the Victory of the Chinese People’s War Against Japanese Aggression” (9/3/15, II.484). Today, “we must uphold the Party’s leadership of the armed forces,” inasmuch as “the future of socialism, the enduring stability of the party, and lasting peace of our country” are “central to the nature and mission of the armed forces” (Speech to the Central Military Commission, 11/16/12, I.238). “The Party’s absolute leadership over the military is a defining feature of Chinese socialism, and a major source of political strength to the Party and the state” (Speech on the 90th Anniversary of the Founding of the People’s Liberation army, 8/1/17, II.452). To sustain this leadership, officers and soldiers must be given a “theoretical and political education” so that they “will follow without hesitation the commands of the Party Central Committee and the Central Military Commission at all times and under all conditions”; for that reason, “we will apply political convictions as a measure when reviewing and appointing officers” so as to ensure that they “are reliable and loyal to the Party” (Commemoration of the 10th Anniversary of the Chinese People’s War Against Japanese Aggression, op. cit. I.238). “We must build a modern and standardized military dedicated to our revolutionary goals” (Speech to the Guangzhou Military Command, 12/8/12; see also Speech at the Plenary Meeting of the People’s Liberation Army delegation at the First Session of the 12th National People’s Congress, 3/11/13, I.243ff.). This education will “develop the army’s military theory and constantly open up new horizons for the Party theory of Marxism and for military practice,” so that “the truth of Marxist military theory applied in practice will shine brighter in China” (Speech on the 90th Anniversary of the Founding of the People’s Liberation army,” 8/1/17, II.453). “We must be on the alert against any possibility of a ‘color revolution'” supported by the military (Speech at the Military Conference on Political Work, 10/31/14, II.435). 

Accordingly, Xi lays down “Four Fundamentals” of CCP policy regarding the military. The Party must “foster our shared ideals and convictions” in the “new generation of revolutionary force,” particularly among “high-ranking officers” (ibid. II.436). The military must “love the Party, protect the Party, work for the Party and share [their] weal and woe with the Party” (ibid. II.437); “nobody is entitled to cross the red lines of political discipline and rule” and “those who do will have to pay a price” (ibid. II.438). The military must “uphold the standard of combat capability,” especially since “political work itself” depends on it; this includes not only combat capability but “winning local war in the informational era” (ibid. II.439). And finally, officers must “uphold the authority of political work” by serving as “role models,” combining “the power of truth” (Marxism) “with the power of their personalities,” while being pragmatic, fair, and honest (ibid. II.440). Institutionally, this means centralization of power under the Central Military Commission, power over the armed forces but also the “People’s Armed Police,” ensuring “the correct political direction” under the “absolute leadership” of the Party (Speech to the Central Military Commission, 11/24/15, II.443). This will achieve full “civil-military integration,” “a structure in which the military and non-military sectors develop together efficiently across multiple fields” (ibid. II.445). The “long-term endeavor to coordinate economic development with military defense” evidently means that the internal force of the People’s Armed Police will be deployed to enforce Party-driven economic initiatives, while the conventional army and navy will back up foreign trade relations. It will also tap the “tremendous potential for civil-military integration in such areas as infrastructure development, science, technology an industry for national defense, weaponry and equipment procurement, personnel training, outsourcing of military logistical support, and national defense mobilization to be “implemented in such fields as oceans, outer space, cyberspace, biology, and new energy, which can serve both military and civilian purposes” (Speech to the First Plenary Session of the Central Commission for Civil-Military Integration, 6/20/17, II.450).

There can be no question that in his first years of supreme authority in China, Xi Jinping enunciated a comprehensive, not to say ‘totalitarian,’ strategy for the regime of China, with a ruling body (the Communist Party), ruling institutions (economic, educational, and military), a way of life (“moderately prosperous socialism” in pursuit of the “Chinese Dream”), all aiming at the purpose of a “happy life” of the people, a life consisting of hard work in the service of eventual, worldwide Communism.

