{"id":82682,"date":"2023-10-03T13:45:42","date_gmt":"2023-10-03T02:45:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=82682"},"modified":"2023-10-03T13:46:57","modified_gmt":"2023-10-03T02:46:57","slug":"china-and-america-are-not-destined-for-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/china-and-america-are-not-destined-for-war\/","title":{"rendered":"China and America are not destined for war"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

The great-power competition between the United States and China is a defining feature of the first part of this century, but there\u2019s little agreement on how it should be characterised. Some call it an \u2018enduring rivalry<\/a>\u2019 analogous to the one between Germany and Britain prior to the last century\u2019s two world wars. Others worry that America is like<\/a> Sparta (the dominant power) and China is like Athens (the rising power) in the 5th century BC: the two are \u2018destined for war\u2019. The problem, of course, is that a belief in the inevitability of conflict can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.<\/p>\n

\u2018Enduring rivalry\u2019 itself is a misleading term. Just think of all the phases the Sino-American relationship has gone through since the Chinese Communist Party came to power in 1949. In the 1950s, American and Chinese soldiers were killing each other on the Korean peninsula. In the 1970s, after US President Richard Nixon\u2019s historic visit to China, the two countries cooperated closely to counterbalance the Soviet Union. In the 1990s, economic engagement increased, and the US supported China\u2019s entry into the World Trade Organization. Not until after 2016 did we enter the current phase of great-power competition, with one US official describing<\/a> China as a \u2018pacing threat\u2019\u2014meaning \u2018the only country that can pose a systemic challenge\u2019 to America \u2018economically, technologically, politically and militarily.\u2019<\/p>\n

But even if enduring rivalry doesn\u2019t imply violent conflict, what about a \u2018cold war\u2019? If that term refers to an intense prolonged competition, we are already in one. But if it\u2019s a historical analogy, the comparison is inapt, and risks misleading us about the real challenges the US faces from China. The US and the Soviet Union had a high level of global military interdependence, but virtually no economic, social or ecological interdependence. Today\u2019s Sino-American relationship is different in all those dimensions.<\/p>\n

For starters, America can\u2019t decouple its trade and investment completely from China without causing enormous damage to itself and the global economy. Moreover, the US and its allies are threatened not by the spread of communist ideology, but by a system of economic and political interdependence that both sides routinely manipulate. Partial decoupling or \u2018de-risking\u2019 on security issues is necessary, but total economic decoupling would be prohibitively costly, and few US allies would follow suit. More countries count China<\/a> rather than the US as their leading trade partner.<\/p>\n

Then there are the ecological aspects of interdependence, which make decoupling impossible. No country can tackle climate change, the pandemic threat or other transnational problems alone. For better and worse, we are locked in a \u2018cooperative rivalry\u2019 with China, in need of a strategy that can advance contradictory objectives. The situation is nothing like Cold War containment.<\/p>\n

Meeting the China challenge will require an approach that leverages the alliances and rules-based system the US created. Allies like Japan, and partners like India, are assets that China lacks. Although the center of global economic gravity has shifted from Europe to Asia over the past century, India, the world\u2019s most populous country, is one of China\u2019s longstanding rivals. Clich\u00e9s about the \u2018global south\u2019 or solidarity among the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) are highly misleading, because they ignore internal rivalries within those categories. Moreover, the combined wealth of Western democratic allies will far exceed that of China (plus Russia) well into this century.<\/p>\n

To succeed, America\u2019s China strategy must set realistic goals. If the US defines strategic success as transforming China into a Western democracy, it is likely to fail. The CCP fears Western liberalisation, and China is too big to invade or fundamentally change through coercion. This reality cuts both ways: the US has domestic problems, but they certainly don\u2019t owe anything to the attractiveness of Chinese communism. In this important respect, neither China nor the US poses an existential threat to the other\u2014unless they blunder into a major war.<\/p>\n

The best historical analogy is not Cold War Europe after 1945 but pre-war Europe in 1914. European leaders welcomed what they thought would be a brief conflict in the Balkans, but instead got the four terrible years of World War I. Some foresee the US and China blundering into a similar war over Taiwan, which China regards as a renegade province. When Nixon and Mao Zedong met in 1972, they could not agree on this issue, but they devised a rough formula for managing it that has lasted half a century: no de jure independence for Taiwan, and no use of force against the island by China. Maintaining the status quo requires deterring Beijing while avoiding the provocation of supporting de jure independence for Taiwan. War is a risk, but it is not inevitable.<\/p>\n

The US should expect low-intensity economic conflicts with China, but its strategic objectives should be to avoid escalation\u2014what US Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently called<\/a> \u2018peaceful coexistence\u2019. That means using deterrence to avoid a hot war, cooperating when possible, leveraging US hard and soft power to attract allies, and marshalling domestic assets to compete successfully. The goal should be to shape China\u2019s external behaviour by strengthening America\u2019s own alliances and international institutions.<\/p>\n

For example, the key to advancing US interests in the South and East China Seas is Japan, a close ally that hosts US troops. But since the US also needs to bolster its own economic and technological advantages, it would be wise to adopt a more active Asian trade policy, and to offer assistance to the low- and middle-income countries being wooed by China. Global polls suggest<\/a> that if the US maintains its domestic openness and democratic values, it will have much greater soft power than China.<\/p>\n

Investments in America\u2019s own military power of deterrence are welcomed by the many countries that want to maintain trade relations with China but don\u2019t want to be dominated by it. If the US maintains its alliances and avoids demonisation and misleading historical analogies, \u2018cooperative rivalry\u2019 will be a sustainable goal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The great-power competition between the United States and China is a defining feature of the first part of this century, but there\u2019s little agreement on how it should be characterised. 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