Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Glossary
Appeasement a diplomatic policy of making political or material concessions to an enemy power in
order to avoid conflict. In simpler terms, to give an enemy something they want to encourage them to
behave in a way you want them to behave.
Containment a military strategy to stop the expansion of an enemy by surrounding them and/or scaring
them into stopping any behavior. Originally in reference to the Cold War, the United States decided to
develop relationships that would surround the Soviet Union.
Engagement the phrase in the topic. This disad wants to say that the aff gives China something they
want.
Hegemony U.S. leadership. When one country dominates the global order. The disad argues that the
U.S. should continue to dominate and provide security guarantees to our allies.
Proliferation The spread of something. Most commonly, nuclear weapons. IN this instance,
allies/friends who dont have nuclear weapons decide to develop them.
1nc
U.S. is shifting away from engagement the Pivot shows we are containing
Mearsheimer 16 PhD., Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor
University of Chicago Co-director, Program on International Security Policy
University of Chicago [John R. Mearsheimer, interviewed by Peter Navarro, March 10, 2016,
Mearsheimer on Strangling China & the Inevitability of War, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peternavarro-and-greg-autry/mearsheimer-on-strangling_b_9417476.html]
As for whether the Hillary Clinton pivot to Asia is simply an old-style containment in a new rhetorical bottle, there is this bit of
history:
Now, in the 1990s, the Clinton administration did pursue engagement. There was little evidence of containment: and you could do
that in the 1990s because China was then weak enough that it didnt matter.
So I believe in the 1990s that the Clinton administration really did believe in engagement and thought that containment was a bad idea and
pursued this policy of engagement.
But were now reaching the point where China is growing economically to the point where its going to have a lot of military
capability, and
people are getting increasingly nervous. So what you see is were beginning to transition from
engagement to containment; and this, of course, is what the pivot to Asia is all about.
Hilary Clinton, who is married to Bill Clinton and pursued engagement in the 1990s, is now the principle proponent of the
pivot to Asia; and she fully understands that it is all about containment.
Of course, whats going to happen here given that we live in the United States is that were going to use liberal rhetoric to disguise our realist
behavior. So we will go to great lengths not to talk in terms of containment even though were engaged in
containment and even though the Chinese know full well that were trying to contain them. But for our own sake and for our public we will
talk in much more liberal terms. So its liberal ideology disguising realist behavior.
could come from familiarity with one another. In the 1930s, the major Western powers all attended each others war games. The US
Marine Corps even took the German World War I fighter ace, Ernst Udet on a ride in a USMC dive bomber. This engagement and
transparency did not make the Nazis nicer, but perhaps gave them some ideas about dive bombing and Blitzkreig.
Even the Soviets and Germans had close ties with joint training, military technology development, and raw material shipments to
Germany.
There was also extensive political and diplomatic interaction. Close economic ties were believed to be a further hedge against conflict breaking
out, and companies such as Ford, IBM, and many others did profitable business in Germany.
The elites believed anything was better than war. Preserving peace, even if sacrificing principles and certain small nations was considered
wise and statesmanlike. People who criticized appeasement policy in the 1930s, most notably Winston Churchill,
Curiously, appeasement (by another name) reappeared even before the end of the war in calls to address Stalins fears and allow him to
dominate Eastern Europe. And throughout the Cold War, in Western academic and government circles it was argued that Soviet behavior was
simply a reaction to fears of Western containment. The appeasers protested the peacetime draft as threatening the Russians. They also pushed for
unilateral nuclear disarmament, and opposed the Pershing missile deployment and the neutron bomb well into the 1980s.
Even President Jimmy Carter, once he overcame his inordinate fear of communism, tried something akin to appeasement as national policy. It
was not until the Soviets invaded Afghanistan that Carter learned his lesson.
It perhaps will take another case of an authoritarian regime rearranging its neighborhood to understand the
and openness especially in the military realm as such openness is perceived as inherently good.
In return, the PRC is expected to change, to show more respect for human rights and international law and to become a
responsible stakeholder in the international community.
We now have several decades of empirical evidence
Nonetheless, we invite the PRC to military exercises and repeat the engagement mantra expecting
that one day things will magically improve. Some argue that letting the PRC see US military power will
dissuade it from challenging us. Perhaps, but we are just as likely to be seen as nave or weak. From the
Chinese perspective, there is no reason to change since they have done very well without transforming and the PRC has never
been stronger. Indeed, the PRC frequently claims that human rights, democracy, and the like are outmoded Western values having nothing to do
with China.
This is also demoralizing our allies, who at some point may wonder if they should cut their own deals
with the PRC.
Some revisionist historians argue that Neville Chamberlains 1930s era appeasement was in fact a wise stratagem to buy time to rearm. This
overlooks that even as late as 1939 when Hitler seized all of Czechoslovakia, the Western democracies still had the military advantage. One can
appease oneself into a corner. And the beneficiary of the appeasement usually strengthens to the point it is too hard
We should constantly stress that China is welcome as a key player in the international order but only
under certain conditions. The US and other democratic nations have not done enough to require China to
adhere to established standards of behavior in exchange for the benefits of joining the global system that
has allowed the PRC to prosper.
Human nature and history are a useful guide to where appeasement (by whatever name) leads. And they also show that
a strong defense and resolutely standing up for ones principles is more likely to preserve peace.
Japanese public and Japan's political leaders are keenly aware that the country's security still
hinges on the United States' dominant military position in East Asia. Some on the far right would like to see Japan develop
the full range of armaments, including nuclear weapons , in a push to regain its autonomy and return the country to the ranks
the conservative mainstream still believes that a strong alliance with the United States
is the best guarantor of Japan's security.
ISLANDS IN THE SUN
Given Japan's pragmatic approach to foreign policy, it should come as no surprise that the country has reacted cautiously to a changing
international environment defined by China's rise. Tokyo has doubled down on its strategy of deepening its alliance with the United States; sought
to strengthen its relations with countries on China's periphery; and pursued closer economic, political, and cultural ties with China itself. The
one development that could unhinge this strategy would be a loss of confidence in the U.S. commitment
to Japan's defense.
It is not difficult to imagine scenarios that would test the U.S.-Japanese alliance; what is difficult to imagine are realistic ones. The exception is
the very real danger that the dispute between China and Japan over the Senkaku Islands (known as the Diaoyu Islands in China), in the East
China Sea, might get out of hand, leading to nationalist outbursts in both countries. Beijing and Tokyo would find this tension difficult to contain,
and political leaders on both sides could seek to exploit it to shore up their own popularity. Depending on how events unfolded, the United States
could well become caught in the middle, torn between its obligation to defend Japan and its opposition to actions, both Chinese and Japanese, that
could increase the dangers of a military clash.
The Japanese government, which took control of the uninhabited islands in 1895, maintains that its sovereignty over them is incontestable; as a
matter of policy, it has refused to acknowledge that there is even a dispute about the matter. The United States, for its part, recognizes the islands
to be under Japanese administrative control but regards the issue of sovereignty as a matter to be resolved through bilateral negotiations between
China and Japan. Article 5 of the U.S.-Japanese security treaty, however, commits the United States to "act to meet the common danger" in the
event of "an armed attack against either Party in the territories under the administration of Japan." Washington, in other words, would be
obligated to support Tokyo in a conflict over the islands -- even though it does not recognize Japanese sovereignty there.
The distinction between sovereignty and administrative control would matter little so long as a conflict over the islands were the result of
aggression on the part of China. But the most recent flare-up was precipitated not by Chinese but by Japanese actions. In April 2012, Tokyo's
nationalist governor, Shintaro Ishihara (who resigned six months later to form a new political party), announced plans to purchase three of the
Senkaku Islands that were privately owned and on lease to the central government. He promised to build a harbor and place personnel on the
islands, moves he knew would provoke China. Well known for his right-wing views and anti-China rhetoric, Ishihara hoped to shake the Japanese
out of what he saw as their dangerous lethargy regarding the threat from China and challenge their lackadaisical attitude about developing the
necessary military power to contain it.
Ishihara never got the islands, but the ploy did work to the extent that it triggered a crisis with China, at great cost to Japan's national interests.
Well aware of the dangers that Ishihara's purchase would have caused, then Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda decided to have the central
government buy the islands itself. Since the government already had full control over the islands, ownership represented no substantive change in
Tokyo's authority over their use. Purchasing them was the way to sustain the status quo, or so Noda hoped to convince China.
But Beijing responded furiously, denouncing Japan's action as the "nationalization of sacred Chinese land." Across China, citizens called for the
boycott of Japanese goods and took to the streets in often-violent demonstrations. Chinese-Japanese relations hit their lowest point since they
were normalized 40 years ago. Noda, to his credit, looked for ways to defuse the crisis and restore calm between the two countries, but the
Chinese would have none of it. Instead, China has ratcheted up its pressure on Japan, sending patrol ships into the waters around the islands
almost every day since the crisis erupted.
The United States needs to do two things with regard to this controversy. First, it must stand firm with its Japanese ally.
Any indication that Washington might hesitate to support Japan in a conflict would cause enormous
consternation in Tokyo. The Japanese right would have a field day, exclaiming that the country's reliance on the United
States for its security had left it unable to defend its interests. The Obama administration has wisely reiterated Washington's
position that the islands fall within the territory administered by Tokyo and has reassured the Japanese -- and warned the Chinese -- of its
possibility of
inadvertent nuclear war or escalation to nuclear from conventional war was very real during the Cold War.
This legacy has carried forward into the post-Cold War and twenty-first century world . The term inadvertent means
something other than accidental war, such as the possibility of a test misfire or other technology failure that leads to a war. Inadvertent nuclear war is
the result of an unforeseen combination of human and technical factors , pulling both sides in a nuclear crisis over the brink
despite their shared interest in avoiding war. The likelihood of inadvertent nuclear war between two states is based on their political intentions, military capabilities,
approaches to crisis management, the personalities of leaders, standard operating procedures for the management of nuclear forces during peacetime and in crisis, and
other variables.16 A decision for nuclear preemption is so irrevocable that leaders will want as much intelligence as possible relative to the plans and actions of their
opponent. Unfortunately, inside
dope on the opponents political thinking and military planning may be hard to
come by, under the exigent pressures of crisis. Therefore, states may infer the other sides intentions from the
disposition of its forces, from the behavior of its command, control, communications and intelligence
systems, or from guesswork based on past experience . For example: during Able Archer 83, a NATO command and communications
exercise testing procedures for the release of alliance nuclear weapons in November 1983, there was an apparent mind set among some Soviet intelligence officials
that led them to conclude (temporarily) that the exercise might be the real thing: an actual set of preparatory moves for NATO nuclear release and a possible first
strike against Soviet forces and installations in Europe.17 The pessimistic Soviet interpretations of Able Archer were not universally shared among their intelligence
officers, but some of the alarmism arose from Soviet military doctrine that foresaw the conversion of an exercise simulating an attack into a real attack as one possible
path to war.18 Another example of the difficulty of reading the other sides intentions during a crisis occurred during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. A second letter
from Khrushchev to Kennedy on October 27, more demanding in its terms for settlement compared to an earlier letter the previous day, caused some ExComm
deliberators to wonder whether Khrushchev had been overruled by a hostile faction of the Soviet Presidium. Robert Kennedy noted that The change in the language
and tenor of the letters from Khrushchev indicated confusion within the Soviet Union, but there was confusion among us as well.19 Fortunately, in both the NATO
Able Archer exercise and in the Cuban crisis, the most pessimistic assumptions were proved incorrect before leaders could act on them. A post-Cold War example
of a scenario for inadvertent nuclear war occurred in January 1995 during the launch of a Norwegian scientific rocket for the purpose of studying the Aurora borealis.
The initial phase of the rockets trajectory resembled that of a ballistic missile launched from a nuclear submarine and possibly headed for Russian territory. Russian
early warning systems detected the launch and passed the information to military headquarters. Russian President Boris Yeltsin, the defense minister and the chief of
the Russian general staff were connected via their emergency communication network, and the Russian President for the first time opened his secure briefcase or
football with nuclear codes for launch authorization. The crisis passed when the rocket trajectory eventually veered away from any possible threat to Russia. The
operational misinterpretation of the Norwegian rocket launch was made possible by an earlier bureaucratic mistake. Norwegian officials had notified the Russian
foreign ministry well in advance of the launch date that the rocket test was scheduled and of its mission. For unknown reasons, the Russian foreign ministry failed to
pass that information to the defense ministry or other military headquarters in time to avoid confusion. The Future: Issues of Concern If
the possibility
existed of a mistaken preemption during and immediately after the Cold War, between the experienced
nuclear forces and command systems of America and Russia, then it may be a matter of even more
concern with regard to states with newer and more opaque forces and command systems . In addition, the
Americans and Soviets (and then Russians) had a great deal of experience getting to know one anothers military
operational proclivities and doctrinal idiosyncrasies: including those that might influence the decision for or against war. Another consideration,
relative to nuclear stability in the present century, is that the Americans and their NATO allies shared with the Soviets and Russians a commonality of culture and
historical experience. Future
threats to American or Russian security from weapons of mass destruction may be presented by states or nonstate actors motivated by cultural and social predispositions not easily understood by those in the West
nor subject to favorable manipulation during a crisis. The spread of nuclear weapons in Asia (including those
parts of the Middle East with geostrategic proximity or reach into Asia) presents a complicated mosaic of possibilities in this regard .
States with nuclear forces of variable force structure, operational experience, and command-control systems will
be thrown into a matrix of complex political, social and cultural cross-currents contributory to the
possibility of war. In addition to the existing nuclear powers in Asia, others may seek nuclear weapons if they feel
threatened by regional rivals or hostile alliances. Containment of nuclear proliferation in Asia is a desirable political objective for all of the obvious reasons.
Nevertheless, the present century is unlikely to see the nuclear hesitancy or risk aversion that marked the Cold
War: in part, because the military and political discipline imposed by the Cold War superpowers no longer exists, but also because states in Asia have
new aspirations for regional or global respect. 20 The spread of ballistic missiles and other nuclear capable delivery systems in Asia, or
in the Middle East with reach into Asia, is especially dangerous because plausible adversaries live close together and are already
engaged in ongoing disputes about territory or other issues. The Cold War Americans and Soviets required missiles and airborne
delivery systems of intercontinental range to strike at one anothers vitals. But short range ballistic missiles or fighter-bombers suffice for India and Pakistan to launch
attacks at one another with potentially strategic effects. China shares borders with Russia, North Korea, India and Pakistan; Russia, with China and North Korea;
India, with Pakistan and China; Pakistan, with India and China; and so on. The
victims of nuclear attack in Asia may also have first strike vulnerable forces and
command-control systems that increase decision pressures for rapid, and possibly mistaken, retaliation .
This potpourri of possibilities challenges conventional wisdom about nuclear deterrence and proliferation
on the part of policy makers and academic theorists. For policy makers in the United States and NATO, spreading nuclear and other weapons of mass
destruction in Asia could profoundly shift the geopolitics of mass destruction from a European center of gravity (in the twentieth
century) to an Asian and/or Middle Eastern center of gravity (in the present century).21 This would profoundly shake up prognostications
to the effect that wars of mass destruction are now pass , on account of the emergence of the Revolution in Military Affairs and its
encouragement of information-based warfare.22 Together with this, there has emerged the argument that large scale war between states or coalitions of states, as
opposed to varieties of unconventional warfare and failed states, are exceptional and potentially obsolete.23 The spread of WMD and ballistic missiles in Asia could
overturn these expectations for the obsolescence or marginalization of major interstate warfare.
