ArgumentThe Surest Way to Lose to China Is to Disparage Expertise

Published 3 December 2019

In the White House, university halls, and op-eds pages, experts are under siege. Oriana Skylar Mastro writes that President Trump calls them “terrible,” and so it is little surprise that most of the individuals driving his China policy are not China specialists, do not speak Mandarin, and have little in-country experience.

In the White House, university halls, and op-eds pages, experts are under siege. Oriana Skylar Mastro writes in Defense One that President Trump calls them “terrible,” and so it is little surprise that most of the individuals driving his China policy are not China specialists, do not speak Mandarin, and have little in-country experience.

Mastro writes:

To state the obvious, there are people on both sides who got it wrong. All experts should be humble about their assessments and open to the ways that Chinese interests, behavior, and strategy may change. Also, the knowledge of history, strategy and theory continues to be useful tools in research, analysis and advocacy. For this reason, many foreign-policy China hands of this generation invest in building equally strong theoretical backgrounds as they do in country knowledge. But for whatever reason, we are seeing a trend of discounting area expertise. Because of this, many of us couch our research agendas in language that appeals to generalists and downplay our strong China backgrounds for the sake of publishing in political science journals or scoring tenure.

She adds:

The surest way for the United States to lose in its great power competition with China is to disparage expertise. Generalists and specialists, qualitative and quantitative researchers, academics, think tankers, government bureaucrats, we all need to come together as allies against anti-expert sentiment and regain credibility. We need all the expertise we can get – China hands, generalists, military strategists and operators, economists, anthropologists, sociologists, experts on U.S. politics and public opinion, all of it. This competition with China is global and across all domains.

We have the advantage of having a free and open society conducive to debate and new ideas. Let’s make use of it.