I'm Dan Kurtz-Valen, and this is the Foreign Affairs Interview.
As we see from the 20th century, for great powers, appetite sometimes increases with eating.
So, you know,
the fact that China doesn't today have a uniform strategy
for becoming globally predominant is not the same thing as China wouldn't move that over time
if given the opportunity.
The biggest questions in U.S.
foreign policy today tend to be about China.
Policymakers and analysts argue over the implications of China's rise, the extent of its ambitions,
the nature of its economic influence, and the meaning of its growing military strength.
Underlying these arguments is a widespread sense that where Beijing once seemed likely to slot comfortably into a U.S.-led international order,
it now posed as a profound challenge to American interests.
No one brings more perspective to these arguments than the historian Adarna Westad.
In a series of essays and foreign affairs over the past few years,
Wested has explored the drivers of China's foreign policy,
its approach to global power, and its fraught ties with the United States.
He sees in the long arc of Chinese and global history a stark warning,
but the potential for conflict, including a war between China and the United States.
But Wested also sees in this history lessons for policymakers today about how to avoid such an outcome.
I recently spoke to him about China's complicated past,