Embracing Communist China: America’s Greatest Strategic Failure
James E. Fanell and Bradley A. Thayer. New York: War Room Books, 2024. 216 pp. Figs. Tables. Appx. Notes. Biblio. Index. $23.49.
Reviewed by Rear Admiral Paul Becker, U.S. Navy (Retired
I served with retired Navy captain Jim Fanell in Hawaii and Washington. From the late 1990s until his retirement in 2015, he consistently sounded the call for warfighters and policymakers to be more wary of and take actions to counter Chinese communist geopolitical strategy and military capabilities. He remains consistent, with coauthor Dr. Brad Thayer, in their short, sharp Embracing Communist China: America’s Greatest Strategic Failure.
Reading the first three title words, one might presume it is a guide to peaceful coexistence with the United States’ principal adversary. Not true. The crux of the authors’ work is in the second portion of the title, explaining how and why this is “America’s Greatest Strategic Failure” and proposing solutions to overcome an historic error.
Their thesis: The U.S. national security apparatus—across many presidential administrations and years—profoundly underestimated the grand strategy and military threat from China and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) following the fall of the Soviet Union. The result is now the nation’s number one existential threat to the United States losing its dominant position in Asian and global affairs.
How did this happen? The authors concentrate on “threat deflation.” Post–Cold War U.S. dominance and post–9/11 diversion of attention to the Middle East, combined with China’s consistent and sustained political warfare and information operations campaigns, which downplayed Beijing’s rising power, resulted in the U.S. national security community failing to recognize and respond to a new, growing threat.
This failure was exacerbated by the avarice of many segments of corporate America that invested in China’s rise for their own profit at the expense of U.S. foundational principles such as human rights and democracy. For example, most-favored-nation status and admission to the World Trade Organization for China were supported by the U.S. “Engagement School,” which asserted that through increased contact, China would become wealthy and democratic. The United States willingly taught, trained, and equipped its adversary along the way, while turning a blind eye to violations. This “blind engagement” included military-to-military engagements. There was no measurable goal other than quantity of interactions and no objective net assessment of the outcomes.
“Elite capture” is another phrase the authors use to identify accepting endowments at universities, establishing Chinese propaganda offices called Confucius Centers, and underwriting influential think tanks, financiers, and foundations that profited from China’s rise. China used new wealth not only to build its military, but also to support select U.S. broadcast, print, and social media outlets.
So, what should the United States do? The authors provide several recommendations, ranging from “push back” statecraft that challenges China at the source of its propaganda, to professional education (civilian and military) that includes emphasis on the principles of power politics, to ending a policy of “strategic ambiguity” and announcing unambiguous U.S. support for Taiwan, to more controversial measures such as increasing deterrence by supporting nuclear proliferation in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan to complicate and add risk to Beijing’s strategic calculus.
After the Cold War, the U.S. national security community did not perceive Beijing’s global goal to eventually replace the United States as the preeminent power in Asia and the world, despite the CCP’s authoritatively stated intent and actions to do so. Read this short, sharp book to understand how the United States ended up off course and what can be done to get back on track.
Rear Admiral Becker was the Director of Intelligence (J2) for the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2013 to 2015. He is now president of The Becker T3 Group and co-teaches Ethics and Moral Reasoning for the Naval Leader at the U.S. Naval Academy.
From Yeomanettes to Fighter Jets: a Century of Women in the U.S. Navy
Randy Carol Goguen. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2024. 336 pp. Illus. Notes. Biblio. Index. $34.95.
Reviewed by Lieutenant Commander Andrea Howard, U.S. Navy
Active-duty women often give credit to their predecessors through the metaphor “standing on the shoulders of giants,” but scoping the exact size of these giants—and their unique, interconnected lineage—is impossible without a detailed history of the challenges surmounted and the subsequent progress achieved. From Yeomanettes to Fighter Jets: A Century of Women in the U.S. Navy not only serves this purpose for women, but also spells out its essentiality for all members across the naval service. In her book, Randy Carol Goguen traces four distinct phases in the history of women in the Navy: militarization through World Wars I and II, marginalization into the 1960s, transitional integration until the Defense Authorization Act of 1994, and true integration.
In the introduction, Goguen lays out the strongest component of this book: the contextualization of her selected stories, legislation, and judicial decisions across five trends for American women since the early 1900s. It would be tempting to amalgamate the narratives of each era’s giants and let them stand with their undeniable gravity in a void, but, instead, the author uses each story to cement the societal changes in attitudes toward women. The book seamlessly ties the lived experiences of military women to the century of challenges and progress around political enfranchisement, migration into the workplace, technological change, and the overhaul of the U.S. military structure into a modern, all-volunteer force. Throughout, exigency serves as a driving factor for integration and then sustained change.
With the launch point of women enlisting as yeomen (F) in World War I and Joy Bright Hancock’s ascendancy, Goguen’s work is required reading on the irrevocable efforts of women such as Representative Edith Rogers, Margaret Chung, Professor Elizabeth Reynard, and Representative Margaret Smith toward women’s permanence in the Navy. However, the book also emphasizes the integral role of men’s allyship through the likes of Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Admiral Elmo Zumwalt and Secretary of the Navy John Warner in advancing women’s roles across warfare domains. While the Naval Institute Press’s previous publications on women’s history—Serving Proudly: A History of Women in the U.S. Navy (2002) and Women in the Navy: The History (2015)—are important contributions, Goguen achieves the first comprehensive, multidomain perspective.
I could paint this book as a clear-cut triumph for women’s naval history, but doing so would not accurately capture the nuanced sentiment of the final chapter, “SITREP”—my favorite in the 200 pages. As one of the 20 most senior women in the Navy’s submarine force, I viscerally understand the fundamental human dynamic underpinning women’s continued integration: respect. Goguen explores how the modern notions of respect for women permeate ongoing debates on selective service, the prevention of and response to sexual assault, and the integration of my beloved submarine community.
The tightrope walk between inclusion and marginalization—whether intended or inadvertent—is both timeless and endless. Early in the book, Goguen explains this by describing the relationship between CNO Zumwalt and his Assistant Chief of Naval Personnel for Women, Captain Robin Quigley: “While they shared a common goal to advance the interest of Navy women . . . Quigley focused on maintaining the integrity of the institutional process, and Zumwalt focused on quick results to be responsive to the demands of his civilian overseers.” Disruption over the past 100 years has counterintuitively stabilized both women’s roles in the Navy and the Navy itself, and the women who comprise 20 percent of the service today—and their allies—should embrace this tactful charge with Goguen’s lessons at hand.
Lieutenant Commander Howard is navigator and operations officer on board the USS New Jersey (SSN-796). Following graduation from the U.S. Naval Academy in 2015, she was a Marshall Scholar at the University of Oxford and King’s College London and a division officer on board the USS Ohio (SSGN-726/Blue).
