‘The Longer Telegram’ Is A Recipe For Costly Failure — Daniel Larison

An anonymous former government official has written a conventionally hawkish paper on China. The Atlantic Council and Politico have both published versions of the piece, and they have agreed to keep the author’s identity under wraps for reasons known only to them. The Atlantic Council claims that anonymity was necessary because of “the extraordinary significance of the author’s insights and recommendations.” It’s not clear why they find these insights and recommendations to be so extraordinary, since almost everything in the paper has been said before by various authors. It makes no sense why the author would need to remain anonymous in order to make these views known. The author likens the paper to George Kennan’s “Long Telegram” by calling it “the longer telegram,” but the paper has little or none of Kennan’s astute observations about history and strategy. A lot of it is a series of regurgitated ideological claims about the Chinese government and its ambitions under the leadership of Xi Jinping. In that respect, it is not so different from H.R. McMaster’s attempt from last year. It is just much, much longer....

Daniel Larison delivers a smackdown to this attempt to shape US foreign policy based on regime change in China.

The American Conservative
‘The Longer Telegram’ Is A Recipe For Costly FailureDaniel Larison, senior editor

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Overall good, but it ignores the elephant in the room — control of the South China Sea. Taiwan, Hong Kong, the Chinese-Indian border, Tibet, and Xinjiang are strategically vital to China. So is the South China Sea. The US is probing China in all these regions. This would have to stop. It is not going to, and it is leading to WWIII, with NATO surrounding Russia, which is not going to stop either. This has led to a Sino-Russian alliance. The grand chessboard still rules US strategic thinking and planning.

Sane US foreign policy would have to address this.

A Better U.S. Strategy For East Asia