In the Arena

by Pete Hegseth

  Iran, the Shia Muslim standard-bearer of Islamism, has also made opposing the West a lodestar since its Islamic Revolution in 1979. Unlike any other nation on earth, the revolutionary Islamic Republic of Iran was literally founded on the premise of opposition to the West and America—with their bold seizure of the American embassy in 1979 serving as a literal and symbolic rejection of the Western system. Not only do both Sunni and Shia Islamists seek their own pure Islamic governance structures, but they also dream about the destruction of Israel, America, and the entire construct of Western civilization—and actively pursue the weapons, and the leverage that comes with them, to make that dream a reality.

  Even the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, have a centuries-old connection. On September 11, 1683—more than three centuries ago—an alliance of Christian armies led by the king of Poland came to the defense of the Gates of Vienna in Austria, turning back the farthest advance of the Ottoman Empire’s Muslim army. For the next three hundred years, and throughout the twentieth century, Islam was in cultural, technological, and geographic retreat from the West. Osama bin Laden, while also galvanized by immediate circumstances, believed that—first in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union, and then on 9/11 against America—he was putting Islam back on the offensive. He saw the attacks on the date of September 11 as both a metaphoric and literal continuation of the unsuccessful 1683 siege of Christendom. In the mind of Osama bin Laden, the wars he unleashed in the twenty-first century are part of drawing the far enemy (America) into his neighborhood, where he could bleed us dry physically and financially. The larger point is that whether the West does or not, modern Islamists still live in history and believe they will come out on top—eventually. We barely remember 2001, whereas they are motivated by 1683 and 1924. We’re sedated by postmodern multiculturalism; they’re motivated by end-times theology.

  The threat Islamism poses goes even deeper. While the Islamic State, Al Qaeda, and Iran—through Hezbollah and other proxy forces—lead the military fight, there is a stealth enemy afoot as well. Saudi Arabian oil money funds radical, anti-Western Islamic schools (madrassas) and mosques across the Muslim world, in Europe, and even here in the United States. This is not to say that rank-and-file Muslims are seeking out radical madrassas or mosques, but rather that many Muslim leaders who build, finance, and lead those institutions use them to radicalize the larger population. Groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) have quietly advanced this mission for decades. Likewise, on the demographic front, average Muslims aren’t necessarily having ten kids because they hope to form Muslim majorities in European countries; but many radical Muslim leaders exploit these developments as opportunities to spread their radical and violent ideology, and eventually—in twenty-five, fifty, seventy-five years—will attempt to insert Islamic law into these societies. The same goes for how radicals will exploit the ongoing refugee crisis to seed Europe with radicalized young Muslim men. Like bin Laden, Islamists take a very long, aggressive, and subversive view of the future. Islamists will not conquer Europe militarily; they will do so demographically first, and then politically.

  At this point, I can already hear the Coexist Left, and the “perpetual pragmatists” of today, demanding—yelling—“The Islamic State is not Islamic! . . . and, for that matter, Islam is a religion of peace!” Of course I reply with the obligatory, obvious, and quite personal response that there are millions of peaceful Muslims in this world. As I discuss in other portions of this book, I’ve met, worked with, fought with, and personally helped many Sunni and Shia Muslims. They can be kind, courageous, and fiercely loyal; but, alas, the problems of Islam do not lie with the sensibilities of rank-and-file Muslims or how most of them practice their faith, but instead with the Quran they read, the various religious interpretations that emanate from it, and the (millions!) of Islamists who embrace jihad as a tactic to advance it.

  It doesn’t take a Quranic scholar to identify the core reasons why Islamism has taken root and isn’t going anywhere soon. Islam is neither a religion of peace nor a religion of violence; it is a religion of submission. The word Islam itself translates to English as “submission” (not “peace,” as revisionists attempt to argue)—submission to God (Allah), submission to God’s word (the Quran), and submission to the life and teachings of God’s prophet Muhammad (the Hadith). To adherents, the text of the Quran and teachings of Muhammad are infallible, inflexible, and unquestionable—making the text of Islam the real challenge. Moreover, if the Quran and Hadith are reordered and read chronologically, the text starts with harmonious and peaceful passages and evolves toward more dominant and violent passages—mirroring the life of Muhammad. As he accumulated devotees, power, and a conquering army, Muhammad changed his approach to spreading his new faith; he captured Mecca through persuasion, but took Medina by the sword. In both scenarios—peaceful and violent—the outcome was the same. Non-Muslims paid a second-class-citizen tax (Jizya), converted to Islam, or were killed. Either way, they submitted. The aims of Islamists today—all around the globe—are the same.

