China and the Challenge of Cognitive Empathy

Plus: Jen Psaki’s McCarthyite moment

Hi! Today, rather than post a piece, I’m speaking my piece. I recorded a kind of monologue, and below are two excerpts from it. The monologue itself, in audio form, is available to paid newsletter subscribers, along with a complete transcript, right here. Paid subscribers can also find the monologue on their smartphones in the podcast feed that brings them the Parrot Room every Friday night.

Excerpt One: In which I complain about something White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki recently said about Republican Senator Josh Hawley.

Now, what you're about to hear may be the closest I ever come to defending Josh Hawley. I'm not a fan of his. But the thing that he had said that set Jen Psaki off was his just suggesting that maybe the US should abandon its commitment to future NATO membership for Ukraine. And whatever you think of that idea, it's not a crazy thing to be talking about right now, because for one thing, it could avert war--if Biden were to enunciate some version of it, formally or informally. And, second, there's no serious plan to admit Ukraine to NATO anytime soon, anyway, like within a decade or so.

So anyway, as for what Jen Psaki said, when a reporter brought up Josh Hawley's suggestion, here is that:

Well, if you are digesting Russian misinformation and parroting Russian talking points, you are not aligned with long-standing bi-partisan American values, which is to stand up for the sovereignty of countries like Ukraine, but others, their right to choose their own alliances and also to stand against, very clearly, the efforts or attempts or potential attempts by any country to invade and take territory of another country—that applies to Senator Hawley. But it also applies to others who may be parroting the talking points of Russian propagandist leaders.

Did you catch that last part? Anyone--not just Josh Hawley, not just American senators--anyone who dares suggest that maybe Ukraine should not join NATO will be guilty of parroting Russian talking points and not subscribing to American values. Okay?

Now, I did my senior thesis in college on Joseph McCarthy. And this is McCarthyism. It's one facet of McCarthyism, which is a complex, multifaceted thing. [Psaki is] trying to marginalize legitimate political discourse by suggesting that it's aiding and abetting the enemy. And for my money, this is even creepier-- when this kind of shot across the bow comes from the White House--than when it comes from a Senator, as it did when it came from Joseph McCarthy.

And if we do slide into a full-scale cold war, which seems to be what we're headed for, get ready to hear a lot of this. People will be accused of aiding and abetting Russia, of aiding and abetting China. One of the first casualties of a cold war, and for that matter a hot war, is uninhibited debate.

Excerpt Two: In which I (again!) sing the praises of exercising “cognitive empathy”—i.e., understanding how other people view the world—but also talk about why cognitive empathy is so hard to exercise. I illustrate the difficulty—and also the rewards—of cognitive empathy by reference to US-China relations and then repeat the exercise in the context of US-Russia relations.  

As you probably know, I consider cognitive empathy potentially salvific--that is to say, it could help save the world. I think if there's one talent that you could amplify in every human being in hopes of saving the world, this might be it: just make them better at seeing the perspective of all kinds of people, even including their enemies.

If you read my piece a few weeks ago called “How cognitive empathy could have prevented the Ukraine crisis,” you know that I think if we had done a better job of understanding Russia's perspective, ever since the 1990s, we might have never expanded NATO and we might not be in the Ukraine mess to begin with.

Well, I feel kind of the same way about the current descent into Cold War II—that (A) if we had better understood China's and Russia's perspective in the past, it might not be happening or at least might not be happening at this rate; and (B) it may be that going forward, we can prevent it from happening by doing a better job of deploying cognitive empathy, just understanding their perspective.

But before I talk about that, I want to emphasize that cognitive empathy is really hard. It sounds easy: just, you know, try to get an understanding of how they're viewing the world. But it's really, really hard. It is not for the faint of heart. And one reason it's hard is because to do it well, you may have to, in a sense, suspend moral judgment.

I don't mean abandon all moral judgment; I mean suspend. Like, just suspend moral judgment for the duration of the analysis during which you're employing the cognitive empathy. And then at the end, when you think you've got a clearer picture of the whole situation, you can make your moral judgments and guide your future behavior by those moral judgments.