Uniqueness
Containing Now
Pivot marks transition to containment strategy
Krepinevich, PhD Harvard, 15
(Andrew F, currently serves as President of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments,
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2015-02-16/how-deter-china March/April)
In the U.S. military, at least, the pivot to Asia has begun. By 2020, the navy
Abandoning Engagement
Engagement era coming to an end- containment now
Shambaugh, PhD Michigan, 15
(David, professor of political science and international affairs at the George Washington University in
Washington DC,[1] as well as a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution
http://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1819980/fundamental-shift-china-and-us-arenow-engaged-all-out?page=all , 6-12)
The relationship between the United States and China has rightly been described as the most important
relationship in world affairs. It is also the most complex and fraught one. These two titans are the world's two leading powers and are
interconnected in numerous ways bilaterally, regionally, and globally. It is therefore of vital importance to understand the
dynamics that underlie and drive this relationship at present, which are shifting. While
Washington and Beijing cooperate where they can, there has also been steadily rising competition in the relationship . This
balance has now shifted, with competition being the dominant factor. There are several reasons
for it - but one is that security now trumps economics in the relationship . The competition
is not only strategic competition, it is actually comprehensive competition: commercial,
ideological, political, diplomatic, technological , even in the academic world where
China has banned a number of American scholars and is beginning to bring pressure to bear on university
joint ventures in China. Mutual distrust is pervasive in both governments, and is also evident at the
popular level. The last Pew global attitudes data on this, in 2013, found distrust rising in both countries. Roughly two-thirds of
both publics view US-China relations as "competitive" and "untrustworthy" - a significant change since 2010 when a
majority of people in both nations still had positive views of the other. One senses that the sands are fundamentally
shifting in the relationship. Viewed from Washington, it is increasingly difficult to find a
positive narrative and trajectory into the future . The "engagement coalition" is crumbling
and a "competition coalition" is rising. In my view, the relationship has been fundamentally troubled for many
years and has failed to find extensive common ground to forge a real and enduring partnership. The "glue" that seems to keep it
together is the fear of it falling apart. But that is far from a solid basis for an enduring partnership between
the world's two leading powers.
(Joshua, assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin's Lyndon Baines Johnson School of
Public Affairs and senior fellow for China studies at the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington,
DC, https://www.carnegiecouncil.org/publications/articles_papers_reports/756 1-21)
Now, however, a growing contingent in Washington and beyond is arguing that extensive U.S. engagement has
failed to prevent China from threatening other countries. One longtime proponent
of engagement with China, David M. Lampton, gave a speech in May 2015 entitled "A Tipping Point in U.S.-China Relations is
Upon Us," in which he noted that, despite the remarkable "policy continuity" of "constructive engagement "
through eight U.S. and five Chinese administrations, "today important components of the American policy elite
increasingly are coming to see China as a threat." 11 Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd
summarized this view: Beijing's long-term policy is aimed at pushing the U.S. out of Asia altogether and
establishing a Chinese sphere of influence spanning the region.12 Similarly, in June, former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson
said on PBS Newshour: "The longstanding consensus that China's rise is good for the U.S. is beginning to break down.13 In response to these
misgivings about Beijing's intentions, there have been calls for Washington to actively shape China's strategic
choices by enhancing U.S. military capabilities and strengthening alliances to counterbalance against its
growing strength. Recent publications reflect increasing apprehension; most argue that policymakers must
avoid an enduring "structural problem" in international relations that causes
rising powers to become aggressive. Some experts, like Princeton's Aaron Friedberg, contend
that the U.S. should "maintain a margin of military advantage sufficient to deter attempts at coercion or
aggression.14 Thomas Christensen, former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asia, noted in June,
that there are two primary questions for U.S. security vis--vis China: How to dissuade China from using force in East Asia? How can we get
China to actively contribute to stabilizing global governance? These initiatives, Christensen noted, are based on the assumption that
"whenever a country becomes a rising power, tensions with neighbors arise. 15 Christensen agrees with Bader that the
U.S.' "strategic goal" vis--vis China is to "shape Beijing's choices so as to channel China's nationalist ambitions into cooperation rather than
coercion." 16 To elicit Beijing's participation U.S. policymakers should persuade China that bullying its
neighbors will backfire, while proactive cooperation with those neighbors and the world's other great
powers will accelerate China's return to great power status .17 The U.S. should build a robust
deterrence architecture to counter-balance China's rise and push Beijing
towards meaningful engagement, Christensen argues. The U.S. and its allies "need to
maintain sufficient power and resolve in East Asia to deter Beijing from choosing a path of coercion or
aggression.18 "Chinese anxiety about a U.S. containment effort could carry
some benefits for the United States: the potential for encirclement may
encourage Chinese strategists to become more accommodating," resulting
in more "moderate policies." Both engagement supporters and deterrence supporters agree that the U.S. should change
China's strategic calculus in ways that increase the benefits of cooperation and the costs of aggression; where they disagree is on how to achieve
this.
transcend the United States and Chinas other Asian rivals, to replace U.S. primacy in
Asia writ large. For China, which is simultaneously an ancient civilization and a modern polity, grand strategic
objectives are not simply about desirable rank orderings in international politics but rather about
fundamental conceptions of order.
that Chinas grand strategy toward the United States will evolve in a wayat least in the next ten years
that accepts American power and influence as linchpins of Asian peace and security, rather than seeks to
systematically diminish them. Thus, the central question concerning the future of Asia is whether the
United States will have the political will; the geoeconomic, military, and diplomatic capabilities; and,
crucially, the right grand strategy to deal with China to protect vital U.S. national interests .(39)
argue that China has no grand strategy. Although there may be those in Beijing who disagree with Chinas current strategic approach,
its dominating elements are not a mystery. Chinese officials insistently argue that the U.S. alliance system
in Asia is a product of the Cold War and should be dismantled; that the United States Asian allies and
friends should loosen their U.S. ties and that failure to do so will inevitably produce a negative PRC
reaction; that U.S. efforts to maintain its current presence and power in Asia are dimensions of an
American attempt to contain China and therefore must be condemned and resisted ; that U.S. military power
projection in the region is dangerous and should be reduced (even as the PLA continues to build up its military capabilities with the clear
objective of reducing U.S. military options in the context of a U.S.-China confrontation); and that the U.S. economic model is fundamentally
exploitative and should have no application in Asia. To not take seriously official Chinese
China Rise goes neg- they will never accepts bounds of engagement
Friedberg, PhD Harvard, 15
(Aaron L, Prof of Politics and international affairs @Princeton, The Debate Over US China
Strategy Survival | vol. 57 no. 3 | JuneJuly 2015 | pp. 89110)
The belief in Beijing that, whatever its current challenges, Chinas relative power
continental power, leaving control of the maritime domain to the United States, also appears increasingly
implausible and at odds with the facts. Even if China succeeds in marching West, building transport and communication links
through Central and South Asia, it will continue to be heavily reliant on seaborne imports of energy, food and raw materials.46 The presence of
US forces and bases around Chinas maritime periphery, and its leadership of a maritime coalition that extends from Northeast Asia into the
Indian Ocean, will likely be perceived as posing an even greater threat in the future than it does today. (104-5)
China has a plan to overtake the US- its official doctrine if unwritten
Pillsbury, PhD, 15
(Michael, director of the Hudson Institutes Center for Chinese Strategy,
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-hundred-year-marathon-excerpt-2015-2 2-9)
In the late 1990s, during the Clinton administration, I was tasked by the Department of Defense and the CIA to
conduct an unprecedented examination of Chinas capacity to deceive the United States and its actions to date
along those lines. Over time, I discovered proposals by Chinese hawks (ying pai) to the Chinese leadership to mislead and
manipulate American policymakers to obtain intelligence and military, technological, and economic
assistance. I learned that these hawks had been advising Chinese leaders, beginning with Mao Zedong, to avenge a
century of humiliation and aspired to replace the United States as the economic, military, and political leader
of the world by the year 2049 (the one hundredth anniversary of the Communist Revolution). This plan became known as
the Hundred-Year Marathon. It is a plan that has been implemented by the Communist Party leadership from the beginning of its
relationship with the United States. When I presented my findings on the Chinese hawks recommendations about Chinas ambitions
and deception strategy, many U.S. intelligence analysts and officials greeted them initially with disbelief. Chinese
leaders routinely reassure other nations that China will never become a hegemon. In other words, China will be the most powerful nation, but
not dominate anyone or try to change anything. The strength of the Hundred-Year Marathon, however, is that it
operates through stealth. To borrow from the movie Fight Club, the first rule of the Marathon is that you
do not talk about the Marathon. Indeed, there is almost certainly no single master plan locked away in a vault in Beijing that outlines
the Marathon in detail. The Marathon is so well known to Chinas leaders that there is no need to risk exposure by writing it down. But the
Chinese are beginning to talk about the notion more openly perhaps because they realize it may
already be too late for America to keep pace. I observed a shift in Chinese attitudes during three visits to
the country in 2012, 2013, and 2014. As was my usual custom, I met with scholars at the countrys major think tanks,
whom Id come to know well over decades. I directly asked them about a Chinese-led world order a term that only a
few years earlier they would have dismissed, or at least would not have dared to say aloud. However, this time many said openly that
the new order, or rejuvenation, is coming, even faster than anticipated . When the U.S. economy was battered during the
global financial crisis of 2008, the Chinese believed Americas long-anticipated and unrecoverable decline was beginning. I was told by
the same people who had long assured me of Chinas interest in only a modest leadership role within an
emerging multipolar world that the Communist Party is realizing its long-term goal of restoring China
to its proper place in the world. In effect, they were telling me that they had deceived me and the American government. With
perhaps a hint of understated pride, they were revealing the most
systematic, significant, and dangerous intelligence failure in American
history. And because we have no idea the Marathon is even under way,
America is losing.
have been riveted by headlines about Islamic State terrorist attacks across the globe. From
a far greater threat to global stability is brewing in the
Brussels to Lahore, it seems ISIS is the biggest thing going on overseas. Yet
South China Sea, where China has been building military bases on man-made islands and asserting maritime rights to some of the busiest global trade routes.
Meanwhile, here in the United States, Chinese intelligence services have deployed an ever-widening network
of spies. Although not directly connected, both of these developments are manifestations of Chinas new, expansionist
foreign policy in the Pacific. If China and the United States dont alter their trajectory, we could be slowwalking into another cold waror setting the stage for a hot one.Naval Officer Charged With Espionage News
broke over the weekend that a Taiwan-born Navy officer, Lt. Cmdr. Edward C. Lin, has been charged with passing military secrets to China. On
its own, the discovery of a Chinese human intelligence operation in the United States is perhaps not all that remarkable, since by some estimates
there are scores of Chinese spies in America, most of them engaged in corporate espionage. If China and the U.S. dont alter their trajectory, we
could be slow-walking into another cold war. But Lins case is different because he had access to sensitive military intelligence. Lin, who became
a naturalized citizen in 2008 and speaks fluent Mandarin, served as a signals intelligence specialist for naval spy planes. Signals intelligence is
how the U.S. military identifies the whereabouts of foreign military units, like submarines, and the methodology behind this work ranks among
the U.S. armed forces most closely guarded secrets. Although corporate spying by the Chinese might be common, the last time an active-duty
member of the Navy was caught spying was in 1985, when John Walker, a Navy officer and submariner, was caught passing secrets to the Soviet
Union as part of an elaborate spy ring that operated for 18 years. That was during the Cold War, when spying between America and the Soviet
Union was an open secret. The incident with Lin is the latest sign that a cold war with China could be on the horizon, especially as evidence
mounts that China might be willing to risk a military conflict with Americas allies in Asia, and perhaps with America itself. Chinese Spies Are
Everywhere News of Lins alleged espionage comes on the heels of recent remarks by the former head of the House Intelligence Committee that
there are more foreign spies operating the United States than at any point in our history. In a recent speech at the Heritage Foundation, former
Rep. Mike Rogers said foreign agents in the United States outnumber those of any previous period, including the Cold War. Theyre stealing
everything. If its not bolted down, its gone, Rogers said. And if its bolted down, give them about an hourtheyll figure out how to get that,
too. There are more foreign spies operating the U.S. than at any point in our history. In his remarks, Rogers noted the difference between
Russian and Chinese operatives. The former tend to be trained professionals, he said, while the latter are often recruits with a very specific goal
of stealing a very specific piece of intellectual property, making them harder to detectand also more numerous. Rogers isnt the first to raise
concerns about espionage in the United States. In 2012, former top CIA covert officer Hank Crumpton told CBS News there are more spies in
America than during the peak of the Cold War. Crumpton, who ran counterintelligence inside the U.S. as chief of the CIAs National Resources
Division and served as deputy director of the CIAs Counter-Terrorism Center, claimed major world powers, particularly China, have very
sophisticated intelligence operations, very aggressive operations against the U.S. Chinas Military Outposts in the South China Sea But
espionage is just one aspect of Chinas broader strategy to establish hegemony in the Pacific. A more visible sign of this strategy is the
construction of artificial islands in the South China Sea on a string of disputed reefs and islets called the Spratley Islands. The man-made islands,
which are more than 500 hundred miles from mainland China and now feature military-length runways and radar stations, are the main source of
growing tension between China and its neighbors. Chinas man-made islands in the South China Sea now feature military-length runways and
radar stations. Over the past year, ongoing construction of the islands has prompted U.S. freedom-of-navigation patrols, designed to challenge
Chinas claim to them. Last month, the United States sent a carrier strike group, and the Navy has said its planning a third patrol near the
artificial islands this month. In an effort to mollify anxious Pacific allies, weve also increased military aide to the Philippines and struck an
agreement that would allow the Pentagon to use some military bases there to deploy U.S. troops for the first time in decades. This issue isnt
going away. At a recent meeting of the G7, foreign ministers expressed concerns about territorial disputes in the East and South China Seas.
Although not named outright, Chinas artificial islands were clearly what the foreign ministers were referring to in a joint statement at the end of
a meeting held in Hiroshima, Japan. The statement expressed strong opposition to any intimidating, coercive or provocative unilateral actions
that could alter the status quo and increase tensions, and urged states to refrain from land reclamations, including large scale ones, and
building out outposts. Why such a strong statement? More than half of the worlds merchant fleet tonnage passes through the choke points
surrounding the South China Sea. Robert Kaplan calls it the throat of the Western Pacific and Indian oceansthe mass of connective economic
tissue where global sea routes coalesce.I spoke with Dr. Arthur Waldron, a professor of international relations at the University of
Pennsylvania and a member of the highly classified Tilelli Commission, which evaluated the China
operations of the CIA from 2000 to 2001. He told me Chinas foreign policy shifted sharply in
2008. It is now aggressive and expansionist, he said, and if it doesnt change, its
going to lead to war. Waldron believes our inability to respond to Chinas new posture has been a long time in the making.