  Prior to the life and teachings of Jesus and the New Testament, many of these same attributes could be said of the Bible and Christianity. The Bible’s Old Testament also contains violent passages; but a key distinction makes these two Abrahamic religions very different. The Quran has no “New Testament,” which means a painful reformation like the one Christianity eventually emerged from—peace over violence, equality over slavery, and separation of religion and state—could be a long way off for Islam, if possible at all. Islam simply has no theological “new testament” positioned to supersede its “old testament” Quran. Making matters even more complicated, Islam is not just a religion, but also a system of governance (sharia law, in various forms), a judicial and penal system, and a cultural way of life for devout Muslims; meaning Islamism, and some argue more mainstream political Islam, cannot peacefully coexist with representative government and the modern nation-state system. Again, millions of Muslims have joined modernity and choose to live peacefully, liberally, and inclusively; but those Muslims do so by disregarding intolerant and violent Quranic passages that are no less authoritative today than they were a thousand years ago. They also must openly and courageously confront fervent Islamists who choose to interpret the Quran as it is written, not as modernity views it. This confrontation, on a large scale, is what made Iraq’s budding post-surge “Iraqracy” so important.

  These facts do not mean that America is at war with Islam, but it does mean we are, and will be, at war with Islamism—because they are at war with us, and have been, in modern form, for almost one hundred years. Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, and Iran and its proxies, are the latest manifestations of an Islamist movement that has no plans of receding and certainly no plans of “coexisting.” They seek land, they seek power, they seek demographic and political advantages, and they actively seek the military means, especially nuclear weapons, to bring the West to its knees—and in the case of the Islamic State, hasten end-times. They seek our subjugation and destruction. The longer the West lives with the comfortable delusion that Islam is a religion of peace—especially as the demographic tables are dramatically turned on us in Europe and across the globe—the more difficult we make our task of dealing with future, and even more contentious, confrontations with both violent and political Islamism. In doing so America cannot bow to leftist elites who, in agreement with Islamists, point smugly to the land divisions in the Sykes-Picot Agreement as the cause of Middle Eastern violence and assert that there is only a choice between dictators and Islamists. Drawing lines on a map a century ago did not make the Islamist bloodshed inevitable. Moreover, failing to defeat Islamism and provide a viable alternative only ensures that more blood will be shed in the Middle East and around the world in defense of freedom and pluralism for Christians, Jews, moderate Muslims, and other “infidels.”

  THE CHINA MODEL AND CHINESE DREAM

  The three thousand
years of Chinese civilization make Islam’s 1,300 years look like a warm-up. Like Islam, the Chinese boast many ancient and important achievements, like the invention of paper, printing, gunpowder, and the compass. They are proud of their long and consequential cultural history, and rightfully so. However, China’s modern history lacks that luster, starting with a republican revolution in 1912 that ended more than two thousand years of dynastic rule but quickly descended into a century of internal strife. Coups, civil war, and revolution ultimately led to the creation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the Chinese nation-state that exists today. The infamous insurgent and communist revolutionary Mao Zedong was modern China’s first leader, and implemented the “Great Leap Forward” in 1958, a period of sheer state coercion intended to catch China’s economy up with the Western world that ultimately led to the direct death of more than 45 million Chinese. While most in the West see Mao as a ruthless dictator and mass murderer, official Chinese history—and current Chinese leadership—lauds him as the revered father of modern China’s rising power.

  The Chinese, like Islam, look back on the past two centuries and wonder how such a storied and massive civilization finds itself playing second fiddle to the United States, and beholden to a Westernized international system stacked against them. China does not oppose the nation-state system outright like Islamists do; instead they have been involved begrudgingly while actively seeking rival structures, especially in the last decade. China was a founding member of the United Nations and the UN Security Council but quickly found itself in a contested status for twenty years over a dispute centered on Taiwan that remains relevant to this day. China was a late addition to global economic organizations like the World Trade Organization (WTO) because of both global skepticism about China’s record and Chinese skepticism toward great powers and the global stage. For the latter half of the twentieth century, legitimate concerns over global communism and the balance of power between the United States and the Soviet Union kept China on the fringes of international affairs, a period during which China ultimately undertook economic reforms that led to its current mixed model, the “China Model.”

  The China Model combines a closed authoritative political system with a quasi-open economy, allowing the Chinese economy to grow quickly (if precariously) while the Chinese Communist Party retains absolute power. Communist China learned the lessons that the former Soviet Union learned too late, that some amount of economic liberalization is needed in order to maintain an economic base capable of sustaining military power and consolidating political control. But according to American foreign policy intelligentsia since the end of the Cold War, it wasn’t supposed to happen this way. Led by “elite” Mc-ademics like Thomas Friedman and his “Golden Arches” theory—an economic adaptation of the Democratic Peace theory—economic liberalization in China would lead to gradual political liberalization, and largely peaceful intentions. Instead, by underestimating the level of state control and the depth of cultural supremacy in China, the opposite occurred and China has exploited international markets to expand its economic prowess, extend its military influence, crack down on internal political dissent, and stoke communist nationalism. Worse, China is gleefully if quietly proliferating its “Model,” breathing new life into international communism and encouraging other budding authoritarian regimes to follow suit. Empowered by ideologically agnostic international institutions and a current U.S. administration that also ignore the nature of regimes, look for countries like Cuba—which the United States recently normalized relations with in return for no political reforms—to adopt the China Model, along with the nefarious influence it enables.

