US–China military and intelligence ties

According to three books, Pillsbury participated in President Jimmy Carter's decision in 1979–80, as modified by President Reagan in 1981, to initiate military and intelligence ties with China.^{[16]: 58–59}

According to Raymond L. Garthoff, "Michael Pillsbury first floated the idea of arms sales and broad range of American military security relationships with China in a much-discussed article in Foreign Policy in the fall of 1975. Not known then was that Pillsbury had been conducting secret talks with Chinese officials … his reports were circulated to a dozen or so top officials of the NSC, Department of Defense and Department of State as secret documents."^[17]: 696 According to the book US–China Cold War Collaboration, 1971–1989, "The man spearheading the effort was not a public official, and enjoyed deniability. Michael Pillsbury, a China analyst at the RAND Corporation… spent the summer of 1973 secretly meeting PLA officers stationed under diplomatic cover at China's UN mission… The DoD managed Pillsbury. Pillsbury filed a report, L-32, in March 1974… L-32 was a seminal paper on which subsequent US-PRC military cooperation blossomed."^[18]: 81 James Mann wrote, "Outward appearances indicate that Pillsbury may have been working with American intelligence agencies from the very start of his relationship with General Zhang… In the fall of 1973, Pillsbury submitted a classified memo suggesting the novel idea that the United States might establish a military relationship with China… This was the genesis of the ideas of a 'China card,' the notion that the United States might use China to gain Cold War advantage over the Soviet Union. The idea would eventually come to dominate American thinking about the new relationship with China."^{[16]: 58–59}

Arming the Mujahedeen with Stinger missiles

Pillsbury participated in President Reagan's decision in 1986 to order the CIA to arm the Afghan resistance with Stinger missiles. According to the UN Undersecretary General who negotiated the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, "Initially, the Stinger campaign was spearheaded by Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Fred Ikle and his aggressive Coordinator for Afghan Affairs, Michael Pillsbury… The Stinger proponents won their victory in the face of overwhelming bureaucratic resistance that persisted until the very end of the struggle."^[19]: 195 Mann wrote, "For Michael Pillsbury, the covert operations in Afghanistan represented the fulfillment of the decade-old dream of American military cooperation with China… To help him win the argument, Pillsbury made use of his China connections."^{[16]: 137–139} George Crile stated in Charlie Wilson's War that, "Ironically, neither [Gust] Avrakotos nor [Charlie] Wilson was directly involved in the decision and claims any credit."^{[20]: 419 [21]: 33–36 [22][23]: 126–127, 257–261, 428–429 [24]: 240–242 [25]: 27–28 [26]}

Harvard University's Harvard Kennedy School published what it called the first case study of how covert action policy is made and describes the role of Michael Pillsbury.^[25]: 24 According to Charlie Wilson's War, "The moving force in this group was an engaging, well-born conservative intellectual named Mike Pillsbury, then serving as the Pentagon's deputy undersecretary in charge of overseeing covert programs. Pillsbury, a former Senate staffer and China expert, had been an early believer in the program…"^{[20]: 415–416} According to Philip Heymann in his 2008 book Living the Policy Process, "A policy player such as Michael Pillsbury may have absorbed many of the critical rules of the game of shared policy choice without even thinking of them as rules."^[21]: 52

Heymann wrote that "providing Stinger missiles was obviously of such importance or political prominence that the President would want to decide. This decision is obviously of that character for several reasons. If approved, we may be furnishing a terrifying weapon to a present or future enemy. There is a small chance that we will encourage dangerous forms of retaliation by the Soviet Union. Even the shift from a "plausibly deniable" covert action to the open support of a guerrilla force fighting the Soviet Union would raise issues in Congress that the President would want to consider in light of his staff's advice."^{[21]: 54–58} Pillsbury worked through the secret Planning and Coordination Group. Heymann wrote, "This committee was secret, and public details about it are sketchy… The covert action committee met every three to four weeks. Its existence was not officially acknowledged, although such a committee had operated in every administration since Eisenhower. In the Kennedy administration, for example, it was known as the Forty Committee. Any information on covert actions was protected under a compartmentalized security system given the name VEIL."^{[21]: 44–45}

Studies of China and the Pentagon's annual report

In 1997–2007, Pillsbury published research reports and two books on China's view of future warfare. According to the Wall Street Journal in 2005, Pillsbury's findings were added to the reports the Secretary of Defense sent to Congress on Chinese military power in 2002–2005.^[27][28] In 2003, Pillsbury signed a non-partisan report of the Council on Foreign Relations task force on Chinese military power. The task force found that China is pursuing a deliberate course of military modernization, but is at least two decades behind the United States in terms of military technology and capability. The task force report stated it was a "non-partisan approach to measuring the development of Chinese military power."^{[29]: 1–3} He has discussed the threat the People's Republic of China poses to the United States of America with Tucker Carlson.^[30] In December 2020, the Trump administration announced it intended to appoint him as the chair of the Defense Policy Board.^[31]

Books

Author of two books on China, available at National Defense University Press:

• Pillsbury, Michael (2015). The Hundred-Year Marathon: China's Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower. ISBN 978-1-6277-9010-9.^[36][37][38]
• Pillsbury, Michael (2000). China Debates the Future Security Environment. ISBN 978-1-4102-1856-8. Archived from the original on 2009-06-25.
  This book has been translated and published in China by the New China News Agency Press
• Pillsbury, Michael (1998). Chinese Views of Future Warfare. ISBN 978-1-57906-016-9. Archived from the original on 2009-07-09. (editor)

Reports and articles