Under President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, it was thought that the United States would partner
with China as a strategic ally against the Soviet Union. For decades, we treated China as our most important Asian partner. But in recent
years, the U.S. intelligence community has been astonished at the kind of aggressive
intelligence operations China has launched at the United States, the vast number of people
involved, and the sensitive targets they have chosen. We havent figured out how to react, Waldron said. One reason is that
the administration is completely divided between people who are still holding the torch for a partnership and
people who have had the scales fall from their eyes, and have realized that what we have now
is something else. We cant change their policy, but we can change ours.
public service, this time as head of Sasakawa Peace Foundation USA (SPF). The organization has produced a comprehensive report
assessing Chinas evolving strategic posture and presenting alternative scenarios for the U.S.-Japan alliance response to the
ensuing threats and opportunities. While the paper is dispassionate and clear-eyed about the risks and openings
presented by China's rise, the implications are ominous. The paper posits four possible
outcomes for a future China: a powerful and benevolent state; a powerful and aggressive state; a weak and inward-looking state, or a
weak and aggressive state. The study offers a caveat, however: It is dangerous to base an Alliance strategy on a single future for the China of
2030 . . . [It] . . . will not fall neatly into any of the four alternatives . . . The most likely scenario is elements of different futures. Theoretical
neatness aside, the report also states that "current trends project a somewhat more powerful
and aggressive China than the United States and Japan have dealt with in the past." Indeed, on its own
terms the report already identifies China's present course as increasingly
threatening. We don't need another ten to fifteen years to know from the preponderance of evidence
that we already face the worst-case scenario: a powerful and aggressive China
that is on course to become even more powerful and more aggressive . The
even more powerful nature of this "future" China, the report prognosticates, would consist of a predominantly market-based economy with
growth of five to seven percent; increased restrictions on foreign businesses in China; strongly mercantilist policies overseas; and high defense
spending approaching that of the United States. Most of these characteristics are already true of today's China or are rapidly becoming the status
quo. As for the aggressive part of the picture, this "future China" would use its "economic and military advantage . . . to
support its current core interestsprimacy of the CCP, reunification with Taiwan, secure administration
of Tibet and Xinjiang, and success in pursuing its claims in the East and South China Seas" again, all of
which China is now doing. (An additional area would be expansionist claims vis a vis India and the Indian Ocean which
China is not yet pursuing vigorously.) Support for the near-certainty of an increasingly powerful and aggressive China can also be found in other
sections of the text. For example, Xi Jinping is said to see his new model of great power relations as the key to a
stable U.S.-China relationship. The report offers two alternatives to understand Beijings calculus for achieving this stability. In a
best-case scenario, the Chinese seek to ensure that competitive elements in the U.S.-China relationship remain firmly under control roughly
analogous to the period of U.S.-Soviet dtente during the Cold War. During that earlier period of dtente, the Soviet Union cracked down on
internal dissent, conducted an increasingly interventionist foreign policy in Latin America and Africa, and invaded Afghanistanhardly a posture
the West would want China to emulate. Additionally, there is the report's less benign assessment of China's new model. China is using
the framework of great power relations to seek U.S. acquiescence to Chinas definition of core interests ,
which include maintaining Chinas political system, territorial claims, and way of shaping and applying international rules and regimes. In other
words, the United States would accept Chinas regional, and quite possibly
global hegemony. Under both the best case and less benign
scenarios, the U.S. response must be either capitulation or confrontation.
in a single breath, saying, China is a big country, and other countries are small countries, and that is just
a fact. Consider Beijings recent bullying in the South China Sea. In March 2014, Chinese coast guard boats blocked the Philippines from
accessing its outposts on the Spratly Islands. Two months later, China moved an oil rig into Vietnams exclusive economic zone, clashing with
Vietnamese fishing boats. The moves echoed earlier incidents in the East China Sea. In September 2010, as punishment for detaining a Chinese
fishing boat captain who had rammed two Japanese coast guard vessels, China temporarily cut off its exports to Japan of rare-earth elements,
which are essential for manufacturing cell phones and computers. And in November 2013, China unilaterally declared an air defense
identification zone, subject to its own air traffic regulations, over the disputed Senkaku Islands and other areas of the East China Sea, warning
that it would take military action against aircraft that refused to comply. Some have suggested that as its military grows
stronger and its leaders feel more secure, China will moderate such behavior. But the opposite
seems far more likely. Indeed, Beijings provocations have coincided with the dramatic growth of
its military muscle. China is now investing in a number of new capabilities that pose a direct challenge to regional stability. For example,
Chinas Peoples Liberation Army is bolstering its so-called anti-access/area-denial capabilities, which aim to prevent other militaries from
occupying or crossing vast stretches of territory, with the express goal of making the western Pacific a no-go zone for the U.S. military. That
includes developing the means to target the Pentagons command-and-control systems, which rely heavily on satellites and the Internet to
coordinate operations and logistics. The PLA has made substantial progress on this front in recent years, testing an antisatellite missile, using
lasers to blind U.S. satellites, and waging sophisticated cyberattacks on U.S. defense networks. China is also enhancing its capacity
to target critical U.S. military assets and limit the U.S. Navys ability to maneuver in international waters.
The PLA already has conventional ballistic and cruise missiles that can strike major U.S. facilities in the region, such as the Kadena Air Base, in
Okinawa, Japan, and is developing stealth combat aircraft capable of striking many targets along the first island chain. To detect and target naval
vessels at greater distances, the PLA has deployed powerful radars and reconnaissance satellites, along with unmanned aerial vehicles that can
conduct long-range scouting missions. And to stalk U.S. aircraft carriers, as well as the surface warships that protect them, the Chinese navy is
acquiring submarines armed with advanced torpedoes and high-speed cruise missiles designed to strike ships at long distances. Beijings
actions cannot be explained away as a response to a U.S. arms buildup. For the last decade, Washington
has focused its energy and resources primarily on supporting its ground troops in Afghanistan and Iraq .
The U.S. defense budget, which until recently stood at above four percent of the countrys GDP, is projected to decline to less
than three percent by the end of the decade. Simply put, the Pentagon is shedding military
capabilities while the PLA is amassing them. Yet if the past is prologue, China will not seek to resolve
its expansionist aims through overt aggression. Consistent with its strategic culture, it wants to slowly but inexorably shift the regional military
balance in its favor, leaving the rest of the region with little choice but to submit to Chinese coercion. For the most part, Chinas maritime
neighbors are convinced that diplomatic and economic engagement will do little to alter this basic fact.
Several of them, including Japan, the Philippines, and Vietnam, are increasingly focusing their militaries
on the task of resisting Chinese ambitions. They know full well, however, that individual action
will be insufficient to prevent Beijing from carrying its vision forward. Only
with U.S. material support can they form a collective front that deters
China from acts of aggression or coercion.
Conflict Coming
Conflict inevitable as China pursues regional hegemony
Mearsheimer, PhD, 16
(John, R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor University of Chicago Co-director, Program
on International Security Policy University of Chicago, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-navarroand-greg-autry/mearsheimer-on-strangling_b_9417476.html 3-10)
So one of the really interesting questions here is what
South China Sea and the East China Sea. I wouldnt be surprised if you had a crisis on the Korean peninsula that
threatened to bring the United States and China into the fray. That would be a very dangerous situation. So I think, in addition to arms races,
youll have crises. And then, of course, youll have the ever-present danger that those crises will escalate to wars. And
given the geography of Asia, it is possibly that you could have a war between the United States and
China. Just to give you one example: If a conflict were to break out between Japan and China over the Diaoyu or
Senkaku Islands, the United States would almost certainly come in on the side of Japan; and its possible to imagine
shooting starting in that situation because youre talking about a war that would be fought at sea, and where there would be no need to use nuclear
weapons. This is not like a war on the central front during the Cold War where the United States and the Soviet Union, were they to fight, would
end up fighting World War III with nuclear weapons; and because that possible scenario was so horrific, it was extremely unlikely. Were talking
about fighting a war over a series of rocks out in the East China Sea. Its easy to imagine such a war starting. Its easy to imagine North Korea
collapsing and a conflict breaking out between North and South Korea that pulls the United States and the Chinese in. Its easy to imagine
a war being fought over Taiwan and the United States coming in on the side of Taiwan, presenting a situation
where the United States and China are fighting each other. Where the Chinese have gone wrong, in my opinion, is they
have overreacted in almost every case; and, as a consequence, they have scared their neighbors, and they
have scared the United States. The Chinese argue that its imperative in these crises to lay down markers and
to make it clear where China stands on the conflict or the dispute in question; and I understand that, but they do it in
ways that seem very aggressive in tone and or aggressive in nature, and they end up scaring
people. And thats not smart. Now, some people might say, a lot of countries have pursued hegemony in the past and they have ended up
destroying themselves. Look at what happened to imperial Germany, look at what happened to imperial Japan, look at what happened to Nazi
Germany. Look at what happened to the Athenians. Now, theres no question that, in the past, countries have pursued hegemony and have ended
up getting destroyed in the process. What subsequent countries do, looking back, is say to themselves: Were going to be much smarter the next
time. Were going to pull it off. Were going to be like the United States. Just take China for example. The Chinese understand full
well what happened to Imperial Germany, what happened to the Soviet Union; and the Chinese do not
want to end up committing suicide. So what the Chinese are doing is thinking about how to maximize
their power in smart and sophisticated ways. So my argument would be that, given the tragedy
of great power politics, they will pursue regional hegemony. They will try to push the Americans out of
Asia, they will try to dominate Asia, and they will try to do it smartly. Whether theyre successful or not is
another matter.
the United States back towards the United States. And the first step would be to push them
beyond the First Island Chain, which would allow them to control all of the waters in between that First
Island Chain and the Chinese mainland. And then, of course, if they push the Americans out beyond the
Second Island Chain, theyd control most of the West Pacific. Theyd control the waters off their
coastline.
Links
regime has invested political capital in cultivating anti-foreign nationalism as a basis for the Partys
legitimacy narrative, and this nationalism has indeed become a potent force. As another part of its effort to develop a post-Marxist ideology
to sustain one-party rule, the Chinese Party-State has also been developing a discourse of quasi-Confucian domestic politics and international
relations doctrine.
Together, these two themes of the modern CCP legitimacy narrative call it Confucio-nationalism, if you will have an impact upon
Chinese policy. They have
helped make China more moralistically confrontational in its foreign relations and
more inclined to press its neighbors into patterns of deference to Beijing than at any other point since the era of
reform and opening took off under Deng Xiaoping more than three decades ago. This just isnt a pre-Party-Congress pose, in other words,
but in fact an important part of the new normal in 21st-Century China. Though adopted, in the first instance, for
domestic political reasons tied to the Partys desire to cling to power, these themes essentially demand confrontational
foreign postures and efforts to nudge East Asia, at the very least, into more Sinocentric forms of interstate order. Significantly,
moreover, Beijing today feels freer to act upon such thinking than at any time since the death of Mao Zedong.
Let me explain a little more about what I think has happened. After Tiananmen, Deng is said to have articulated a pithy phrase about the
importance of biding ones time and hiding ones capabilities, which encapsulated important conclusions about Chinas interest in strategic
caution. This did not amount to any relinquishment of the dream of national rejuvenation and return that so many Chinese have shared since
the Qing Dynasty was first humbled by Western power in the 19th Century, but it was a clear policy of tactical postponement of the kind of selfassertion implied by the countrys destined return. China, it was said, needed breathing space in which to build up its strength, and to this end
should carefully keep a low profile and adopt a relatively non-provocative posture.
This approach of Dengist time-biding, which some scholars have referred to as Taoist Nationalism, became the foundation of Chinas foreign
relations for many years. As Chinas strength and confidence have grown in the international arena, however
and as the CCP has invested more and more political capital in Sino-nationalist legitimacy strategies that
encourage both revanchiste posturing against an outside world felt to have humiliated China and quasi-Confucian notions of the desirability of
a Sinocentric global order such time-biding has come increasingly under pressure.
A dynamic that I think has been particularly important recently, however and which is probably
a major factor behind Chinas recent moves to escalate tensions in the SCS and the
ECS is Beijings perception that America is enfeebled, weary of foreign
commitments, and in a precipitous decline.
Why is that? Taoist Nationalism based its strategic logic on two main assumptions. First, it was felt that in order to gain the strength necessary
to effect its return to glory, China needed to learn modernity from the West, particularly from the iconic modern state and the most powerful of
the Western polities: the United States. This required congenial engagement in which China could engage in export-driven growth, acquire
technology and modern know-how from the West, and have the breathing space necessary for its development. Second, it was recognized that the
outside world and the Americans in particular were still powerful enough to be able to impose huge costs on the PRC if sufficiently threatened or
provoked. Accordingly, great care should be taken not to provoke them, at least until China was strong enough to handle the consequences. The
strategic caution of Taoist Nationalism thus rested upon the presumed great benefits of friendly engagement and high costs of confrontation.
To my eye, however, this balance was destabilized by the U.S. financial crisis and our present indebtedness and ineffective political leadership.
In Chinese eyes, I think we no longer appear an attractive teacher or model of
confrontational
sentiments are gradually coming to predominate. Even as the CCP regime has staked its political legitimacy
on anti-foreign nationalism and increasingly Sinocentric pretensions of global return, in other words, the
confrontational postures encouraged by such thinking have seemed more feasible than ever.
To my eye, there is little chance in the near term of conclusively resolving the disputes in question. One could argue all day about the relative
legal merits of the various competing claims and lots of people do but whatever their merits, I think it is unlikely that well see the issues
resolved any time soon. It is thus the challenge of diplomacy and statesmanship to defer the issue peacefully
and manage the situation so as to keep things from getting out of hand .
strategic caution is losing ground in Beijing because China feels it now has less to gain from congenial
engagement and less to lose from confrontation.
Accomodations
Accommodation leads to revisionism and breaks down assurances
Jackson 15 August 6 [Van Jackson, Ph.D., is an associate professor at the Asia-Pacific Center for
Security Studies and an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. He is the author
of the forthcoming book Rival Reputations: Coercion and Credibility in US-North Korea Relations] The
Myth of a US-China Grand Bargain Accommodating China wont produce peace and stability in the AsiaPacific. http://thediplomat.com/2015/08/the-myth-of-a-us-china-grand-bargain/
A number of scholars have tried to advance the well-intentioned proposal that U.S. concessions to Chinas many
concerns will somehow facilitate a peaceful order in Asia . While I agree with the sentiment and recognize that there are areas of
international life where Sino-U.S. cooperation is essential, the idea that U.S. accommodation of China will produce a peaceful
and stable order in Asia isnt just unrealistic; its irresponsible.
Though it wasnt the first, Hugh Whites China Choice was an early and pointed call for the United States to form a G-2 with China in which the two countries
would work together to set the terms of the regional order, requiring that the United States accommodate the demands of a rising China. Jim Steinbergs and Michael
OHanlons Strategic Reassurance and Resolve reiterates many of Whites points, but with better theoretical grounding. Lyle Goldsteins Meeting China Halfway
argues far more persuasively than many in this lineage, and some of his specific recommendations merit serious considerationnot least because they would incur no
great cost to try. But there
are equally serious reasons to doubt the transformative ambitions attached to U.S.
concessions.
The latest salvo in this America must accommodate China literature hails from an accomplished political scientist at George Washington University, Charles Glaser,
writing in the most recent issue of International Security. Glaser makes the sweeping and somewhat unhelpful claim that military competition is risky and therefore
undesirable. As an alternative he suggests that if only the United States would abandon commitments to Taiwan, China would be willing to resolve its territorial
disputes in the East and South China Sea, thereby sidestepping military competition.
Prior to around 2008, proposals for U.S. accommodation of a rising China made much more sense , or at least
could be taken more seriously. But times have changed. Chinas ambitions have changed. And so has its foreign policy behavior. These contextual
changes matter for whether and when accommodation can have the desired effect. More to the point though, there are a number of problems with the grand bargain
line of argumentation.
First, any
proposal for a Sino-U.S. solution to regional problems is by definition taking a great power view
of Asia that marginalizes the agency and strategic relevance of U.S. allies and the regions middle powers .
In the brief period (five to ten years ago) when a G-2 concept was taken semi-seriously in Washington, alliesespecially South Korea and Japanchafed. The
regions middle powers would be unlikely to simply follow the joint dictates of China and the United States without being part of it, and attempting a G-2 could
ironically create a more fragmented order as a result. Including others, at any rate, is antithetical to the concept of a Sino-U.S. G-2 arrangement. As early as the 1960s
U.S. officials tried to rely on China to deal with regional issues spanning from North Korea to Vietnam. It was almost always to no avail.
Second, and as Ive written about extensively elsewhere, Asia
bargains rarely work. Theres a dangerous naivete in abandoning U.S. commitments on the
hope that China will then be more willing to resolve its other disputes . And policies of accommodation will not suspend
military competition because that involves more than present day concerns with surveillance overflight missions, territorial disputes, and current political
commitments. Regardless of the policy and crisis management decisions we make today, military competition plays out over years and decades; it relates to force
structure investment and doctrinal decisions that cant be sacrificed for political promises.
Chinas concerns will only be assuaged when the United States divests of the military force structure that makes it possible to project power globally, uphold its
commitments, and bolster the regional order. The
Perception Matters
Perception is all that matters- the world watches US China policy closely
Krauthammer, MD Harvard, 16
(Charles, Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated columnist, author, political commentator, and physician,
http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20160108/OPINION04/160109282 1-8)
For the United States, that would be the greatest geopolitical setback since China fell to communism in 1949. Yet
What's happened to Obama's vaunted isolation of Russia for its annexation of Crimea and assault on the post-Cold War European settlement?
