Drawing from interviews with an impressive panel of distinguished Brookings scholars, this Brookings Report of November 2017 Avoiding War - Containment, Competition, and Cooperation in US-China Relations examines how the United States may respond to a dramatically-changed world where Pax Americana has given place to multi-polarity increasingly influenced by the shape of US-China relations.
The Report highlights the emergence of a more confident and assertive China driven by increasing global economic clout and asymmetric capabilities which challenge US military dominance in the West Pacific. It delves into the nuances of a complex US-China relationship and calls for an unambiguous US strategy on China to manage and steer China's rise towards outcomes less inimical to US national interests.
The interviews were conducted by Bruce Jones, Director of the Foreign Policy Program at Brookings and Senior Fellow of the Institution's Project on International Order and Strategy.
US misgivings with this emerging uncertain world are also captured in Bruce Jones's article of 28 November The New Geopolitics for the Order from Chaos Program.
He concludes that "questions about the new geopolitics must inform a new debate about America’s role—and interests—in a much more competitive world. What choices we as a nation now make will reverberate through this new geopolitical landscape, leading us either to a situation of tense stability or to a more dramatic, and probably violent, re-ordering of international relations."
While accepting and perhaps welcoming China's economic ascendancy, both of these pieces set great store on the necessity of continuing US military hegemony in the West Pacific as a cast-iron guarantor of regional stability. According to both, this is perceived to be under threat from an increasingly assertive China. Click here
However, what have not been sufficiently addressed is whether China's rapid military modernization and assertiveness in the South China Sea are to a considerable degree the natural consequence of a rising global power wanting and able to defend its strategic sea lanes of communication and territorial integrity. Both objects are understandable from the perspective of safeguarding national security and restoring wounded national pride. In other words, China's military "assertiveness" may be largely defensive.
Nevertheless, while accepting that it's in China's interest to maintain freedom of navigation in these vital sea lanes, the worry is that with growing economic and military clout, China may be able to marginalize or even push US influence away from the Western Pacific in favor of a revived China-centric "tributary system" involuntarily observed by China's neighbors, including US allies.
In this regard, during the above-mentioned interviews, the following outburst by Robert Kagan, renowned author and contributing columnist at the Washington Post, says it all:
"My attitude towards China is, do well economically, but you cannot use your military to expand your power position in the region. Is that fair? No. Is there any justice to that? No. We get the Monroe Doctrine and you don't. That's just the way it is. I'm sorry. But we cannot allow China to use its military power to establish regional hegemony. There's nothing we can do about economic hegemony. That's just a reality. I would say, forget about that, cooperate, open the world to them, and wish them the best. The BRI (Belt and Road Initiative), we are not going to stop it anyway."
Chances are that China may achieve a good measure of economic hegemony in the Western Pacific not through military coercion but through driving regional economic growth while upholding international trade rules.What if, at the same time, China continues to modernize and enhance its defensive military capacities, including fortification of reclaimed physical features in the South China Sea, without inhibiting any maritime traffic? How would US military hegemony alter this power re-balance without a Cold if not a Hot War? As pointed out in the Report, an arms race between the two is already happening in all but name.
From an American perspective, what is at stake is a "Contest for the 21st Century and the Future of American Power", as seen by Thomas J Wright in his latest tome, All Measures Short of War, Yale University Press, 2017.
How to construct a mutually-acceptable relationship between these global rivals is becoming increasingly critical, as Professor Amitai Etzioni of George Washington University, points out in Avoiding War with China - Two Nations, One World, University of Virginia Press, 2017.
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