Avoiding the 'Guns of August' 2026
Last updated 08:53 AM EDT • Read time: 5m
Donald Trump has done more than any other 21st century U.S. president to “pivot” to Asia and the western Pacific, yet recently his administration has been criticized for going “soft” on China. There is no question that the rhetoric of the second Trump administration is, in Undersecretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby’s words, “quiet and respectful . . . towards China,” but “quiet and respectful” are sound tactics of diplomacy. Building more warships, modernizing our nuclear forces, winning the AI race, using geoeconomic pressure, strengthening our alliances in the western Pacific—those are actions that speak louder than words. The goal in Cold War II with China, after all, is to counter China’s geopolitical ambitions without going to war. It is to avoid the “Guns of August” 2026.
One hundred twelve years ago this month, what George F. Kennan called the “seminal catastrophe” of the 20th century emerged from the failed diplomacy of Europe’s great powers. Barbara Tuchman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Guns of August recounted the diplomatic missteps of the great powers in the first decade and a quarter of the 20th century that led to the cataclysmic First World War in 1914. Tuchman portrayed the leaders of the great powers of Europe almost stumbling towards a war that none of them wanted. But as David Fromkin pointed out in his magnificent book Europe’s Last Summer, Austria-Hungary deliberately went to war against Serbia, and Germany had planned for war against Russia and France since at least 1905. Those two wars brought Great Britain and its empire, Italy, and ultimately the United States into what became a global conflict.
The same thing happened in the late 1930s-early 1940s, as Victor Davis Hanson explained in his book The Second World Wars, when a Sino-Japanese War, a German-Soviet war against Poland, a Soviet war against Finland, and a Japanese war against the U.S. and Britain merged into the Second World War. In both instances, separate regional wars grew into global wars with catastrophic consequences.
Today, the Russia-Ukraine war is in its fifth year with no end in sight and threatens to spill over into the NATO countries of Europe and the Caspian Sea region. The U.S./Israeli-Iran war in the Middle East has already involved several other Gulf states, Lebanon, Iraq, the straits of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb, and Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, tensions continue to rise in the western Pacific. Unless there emerge diplomatic solutions to these wars and potential wars, we risk a “Guns of August” 2026, which could be exponentially more catastrophic than the two world wars of the 20th century.
One of our greatest foreign policy presidents, Richard Nixon, in analyzing Cold War I against the Soviet Union, was fond of saying that “Kremlin leaders do not want war, but they do want the world.” “The Soviets,” he wrote in his book 1999:Victory Without War, “seek victory without war.” The United States, he continued, should also seek victory without war and the key elements of that approach are competition, deterrence, and diplomacy.
Nixon’s diplomacy brilliantly exploited the growing Sino-Soviet rivalry in the late 1960s and early 1970s with his opening to China. But he also conducted “triangular diplomacy” that positioned the United States closer to China and Russia than they were to each other. He also ended the unpopular Vietnam War, while pursuing “hardheaded détente” with Soviet leaders. His Middle East policy helped to stabilize the region after the Yom Kippur War and reduced Soviet influence there for years to come. Nixon toned down the rhetoric with Soviet leaders because he knew that actions speak louder than words, and that quiet diplomacy can often accomplish more than overheated, antagonistic rhetoric. Nixon’s foreign policy was realism at its best.
Thankfully, the Cold War never turned into a great-power kinetic war. Nixon’s diplomacy set the stage for the Reagan administration’s successful economic and political exploitation of Soviet vulnerabilities and the resultant U.S. victory without war, just as Nixon had hoped.
Nixonian diplomacy may be just what is needed to prevent today’s regional wars and geopolitical conflicts from merging into the Third World War. Being respectful towards China while conducting quiet diplomacy and strengthening our alliances and deterrent capabilities in the western Pacific is foreign policy realism in the Nixonian tradition. A combination of patience, prudence, and quiet resolve is what is called for at the present moment. Saber rattling will only serve to increase tensions while potentially undermining diplomatic efforts. The Trump administration appears to understand this better than its critics on both the left and right.
As Nixon said of Soviet leaders, so, too, Trump can say of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders: They want the world, but they don’t want war. China is our principal geopolitical enemy. The CCP is engaging in what they call “unrestricted warfare” by non-military means against the U.S. and its allies. The threat posed by China to the U.S. and its allies is greater than the Soviet threat during Cold War I. But, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently told Fox News: “Any conflict between the U.S. and China . . . would be catastrophic for both countries and for the world.” The Trump administration understands that deterring China must be accomplished by methods and means that avoid such a catastrophic outcome. Trump is, like Nixon was, on the receiving end of criticism from the left and the right. Events proved Nixon right. Events will prove Trump right, too.
Francis P. Sempa writes on geopolitics.