Gone. Evaporated. Kerry plays lapdog to Sergei Lavrov. Obama meets openly with Vladimir Putin in Turkey, then in Paris. And is now
practically begging him to join our side in Syria. There is no price for defying Pax Americana not even trivial
sanctions on Iranian missile-enablers. Our enemies know it. Our allies see it and sense they're
on their own, and may not survive.
Regional jitters due to Chinese military power have been aggravated by unease over U.S. steadfastness ,
especially during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. At present, the United States appears resolved to back its East Asian
friends, old and new, in the face of Chinese pressures. This is clear from U.S. diplomatic opposition to Chinese attempts to
bully states bordering the South China Sea and from U.S. support for South Korea in the face of provocations by North Korea, Chinas ally. Failure to
stand alongside its friends would deplete U.S. influence with these important states and possibly weaken their resolve
to resist intimidation. In the case of Japan and South Korea, there is an additional risk that faltering U.S. steadfastness would
tempt them to acquire nuclear weapons . Overall, owing mainly to Chinas economic success, the steady expansion and reorientation of its
military capabilities toward the Pacific, and signs of its growing reliance on force, East Asia may be entering a period of instability.
Under these conditions, the instinct of the United States true to its policy since becoming a Pacific power a century agois to renew its
commitment to regional equilibrium , to its friends (Chinas neighbors), to the peaceful resolution of disputes, and to
the unrestricted use of the international waters by its shipping and naval forces .7 This is a matter not just of
U.S. regional strategy but of U.S. global strategy . In its latest national defense strategy, the U.S. government has made clear that its preoccupation with the
Middle East and South Asia since 2001 has been succeeded by the recognition that its global interests demand greater attention to Asia.
East Asia is a region of global importance not only economically but also in addressing international security problems of U.S.
concern around the world. Japan, Australia, and South Korea, for example, have to varying degrees supported the United States in
stabilizing the Middle East and South Asia and in countering the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Indonesia, the Philippines, and
Thailand are important in stemming the spread of violent Islamist extremism. Moreover, equilibrium and peace in
East Asia are essential if the United States is to confront threats to itself and its interests elsewhere in the world, as it did in
the decade following 9/11. Now, with the United States struggling with mounting debt and domestic challengesnagging unemployment, lagging education, and
sagging infrastructureEast
U.S. Isolationism
If the US pulls back China will expand into our sphere of influence
Mearsheimer, PhD, 16
(John, R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor University of Chicago Co-director, Program
on International Security Policy University of Chicago, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-navarroand-greg-autry/mearsheimer-on-strangling_b_9417476.html 3-10)
One might argue that what the United States should do if China continues to rise is that we should retreat
to Hawaii or retreat to the continental United States; and we should pursue an isolationist strategy. And the argument here would be
that it doesnt really matter whether China dominates Asia because it cant get at the United States anyway. This is actually a very powerful
argument. If you think about it, were separated from China as we separated from Europe by two giant moats. The Chinese would have to come
6,000 miles across the Pacific Ocean to get to California. Theres not going to be an amphibious operation thats 6,000 miles long across the
Pacific Ocean. So not only do we have these oceans, we also have thousands of nuclear warheads, which are the ultimate deterrent. Furthermore,
we dominate the Western Hemisphere. So the
United States is an incredibly secure country; and one can make a quite
persuasive argument that, even if China dominates Asia, its not going to affect the United States in any
meaningful way. My view is that theres one powerful counter to that argument ; and its the main argument again
isolationism; and it says that if China dominates all of Asia, if its a regional hegemon, it is then free to roam
around the world much the way the United States, as a regional hegemon, is free to roam around the
world. Most Americans dont think about this, but the reason that the United States is wandering all over
Gods little green acre, sticking its nose in everybodys business, is because we are free to roam. We have
no threats in the Western Hemisphere that pin us down. Now if China is free to roam because its a
potential hegemon, it can roam into the Western Hemisphere. It can develop friendly relations with a
country like Brazil or country like Mexico. It could put a naval base in Brazil much the way the Soviets were putting troops in
Cuba, right? So what the United States fears about China dominating Asia is the possibility that it will not
invade the United States, but that it will move into the Western Hemisphere, form a close alliance with a
country like Brazil or Cuba or Mexico, and become a threat to the United States from inside the
Hemisphere.
U.S. Offshoring
Offshore balancing encourages Chinese aggression- new alliances wont work to
balance
Friedberg, PhD Harvard, 15
(Aaron L, Prof of Politics and international affairs @Princeton, The Debate Over US China
Strategy Survival | vol. 57 no. 3 | JuneJuly 2015 | pp. 89110)
An explicit American shift towards offshore balancing would greatly exacerbate these risks.
While it is possible that the prospect of being forced to provide for their own security would shock at least
some current US allies into more vigorous defence programmes, it would likely demoralise
others, creating new opportunities for Beijing to pursue divide-andconquer strategems. The advocates of this approach assume that, even if they cannot balance
China alone, in the absence of full US support other Asian countries will be impelled to cooperate more
closely with one another. Again, this may be easier in theory than it turns out to be in
practice. Some of the states that would have to join in a countervailing coalition (most notably Japan and
South Korea) have long histories of suspicion and animosity. Others (such as Japan and India) do not, but they also have
little experience of close strategic cooperation of the kind that would be needed to counter a fastgrowing
challenge. (105-6)
Supporting Taiwan
Reduced support for Taiwan encourages Chinese aggression and weakens alliances
Friedberg, PhD Harvard, 15
(Aaron L, Prof of Politics and international affairs @Princeton, The Debate Over US China
Strategy Survival | vol. 57 no. 3 | JuneJuly 2015 | pp. 89110)
Attempting to implement a spheres-of-influence strategy would also carry significant risks. In addition to the harmful implications for its people,
backing away from Taiwan could unleash a cascade of damaging consequences for the United States.
Finally succeeding in its decades-long campaign to reunify with Taiwan seems more likely to
feed Beijings appetite for further gains than to satisfy it. Aside from its impact on Chinas
intentions, gaining access to the island would increase its capabilities, enhancing its ability to project power
into the Western Pacific and potentially threatening the sea lines of communication of Japan and South
Korea.47 Regardless of the way in which it was framed, a decision to abandon its
ambiguous but long-standing commitment to Taiwan would inevitably raise doubts in the
minds of Americas other friends and allies. If they conclude that continued balancing is
no longer a viable option, some may choose instead to bandwagon with China . (105)
Interestingly, developments under Xis leadership portrayed as good news for the West are things that
make the Communist regime internally stronger and more efficienteconomic reforms eliminating
excessive regulation and local protectionism [that] have made the market inefficient. To the extent those
reforms produce benefits for the Chinese people, they presumably increase the regimes
legitimacy, both domestically and internationally. One may very well hope that such
news of increasing influence would induce a more relaxed attitude among Chinese leaders regarding their
place in the world. More realistically, however, given the Communist Party of Chinas implacable view of
the United States and its allies as the enemydespite more than four decades of Western engagement
and its expectation that it can achieve U.S. acquiescence to the dominance Xi seeks, China will
almost certainly become even more ambitious and aggressive.
Growth is crucial to CCP control- weakens US fopo and stops regional allies from
challenging the PRC
Blackwill, Senior Fellow @ CFR, and Tellis, PhD, 15
(Robert, Former Ambassador to India, Ashley, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace specializing in international
security, defense, and Asian strategic issues. Revising U.S. Grand Strategy Toward China March)
Preserving internal control remains the foremost objective of the CCP today. But the goal of ensuring continued and unchallenged
Communist rule leads to the second operational aspiration: sustaining the high levels of economic growth
necessary to preserve social order. Since the founding of the Communist state, transforming the Chinese economy has remained an
important political aim. After all, Mao Zedong had no doubts that political power grew out of not only a monopoly of force, but, more
fundamentally, material foundations. Unfortunately for China, however, Maos collectivist strategies failed to achieve the high levels of growth
chalked up by its neighbors, and his capricious political actions only further stunted Chinas development. Yet so long as Mao remained alive, his
towering personality and his ruthless politicsespecially the extreme and effective brutality of the PLA and the Red Guardsensured that the
CCPs hold on power did not suffer because of economic underperformance.17 Since the beginning of the reform period under Deng Xiaoping,
however, high levels of economic growth have become indispensable. In the absence of charismatic leaders such as Mao and Deng,
may be, the Chinese population ultimately ends up supporting the regime because it views order and
control as essential for maintaining the high rates of economic growth that generate the prosperity
demanded by the citizenry. The populace and the party are thus locked into an uncertain symbiosis that provides the regime with
strength and the polity with a modicum of stabilitya relationship that compels Chinas leaders to maintain strong economic ties with the outside
world while protecting the countrys claims and prerogatives internationally as the price of political success at home. The aim of sustaining high
levels of economic growth, therefore, is colored by both economic and political imperatives. The former speak to the development agenda of the
Chinese statethe importance of lifting vast numbers of people out of poverty and enriching the population at the fastest rate possiblewhile the
latter are advanced by the fact that rapid economic expansion contributes to the CCPs political legitimacy, increases its available resources for
domestic and international (including military) ends, and underwrites its status and material claims in the international arena. Chinas means of
producing high economic growth have also been distinctive. By liberalizing commodity and labor prices but not the prices of other elements such
as land, capital, and energy, Beijing created limited free markets in China that operated under the supervision of a strong and controlling state.
Because many foreign firms invested in China under this scheme, manufacturing consumer and industrial goods intended primarily for export,
China has become the new workshop of the world.19 This economic model of production for overseas markets is slowly changing: it is now
supplemented by increasing attention to domestic consumers and by the rise of new private enterprises, but it was controlled capitalism that
elevated Chinas growth to unprecedented levels, thus permitting Beijing to portray its older approachwhich consisted of incremental reforms,
innovation and experimentation, export-led growth, state-dominated capitalism, and authoritarian politicsas the superior alternative to the
American framework of free markets overseen by democratic regimes. The global financial crisis of 20072008 raised doubts about the wisdom
of Washingtons methods of economic management, giving new life to Chinas critique of liberal democracy and free markets. Although the
attractiveness, endurance, and exportability of this so-called Beijing model are suspect on multiple grounds, the fact remains that it has more or
less served China well until now.20 This model has bequeathed Beijing with huge investible surpluses (in the form of vast foreign exchange
reserves), substantially increased its technological capabilities (thanks to both legitimate and illegitimate acquisitions of proprietary knowledge),
andmost importanthas tied the wider global economy ever more tightly to China. Although this last development has generated wealth and
welfare gains globally, it has also produced several unnerving strategic consequences . It has made many
Prolif Impacts
Threshold Small
The threshold for our link is low --- requirements for assurance are greater than for
deterrence --- even small declines in Japanese confidence in our umbrella can
trigger arms racing and nuclear use.
Santoro & Warden 15 - senior fellow at the Pacific Forum CSIS & WSD-Handa
fellow at the Pacific Forum CSIS [Santoro, David, and John K. Warden. "Assuring Japan and
South Korea in the Second Nuclear Age." The Washington Quarterly 38.1 (2015): 147-165.]
The New Assurance Imperative
Dubbed the second nuclear age,2 the current context has been widely discussed for its differences with the Cold War, or the worlds first
nuclear age. During this first age, two nuclear superpowers were locked in a competition for global dominance with allies on each side, a handful
of which developed small nuclear arsenals. U.S.Soviet competition was intense, but remained cold in part because Washington
and Moscow developed arms-control and crisis management mechanisms to regulate their behavior .
Stability endured because even though Washington and Moscow did not control all the triggers, they had sufficient authority to keep bloc
discipline and avoid becoming entrapped in a nuclear war. The security environment was always extremely dangerous
because the possibility of global nuclear annihilation was omnipresent , but per the notorious formula, a stable
balance of terror endured.3
The end of the Cold War gave rise to hopesmainly in Western quarters that nuclear weapons would be relegated to the dustbin of history.4
This belief led the United States, the United Kingdom, and France to downsize their arsenals and assist a financially-strapped Russia to do the
same. Meanwhile, several states across Asiain Western Asia (the Middle East), South Asia, and East Asiadeveloped nuclear and long-range
missile programs.5 Chinas efforts to modernize its nuclear and missile forces continued steadily. India and Pakistan pushed forward with their
own programs and, after exploding nuclear devices in 1998, became nuclear-armed states. North Korea conducted several rocket tests during the
late 1990s and tested its first nuclear device in 2006. Iran, Syria, and others also developed nuclear and missile programs. By the early 21st
century, the Cold War order tightly controlled by the United States and the Soviet Union was replaced by a multiplayer arena
with several less experienced nuclear decision-making parties and an epicenter in Asia. As a result, today,
while there is less risk of global annihilation both because major-power relations have improved and because important firebreaks against
conflict are in place, including robust crisis management mechanisms and enhanced economic interdependence the potential for war,
nuclear-armed adversaries, some of whom have less adversarial relations with the United States than the Soviet
Union did. Just as important, the United States also faces an equally difficult task of convincing its allies that it
could and would respond should extended deterrence fail .
Allies Nervous
Any perception of change in US commitment sparks allied prolif
Swaine, PhD Harvard, 15
(Michael D, expert in China and East Asian security studies and a Senior Associate in the Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace, http://carnegieendowment.org/2015/04/20/beyond-american-predominance-in-western-pacific-need-for-stable-u.s.-chinabalance-of-power/i7gi, 4-20)
Second, and closely related to the prior point, U.S. decisionmakers are extremely loath to contemplate
significant adjustments in the current status of the Korean Peninsula and Taiwan. From the U.S. perspective, any
movement toward a reduction in or even a significant modification of the U.S. security
commitment to these two actors (a U.S military ally and a de facto U.S. protectorate, respectively) could result in either
moving to acquire nuclear arms, and/or threats or attacks from North
Korea or China. In addition, Japan might react to such movement by questioning Washingtons basic
security commitment to Tokyo, which could result in a break in the U.S.Japan alliance and/or Japanese
acquisition of nuclear arms. These concerns are real, if no doubt exaggerated by some in Tokyo or Taipei in
order to justify maintenance of the existing U.S. relationship, and in some cases to avoid undertaking costly defense improvements of their own.
Over the next 10 years, Northeast Asia could become one of the most volatile regions of the world when
it comes to nuclear weapons. Compared to other areas, it has a higher percentage of states with not only
the capability to develop nuclear weapons quickly, but also the potential motivation .1 With the exception of
Mongolia, all the countries in the regionRussia, China, North Korea, South Korea, Japan, and Taiwanalready have civilian
nuclear power infrastructures. They also have experience with nuclear weapons. Northeast Asia has two established nuclear
weapon statesRussia and Chinaand North Korea is a presumed nuclear power. Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are
considered threshold statesall have had nuclear weapons development programs and could resume them in the future.
Adding potential volatility to the mix, Northeast Asia suffers from underlying political and security fault
lines: the legacy of the Cold War on the Korean Peninsula; enduring Korean and Chinese enmity over
Japanese atrocities committed before and during World War II; Russo-Japanese disputes over the Kuril
Islands; and the tensions created by China's growing effort to rein Taiwan into its governance. For these
and other reasons, regional security institutions in Northeast Asia are weak and tend to be based around
bilateral commitments (Sino-North Korean, U.S.-Japanese, U.S.-South Korean, and U.S.-Taiwanese). The
nuclear character of Northeast Asia is further defined by the fact that the United States used nuclear weapons twice against Japan
in August 1945 and eventually stationed 3,200 nuclear weapons in South Korea, Guam, the Philippines, Taiwan, and the formerly
U.S.-held islands of Chichi Jima, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa.2 Major and minor wars involving regional powers were fought in the
years from 1945 to 1991: the Chinese Civil War, the Taiwan Strait crisis, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, border skirmishes
between China and the Soviet Union, and the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War. Given this violent history, it is remarkable
that further nuclear proliferation did not occur. The role of U.S. security guarantees with Japan, South
Korea, and Taiwan clearly played a major role in this sometimes less-than-willing restraint . In recent years,
however, there has been a gradual erosion of political support for U.S. forces in both South Korea and Japan. North Korea's
withdrawal from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) in 2003 also has caused both states to reevaluate
their decisions to halt nuclear weapons programs. Moreover, the views of some top officials in the George W. Bush
administration regarding the acceptability of nuclear weapons may be eroding national restraint and increasing the willingness of
countries to go the final step, using their nuclear capabilities to make up for any conventional defense gaps. This essay
examines potential nuclear proliferation trends among the states of Northeast Asia to 2016 from the context of early post-Cold
War predictions, current capabilities, and possible future trigger events. It offers the unfortunate conclusion that
several realistic scenarios could stimulate horizontal or vertical nuclear proliferation.3 Indeed, if left
unattended, existing political and security tensions could cause Northeast Asia to become the world's most
nuclearized area by 2016, with six nuclear weapon states. Such a scenario would greatly exacerbate U.S.
security challenges and probably spark nuclear proliferation elsewhere in the world .