 

Notes

1. Xi has spoken extensively about “green development” and “promot[ing] green, circular and low-carbon growth” by “integrat[ing] or climate change efforts into the country’s medium- and long-term program of economic and social development” (Speech at the Paris Conference on Climate Change, 11/30/15, II.576) in order to “usher in a new era of ecological progress” (Speech to the Sixth Group Study Session, Political Bureau of the 18th CPC Central Committee, 5/24/13, I.231) in order to “leave to our future generations blue skies, green fields, and clean water” (Letter to the Eco Forum Annual Global Conference, 7/18/13, I.233-234) and to promote a “green way of life” (Speech to the 41st Group Study Session, Political Bureau of the 18th CPC Central Committee, 5/26/17). See also his speech to the Sixth Meeting of the Central Leading Group on Financial and Economic Affairs, in which he announces a policy that will “revolutionize energy consumption” by “rein[ing] in irrational energy use” with “strict controls,” increase the supply of energy by technological innovation and NEP-like controlled allowance of market pricing, and “enhanc[ing] international cooperation” on energy supply with the Belt and Road Initiative, opening energy markets worldwide to China, and “intensify[ing] our efforts in energy exploration and extraction” of oil and natural gas, along with pipelines and storage facilities (6/13/14, I.143). Evidently, Xi wants his audiences to believe that increased use of fossil fuels will somehow co-exist happily with “green development.”
2. Along these lines, see also Xi’s speech to the G20 Leaders Summit, 9/5/13, I.369-371); Speech to the Senate of Mexico, 6/5/13, 342-343.
3. In this speech, Xi also observed that “China was the first country to put its signature on the Charter of the United Nations,” conveniently overlooking the fact that this was done by the Republic of China under Mao’s deadly enemy, Chiang Kai-Shek.
4. Other member states at this time were Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan

 

 

Alexandros Petersen: The World Island: Eurasian Politics and the Fate of the West. Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2011.

 

Writing in 2011, a few years after a worldwide financial crisis, the late Alexandros Petersen (murdered by the Taliban in 2014) clearly saw that the “geopolitical bubble” was over, too, that the “unipolarity of Western preponderance following Russia’s imperial implosion” had ended, as Russia under the command of Vladimir Putin began to recover and China sought “to challenge the institutionalized setting of Western power as it exist[ed] beyond the borders of the Euro-Atlantic community.” He also understood that this was not only a ‘power struggle’ but a regime struggle, since for both Russia and China, “the watchword is authoritarianism,” it being “increasingly conspicuous” that a “free nation-authoritarian struggle…goes to the heart of the East-West schism.” And although, unlike commercial republics, ‘authoritarian’ regimes, whether tyrannical or oligarchic, often fight wars against one another, by now “Moscow and Beijing do find themselves sharing a common short- to medium-term goal of banishing Western political and economic influence from the larger part of the Eurasian pace and undermining it in its peninsular stronghold of western Europe.” If successful, this effort would reverse commercial-republican advances worldwide, reduce access to natural resources by those regimes, and possibly end in the “demise of Western power altogether.” In the “fissiparous climate of Eurasia,” especially, China is “best placed to exploit” weakness; “eventual dominance by some form of Chinese informal hegemony is a distinct possibility.” 

Why so? At the beginning of the twentieth century, Europeans ruled much of the world, thanks to ‘modernity’—their conquest of nature for the relief of man’s estate, made possible by the technologies invented by modern experimental science. For imperialist purposes, these technologies included coal-powered warships bearing advanced weaponry. This notwithstanding, “shipboard coercion” wielded by Europeans, North Americans, and by then Japan had a limitation described by the British geopolitician Halford Mackinder. The “World Island,” as he called it—the vast landmass including Asia, Europe, and northern Africa—could be ruled on its peripheries by sea power, but sea power could not reach into its “Heartland,” soon to be spanned by the Soviet empire. This was a serious problem for the West because, as Mackinder wrote in 1904, “If the whole World Island, or the larger part of it, were to become a single united base of seapower, then would not the insular nations”—the commercial republics of Great Britain, the United States, France, and other maritime nations—be “out-built as regards ships and out-manned as regards seamen?” Hence the two world wars and the Cold War that followed them: all struggles aimed at preventing or at least containing the regime enemies of commercial republicanism, would-be rulers of the Heartland of the World Island.