  For the ruling Communist Party and its benefactors, the China Model has been a success. Despite market variations, inside Chinese government–controlled “think tanks,” academic institutions, and military circles, there is an increasingly bold belief that China is on the cusp of becoming the world’s most consequential nation—first economically and militarily, then regionally (a Chinese Monroe Doctrine), and finally globally. Beijing sees a weakened U.S. economy (as they challenge the dollar’s supremacy and watch America’s swelling debt), eroding American leadership and political will globally, and the literal shrinking of the U.S. military as signs that American hegemony is ending and a new era of the proud—or some might say, arrogant—Chinese civilization is beginning. Even though it is better shrouded, many Chinese leaders (not all, but many) possess a belief in Chinese cultural supremacy with the same ideological and evangelical fervor as Islamists. In this way, and especially with Xi Jinping’s nationalist rise to the presidency in 2012, the China Model has given rise to a new class of Chinese political and military leaders who believe in a “Chinese Dream” of military power and communist collectivism.

  The Chinese Dream—first the title of a book by a hawkish Chinese general and now the central theme of Xi Jinping’s tenure—is not the dream of empowering free individuals to achieve, like the American Dream, but instead a collectivist dream of a great and powerful nation. Said Xi Jinping in December 2012, “This dream can be said to be the dream of a strong nation. And for the military, it is a dream of a strong military . . . to achieve the great revival of the Chinese nation.” The Chinese Dream, as articulated repeatedly by Xi Jinping and Party leadership, has nothing to do with Western constructs of freedom and everything to do with leveraging Chinese economic and military power to first establish regional dominance, and then eventually shape a China-dominated world that, to quote a top Chinese government–controlled “think tank,” establishes “a global hierarchy where order is valued over freedom, ethics over law, and elite governance over democracy and human rights [italics added].” Reads a bit too much like a directive from the First Order from Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Peaceful rise, violent rise, or something in between, if the twenty-first century is a Chinese century then it will not be a free century, a prosperous century, or a peaceful century. Plain and simple, a rising China—armed with a “model” and a “dream”—represents an eventual existential challenge to America and the free world.

  And the Chinese are putting their muscle where both their money and their mouth are. Leaked internal documents repeatedly reveal that China’s most important foreign policy priority is “how to manage the decline of the United States,” and they are building a military capable of—eventually—challenging American power in the Pacific and around the world. Over the past decade, China has embarked on an ambitious military modernization program, aggressively increasing the size, sophistication, and lethality of its armed forces with an obsessive focus on capabilities that specifically neutralize American advantages. China is not only building its own aircraft carriers; it is building sophisticated missiles specifically designed to destroy American aircraft carriers. Furthermore, a nuclear-armed China is right now building man-made islands in the South China Sea from which to project its growing military power. The Chinese military is chasing next-generation capabilities in the air, land, and sea—far beyond what experts believe would be needed for self-defense, or even regional hegemony. The Chinese are also spending massive amounts of money on “soft power” domestic and international propaganda machines. But don’t just take my word for it. In one of his first moves after taking power, Xi Jinping issued orders to his military to focus on “real combat” and “fighting and winning” wars—a stark departure from China’s previously benign “nothing to see here” rhetoric. While China says it is rising peacefully, a growing body of public and private evidence suggests the opposite.

  Yet, while China has huge potential and nefarious intentions, it also faces serious obstacles to becoming a modern power. They are the world’s most populous nation but are confronted by major demographic problems. A long-standing “one-child” policy (recently updated to two) that favors boys has created a gender gap with unknowable consequences, and China’s massive population will get old before the country gets rich—creating entitlement liabilities that are unsustainable (much like Am
erica’s). China may have an economy that rivals America’s in sheer size, but much of its growth has been fueled by forced population relocation from rural areas, economic exploitation abroad (which continues to undermine China’s global popularity), and massive state-directed investment, especially in manufacturing. Their economy is limited by a lack of middle-class consumers and entrepreneurial talent, each of which they’re currently outsourcing and insourcing, respectively. Attempts to open up their stock market have invited substantial volatility—and unchartered risk. Their aggressive military actions have driven regional countries into the American orbit, stunting their regional options for strategic alliances in the near term. But domestic politics could ultimately be their downfall. As Chinese leaders double down on authoritative policies, China’s youth—with access to wealth, information, and world travel—will continue to demand more say in their nation’s political system, leading to more domestic instability. China’s challenges are real, but they are not insurmountable.

  America’s governing and economic “model” is superior to China’s and our “dream” is real, not manufactured. American free enterprise—properly oriented, unleashed, and positioned—carries the day against central planning and failed political philosophies every time. But because the superiority of America and American power is not inevitable, the prospect of the twenty-first century being a Chinese one is not inconceivable. In fact, if America continues to decline in power and posture, Chinese predominance is more likely than most care to admit; especially since China, like Islamism, is playing a long game—with Xi Jinping projecting 2049 as the high-water mark of his aforementioned Chinese Dream of national greatness and regional and global power. Even with this rise, violent conflict with China is not inevitable or even likely on a large scale; but, like with Islamism, American weakness and equivocation only invites more challenge and violence, and if America does not maintain its economic and military edge, then China could eventually usher in a new era of collectivism.