Timeframe Quick
Timeframe Japan and South Korea have the infrastructure and materials to go
nuclear in months.
Michael Moran, 10/15/2006. Executive editor of CFR.org and a columnist for Globalpost.com. Will
nukes march across Asia? Star Ledger, http://www.cfr.org/publication/11731/.
So far, the reaction of North Koreas Asian neighbors has been moderate: careful condemnations, calls for sanctions, pledges to work for a peaceful solution, etc. This
certainly is a far cry from Pakistans tit-for-tat, nuke-for-nuke response to Indias 1998 nuclear test. But those who make a living tracking proliferation threats remain
concerned. Both South Korea and Japan are signatories of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the treaty North Korea renounced in 2003 before its final push for
nuclear weaponry began. Yet,
of all the non-nuclear states that have pondered, secretly or openly, the wisdom of
going nuclear, none is more capable of fielding an actual arsenal as quickly and completely as Japan and
South Korea are. As the only nation ever to suffer a nuclear attack, Japan has repeatedly vowed in the years since 1945 to never develop, use, or allow the
transportation of nuclear weapons through its territory. It later emerged Japan had, in fact, studied the idea during the 1960s. By and large, however, Japan has been
true to its word. Yet Japan, more vulnerable than any other major industrial nation to oil crises, also developed
neighbors and the nonproliferation regime, meaning subtle changes in its attitude could carry serious
security consequences for both. Historically, Japan has maintained complicated relations with many of its
neighbors--specifically China, North Korea, and South Korea. While functional relationships do exist, deep mistrust and suspicions
persist, creating a paranoid security environment where an innocuous change from an outside perspective sets off
alarm bells in the region. So what may seem like a natural shift in Japan's nuclear attitudes may be a destabilizing change for those less
trustful and less objective. Therefore, if discussing nuclear weapons becomes more acceptable in Japan, China and
the Koreas might perceive this as a dangerous development and use it as an excuse to increase their military
capabilities--nuclear or otherwise. In terms of the teetering nonproliferation regime, a change in Japan's
attitude toward nuclear weapons would be a serious blow. To date, Tokyo has been a foremost advocate of
the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, campaigning against proliferation and rejecting the idea of developing nuclear weapons
despite possessing the best nuclear capability of any non-nuclear weapon state and having two nuclear weapon states near its borders. The
binding nature of international agreements relies on such attention and support from its signatories. So although Japan may never
violate the treaty, if Tokyo is perceived as being less supportive as it opens up domestically on the nuclear
issue, the effect on NPT morale could be dire, which speaks directly to the NPT's current vulnerability. Some element of the
changing attitude toward nuclear weapons in Japan must be due to discomfort with the status quo and a security need that the NPT or the
country's other security partnerships isn't satisfying. Therefore, a disturbing factor of Japan's nuclear normalization is what it may symbolize for
the NPT overall.
If it were to happen overnight, the acquisition of nuclear weapons b y current US security partners in East
Asia (perhaps including Taiwan, as well as Japan and South Korea) might improve their prospects for balancing against
Chinese power. But here again, there is likely to be a significant gap between theory and reality.
Assuming that Washington did not actively assist them, and that they could not produce weapons
overnight or in total secrecy, the interval during which its former allies lost the
protection of the American nuclear umbrella and the point at which they
acquired their own would be one in which they would be exposed to
coercive threats and possibly pre-emptive attack. Because it contains a large number
of tense and mistrustful dyads (including North Korea and South Korea, Japan and China, China and Taiwan, Japan
and North Korea and possibly South Korea and Japan), a multipolar nuclear order in East Asia might
be especially prone to instability.48(106)
Wont Work
strategic concessions Washington can make to persuade Beijing that the United States and China are
equals, and that it is no longer trying to maintain regional primacy. The basic problem with such adjustments is that small US
concessions would not satisfy China, while large concessions would effectively hand it regional
domination.
White's approach to solving this problem does too much and too little. He specifies that the United States should end its alliance with Japan, halt
its support for an autonomous Taiwan, recognise Indochina (but not the South China Sea) as within the Chinese sphere of influence and accept
that China's military and nuclear forces can be as large as its own.
Acknowledging China's sphere of influence entails acquiescing to Chinese domination ; the question is the size of
the sphere. White asks Washington to abandon Taiwan and, apparently, Vietnam to Chinese influence. The
White wants America to walk away from, has
decades. Such an act could result in Japan succumbing to defeatism and eventually accommodating China. If the United States' alliance with
Japan ended, its alliance with South Korea would also come under increased pressure. Although he asks much of Washington, White does not
require Beijing to reciprocate. By contrast, Donald Gross, a former White House and US Department of State official, argues that USChina
rapprochement requires concessions from both Washington and Beijing. Gross asks that the Chinese pull back missiles and other forces
threatening Taiwan, formally promise not to use force against Taiwan or other Asia-Pacific countries, cease naval activities in the seas close to
Japan and submit its claims in the South and East China Seas to international arbitration.31
White's plan does too little in that it does not address some of the major causes of strategic tension in the region. Other than those in Japan, he
does not discuss reductions in US forces based in and constantly moving through the Asia-Pacific region; rather, he suggests Chinese forces
should become larger. By leaving the South China Sea out of China's sphere of influence, he maintains flash points there and in the East China
Sea. The other possible outcome of severance of the USJapan alliance is a cold war between China and a rearmed, self-reliant Japan.
The onus is on White to explain why an offer by the United States to partially withdraw from the region in recognition of China's new strength
would not stoke demands for further expansion from the PLA and a nationalistic Chinese public. Such demands could force Beijing to push more
strongly to achieve the long-sought goals of complete recovery from the Century of Shame and restoration of China's previous position as leader
of the region. Amid the triumphalism of China's rise and Beijing's persistent worries about maintaining its domestic legitimacy, the country's
leadership understands the risks of disappointing such expectations.
White starkly differentiates a hypothetical US withdrawal from his proposal of levelling and power-sharing. He argues that withdrawal would,
disastrously, encourage China to seek primacy, while levelling and powersharing would maintain peace and prosperity by ensuring that neither
country dominated the region. In practice, however, these options are similar because levelling and power-sharing would require the United States
to make changes that would result in a partial withdrawal and, consequently, at least partial Chinese primacy. White's USChina bargain seems to
encourage a Chinese drive for unambiguous hegemony, while leaving enough strategic clutter to ensure a continuation of serious friction between
the countries.
Ultimately, White's project proves too ambitious. His recommendations are problematic. By following White's advice, Washington may invite
China to take a giant step towards achieving the primacy the author sees as disastrous. Furthermore, White does not supply a rationale for why his
proposed Concert would surmount the obstacles that have prevented China and the United States from amicably resolving their strategic
disagreements.
Asking the United States to unilaterally give up much of its leadership and influence in the Asia-Pacific region and abruptly
pull China into an exclusive regional G4 is
Bilateral USChina discussions have not settled many significant strategic disagreements because both
countries value attaining their preferences more than achieving consensus with a major strategic rival. The Concert could
succeed if it could reverse these priorities but White does not explain how this would be achieved, except by saying that the United States and
China should give serious consideration to each other's views (p. 149). Shifting the format from bilateral talks to a four-party Concert
would not solve these substantive problems. If anything, progress would be more difficult because negotiations
would involve four governments instead of two. White puts the cart before the horse. Settlement of fundamental
strategic issues is as much a prerequisite for establishing the Concert as an outcome of its work.
expectation, which White shares, that present trends will continue and China's strength, relative to that of the United
States, will increase. This expectation is certainly defensible, as China's faster rate of economic growth suggests it will overtake the United
States in economic output in approximately a decade.21 With the world's largest economy, China would have the wherewithal to build strong
military forces and wield unparalleled influence with its many trading partners, laying the foundation for its challenge to US supremacy in the
Asia-Pacific. But this premise is highly controversial, and the obstacles that could prevent China from achieving such
regional dominance are significant. Former US ambassador J. Stapleton Roy, one of the United States' foremost China experts, is among
those who conclude that it is foolish to postulate that the twenty-first century will belong to China.22
Over the next decade, China will face many internal obstacles to its rapid economic growth. The factors that have driven its expansion in the
postMao era chiefly an abundant supply of cheap labour and capital, alongside worldwide demand for Chinese exports are diminishing. Many
economists believe that Chinese economic growth will decrease to a rate closer to those of today's developed economies within a decade or
two.23 The effect of Beijing's one-child policy will begin to impair the country's productive capacity. China's fertility rate has dropped to 1.4
births per woman: below the developed country rate of 1.7 and far below the population replacement level of 2.1. The majority of Chinese factory
workers are between the ages of 20 and 24, and the number of people in this age bracket will decrease by 42% in 201030. This reduction in
factory workforce will be compounded by an increasing number of young adults pursuing university studies. It is estimated that the number of
people in this age bracket available for factory work will therefore soon shrink by around 50%. Additionally, national savings will decline as the
population ages, and the number of Chinese over the age of 60 will double in 201030. During this period, the number of workers supporting
each retiree will drop from five to two.24 To maintain the economy's growth, Chinese leaders must rebalance and restructure it to rely on
innovation and domestic consumption rather than infrastructure investment and exports. Beijing is aware of the need for changes. Outgoing
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao famously said China's growth is unbalanced, unsustainable and uncoordinated.25 The Chinese Communist Party,
however, is conservative and wary of social turmoil. The required changes would be opposed by powerful special interest groups and would roil
much of Chinese society. The greater transparency and rule of law needed to boost entrepreneurship and innovation are implicit political
challenges to Beijing's leadership. It is unclear whether China's rulers will be bold enough to fully implement the necessary reforms.
China is a major economic and military power. It is not, however, strong enough to dominate the region. War with
the United States would be so devastating that the Chinese leadership could not contemplate it unless a vital
Chinese interest was under attack. China's continued ascension to a position of strength from which it could expect to prevail at acceptable cost in
a regional conflict against US forces or against two or more of its neighbours is uncertain. It would be unwise for the United States to
make large concessions to China to prevent a scenario that may not occur .
Hegemony Impacts
have struggled to conceptualize a grand strategy that would prove adequate to the
nations new circumstances beyond the generic desire to protect the liberal international orde r underwritten by
American power in the postwar era. Though the Department of Defense during the George H.W. Bush administration presciently contended that
its strategy must now refocus on precluding the emergence of any potential future global competitorthereby consciously pursuing the
strategy of primacy that the United States successfully employed to outlast the Soviet Union there was some doubt at the time whether that
document reflected Bush 41 policy.5 In any case, no administration in Washington has either consciously or consistently pursued such an
approach. To the contrary, a series of administrations have continued to implement policies that have actually
enabled the rise of new competitors, such as China, despite the fact that the original impulse for these policiesthe successful
containment of the Soviet Unionlost their justification with the demise of Soviet power. Because the American effort to
integrate China into the liberal international order has now generated new threats to U.S.
primacy in Asiaand could eventually result in a consequential challenge to American
power globallyWashington needs a new grand strategy toward China that centers on balancing the
rise of Chinese power rather than continuing to assist its ascendancy. This strategy cannot
be built on a bedrock of containment, as the earlier effort to limit Soviet power was, because of the current
realities of globalization. Nor can it involve simply jettisoning the prevailing policy of integration. Rather, it must involve crucial
changes to the current policy in order to limit the dangers that Chinas economic and military expansion
pose to U.S. interests in Asia and globally. These changes, which constitute the heart of
an alternative balancing strategy, must derive from the clear recognition
that preserving U.S. primacy in the global system ought to remain the
central objective of U.S. grand strategy in the twenty-first century . Sustaining
this status in the face of rising Chinese power requires , among other things, revitalizing the U.S. economy to nurture those
disruptive innovations that bestow on the United States asymmetric economic advantages over others; creating new preferential
trading arrangements among U.S. friends and allies to increase their mutual gains through
instruments that consciously exclude China; recreating a technology-control regime
involving U.S. allies that prevents China from acquiring military and strategic capabilities enabling it to
inflict high-leverage strategic harm on the United States and its partners; concertedly building up the
power-political capacities of U.S. friends and allies on Chinas periphery; and improving the capability of
U.S. military forces to effectively project power along the Asian rimlands despite any Chinese opposition
all while continuing to work with China in the diverse ways that befit its importance to U.S. national
interests. The necessity for such a balancing strategy that deliberately incorporates elements that limit Chinas capacity to
misuse its growing power, even as the United States and its allies continue to interact with China diplomatically and economically , is
driven by the likelihood that a long-term strategic rivalry between Beijing
and Washington is high. Chinas sustained economic success over the past thirty-odd years has enabled it
to aggregate formidable power, making it the nation most capable of dominating the Asian continent and
thus undermining the traditional U.S. geopolitical objective of ensuring that this arena remains free of
hegemonic control. The meteoric growth of the Chinese economy, even as Chinas per capita income remains behind that of the United
States in the near future, has already provided Beijing with the resources necessary to challenge the security of both its Asian neighbors and
Washingtons influence in Asia, with dangerous consequences. Even as Chinas overall gross domestic product (GDP) growth slows considerably
in the future, its relative growth rates are likely to be higher than those of the United States for the foreseeable future, thus making the need to
balance its rising power important. Only a fundamental collapse of the Chinese state would free Washington from
United States in Asia and beyond. Of all nationsand in most conceivable scenariosChina is
and will remain the most significant competitor to the United States for
decades to come.6 Chinas rise thus far has already bred geopolitical,
military, economic, and ideological challenges to U.S. power, U.S allies,
and the U.S.-dominated international order. Its continued, even if uneven, success in the
future would further undermine U.S. national interests. Washingtons current approach toward Beijing, one
that values Chinas economic and political integration in the liberal
international order at the expense of the United States global
preeminence and long-term strategic interests, hardly amounts to a
grand strategy, much less an effective one. The need for a more coherent U.S. response to increasing
Chinese power is long overdue. (4-6)
Hegemony solves a laundry list of impacts regional war, economic collapse, prolif
Brooks and Wohlforth, PhDs, 16
(Stephen G, Associate Professor of Government @Dartmouth, William C, Daniel Webster Prof of Government @Dartmouth, May/June,
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2016-04-13/once-and-future-superpower?cid=nlc-fatoday20160520&sp_mid=51424540&sp_rid=c2NvdHR5cDQzMUBnbWFpbC5jb20S1&spMailingID=51424540&spUserID=MTg3NTEzOTE5Njk2S
0&spJobID=922513469&spReportId=OTIyNTEzNDY5S0)
Given the barriers thwarting Chinas path to superpower status, as well as the low incentives for trying to overcome them, the future of the
international system hinges most on whether the United States continues to bear the much lower burden of sustaining what we and others have
called deep engagement, the globe-girdling grand strategy it has followed for some 70 years. And barring some odd change of
heart that results in a true abnegation of its global role (as opposed to overwrought, politicized charges sometimes made
about its already having done so), Washington will be well positioned for decades to maintain the core military
capabilities, alliances, and commitments that secure key regions, backstop the global
economy, and foster cooperation on transnational problems. The benefits of this grand
strategy can be difficult to discern, especially in light of the United States foreign misadventures in recent years.