Petersen wrote in the knowledge that geopolitics often no longer commanded the attention of citizens who thought about foreign policy. From the 1990s through the first decade of the new century, many assumed that geopolitics had become largely obsolete, now that the Internet had made borders porous; more, they assumed, international trade would surely liberalize ‘authoritarian’ regimes. Few noticed that trade hardly prevents wars, as Germany had proved in its several assaults on its principal trading partner, France, in the decades between 1870 and 1940; few considered the fact that the ability to exchange ideas with some newfound friend in Tashkent requires a secure place in which to sit in front of a computer keyboard, peacefully tapping. And so, Petersen attempts to remind his fellow citizens of these realities, beginning with a reprise of Mackinder’s original analysis.

At the time of Mackinder’s writing, geopolitical strategy in the west was animated by U. S. Naval War College historian Alfred T. Mahan’s 1890 book, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783, followed two years later by The Influence of Sea Power Upon the French Revolution and Empire, 1793-1812. The latter, especially, drew attention to the fatal error of Napoleon I, who dismissed the sea-going Brits as a merely commercial people, incapable of seriously threatening mighty France, dominant on continental Europe. Nor did Mahan ignore Asia. Dividing the world among Northern, Southern, and what he understatedly called the “Debated and Debatable” zones between the 30th and 40th parallels, he called for “the development of the Panama Canal as a critical U.S.-controlled choke point to complement its British-controlled counterpart at Suez” while advocating Western naval control of other “critical bottlenecks,” including the entrances to the Black and Baltic seas. From America’s Theodore Roosevelt to Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II, to Imperial Japan’s admirals Yamamoto Gombei and Satō Tetsutarō, statesmen found in Mahan confirmation of their own insights. Accordingly, they undertook massive shipbuilding programs in an effort to compete with British dominance of the seas. 

While understanding and accepting Mahan analysis of the geopolitical importance of sea power in the modern world, beginning with Columbus, Mackinder “foresaw the demise of the relative advantage that seapower had recently enjoyed over landpower and on which Britian’s power wholly rested.” After all, a sufficiently powerful army could block enemy navies from occupying bases while using those ports to radiate naval power of its own. A few years later, Great Britain’s failed Dardanelles campaign during the First World War proved, “contrary to Mahan’s assumptions, that seapower could quite easily be prevented from penetrating critical strategic areas,” such as the Black and Baltic seas. Accordingly, “the power that would ultimately control the seas, he predicted, would be the one based on the greater resources of landpower.” For example, could not the Suez Canal readily be taken from the British by a military power controlling Arabia? And could not the Heartland be united with the help of another form of modern technology, railroads? 

The Heartland of the World Island went from Eastern Europe (the Elbe River in Germany) through Siberia (to the Amur River between the Russian Far East and China) and north-south from the Arctic Circle to South Asian deserts in the east to the isthmus between the Black and Baltic seas in the west. West of Suez and on the southern coast of the Mediterranean, the Heartland’s southern border was the Sahara Desert. Mackinder considered the southern spur of the Ural Mountains “the very pivot of the pivot area,” the “heart of the Heartland.” “Inaccessible to the shipborne coercion of the islanders,” the Heartland was “the greatest natural fortress on earth,” contended over by “waves of nomadic warriors” for centuries. Those shipborne powers consisted of two “crescents”: the inner crescent consisted of western Germany, Austria, Turkey, and India; the outer crescent consisted of the British Isles, Japan, South Africa, North and South American, and Australasia. But “the three so-called new continents” of North America, South America, and Australia “are in point of area merely satellites of the old continent,” the World Island, which is double their size. Since Russia sits on “the essential territory of the Heartland,” it will maintain its geopolitical importance, absent conquest. Mackinder foresaw that the central conflict of the new century would occur between Russia and Germany. Unless the countries between them allied, they would be the victims of the coming struggles. 

Petersen duly notes that Mackinder’s insights were not original. Bismarck had said, “Who rules Bohemia rules Europe.” Nonetheless, “Mackinder made the clearest statement of the problem and its underlying geographical reasons.”

