2 days ago
- Politics
- Wall Street Journal
The U.S. Can Rise to the Chinese Challenge
The only way to rise to the Chinese challenge in the epic contest now under way is to heed the words of China's great warrior philosopher, Sun Tzu: 'The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.'
Because we were able to avoid a mutually catastrophic military conflict with the Soviet Union, we won the Cold War through the skillful use of nonmilitary advantages. These included economic power, technological superiority, diplomacy, strategic communications behind the Iron Curtain and around the world, development and humanitarian assistance, security assistance, alliances and ideology. We were lucky that the Soviet Union, while a military superpower, was weak in every other way, economically and technologically most of all. After the 1950s, its ideology had little appeal around the world.
