In The Daily Beast, David Rothkopf argues that the United States’ relationship with China is not a zero-sum conflict. I find Rothkopf’s reasoning naive. Rothkopf’s basic argument is that China is doing nothing wrong in seeking regional power; therefore, it is not a threat to us:
Is there something inherently wrong or dangerous about China seeking to challenge the United States economically, technologically, or politically? Isn’t that what all nations do? Don’t we believe in the inherent superiority of our system? Don’t we believe in the benefits of competition? (I thought that was fundamental to America’s national identity and values.)
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isn’t their desire to have military power consistent with the size of their country, their economy, and their national security interests what we should expect of them? Is that inherently a threat to us?
This relies on the naive idea that only an “evil” country is a threat to us. If China is not doing something “wrong” in seeking to become a regional hegemon, then we have nothing to fear. But throughout history, wars have occurred between countries not because either one was doing something “wrong”, but because their interests were in conflict. All nations seek power, so China challenging us is not wrong and should not be unexpected. But it might be dangerous.
What really bothers us about China’s rise is that they are quite open about the fact that they want to challenge our influence in the world. We want to be No. 1. We don’t like being challenged.
But isn’t it reasonable for China to want such influence? After all, throughout world history until the start of the industrial revolution, China had the world’s largest economy and it is now resuming that role.
Again, China seeking primacy is certainly “reasonable”. But surely, the same argument applies to us. We don’t want to give up our primacy any more than China does. Both the US and China are being reasonable in pursuing power, and it’s not irrational to predict that such pursuit will lead to future conflict.
Why is it such a great threat even though the country has no history of conquest beyond its region in 5,000 years of history and is far from being able or inclined to pose a direct threat of attack to the U.S.?
There is a major difference between “inclined” and “able”. Currently, China’s military is not sufficiently powerful to pose a direct threat. In the future, it may be able to do so. I see no indication that China is disinclined to avoid posing such a threat.
Why is a strong military inherently threatening? This is the subject of John Mearsheimer’s The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. In brief, according to Mearsheimer, states are unable to be certain of each other’s intentions. Hence, in a global arena where there is no world government to control states’ actions (“international anarchy”), states must seek to avoid allowing their rivals the power to destroy them.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t seek to expand our influence, to be more prosperous, to enhance the security and quality of life of all Americans. It just means we need to get over the idea that somehow the U.S.-China relationship is a zero-sum conflict, the way the U.S.-Soviet Union relationship was.
It’s not. Our economies are intertwined. Over 70,000 U.S. companies are active in China. There is not a single major global issue we can resolve without cooperating with China. On many of them, our interests intersect. On some of them, they overlap.
To some degree Rothkopf is right here, but a relationship can be non-zero-sum in some areas (economically and where our interests “intersect” or “overlap” — I’m not sure of the difference) and zero-sum in others (militarily and in soft power). The question is whether the zero-sum aspects will outweigh the non-zero-sum aspects, or vice versa.
Rothkopf conflates the fact that China’s development and desire for economic primacy and regional influence are reasonable with the thesis that China is not a danger to the US. In fact, it is the very reasonableness of China’s desire to challenge the US that makes it an inevitable threat. While it certainly behooves us to maximize the cooperative aspects of our relationship, to deny the competitive and potentially combative aspects is naive and unrealistic.