Writing some four decades later, Nicholas Spykman refined Mackinder’s analysis by emphasizing what he called the “Rimland” countries—his renaming of Mackinder’s inner crescent. Judging that Russia would never rival the sea powers, he viewed India, Turkey, and the easternmost areas of western Europe as access points to the Heartland, points that not only looked ‘inward’ toward the Heartland but ‘outward’ as places with viable seaports. And so, “Who controls the Heartland rules Eurasia; who rules Eurasia controls the destinies of the world.” Petersen cites the rise of China in the twenty-first century as the most salient example of Spykman’s point. For Spykman, “history was not primarily a story of seapower contesting landpower, but rather a struggle between mixed seapower/landpower alliances to prevent domination of the Rimland.” The invention of nuclear weapons deliverable by intercontinental ballistic missiles has vastly increased the risks of military adventurism, but it has not removed “the struggle for relative power” over territory. In this struggle, Spykman’s “fear [was] that America would slide back into an isolationist repose.” Mackinder, too, understood the potential significance of China “as a possible Heartland organizer with designs to overthrow the Russian Empire,” although at the time it seemed that modernizing Japan would rule then-unmodern China. And Petersen sees that, for the time being, Russia has aligned with China against the commercial republics of the inner and outer crescents, perhaps counting on its nuclear arsenal to deter Chinese encroachment.

The post-World War Two American strategy of ‘containing’ the Soviet empire, famously enunciated by the State Department’s Russia expert, George F. Kennan, drew upon Mackinder and Spykman. Seeing that Soviet rulers deployed an ideology mixing Marxism-Leninism with Russian nationalism in order to unite their empire spiritually (as it were), Kennan understood that the liberal internationalism of Woodrow Wilson, then regnant among his colleagues at State, could not adequately respond to the geopolitical realities of the postwar any better than it had responded to the realities prevailing between the world wars. Echoing Mackinder but also the British Viscount Castlereagh at the Congress of Vienna, “Kennan acknowledge that the heart of the problem was to prevent the gathering together of the military-industrial potential of the entire Eurasian landmass under a single power.” Fortunately, geography imposed limits on “Russia’s political development,” which was likely also to be stunted in the long run by its Marxist “pseudoscience.” These handicaps made containment possible, if the West remained united, Russia, China, and Germany separated. Western unity included observance of Kennan’s “rules” for behavior, vis-à-vis the Soviets; these rules included recognition that there would never be “a community of aims” between the United States and the Soviets, coordination of public and private activities relating to the Soviet Union, and not being ‘diplomatic’ with a regime that would never reciprocate. Liberal-internationalist “hope for a Soviet Union that converged with the Western model of liberal-democratic capitalism was a chimera and transmogrification that would never happen.” The Soviets themselves understood that “there could be no permanent peaceful coexistence between the capitalist and Communist countries,” so Americans had better understand that, too. “There was, moreover, an underground operating directorate of world communism, a concealed Comintern tightly coordinated and directed by Moscow, intended to set the poor against the rich, black against white, young against old, newcomers against established residents, and so forth.” That is, the Cold War would be another world war, in its own way.

Kennan confined his strategy to what is now called ‘soft power’—the establishment of Radio Free Europe, negotiations, building political alliances. He eschewed the use of military power, opposing the formation of NATO. And he quickly abandoned even his rather dilute version of containment after Stalin died and the Sino-Soviet split occurred. This, despite the fact that he understood “that the Russian were impervious to the logic of reason but highly sensitive to that of force.” Petersen imagines that Kennan’s softer approach might have shortened the Cold War by reducing the Politburo’s sense of insecurity, but gives no real evidence that the Soviet rulers, buoyed by Marxist optimism, were really all that insecure.

