The Avoidable War: The Dangers of a Catastrophic Conflict Between the US and Xi Jinping’s China

"Kevin Rudd is a former Prime Minister of Australia , ambassador to the United States, and also foreign minister. He’s a trained Sinologist who speaks exquisite Chinese, and therefore got to know Xi Jinping in a way that few other foreign leaders have, and no other Anglophone foreign leader has. The book is essentially an accounting of the last 15 years of US-China relations from the vantage point of Washington and Beijing, and it’s inspired by or informed by Rudd’s several hours of one-on-one conversations in Chinese, in informal settings, with Xi Jinping, through which he gleaned insights into Xi’s worldview. The book shows how the same pattern of facts has been interpreted or can be interpreted so differently in Washington and Beijing. We think that the history of what has transpired between our two countries in the last 15 years is obvious, and there’s only one way to read it. Rudd busts that narrative comprehensively. Briefly, but the main point of the book is to understand the divergence in perception. He says it is an avoidable war, but it will not be avoided if we fail to have ‘strategic empathy’ for the other side’s perceptions. That doesn’t mean you have to agree they’re correct, but as an empirical matter, you have to understand how your counterparty sees the world. Xi Jinping has a view of the world informed by his own upbringing, his own rise to power, his own Marxist-Leninist ideology, promises that he believes were made and broken, and responsibilities that he believes he has to the Chinese people and the Communist Party. I included this book, as well as the Tsang and Cheung book, because ultimately, Taiwan deterrence is not a question of deterring a country or even an organization. It’s about shaping the decision calculus of a single man, and Rudd knows that man better than any other Western leader."