Fiascos such as the invasion of Iraq stand as stark reminders of the difficulty of using force to alter domestic politics abroad. But power is
as much about preventing unfavorable outcomes as it is about causing favorable ones, and here
Washington has done a much better job than most Americans appreciate. For a
largely satisfied power leading the international system, having enough strength to deter or block
challengers is in fact more valuable than having the ability to improve ones position further on the
margins. A crucial objective of U.S. grand strategy over the decades has been to prevent a much
more dangerous world from emerging , and its success in this endeavor can be measured
largely by the absence of outcomes common to history: important regions destabilized by
severe security dilemmas, tattered alliances unable to contain breakout
challengers, rapid weapons proliferation, great-power arms races, and a
descent into competitive economic or military blocs. Were Washington to truly
pull back from the world, more of these challenges would emerge, and
transnational threats would likely loom even larger than they do today. Even
if such threats did not grow, the task of addressing them would become immeasurably harder if the U nited States had
to grapple with a much less stable global order at the same time . And as difficult as it sometimes is today for
the United States to pull together coalitions to address transnational challenges, it would be even harder to do
so if the country abdicated its leadership role and retreated to tend its garden, as a growing number of analysts and policymakers
and a large swath of the publicare now calling for.
assertive China has bullied the Philippines (with which the U.S. has a 61-year-old defense pact) over the Spratly islands, and
China has pressed its claims on Japan (a 53-year-old defense pact) over the Senkaku Islands. At stake are territorial waters
and mineral resourcessymbols of China's drive for hegemony and an outburst
of national egotism. Yet when Shinzo Abe, the new prime minister of an understandably anxious Japan, traveled to Washington
in February, he didn't get the unambiguous White House backing of Japan's sovereignty that an ally of long standing deserves and needs. In
Europe, an oil-rich Russia is rebuilding its conventional arsenal while modernizing (as have China and Pakistan) its
nuclear arsenal. Russia has been menacing its East European neighbors, including those, like Poland, that have
offered to host elements of a NATO missile-defense system to protect Europe. In 2012, Russia's then-chief of general staff, Gen. Nikolai
Makarov, declared: "A decision to use destructive force pre-emptively will be taken if the situation worsens." This would be the same Russia that
has attempted to dismember its neighbor Georgi a and now has a docile Russophile billionaire, Prime Minister Bidzina
Ivanishvili, to supplant the balky, independence-minded government loyal to President Mikhail Saakashvili. In the Persian Gulf, American policy
was laid down by Jimmy Carter in his 1980 State of the Union address with what became the Carter Doctrine: "An attempt by any outside force
to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault
will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force." America's Gulf allies may not have treaties to rely upon
but they do have decades of promises and the evidence of two wars that the U.S. would stand by them. Today they
wait for the long-promised (by Presidents Obama and George W. Bush) nuclear disarmament of a revolutionary Iranian government that has been
relentless in its efforts to intimidate and subvert Iran's neighbors. They may wait in vain. Americans take for granted the world in
which they grew upa world in which, for better or worse, the U.S. was the ultimate security
guarantor of scores of states, and in many ways the entire international
system. Today we are informed by many politicians and commentators that we are weary of those burdensthough what we should be
weary of, given that our children aren't conscripted and our taxes aren't being raised in order to pay for those wars, is unclear. The truth is that
defense spending at the rate of 4% of gross domestic product (less than that sustained with ease by Singapore) is eminently affordable. The
arguments against far-flung American strategic commitments take many forms . So-called foreign policy realists,
particularly in the academic world, believe
Heg Good
Hegemony solves war, terrorism, climate
Brooks and Wohlforth, PhDs, 16
(Stephen G, Associate Professor of Government @Dartmouth, William C, Daniel Webster Prof of Government @Dartmouth, May/June,
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2016-04-13/once-and-future-superpower?cid=nlc-fatoday20160520&sp_mid=51424540&sp_rid=c2NvdHR5cDQzMUBnbWFpbC5jb20S1&spMailingID=51424540&spUserID=MTg3NTEzOTE5Njk2S
0&spJobID=922513469&spReportId=OTIyNTEzNDY5S0)
Lasting preeminence will help the United States ward off the greatest traditional international danger, war
between the worlds major powers. And it will give Washington options for dealing with
nonstate threats such as terrorism and transnational challenges such as climate change . But it will also impose
burdens of leadership and force choices among competing priorities, particularly as finances grow more straitened. With great power comes great
responsibility, as the saying goes, and playing its leading role successfully will require Washington to display a maturity that U.S. foreign policy
has all too often lacked.
2NC Blocks/Answers To
region, increased reassurance of American protection, and increased U.S. support for their own economic
growth and security. The grand strategy outlined in this report advances all of these objectives.
Moreover, it is difficult to exaggerate the current anxiety among virtually all Asian nations about the
strategic implications of the rise of Chinese power, recent examples of PRC aggressiveness in the East
and South China Seas, and the conviction that only the United States can successfully
deter Beijings corrosive strategic ambitions. Because of PRC behavior, Asian states
have already begun to balance against China through greater intra-Asian cooperationactions that are entirely
consistent with and only reinforce our U.S. grand strategy. Indeed, the worry across Asia today is not that
the United States will pursue overly robust policies toward China; rather, it is that Washington is
insufficiently aware of Beijings ultimate disruptive strategic goals in Asia ,
is periodically attracted to a G2 formula, and may not be up to the challenge of effectively dealing
with the rise of China over the long term. These deeply worried views across Asian governments are fertile ground on
which to plant a revised U.S. grand strategy toward China. Moreover, a close examination of the specific policy prescriptions in this study reveal
few that would not be welcomed by the individual nations of Asia to which they apply. Although this major course correction by
the United States toward China would not gain allied endorsement overnight , with sustained and resolute
U.S. presidential leadership and the immense leverage the United States has with its Asian allies and
friends, this is not too steep a strategic hill to climb, especially given the profound
U.S. national interests at stake across Asia. Finally, nothing in this grand strategy requires the United States and its allies to
diminish their current economic and political cooperation with China. Rather, the emphasis is on developing those U.S. and allied components
that are ultimately necessary to make this cooperation sustainable. In other words, if the balance of power alters fundamentally, U.S. and Asian
economic cooperation with China could not be maintained. (36-7)
the western edge of the South China Sea, complementing American facilities in the Philippines on the
seas eastern edge. If the United States can get regular access to Cam Ranh Bay, it
would be very advantageous to maintaining the balance of power with
China, said Alexander L. Vuving, a Vietnam specialist at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu. If something happens in
the South China Sea, it takes a while for the U.S. to get there. China can get there more quickly.
trivial but also would not threaten vital U.S. national interests. If China went further in its
policy as opposed to reacting rhetorically, the more aggressive Beijings policy response and the more coercive its
actions, the more likely that Americas friends and allies in Asia would move even closer to
Washington. We do not think that China will find an easy solution to this dilemma. Moreover, it is likely
that Beijing would continue to cooperate with the United States in areas that it thinks serve Chinas
national interestson the global economy, international trade, climate change, counterterrorism, the
Iranian nuclear weapons program, North Korea, and post-2016 Afghanistan . Put differently, we do not
think the Chinese leadership in a fit of piquehardly in Chinas strategic tradition would
act in ways that damage its policy purposes and its reputation around
Asia. In short, this strategic course correction in U.S. policy toward China would certainly trigger a torrent
of criticism from Beijing because it would begin to systemically address Chinas goal of dominating Asia
and produce a more cantankerous PRC in the UN Security Council, but it would not end many
aspects of U.S.-China international collaboration based on compatible
national interests. Although there are risks in following the course proposed here, as with most fundamental policy departures,
such risks are substantially smaller than those that are increasing because
of an inadequate U.S. strategic response to the rise of Chinese power In any
case, there is no reason why a China that did not seek to overturn the
balance of power in Asia should object to the policy prescriptions
contained in this report. And which of the policy prescriptions would those who wish to continue the current prevailing
U.S. approach to Chinathat is, cooperationreject? In short, these measures do not treat China as an
enemy as some American analysts rightfully warn against; rather, they seek to protect vital U.S. and allied national
interests, a reasonable and responsible objective. Washington simply cannot have it both waysto
accommodate Chinese concerns regarding U.S. power projection into Asia through strategic
reassurance and at the same time to promote and defend U.S. vital national interests in this vast region . It
is, of course, the second that must be at the core of a successful U.S. grand strategy toward China. (37-8)
other groups of American academics, business leaders, and policy experts on these purportedly
exclusive visits, where they too received an identical message about Chinas coming decline . Many
of them then repeated these revelations in articles, books, and
commentaries back in the United States. Yet the hard fact is that Chinas already robust
GDP is predicted to continue to grow by at least 7 or 8 percent , thereby surpassing that of the United States
by 2018 at the earliest, according to economists from the International Monetary Fund, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development, and the United Nations. Unfortunately, China policy experts like me were so
wedded to the idea of the coming collapse of China that few of us
believed these forecasts. While we worried about Chinas woes, its
economy more than doubled.
2NC Congagement
Engagement with balancing isnt enough- failed for 20 years
Friedberg, PhD Harvard, 15
(Aaron L, Prof of Politics and international affairs @Princeton, https://www.iiss.org/en/politics%20and%20strategy/blogsections/2015932e/may-7114/debate-over-us-china-strategy-f18a)
AF: My starting position for this is to observe that over the last 20 years or so the United States, across Republican and
Democratic administrations, has had a pretty consistent strategy for dealing with China. There have been variations, but the
basic strategy has combined two elements: the need to engage in diplomacy, trade, scientificeducational cooperation and so
on; and balancing efforts to maintain a balance of military power in the Asia-Pacific region that favours the interests of the United
States and its allies. Where there has been variation it has been a matter of emphasis and degree,
rather than a fundamental shift. What has happened over the last five or six years, I think, is that that mixed strategy has
begun to be called increasingly into question, from a variety of different angles. Chinas capabilities are growing. It
is wealthier than ever, it is more powerful militarily than it has ever been, and it is starting to assert itself
more in its neighbourhood and on the global stage, including in ways which are perceived by many people in
the region, as well as in the United States and elsewhere, as potentially threatening to stability . The
engagement side of US strategy, I think, was ultimately intended to encourage Chinas leaders to see their
interests as lying in upholding the existing international system, rather than challenging it. It was also intended,
at least originally we havent talked about this so much in recent years to encourage political liberalisation
in China. What has happened is that people have begun to realise that , at least for the moment, China is not
liberalising. To some extent, under the new leadership China has gotten tougher and more
ideological than it was a few years ago. In part because of these more assertive behaviours, it has
become increasingly difficult to sustain the view that China just wants to become a member in good
standing of the international system. It wants to change some things, starting with its own neighbourhood in particular maritime
disputes, but also US alliances.
AT: Democratization
Engagement not democratizing China
Pillsbury, PhD, 15
(Michael, director of the Hudson Institutes Center for Chinese Strategy,
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-hundred-year-marathon-excerpt-2015-2 2-9)
China has certainly changed in the past thirty years, but its political system has not evolved in the ways that we
advocates of engagement had hoped and predicted. The idea that the seeds of
democracy have been sown at the village level became the conventional wisdom among many China
watchers in America. My faith was first shaken in 1997, when I was among those encouraged to visit
China to witness the emergence of democratic elections in a village near the industrial town of Dongguan. While
visiting, I had a chance to talk in Mandarin with the candidates and see how the elections actually worked. The unwritten rules of the
game soon became clear: the candidates were allowed no pubic assemblies, no television ads, and no
campaign posters. They were not allowed to criticize any policy implemented by the Communist Party, nor were they free to criticize their
opponents on any issue. There would be no American-style debates over taxes or spending or the countrys future. The only thing a
candidate could do was to compare his personal qualities to those of his opponent. Violations of these
rules were treated as crimes.
Deferred deterrence is a lot like deferred maintenancewhen we finally get around to doing what needs
to be done, the cost is almost always higher than it would have been with timelier
action. That is happening now with U.S.-China relations , which under the best of
circumstances require constant vigilance. The first issue is China's stunningly lawless claim of sovereignty over
virtually the entire South China Sea. When the claim was limited to the rhetorical and diplomatic realm, Washington responded in
an appropriately measured manner. It noted the invalidity of Chinese overreach under international law, the need for multilateral negotiations and
peaceful mechanisms for dispute resolution, and the inviolability of rights of navigation and overflight. But when Beijing ignored those
diplomatic and legalistic appeals and proceeded to implement its territorial ambitions over a year ago by building
artificial islandscreating not only facts on the ground but actual new groundit became necessary to push back by peacefully
but firmly exercising navigational and overflight rights. This summer, the United States did send a reconnaissance flight over
the area and wisely invited CNN to record the public and transparent challenge in accordance with international norms. But nothing was done to
assert navigational freedom, which is the most relevant mode of trade access for countries in the region. That passivity unfortunately continues
months later. If the U.S. Navy has made some secret passage through those waters, it would be an ineffective gesture; lack of transparency defeats
the international law and public diplomacy purposes of the Freedom of Navigation (FON) program. With each day that passes without U.S. ships
steaming within twelve miles of China's man-made islands, and declaring the transits, the perception grows that Chinese claims
are being grudgingly accepted by the international communitythat is, by the United States, it's most important member.
Beijing can only be satisfied with the current state of play. If and when the United States does make its FON challenge, it will carry more
confrontational baggage than would have been the case had it occurred at or around the same time as the overflight. (An alternative scenario
would be a Beijing-Washington arrangement whereby China "allows" the United States to make its symbolic transit in exchange for some
diplomatic or other concession in the relationship, such as a reduction in reconnaissance flights near China, a muting of criticism on human
rights, or some deliverable for Xi Jinping's September visit to Washington. That would be an unacceptable accession to China's aggressive
behaviorsome will call it appeasementthat would reward bad behavior and portend even more dire consequences for overall U.S.-China
relations.) The other potentially explosive issue is the need for an effective response to the massive hacking of U.S. government
personnel files that has been widely, but unofficially, attributed to China. In fact, David Sanger of the New York Times reports that
administration officials are under strict instructions to avoid naming China as the source of the attack." Doing so would require a U.S. response
that then "could lead to an escalation of the hacking conflict between the two countries . . . [and] the downsides of any meaningful, yet
proportionate, retaliation [might] outweigh the benefits." As the president's staff struggles to meet his request for "a
creative set of responses," one senior official said "we need to be a bit more public about our responses,
and one reason is deterrence." James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, affirmed the urgency of
the challenge, telling Congress the hacking problem would only get worse until such time as we create
both the substance and psychology of deterrence. At present, the
deterrence dynamic in both the South China Sea and cyber warfare
situations is actually working against the United States because of fears
over how China would respond. The psychology is working in a perverse,
but not historically unfamiliar, way. The transgressing state, in this case China, by
definition does not respect international norms. The aggrieved international
community, represented here by the United States, is genetically programmed to emphasize peaceful,
diplomatic solutions to challengesand, at the same time, it fears that the offending party will react to sanctions
or other retaliatory action by further lashing out. This is often described in the West as "irrational"
behavior, but it is actually quite rational as long as there is no real price to be
paid. As Director Clapper said about China's hacking feat, You have to kind of salute the Chinese for what they did." Unless
Washington finally breaks the counter-deterrence cycle by taking decisive action in both the South China Sea and
the hacking episode, there will be a lot more saluting of China for what it is getting
away with.
Germany and the Soviet Union between 1939 and 22 June, 1941. Nevertheless, that economic
interdependence did not prevent World War II from escalating into a major war between Moscow and
Berlin. And, in fact, there are all sorts of stories about the German forces invading the Soviet Union and
passing trains that were going into the Soviet Union that were carrying German goods, and trains coming
from the Soviet Union towards Germany that were carrying Soviet raw materials and some Soviet goods
as well. So there was economic interdependence between Germany and the Soviet Union and yet you still
got a war.