Petersen has his eye on current circumstances, however, in particular the tensions between Russia and Ukraine, which were soon to heighten with the Russian conquest of Crimea in 2014. He regards Ukraine as a lost cause for the West, preferring a renewal of a strategy designed by the Polish statesman Josef Pilsudski in the interwar period. “Pilsudski argued that any great Eurasian power would crumble if its many minorities were empowered from without.” To do so, Pilsudski recommended what he called “Prometheism” and the “Intermarium.” Prometheism was a policy of fomenting rebellion against Russia by supporting nationalist sentiments in nations under Russia’s control; in the interwar years, newly-independent Poland recognized the governments of Georgia and Azerbaijan, subsidized Armenian nationalists, and established firm contact with the Ukrainian nationalist, Symon Petliura. The Intermarium—meaning “Between the Seas,” namely, the Baltic, Black, and Adriatic Seas—was an envisioned federation of small states “united in their desire to be independent from both Russia in the east and Germany in the west—the two great Eurasian powers of their day.” 

The Intermarium proposal had precedent: the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which had been a major power in the fifteenth century. “The Commonwealth enjoyed almost two centuries gathering new territories, mostly in the Baltics, Ukraine, and Belarus, and swelling in wealth and culture,” becoming “a hive of artistic and scientific advancement,” even at the time other European nations were being wrought apart by the Thirty Years War. And it really was a commonwealth, with its monarch subordinated to a unicameral aristocratic parliament. This proved its undoing, however, when czarist Russia, unencumbered by restrictions on monarchic power, pushed back against the Commonwealth’s encroachments (it had even occupied Moscow for a couple of years) while the parliament dithered. Between Russia, Prussia, and Austria, the Commonwealth “was totally dismembered” by the end of the eighteenth century. 

Pilsudski’s hopes of effectually reconstituting something along the lines of the Commonwealth faltered. Born in 1867, he had begun his political career on the Left, possibly as an expression of hostility toward Russia. He organized paramilitary units that later entered World War I against the Russians. By then, he had abandoned Marxism for nationalism, but this made him no more palatable to the victorious Allies, who suspected him of continued sympathies with what had been the Central Powers, on whose side he had fought. In the event, however, he headed the forces of the Second Polish Republic in its the victorious war on Ukraine immediately after the world war, and then, allied with Ukraine against the Bolsheviks—Lenin intended to recover territories surrendered in the Brest-Litovsk Treaty and continue westward, linking up with Communists in Germany—he halted the Soviet advances in 1920. Had his plan for the Intermarium been realized, “Russia could be pinned back to her natural frontier in the east and the Germans prevented from overspilling into Slavic lands from the west.”

Pilsudski seized power in Poland in May 1926 and pursued his twin strategies. These never came to fruition, lacking support from the West and from the neighboring Slavic countries, fearful of Polish hegemony in any federation. He fell back to signing peace treaties with Germany and the Soviet Union in the 1930s, rightly believing that neither parchment barrier would hold for long. He died in 1935. Mackinder, too, had “thought it vitally necessary that the tier of independent states between Russia and Germany should be properly linked with infrastructure and with secure access to the Baltic, Black, and Adriatic seas,” but he enjoyed no more success in persuading his British colleagues than Pilsudski did within the region itself. 

Petersen calls attention to the expansion of the European Union and NATO into Central and Eastern Europe in the early years of the twenty-first century. This means “that Pilsudski’s Intermarium federation has been realized in outline,” and the previous entry of a united Germany into the western block of commercial republics removed any threat to the region from that quarter. (As seen throughout the twentieth century, “German orientation can make or break the continent.”) As of 2011, Petersen writes, “The EU numbers over 500 million citizens and is Russia’s most obvious and necessary market in which to sell its vast energy resources.” The difficulty, obviously, was (and is) resembles that of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth: Russia is united under a (neo-)czar, whereas “the incoherence and provincial character of the EU approach to its dealings with all these countries has meant that Moscow has been able to extract maximum political advantage from what ought to be recognized as the weaker of the two positions.” Weaker in terms of population and economic power, to be sure, but political and military unity matter more, and, as Charles de Gaulle once said of the much smaller but similarly organized Common Market, “Good luck to this federation without a federator!” 

