China - US Relations: The China Sleepwalking Syndrome by. - by Joseph S. Nye, Jr.

As US President Joe Biden’s administration implements its strategy of great power competition with China, analysts seek historical metaphors to explain the deepening rivalry. But while many invoke the onset of the Cold War, a more worrisome historical metaphor is the start of World War I. In 1914, all the great powers expected a short third Balkan War. Instead, as the British historian Christopher Clark has shown, they sleepwalked into a conflagration that lasted four years, destroyed four empires, and killed millions.

Back then, leaders paid insufficient attention to the changes in the international order that had once been called the “concert of Europe.” An important change was the growing strength of nationalism. In Eastern Europe, pan-Slavism threatened both the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires, which had large Slavic populations. German authors wrote about the inevitability of Teutonic-Slavic battles, and schoolbooks inflamed nationalist passions. Nationalism proved to be a stronger bond than socialism for Europe’s working classes, and a stronger bond than capitalism for Europe’s bankers.

Read more at: The China Sleepwalking Syndrome by Joseph S. Nye, Jr. - Project Syndicate