China and its neighbors are all hooked on capitalism and everybody is getting rich in this world of great
economic interdependence; and nobody in their right mind would start a war because you would, in effect, be killing
the goose that lays the golden egg. So that what is happening here is that economic interdependence has created a situation where its a firm basis
for peace. I think this is wrong. Let me explain. I think theres no doubt that there are going to be certain
circumstances where economic interdependence will be enough to tip the balance in favor of peace ; but I
think as a firm basis for peace, it wont work because there will be all sorts of other situations
where politics trumps economics. People who are making the economic interdependence
argument are basically saying that economics trumps politics . There are no political differences that are salient enough,
right, to override those economic considerations? Again, there will be cases where thats true. But there will be many
more cases, in my opinion, where political considerations are so powerful, so intense, that they will trump
economic considerations. And just to give you an example or two. Taiwan: The Chinese have made it clear that if
Taiwan were to declare its independence now, they would go to war against Taiwan, even though they
fully understand that that would have major negative economic
consequences for Beijing. They understand that, but they would go to war anyway. Why?
Because from a political point of view, it is so important to make Taiwan a
part of China, that they could not tolerate Taiwan declaring its
independence. Another example is the conflict in the East China Sea between Japan and China, over the Diaoyu or
Senkaku Islands. It is possible to imagine those two countries, China and Japan, actually ending up in a shooting match
over a bunch of rocks in the East China Sea. How can this possibly be because it would threaten the economic prosperity of both countries? It
would have all sorts of negative economic consequences. But the fact is, from the Chinese point of view
and the Japanese point of view, these rocks are sacred territory. The politics of the situation
are such that it is conceivable that should a conflict arise, it will escalate into a war because
politics will trump economics.
longstanding aspect of U.S.-China relations, but has become increasingly problematic since President Xi
Jinping took power in 2011. In July 2015, China enacted new laws regulating all aspects of Chinese interaction
with foreigners, including a national security law that covers every domain of public life in China politics,
military, education, finance, religion, cyberspace, ideology and religion. These initiatives are "aimed at exhorting all Chinese
citizens and agencies to be vigilant about threats to the party.28 They help explain why
Washington's engagement strategy has been unable to change party
leaders' perceptions or successfully support moderates over hawks. The
consequence of Americans knowing so little about the CPC and its strategies and tactics towards them is
that many Americans continue to be badly misled by what they hear and see in China.
The extensive U.S.-China engagement architecture has produced
analytical limitations, or blind spots, within the U.S. policy community that
if remain unaddressed are likely to produce the same types of intelligence
failures that have occurred repeatedly in U.S.-China relations since 1911.
The only way to redress these systemic deficiencies is to move beyond engagement and containment and
adopt a nuanced strategy that prioritizes high quality human intelligence about Chinese leaders and policymaking and incorporates them
effectively into U.S. policymaking towards China.
*this is a key piece of 2NC evidence you will want to read in just about every debate because it makes an epistemology argument to set up
evidence comparison- aff engagement defenders are wrong/have blindspots about Chinese behavior
China wont change through engagement- it gives them all the leverage
Blackwill, Senior Fellow @ CFR, and Tellis, PhD, 15
(Robert, Former Ambassador to India, Ashley, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace specializing in international
security, defense, and Asian strategic issues. Revising U.S. Grand Strategy Toward China March)
Because these twin expectations have not materialized, Chinas rise as a new great power promises to be a troubling prospect for the United
States for many years to come. Chinas economic growth derives considerably from its participation in the multilateral
trading system and the larger liberal international order more generally, but its resulting military expansion
has placed Beijings economic strategy at odds with its political objective
of threatening the guarantor of global interdependence, the United States .
At the moment, China displays no urgency in addressing this conundrum, aware that its trading partners
hesitate to pressure Beijing because of the potential for economic losses
that might ensue. Given this calculation, Chinese leaders conclude that their country can
continue to benefit from international trade without having to make any
fundamental compromises in their existing disputes with other Asian states or their efforts to
weaken U.S. power projection in Asia. (17)
Benefits from engagement will fuel military modernization and authoritarianismnot liberalization
Blackwill, Senior Fellow @ CFR, and Tellis, PhD, 15
(Robert, Former Ambassador to India, Ashley, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace specializing in international
security, defense, and Asian strategic issues. Revising U.S. Grand Strategy Toward China March)
The long-term U.S. effort to protect its vital national interests by integrating China into the international system
is at serious risk today because Beijing has acquired the capacity, and increasingly displays the
willingness, to pursue threatening policies against which American administrations have asserted they
were hedging. Nevertheless, these same U.S. policymakers have continued to interact with China as if these
dangerous Chinese policies were only theoretical and consigned to the
distant future. In short, successive administrations have done much more cooperating with China than
hedging, hoping that Beijing would gradually come to accept the United States leading role in Asia
despite all the evidence to the contrary, not least because cooperation was so much less costly in the short term than military,
geoeconomic, and diplomatic hedging. China has indeed become a rapidly growing economy, providing wealth and
welfare gains both for itself and for American citizens, but it has acquired the wherewithal to
challenge the United States, endangering the security of its allies and
others in Asia, and to slowly chip away at the foundations of the liberal
international order globally. In other words, China has not evolved into a responsible stakeholder
as then Deputy Secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick called on it to become.37 Instead, in recent decades Beijing has
used the benign U.S. approach to the rise of Chinese power to strengthen
its domestic economy, and thus the CCPs hold on power, to enhance its
military capabilities and increase its diplomatic and geoeconomic sway in
Asia and beyond, all while free-riding on the international order and public
goods provided by the United States and its allies. (20)
The goals of this mixed strategy have been to tame and ultimately to transform the Peoples Republic of China
(PRC). Through balancing, the United States aims to uphold its alliances and to preserve peace and stability by deterring aggression or attempts
at coercion. At the same time, through engagement, Washington has sought to encourage Chinas full
incorporation into the existing international system, in the anticipation that its leaders will come to see their interests as lying in
preserving and strengthening that system rather than seeking to challenge or overthrow it. Although, in recent years, they have become somewhat
more circumspect in stating this goal directly, since the early 1990s US policymakers have also continued to hope that , in time,
Chinas domestic political institutions would evolve toward something more closely resembling those of a
liberal democracy. This is not a process to which the United States has sought to contribute directly, but rather one that it has attempted to
encourage by indirect means, including the promulgation of ideas and, above all, the promotion of trade. Thus, since the early 1990s, one of the
primary justifications for deepening economic engagement has been the claim that expanding trade and investment would accelerate growth,
thereby hastening the emergence of a reform-minded Chinese middle class. Albeit with occasional shifts in rhetorical tone and emphasis, and
comparatively minor adjustments in the blend of engagement and balancing, for the past quarter-century successive US
administrations have continued to adhere to the same basic approach . In the last several years, however,
questions have emerged about the adequacy and long-term durability of
this strategy. While China is obviously far richer today than it was in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square
massacre in 1989, it is no more democratic. Indeed, to the contrary, the elevation of Xi Jinping to the status of
Chinas paramount leader in 2012 has been accompanied by a wide-ranging crackdown on dissent, a further
tightening of controls over access to the internet, and new restrictions on the activities of nongovernmental organisations, especially those suspected of trying to strengthen
civil society in order to promote human rights and social justice . Despite
decades of deepening engagement, China appears, if anything, to have moved further
away from meaningful political reform. Meanwhile, fuelled by rapid economic expansion,
the nations military capabilities have grown to impressive dimensions. Among other developments,
the deployment by China of so-called anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) forces has raised serious questions
about the future willingness and, perhaps, the ability of the United States to project power into the
Western Pacific. Especially in light of the fiscal constraints under which it now labours, it is not obvious
that the United States can continue to play its accustomed role in preserving a favourable balance of
power in East Asia. Finally, Chinas recent behaviour, especially in disputes with several of its maritime
neighbours, has caused some observers to re-examine the pleasing assumption that the country is fast on
its way to becoming a status quo power. To the contrary, Chinas assertion of the right to control most of
the water, islands and resources off its coasts, and its new-found ability to use displays of power and
threats of force to advance those claims, have shattered the illusion that it wants nothing more
than to become a responsible stakeholder in the existing international order . In light of all these
developments, analysts have begun to consider whether and, if so, how the prevailing approach should be
adapted to meet changing circumstances. A survey of recent writing suggests that there are six possibilities presently on offer in public
discussion, each involving a different mixture of the familiar elements that make up current strategy. As described more fully below, these can be
arrayed along a spectrum ranging from renewed and redoubled efforts at engagement, to a virtually exclusive emphasis on balancing. (89-91)
order is considerably instrumental. China is content to operate within that order to the degree
that it receives material or status benefits, but it has no fundamental commitment to protecting
that system beyond the gains incurred. At one level, this should not be surprising because, as Kissinger astutely
noted, China is still adjusting [itself] to membership in an international system designed in its absence on the
basis of programs it did not participate in developing.30 But, when all is considered, this ambivalence ultimately undermines
American national interests and, most important, the premise on which the current U.S.
strategy of integration is based: that Chinas entry into the liberal order will result over time
in securing its support for that regime, to include the avoidance of threats levied against its principal guardian,
the United States.31 (16)
purposes, binds Beijing to a rules-based system and increases the costs to the PRC of going against it , and
thus should trump other U.S. concerns about Chinas internal and external behavior. We accept that integrating China into international
institutions will continue and that the United States will accrue some benefits from that activity. Our argument is that basing U.S.
AT: Reassurance
Chinese demands for reassurance are a smokescreen- engagement signals US
weakness and invites Chinese aggression
Friedberg, PhD Harvard, 15
(Aaron L, Prof of Politics and international affairs @Princeton, The Debate Over US China
Strategy Survival | vol. 57 no. 3 | JuneJuly 2015 | pp. 89110)
The claim that the United States needs to find ways to reassure China reflects
a questionable
reading of the dynamics of the current strategic competition, as well as what
appears to be an overly benign interpretation of Beijings motivations and
intentions. While it may be true that Chinas leaders see their ongoing military build-up as in some sense
defensive, this does not make it any less threatening to their neighbours or to the interests of the U nited
States. Proposals for restraint rest on the belief that the United States and China are on the verge of an
arms race. In fact, a competition is already well under way. As during the Cold War, the mechanical actionreaction
image grossly oversimplifies the character of the interactions between the two sides and points towards
prescriptions that are likely to be unhelpful, and possibly dangerous. Chinas leaders feel
constrained and potentially threatened, not by any particular US weapons programme or operational
concept, but by the presence of its forward-deployed forces, the persistence of its alliances and its
continuing commitment to intervene on behalf of its friends if they are threatened or attacked. Beijing has had
to live with these facts because, for many years, it lacked the means to challenge or change them. Today that is no longer the case. China now
has the resources, as well as the resolve, to push back against American power , and it has started
to do so. Many of its military-modernisation programmes appear to be aimed precisely at making it
more difficult, costly and dangerous for the United States to continue to project power into the Western
Pacific. Unfortunately, at this point in the sequence of strategic interaction, Chinas leaders are likely to
interpret gestures of restraint not as an indication that a more aggressive
approach is unnecessary, but rather as a sign that it is succeeding . Advocates
of reassurance also likely overestimate the degree to which the leadership of the Communist
Party of China is motivated by fear and insecurity about external, as opposed to possible internal, threats.
The current cycle of Chinese assertiveness did not begin when the U nited States was building up its forces
in the Western Pacific, but rather when it seemed to be weak, preoccupied and in
decline.43 While the initial announcement of the pivot gave Beijing pause,
the subsequent lack of follow-through has reinforced the view that the
United States is constrained, at least for the time being. Despite their protestations about
encirclement, Chinas leaders evidently believe that their more assertive stance is succeeding, rather
than provoking an effective countervailing response from the United States and its allies .44 (103-4)
only a matter of months passing before the two countries encounter new shocks and the deterioration of
ties resumes. The most recent jolts to the relationship , just a few months since Xi Jinping and Barack Obama took their stroll
in the Zhongnanhai (the so-called Yingtai Summit), have been the escalating rhetoric and tensions around China's
island-building in the South China Sea. Behind this imbroglio lies rising concerns about Chinese
military capabilities, US military operations near China, and the broader balance of power in Asia. But
there have been a number of other lesser, but not unimportant, issues that have recently buffeted the
relationship in different realms - in law enforcement (arrests of Chinese for technology theft and falsification of applications
to US universities), legal (China's draft NGO and national security laws), human rights (convictions of rights lawyers and the general
repression in China since 2009), cyber-hacking (of the US Office of Personnel Management most recently) and problems in trade
and investment. Hardly a day passes when one does not open the newspaper to read of more - and
serious - friction. This is the "new normal" and both sides had better get
used to it - rather than naively professing a harmonious relationship that
is not achievable.
Relations are a farce- China only cooperates when it is in their interest- engagement
builds them up for future confrontation
Blackwill, Senior Fellow @ CFR, and Tellis, PhD, 15
(Robert, Former Ambassador to India, Ashley, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace specializing in international
security, defense, and Asian strategic issues. Revising U.S. Grand Strategy Toward China March)
So long as the United States does not alter the intense global codependency that currently defines U.S.-China economic relations, China is
content to maintain the current arrangement.32 China still seeks to cooperate with the U nited States whenever possible,
but only when such collaboration is not unduly burdensome in the face of
common interests, does not undercut its geopolitical ambitions to
undermine U.S. primacy, and does not foreclose future options that might
one day prove advantageous to China. Because China recognizes that its quest for comprehensive national
power is still incomplete, it seeks to avoid any confrontation with the United States or the international system
in the near term. Rather, Beijing aims to deepen ties with all its global partners and especially
with Washingtonin the hope that its accelerated rise and centrality to international trade and
politics will compel others to become increasingly deferential to Chinas preferences.
Should such obeisance not emerge once China has successfully risen, Beijing would then be
properly equipped to protect its equities by force and at a lower cost than
it could today, given that it is still relatively weak and remains reliant on the benefits of trade and
global interdependence. The fundamental conclusion for the United States, therefore, is that China does not see
its interests served by becoming just another trading state, no matter how constructive an outcome that
might be for resolving the larger tensions between its economic and geopolitical strategies . Instead, China
will continue along the path to becoming a conventional great power with the full panoply of political and
military capabilities, all oriented toward realizing the goal of recovering from the United States the
primacy it once enjoyed in Asia as a prelude to exerting global influence in the future .(17)
understanding, a strategic partnership, or a new type of major country relations between the United
States and China. Rather, the most that can be hoped for is caution and restrained predictability by the two
sides as intense U.S.-China strategic competition becomes the new normal, and even that will be no easy task to
achieve in the period ahead. The purpose of U.S. diplomacy in these dangerous circumstances is to mitigate and
manage the severe inherent tensions between these two conflicting strategic paradigms, but it cannot hope
to eliminate them. Former Australian Prime Minister and distinguished sinologist Kevin Rudd believes the Chinese may have
come to the same conclusion: There is emerging evidence to suggest that President Xi, now two years
into his term, has begun to conclude that the long-term strategic divergences between U.S. and Chinese
interests make it impossible to bring about any fundamental change in the relationship .59 The Obama
administration has clearly pursued a policy approach far different than the one recommended in this report. To be clear, this involves a more
fundamental issue than policy implementation. All signs suggest that President Obama and his senior colleagues have a profoundly different and
much more benign diagnosis of Chinas strategic objectives in Asia than do we. Like some of its predecessors, the Obama administration has not
appeared to understand and digest the reality that Chinas grand strategy in Asia in this era is designed to undermine U.S. vital national interests
and that it has been somewhat successful in that regard. It is for this overriding reason that the Obama team has continued the cooperate-buthedge policy of its predecessors, but with much greater emphasis on cooperating than on hedging. Many of these omissions in U.S.
policy would seem to stem from an administration worried that such actions would offend Beijing and
therefore damage the possibility of enduring strategic cooperation between the two nations, thus the
dominating emphasis on cooperation. That self-defeating preoccupation by the United States based on a
long-term goal of U.S.-China strategic partnership that cannot be accomplished in the foreseeable future
should end. (38-9)
AT: Spillover
Engagement doesnt facilitate cooperation- empirics
Pillsbury, PhD, 15
(Michael, director of the Hudson Institutes Center for Chinese Strategy,
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-hundred-year-marathon-excerpt-2015-2 2-9)
For four decades now, my colleagues and I believed that engagement with the Chinese would induce
China to cooperate with the West on a wide range of policy problems . It
hasnt. Trade and technology were supposed to lead to a convergence of Chinese and Western views on
questions of regional and global order. They havent. In short, China has failed to meet nearly all of
our rosy expectations. Take, for example, weapons of mass destruction. No security threat poses a greater
danger to the United States and our allies than their proliferation. But China has been less than helpful to put it
mildly in checking the nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran . In the aftermath of 9/11, some
commentators expressed the belief that America and China would henceforth be united by the threat of
terrorism, much as they had once been drawn together by the specter of the Soviet Union. These high hopes of cooperating to confront
the common danger of terrorism, as President George W. Bush described it in his January 2002 State of the Union address, by speaking of
erasing old rivalries, did not change Chinas attitude. Sino-American collaboration on this issue has turned
out
AT: Swaine
Swaines vision isnt feasible, and ignores empirics
Browne, Senior Correspondent, 15
(Andrew, http://www.wsj.com/articles/can-china-be-contained-1434118534 6-12)
So what, specifically, should America do? In one of the most hawkish of the recent think-tank reports, Robert D . Blackwill, a former U.S.
deputy national security adviser and ambassador to India under President George W. Bush, and Ashley J. Tellis, a senior associate at the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who also served on the National Security Council staff under President Bush, write that
engagement with China has served to strengthen a competitor. It is time, they declare, for a new grand
strategy: less engagement and more balancing to ensure the central objective of continued U.S. global primacy.