In this century, “Beijing and Moscow have made quietly but concerted common cause to muscle Western actors out of Eurasia, while Iran’s nuclear ambitions threaten to spark the security vacuum that could provide the two great Eurasian powers with the opportunity to finally do so.” For Russia’s Putin, “the Orange Revolution in Ukraine was the pivotal event that convinced Russia the West was attempting to deliver a geopolitical knockout in the post-Soviet space,” while “for China, U.S. insistence on criticizing its approach to human rights, currency valuation, and unbending stance over Taiwanese and Tibetan autonomy all emphasized the way the West was unwilling to accept the larger process of economic and societal development being undertaken by the Communist Part as a quid pro quo for authoritarian governance.” In response, Russia invaded Georgia and China began to build a substantial navy supplemented by naval bases—a “fundamental extraterritorial expansion for China beyond its traditional ‘Middle Kingdom’ territory.” In Central Asia, both countries have increased their economic and political presence.

For its part, Russia formed the Collective Security Treaty Organization in 2002, which today consists of five former Soviet satellites (Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan) in addition to Russia. The CSTO is “Moscow’s preferred vehicle for safeguarding its sphere of influence in Eurasia,” whereby it offers to participate in United Nations peacekeeping efforts worldwide while stipulating a monopoly on such efforts not only within the member states but in Moldova and other states nearby. This threatens “to seriously undermine the true pillars of European security: the 1975 Helsinki Final Act, the 1990 Charter of Paris, and the pivotal roles of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance.” This leaves Russia as “the last European empire in Asia, with a territorial extent that would have delighted Peter the Great.” In the long run, “Russia cuts a poor economic and demographic picture,” and Petersen inclines to discount it as a geopolitical force. 

He takes China much more seriously. “For 18 of the past 20 centuries China has ranked as the world’s preeminent global economic power,” and today it has the second-largest GDP, which it “increasingly devote[s] into military” power while doing much more to enable its people to prosper than Mao ever did. It is true that Washington can “decimate China’s export economy instantly by shutting its markets with massive tariff barriers,” a vulnerability the Chinese under Xi Jinping have attempted to remedy. China is also geopolitically contained, at least potentially, by surrounding countries, principally Japan, South Korea, India, the Philippines, and Taiwan, although they have systematically built up their military with the obvious intention of seizing Taiwan. Although currently an ally, Russia might be able to resist some Chinese encroachments on its long border. Meanwhile, China has taken care to reduce its dependence on Russia as a source of energy, building a gas pipeline from methane-rich Turkmenistan through Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

A year before the founding of the CSTO, Russia and China formed the Shanghai Cooperation Association with Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. The organization has since admitted India, Pakistan, Iran, and Belarus, its members encompassing 65% of Eurasia and 42% of the world population. “China appears to form the linchpin and driving force of the organization.” Whatever their suspicions of the West generally and of the United States especially, and whatever misgivings they may entertain concerning China’s intentions, the Russians give priority to blocking Western influence in Eurasia. As of 2011, “practically the entire Heartland and a majority of the World Island” are under “the strong influence, if not direct control, of two powers.” In Petersen’s judgment, containment will not suffice. “If Eurasia is to be preserved from domination by authoritarian, mercantilist powers, and its resources made competitively available for the benefit of both its people and the West…then the West must be grown into Eurasia and its values and institutions transplanted there.”

What to do? Looking at what was then the pro-Russian government of Viktor Yanukovich, Petersen writes off Ukraine as “geopolitically lost for the near future.” This turned out to be premature, as Yanukovich, who tilted Ukraine toward Russia during his four years in office, fled to Russia after his countrymen got fed up with him; when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, anticipated a quick conquest, Yanukovich was rumored to be their choice for puppet. And while things did not work out as planned, if Ukraine eventually returns to the Russian orbit, Petersen, had he lived to see it, presumably would recommend his own preferred strategy.

This consists of a combination of Kennan’s containment and Pilsudski’s Prometheist and Intermarian strategy centered in Eurasia. Although the claim that commercial republics don’t fight one another has been questioned, thanks to some minor counter-examples, commercial republicanism “is clearly the best system on offer and in the overwhelming majority of cases its triumph favors the full spectrum of Western values, from rule of law to free trade and beyond.” While this is so, as Americans have learned in Afghanistan and to some extent in Iraq, commercial republicans “must reckon with reality.” “The trends paint a picture of a future marked by Western decline relative to the Asian ascendency,” and in light of this probability, the West had better cultivate some friends there, recognizing that “the pivot of world politics remains more or less where Mackinder first identified it to be—in the Heartland.” 