Okay, so here's an example of how cognitive empathy can be really hard:  

As you probably know, one of the big sticking points in our relationship with China is Taiwan. China plans to eventually reunite with Taiwan and has not ruled out force as a way to do it. And the US increasingly seems disposed to get involved in Taiwan's defense. So for example, Donald Trump, without telling anyone, inserted some actual American ground troops in Taiwan--not many, but, you know, there's a big difference between zero and a few in China's mind.

So this is just an example of how Taiwan has become more and more a source of tension. Now, as for cognitive empathy and why it is difficult, and its complicated connection to moral judgment:

When I imagine China invading Taiwan, I'm on the side of the Taiwanese. If they don't want to be part of China, they shouldn't have to be--that's my view, and my understanding is that most of them don't want to be. So naturally I consider invading Taiwan bad, like morally bad, but if I dwell on that too much--if the badness of invasion, really pervasively colors my thinking about the situation-- then it will be hard to analyze the situation with clarity, to muster enough cognitive empathy to see things from all perspectives.

You may wonder: Why would that be? Well, to exercise cognitive empathy in this case is to put yourself in the shoes of the Chinese leadership--and maybe the Chinese people or the majority of Chinese people or whatever—[and] try to see the world as they see it.

And the first thing you have to understand, of course, is that they consider Taiwan part of China. To them, Taiwan is kind of the part of China that lost the Chinese civil war. I don't mean the current Taiwanese [lost the civil war], but that's where Taiwan comes from: Its current political constitution is descended from, kind of, the losers in the civil war--which ended, I don’t know, 70, 80 years ago or something.

So from China's point of view, what we consider an invasion of Taiwan wouldn't be an invasion of Taiwan. And if you try to put that in terms that we might understand, you might say, “Well, imagine if Robert E. Lee hadn't surrendered at Appomattox, but instead had retreated to some big island off of Virginia with a bunch of troops and they had declared themselves their own country.”

Well, the Union probably wouldn't have said, “Okay, fair enough. You get to keep this island that used to be part of the United States.” No, we'd have tried to retake it. Or if that wasn't feasible, we'd have said, “Someday we will reintegrate that island into the US.”

Now, I don't know enough about Chinese history, or for that matter American history, or about the mindset of people in China today, to know whether the analogy I just made is very accurate, but I do think it's a useful analogy to throw out there because then that will lead people to look into Chinese history and the Chinese mindset and either say, “Hey, that's a good analogy” or “That's a bad analogy for the following reason.”

Either way, you'll develop a clearer idea of how people in China look at this thing, how the leadership looks at it. And if indeed the analogy is good, then it's a valuable analogy because it helps Americans understand the mindset that is currently governing China's policy. But it's going to be harder to do this valuable thought experiment if you're dwelling on how much you morally disapprove of the Chinese invading Taiwan. The more strongly you feel opposed to it, the more you're going to resist analogizing the Chinese perspective to your perspective--because you kind of unconsciously fear that this analogy would morally legitimize the Chinese perspective.

And if you want to see this dynamic at work in other people, just walk up to somebody who feels very strongly about the Taiwan issue, very strongly that America should defend Taiwan in the event of invasion, and try that civil war analogy, the American civil war analogy. Say, “So I guess Xi Jinping looks at this kind of the way Abraham Lincoln would look at things if Robert E. Lee had retreated to some island off of Virginia.”

Well, I can almost guarantee you that your little thought experiment is not going to be warmly received. And there's a pretty good chance that the person will say, “Oh, so you're saying it's okay for China to invade Taiwan?” Because we all have this intuition that to explain why someone did something is to try to absolve them of moral responsibility. So it's a reasonable reaction for this person to have, to say, “Oh, you're saying it's okay for China to invade?” even though that's not what you mean.

