My Take | Forget Mao, Clausewitz is a better guide to the real US-Chinese trade war
Trade wars, like real wars, are an implicit bargaining tool before the start of formal negotiations
In it, the Great Helmsman counsels against both optimism for a quick victory and defeatism. Rather, there is a need for a realistic assessment of the stages that must be reached before a decisive battle can be risked to achieve ultimate victory.
Beijing clearly wants to portray itself as standing firm and ready to fight to the end against Washington’s “bullying” tariff tactics.
But, instead of following Mao, the two sides may already be practising what the Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz teaches in his classic On War.
One way to understand what is actually happening on the trade war front may be to recast the Prussian general’s famous but usually misunderstood statement as “war is negotiations by other means”.