“The Russia-China nexus is represented less by the prospect of a genuine alliance than by some sort of agreement to partition Central and Inner Asia—whether actively or in terms of spheres of influence—and thus to effectively control the trade and strategic potential of the World Island.” Petersen proposes U.S.-European collaboration in a “forward Eurasian strategy.” This strategy will require increased “coherence” among the Western states themselves “about who they are, where they have come from, and what are their immutable shared values,” a coherence that will buttress institutional coherence in the European Union and NATO. Lack of such coherence led to stumbles in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Once such coherence has been established, or at least approached, the Western powers should address the Heartland countries in terms of three principles: independence, integration, and institutions. By independence, Petersen means an appeal to the smaller Eurasian states’ desire to retain their sovereignty against Chinese and Russian pressure. In this, the West’s weakness is also its advantage: it is too distant from most of those states to threaten them but sufficiently prosperous and militarily powerful to shore them up with investment, training, education, and foreign aid. This also means backing off from hectoring Eurasian governments “with unconstructive criticism of human rights issues and electoral procedures,” a policy that “push[es] them further into the hands of Russia and China,” which have no qualms concerning such matters. Better to offer them “concrete offers of advice about how to remedy some of those ills.” Since “foreign-directed coups and revolutions are a very real danger faced by any of the small Eurasian states that display the desire to diverge from the well-worn paths of corruption and authoritarianism,” the West should emphasize not abrupt regime change but the introduction of the rule of law and “personal security advice for the leaders” of governments that display interest in adopting or enhancing the rule of law. This can be supplemented by assistance in “reorganizing the armed forces and security apparatus hierarchy”—prime sources of ambitious men inclined toward coups d’état. 

He offers some welcome, country-by-country specifics. As mentioned, he more or less writes off Ukraine on the grounds that it “will always hold more significance for Russia than for any Western actor” and “Moscow will not give up Ukraine without a fight, a real fight”—a point subsequent events have confirmed. “The West is at a strategic disadvantage” there, a disadvantage “it will have to accept and adapt to.” However, “the corresponding reality is that Ukraine is not essential for Western integration to continue in Eurasia”; it can be “bypassed” if the Western allies “focus on the far more strategically important Caucasus-Central Asia region.” “Low-yield fumbling in Ukraine…fritters away the opportunity to engage in a truly Eurasian strategy, not just a Black Sea strategy.”

Petersen also deprecates the need to engage with Belarus, which isn’t Western-leaning, Kyrgyzstan (of “little geopolitical significance”), Moldova (the same), and Tajikistan (“the smallest and poorest of the lot” and “politically volatile,” as well). This leaves Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Georgia, Mongolia, Turkey, and Uzbekistan. Petersen hopes (so far in vain, as it has transpired) for the West “to remain a determining player among the many other players” there, in order “to prevent Afghanistan from reverting to being a geopolitical black hole with nothing but drugs and extremism to export to its neighbors and beyond.” He doesn’t have any specific suggestions on how that might be done, eschewing regime change efforts there. Azerbaijan, one of “the most geopolitically important of the small Eurasian states,” located as it is between Russia and Iran and constituting the only route between Europe and Central Asia, makes much more sense for Western attention. As does Kazakhstan, “the regional leader of the smaller Central Asian states” and one with “a deliberate multivectored foreign policy.” Currently, both Russia and China have more influence there than the West does, but the government is open to Western influence precisely in order to avoid subordination to the nearer great powers. 

With its major undeveloped energy resources, Turkmenistan “forms a natural gateway between the Caspian Sea and the rest of Central and South Asia and China.” Moreover, “a nonradical, more commercial, better governed Turkmenistan would add to the pressure on the Iranian regime. Unfortunately, “it is increasingly becoming Beijing’s most powerful pawn in the Caspian,” given its status as the source of supply for China’s energy demands. As the most industrialized of the Central Asian countries, Uzbekistan is a potential field for Western investment.