Among other things, America should beef up its military in Asia, choke off Chinas access to military technology, accelerate missile-defense
deployments and increase U.S. offensive cyber capabilities. For Michael D. Swaine, also of the Carnegie Endowment, this is a certain
recipe for another Cold War, or worse. He outlines a sweeping settlement under which America would
concede its primacy in East Asia, turning much of the region into a buffer zone policed by a balance of
forces, including those from a strengthened Japan. All foreign forces would withdraw from Korea. And China would offer
assurances that it wouldnt launch hostilities against Taiwan, which it regards as a renegade province. Such arrangements,
even if possible, would take decades to sort out. Meanwhile, warns David M. Lampton,
a professor at the Johns Hopkins Universitys School of Advanced International Studies, U.S.-China ties have reached a
tipping point. Our respective fears are nearer to outweighing our hopes than at any time since
normalization, he said in a recent speech. The West has been in this position before. Optimism about the
prospects of transforming an ancient civilization through engagement, followed by deep disillusion, has
been the pattern ever since early Jesuit missionaries sought to convert the Chinese to Christianity. Those
envoys adopted the gowns of the Mandarin class, grew long beards and even couched their gospel message in Confucian terms to make it more
palatable. The 17th-century German priest Adam Schall got as far as becoming the chief astronomer of the Qing dynasty. But he fell from favor,
and the Jesuits were later expelled.
United States is a peaceful country because its democratic, right, is confronted immediately with evidence
that contradicts that basic claim. Its not an exaggeration to say that the United States is addicted to war. We are not
reluctant at all to reach for our six-shooter. And countries like China understand this. And when
countries like China see the United States pivoting to Asia, and they see what our record looks like in
terms of using military force since 1989. And when they think about the history of US-Chinese relations,
when they think about the Open Door policy and how we exploited China in the early part of the 20th century. And when they think about the
Korean War - most Americans dont realize this, but we were not fighting the North Koreans during the Korean War, we were fighting the
Chinese from 1950 to 1953. We had a major war, not with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, but with China. China remembers all
these things. So they do not view the United States as a benign hegemon. They view the United States as
a very dangerous foe that is moving more and more forces to Asia and is forming close alliances with
Chinas neighbors. From Beijings point of view, this is a terrible situation.
2NC Epistemology
Aff engagement literature makes crucial mistaken assumptions about Chinese goals
and behavior- you should heavily discount it
Friedberg, PhD Harvard, 15
(Aaron L, Prof of Politics and international affairs @Princeton, The Debate Over US China
Strategy Survival | vol. 57 no. 3 | JuneJuly 2015 | pp. 89110)
The six strategies discussed here reflect differing assumptions about the sources
U.S. policy toward China. As Washington prepares for a visit from Chinese President Xi Jinping next week, American
thinking about China seems stuck on concepts developed in the 1970s, 80s and 90s. Since that time, however,
China has evolved in ways that few, if any, in Washington saw coming. It has become more assertive
overseas, more repressive at home and more mercantilist in its trade
practices than was anticipated two decades ago. Back then, American leaders regularly predicted that trade and
prosperity would produce a more open China, one that would ease into the existing international system created under U.S.
leadership. Yet even as China moves in new directions, we use the mindset of the past when we talk about it. We continue to draw on
ideas dating to Richard Nixons opening even though it seems likely that Nixon himself, were he alive
today, would take a much tougher stance toward China than he did in 1972. Several
intellectual traps stand in the way of developing new approaches. The first is the notion of
engagement. This concept dates to the period after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, when President
George H.W. Bush resisted proposals to cut off all contact with Chinese leaders. Instead, he laid down a policy of engagement meaning that
his administration would meet with Chinese leaders in hopes of changing them. President Bill Clinton perpetuated the use of engagement, and
it has become a catchphrase for conciliatory, non-punitive approaches to our differences . But it was never
really clear what engagement sought, other than meetings and talk . And now, a quarter century after Tiananmen, when
no one suggests cutting off contact, engagement has lost whatever slight meaning it once
held. Likewise, those who resist any policy change frequently argue that , beginning with Nixon, eight presidents
in a row have come around to roughly the same China policies and that therefore these policies should not be altered.
This idea also has a history. Since the Nixon era, several presidents most notably Ronald Reagan and Clinton have
campaigned promising to change U.S. policy toward China, only to do an about-face in office. Yet the history
isnt so simple. Obama, for example, actually did a reverse about-face: He set out to avoid conflict, then
toughened his approach after his first year in office . More fundamentally, as Obamas words on Cuba recognize, what a series
of predecessors have done does not answer what the United States should do when circumstances change. Nixon himself inherited a China policy
carried out by his four immediate predecessors, but rightly reversed the policy. Then there are the recurrent calls for a G-2. It is sometimes
proposed that China and the United States should reach a broad strategic accommodation allowing them, together, to guide the affairs of the
world. This idea gained strength during the financial crisis, when China appeared to be the economically strongest partner for the United States.
More recently, Xis repeated proposal for a new type of major-power relationship seems a variant of the old calls for a Group of 2. But such
formulations overlook larger realities. They implicitly downgrade the interests of U.S.
allies and friends (Japan, India, South Korea and the European Union, for starters) who would naturally feel
threatened by the notion of the United States and China teaming up without them. They also ignore
fundamental differences in values and political systems . Do advocates expect the United States to stay silent on issues such
as Chinas severe repression of dissent? The underlying reality is that the congruence of strategic interests that held
the United States and China together in the late Cold War no longer exists. And the
desire of the U.S. business community for trade and investment in China, which drove U.S.
policy in the 1990s, has also been transformed: These days, U.S. businesses tend to come to the White
House not to get help in expanding trade but looking for a tougher line on issues such as intellectual
property and cybertheft. In this climate, efforts to perpetuate the old U.S.-China
relationship seem increasingly out of touch. The truth is, the United States China
policy is already changing at the working levels of government and at the grass-roots level, but our
overriding ideas about this relationship have not kept pace. Over the next few
years, a new U.S. policy toward China is sure to emerge, but it may do so gradually, from the
bottom up. As it does, some simple concepts could be brought back into play. One is the idea that China should be treated by the same
rules as other countries. Another is the notion of reciprocity: When China penalizes U.S. businesses or media, the United States should respond
with similar limits on Chinese entities. We should develop a more businesslike approach, forsaking the dream that some personalized diplomacy
or dramatic communiqu can bring back the special relationship of the past. The United States and China are in a new era. Its time to
develop policies and ideas that dont try fruitlessly to replicate the past.
from Sun Tzu through Mao Tse-tung has emphasized deception more than
many military doctrines. Chinese deception is oriented mainly toward
inducing the enemy to act in expediently and less toward protecting the
integrity of ones own plans.
2NC Prodict
Best scholarship concludes engagement is doomed
Shambaugh, PhD Michigan, 15
(David, professor of political science and international affairs at the George Washington University in
Washington DC,[1] as well as a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution
http://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1819980/fundamental-shift-china-and-us-arenow-engaged-all-out?page=all , 6-12)
A qualitative shift in American thinking about China is occurring. In essence, the
"engagement" strategy pursued since Nixon across eight administrations, that was premised on three pillars, is unravelling.
The American expectation has been, first, as China modernised economically, it would liberalise politically;
second, as China's role in the world grew, it would become a "responsible stakeholder" - in Robert Zoellick's words - in
upholding the global liberal order; and third, that China would not challenge the American-dominant security architecture
and order in East Asia. The first premise is clearly not occurring - quite to the contrary, as China
grows stronger economically, it is becoming more, not less, repressive politically .
There are any number of examples, but political repression in China today is the worst it has been in the 25 years since
Tiananmen. With respect to the other two, we are not witnessing frontal assaults by China on these regional and global institutional
architectures. But we are witnessing Beijing establishing a range of alternative institutions that clearly signal
China's discomfort with the US-led postwar order . Make no mistake: China is
methodically trying to construct an alternative international order.
isnt attempting to contain China, why popularize the idea that it is? One reason is that it may be useful
inside China to cultivate an enduring sense of victimhood. If you promote the idea that the
US is set on thwarting Chinas rise, then any pushback on Chinas actions
becomes proof of a covert hostility. But accommodating Chinas expanding claims would hardly demonstrate US
sincerity only that it was forced recognize Chinas legitimate interests in the face of hard power. Inside the structure of
this narrative, either confrontation or accommodation justifies further
expansion and military capability. Faced with this dilemma, the danger for China is
that US policymakers start to reexamine whether the logic of engagement
still holds. For the first time in decades, American analysts are
questioning Americas basic policy. Washington is giving up on Beijing becoming a stakeholder in the present
global order, writes the Financial Times. Washington needs a new grand strategy toward China that centers on balancing the rise of Chinese
power rather than continuing to assist its ascendancy, say Robert Blackwill and Ashley J Tellis in a recent report for the Council on Foreign
Relations. Even now, no one is seriously talking about containment. But a US decision to reconsider engagement as the
foundation for future relations may be difficult to reverse, and could have a significant impact on Chinas
interests down the road. Tragically, Chinas cultivated conspiracy could end up
producing a much more hostile policy than the one that actually exists
now.
Engagement cant produce benefits fast enough to matter- even if they win their
turns, our link outweighs on timeframe
Rudd, Former Aussie PM, 2015
(Kevin, PhD Focus in Chinese/China History, U.S.-China 21 The Future of U.S.-China Relations Under
Xi Jinping Toward a new Framework of Constructive Realism for a Common Purpose
http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/Summary%20Report%20US-China%2021.pdf April)
Chinas worldview, as for all nation-states, is deeply shaped by its past . In Chinas case, this means one of the worlds
oldest continuing civilizations, with a continuing written language and literary tradition over several thousand years. For China, the mark of
history is profound, as are the scars of collective memory. This applies to Chinas philosophical tradition; its core, continuing
values; its
historical experience of its neighbors and those which invaded it; and its cumulative perceptions
over time of the United Kingdom, the United States and the collective, colonizing West. China also takes great pride in its civilizational
achievements; the glories of its imperial past; and the resilience of its people across the millennia, celebrating the material and cultural
achievements of the Han () people. Within those achievements, China has also generated a self-referential body of philosophical thought and
way of thinking (siwei ) that does not readily yield to the epistemological demands and intellectual taxonomies of the Western academy.
And within this philosophical system, Confucianism in its various forms lies at the core. Westerners may find Chinese public formulations arcane.
But that is the way the Chinese system conducts its official discourse, in which case we have some responsibility to understand what these
formulations really mean, rather than once again simply dismissing them as propaganda. Chinese intentions are shaped not simply
by the deep value structures alive in Chinese tradition and in Chinas modern political mind-set. They are
also shaped by Chinas national historiography its narrative about its own place in history, as well as its
historical account of its dealing with its neighbors, the phalanx of Western colonial powers eager to carve up
its territory, and the United States. Chinas lived experience of the outside world, as well as how it recalls that experience in the current
period, exercises a profound impact on how China now views the world. The main thematics that emerge in Chinas own account of
its historical engagement with the world are as follows: First, China, at least over the last 500 years, has been the
innocent party and did nothing by way of its own offensive actions against the West or Japan to provoke the
imperial carve-up of its territory and its people in the modern period; Second, China has therefore been the victim of
international aggression, rather than a perpetrator, particularly during the so-called century of foreign humiliation from the First
Opium War to the proclamation of the Peoples Republic; Third, Chinese national losses during the Japanese invasion and occupation were of
staggering proportions even by global standards, explaining Beijings unique and continuing neuralgia toward Tokyo, both in terms of the official
Japanese historical record of the war as a basis for any effective long-term reconciliation with Japan, and in terms of any evidence today of
Japanese remilitarization or revanchism; Fourth, Russia too has loomed large in the Chinese national memory and has been predominantly seen
as a strategic adversary through most of its history, rather than as a strategic partner; Fifth, throughout its past, right through to the present
period, Chinas national pre-occupations have been primarily, although not exclusively domestic: governing a quarter of humanity rather than
dreaming of carving out even more territory for itself; Sixth, China, after 150 years, has now regained its proper place in the community of
nations, as a product of its own efforts to build national power, rather than depending on anybody else; and Finally, Chinese leaders
have a profound sense that Chinas time has now come for China to have its own impact on the region
and the world; but they are concerned that others (principally the United States) will now prevent it from
doing so because this will challenge U.S. global dominance. The current relationship between the United
States and China has been characterized privately by one Chinese interlocutor as one condemned to a
future of "Mutually Assured Misperception. The report argues that there is considerable truth to this, as each
side engages in various forms of mirror imaging of the other. As another senior Chinese interlocutor said during the preparation of this report:
The problem is the United States believes that China will simply adopt the same hegemonic thinking that
the United States has done historically, as seen under the Monroe Doctrine and the multiple invasions of neighboring states in the
Western Hemisphere that followed. Since the Second World War, there has barely been a day when the United States has not been engaged in a
foreign war. As a result, the United States believes that China will behave in the same way. And this conclusion forms the basis of a series of
recent policies towards China. Americans offer their own variations on the same theme concerning Chinese mirror imaging. Nonetheless, the
report argues that Chinese leaders have begun to form a worrying consensus on what they believe to be the
core elements of U.S. strategy towards China, despite Washingtons protestations to the contrary . These are
reflected in the following five-point consensus circulated among the Chinese leadership during 2014, summarizing internal conclusions about
U.S. strategic intentions: To isolate China; To contain China; To diminish China; To internally divide China; and To
sabotage Chinas leadership. While
misperceptions between the U.S. and China, informed both by history and recent experience, are
likely to endure. I argue that the only real prospect of altering the present reality in a substantive and durable way lies not in
discovering some magical declaratory statement. Instead, the U.S. and China should set out an explicit, agreed road map of cooperative
strategic projects (bilateral, regional and global) to build mutual trust and reduce deeply rooted strategic perceptions, inch by inch,
year after year. The gains from such an approach will be slow and grueling, the reversals
numerous. But it is the only way to arrest the political and policy dynamics that flow from Chinas conclusion that the U.S. will do
whatever it takes to retain its status as the pre-eminent power. (12-15)
hegemon. The problem that we face, however, is that as we move towards a containment strategy now, we almost
certainly guarantee that there will be an intense security competition between the United States and China.
One might say to me: John, the argument youre making for containment now, basically creates a situation where you
have a self-fulfilling prophecy, where it guarantees that China and the United States will compete for security and they will always be
a danger of war. My response to that is its true, but we have no choice because
we cannot afford to let China grow and dominate Asia for fear that it
might have malign intentions. So, therefore, we have to contain it now,
and it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. And my argument is that this is the
tragedy of great power politics.