And it shouldn't be what you mean—at least, it shouldn't be the conclusion you draw from the analogy itself… You should be capable of doing a thought experiment that involves putting yourself in somebody else's shoes, as nearly as possible, without that necessarily leading you to conclude that they are absolved of all moral responsibility for what they do or that they're in the right or whatever.

I think you have to set moral judgment aside, try to understand how the people you may consider bad--you may even consider evil--view the world. And then once you're done with the analysis and you think you understand the whole situation more clearly, then you can bring moral judgment to bear on it.

So you might ask, “Well, if the lesson we're supposed to draw from that is not that… invading Taiwan is okay, well, what kind of lessons can we draw?”

Well, I think it's always good to understand the political pressures under which politicians operate, if you're going to try to have diplomatic success with them. And although, again, I don't know that much about the contemporary mindset of Chinese leaders and Chinese, my understanding is there's a lot of support in China for the view that Taiwan is part of China.

So in other words, there are a lot of people who would not see an invasion of China as China expanding its empire or something. They would see it as just a reuniting, as an integration of part of China into China. And once you understand that, you realize that Xi Jinping, as a political matter, may not have as much leeway as you think. You know, we like to think that “Well, if he weren't this brutal, endlessly ambitious dictator, he would just say, okay, Taiwan can have a long and happy life.” I don't think it's that simple. I think it'd be very hard for him politically to do that.

And by the way, contrary to popular misunderstanding, so-called autocrats do not rule alone. They depend on constituencies and they worry a lot about public approval--in some ways more than a democratically elected leader maybe in some cases.

So anyway, I think once you realize how sensitive and explosive an issue this is for a lot of Chinese, then you might say, “Well, maybe we should talk about it a little less.” Right? Because every time we say something confrontational about Taiwan, it puts Xi Jinping in a position where he has to say or do something confrontational about Taiwan…

You know, I'm not saying this with that much confidence. I haven't studied the situation enough to know that's true, but if you're asking what kinds of benefits can cognitive empathy bring, it's those kinds of benefits: You can better understand the political pressures that leaders are under, and that can help you better navigate the diplomatic territory and get the outcome that you want, which is often an outcome that's in the interest of both parties. I strongly suspect that Xi Jinping would love to not have to invade Taiwan. He doesn't need that problem right now. We don't need that problem. It's in everyone's interest to find a way to turn down the temperature. And again, I think, cognitive empathy can help.

And so I think we need to do whatever work it takes to deploy cognitive empathy. Because it's not easy.

And I guess in closing, this kind of brings us back to Putin and the box we want to help him get out of. If we're going to find an offer that Biden can make given Biden's political situation and that Putin can accept given Putin's political situation, then we need to do the best job possible of understanding Putin's perspective, including the political pressures he's operating under.

For example, the Ukrainian government, as I understand it, has been reducing the amount of Russian language instruction in schools and has been closing down Russian language media, and a lot of Russians in Russia don't like that. And some of them feel that the Russian government should come to the defense of their Russian speaking brethren in Ukraine.

Well, how many Russians feel that way? How much political pressure does this put on Putin to intervene in Ukraine? I have no idea, but it would be useful information. And one reason I have no idea is because I just haven't heard much discussion of this in the American media. The American media is not doing a good job of illuminating Putin's perspective, if you ask me.

And I think one of the reasons is that they consider Putin bad. And so they kind of unconsciously resist trying to put themselves in his shoes, understand his perspective, because they fear that that could complicate the view that he is bad, you know, because again, there is this common intuition that to understand all is to forgive all; it doesn't have to be [the case that to understand all is to forgive all], but it is an intuition.

And by the way, I can see why they consider him bad. He seems to have a habit of trying to kill people by poison if he doesn't like them, for example. Still, if you dwell on that moral judgment--that he's bad--I think you will find yourself resisting attempts to see things from his point of view, to understand why he's done bad things and to understand under what circumstances he's likely to do more bad things and to understand exactly what political pressures are operating on him at this very important time when he may or may not do something bad. And I think understanding those political pressures could help us keep him from doing something bad…

The whole point of the exercise, after all, is to get outcomes that you think are morally good.