In southeastern Europe, Turkey has substantial ambitions of its own in Eurasia, “something that is ultimately to the West’s advantage if not mishandled through historical or racial prejudice,” given the centuries of encroachment practiced by the long-defunct Ottoman Empire. It can be “better integrate[d]” into the West by offering it EU membership (France, Germany, and Austria have opposed this), with a reciprocal agreement from Turkey to open the Turkish Straits to NATO and U.S. warships, especially in view of Russian dominance of the Black Sea subsequent to the Russian fleet’s presence at Crimea. “Europe is at grave geopolitical risk should Turkey become a Middle Eastern- or Russia-Iran-orientated power.” For its part, Georgia “is, and will remain, the needle’s eye through which the West must pass to reach the Caspian and Central Asia.” With its neighbor, Azerbaijan, Georgia forms a link from Europe to the Caspian Sea and Central Asia. It is “the most anti-Russian actor in the Caucasus and, indeed, of all the small Eurasian states,” thanks to Russia’s annexation of the northern portion of the country in 2008. Finally, Armenia, isolated and “estranged from its neighbors” (still alienated from Turkey since the massacre of Armenians by the Ottomans in 1915), might be brought closer to the West if that tension could finally be resolved. “Armenia’s large, well-educated, and very successful diaspora is a wasting asset while the country retains its current Russian-Iranian geopolitical orientation.”

To the north, Mongolia “is a democratic success story in Eurasian terms and contrasts favorably with Russia and China, which it is sandwiched between.”  It has substantial mineral assets and a solid manufacturing base, selling most of its products to China. Having emerged first from Chinese rule in the early 1920s, then from Soviet domination after the collapse of that empire in 1991, it concentrates its attention on staying out of East-West confrontation; prudently, it has its main Western trading partner neutral Switzerland. 

Petersen is optimistic about Western prospects in this decidedly mixed bag. While upholding a policy of political independence for these states, he hopes for increased economic integration. “The EU has a highly dynamic role to play in integrating the smaller Eurasian states, both among themselves and with the West,” thanks to its status as a free trade association. Several “transport corridors” between Europe and East Asia already exist, although it must be noted that the Northern Distribution Network’s roads and railroads run through Russia and the Modern Silk Road depends for its viability on a stable Afghanistan—neither situation being a cloudless sky.

Accordingly, Petersen puts most of his chips on the third dimension of his policy, political institutions. “Unlike Russian or Chinese nationalism many Western institutions, the EU and NATO foremost among them, stand for a set of values” that actually have some universal appeal. “One does not need to be a so-called neoconservative to support the agenda of democracy promotion—it is right to advocate what is simply the best system of government available.” To do so will take time, when dealing with nations that have “no history” of republican government. That “lengthy, incremental process [is] not one that should be doted upon to the detriment of spreading trade and other aspects of good governance.” Unlike the Russian and Chinese regimes, Western alliances are not coerced alliances. Their actions “do not represent unwilling empires or…hegemons but are, in fact, clubs”—a fact seen when a country decides to depart from them, as France did from NATO in the 1960s and Britain would do from the EU in 2020. “This is the West’s great advantage in Eurasia.” Promoting practices of good governance through “institutional links” is “best achieved not through criticism of human rights or electoral procedures but rather through the gradual process of growing functional links with, and institution-building in Eurasian states.” The rule of law and investment are reciprocal drivers of such links, along with education, which can “inculcate a better understanding of Western values.” 

Petersen concludes by remarking that “the overbearing influence of…geography remains undiminished and from this emerges the land’s timeless politics.” Although “it is tempting for the West to respond” to Russian and Chinese dominance of the Heartland of the World Island “with an act of retrenchment,” the “wise course is in fact quite the opposite.” The Western powers have proved “increasingly ignorant of what stands to be lost and indeed gained by their strategy in Eurasia,” and that ignorance will prove increasingly unblissful. “It is in Eurasia that the West’s level of involvement will determine its geopolitical prowess and eventual survival.” The West should pursue a policy of containment and of engagement “to secure the partnership of Russia’s former satellites before China does the same on terms much more disadvantageous for the West and those small states themselves.” I can do so by demonstrating “that it can provide an alternative to the Russo-Chinese system of authoritarian government as a way of ensuring sovereignty.” Emphasis added.