Category Archives: US

‘Take A Deep Breath’ But ….

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This past week Asia-Pacific leaders gathered in Russia’s east – at Vladivostok in fact – for the annual meeting of APEC.  Though President Obama was absent – the demands of the election season upon him – Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was there representing the United States.  Hillary in fact had been doing the rounds prior to the meeting visiting several ASEAN countries before meeting the Chinese leadership in Beijing.  It is evident from those meetings and other conversations that the US and China reside in quite different places when it comes, for example, to resolving the island disputes in the South and East China Seas.  As noted by various media sources there seemed to be little compromise on the part of the two great powers concerning these disputes.  Indeed China’s Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi asserted once again that there was “plentiful historical and jurisprudential evidence” for China’s claims to sovereignty over much of the South China Seas.

In some respects the island disputes represent the leading edge of current tension between the two and indeed in the region.  So, let me go back to examining the grand strategies of the US-China.  In my previous post I looked at the article by Aaron Friedberg in “Bucking Beijing:  An Alternative US China Policy”.  If I can summarize his position it is:  significant hedging and a serious commitment to balancing.  The strategy entails “push back” relying on a balance against China by the US with key allies and a military buildup accompanied by a firm and continuing US commitment.

So there we are:  a traditional grand strategy of balance.  So let me turn to the other article in the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs.  This article “How China Sees America: The Sum of Beijing’s Fears” is by Andrew Nathan of Columbia and Andrew Scobell of Rand. On its face this article – and the grand strategy that accompanies it – appears to tone down US strategy and to rely more on diplomacy.  It recommends this on the basis that China is not a revisionist state.  Implicitly they seem to suggest neither is the United States.  As the authors argue:

But widespread perceptions of China as an aggressive, expansionist power are off base. Although China’s relative power has grown significantly in recent decades, the main tasks of with Chinese foreign policy are defensive and have not changed much since the Cold War era: to blunt destabilizing influences from abroad, to avoid territorial losses, to reduce its neighbors’ suspicions, and to sustain economic growth. What has changed in the past two decades is that China is now so deeply integrated into the world economic system that its internal and regional priorities have become part of a larger quest: to define a global role that serves Chinese interests but also wins acceptance from other powers.

On the interdependence conflict continuum, China is much further along the interdependence/cooperation continuum.  As the authors suggest some international relations specialists in China see at least some compatibility of interests:

A small group of mostly younger Chinese who have closely studied the United States argues that Chinese and American interests are not totally at odds.  In their view, the two countries are sufficiently remote from each other that their core security interests need not clash.  They can gain mutual benefit from trade and other common interests.

But the authors also admit that these scholars are outnumbered by strategists – from the military, from the security services – and I suspect the Party who believe that the US remains committed to hegemony and containment of China and these folk “… believe that China must stand up to the United States militarily and that it can win a conflict, should one occur, buy outpacing US military technology and taking advantage of what they believe to be superior morale within China’s armed forces.”

Well if the view is dominant, then it would appear that rising confrontation is inevitable. Here however the authors return to interdependence and the belief that the mutual interdependence even vulnerability “carries the best medium-term hope for cooperation.  Fear of each other keeps alive the imperative to work together.  In the longer term the authors urge the two to create a new equilibrium of power that maintains stability but does so by admitting China to a larger role in the global system.

How can the United States do this – push and cajole China and the United States to this new place.  Well here are some of the elements:

  • The US has to draw clear policy lines without threatening China – pushing back where necessary to establish these lines of division.  This must be done with professionalism and not rhetorical belligerence;
  • The US should push for a Taiwan resolution that Taiwan’s citizens will accept;
  • The US must insist on freedom of navigation in the seas surrounding China;
  • The US must press for an open world economy and defend human rights;
  • The US must maintain its military predominance in the western Pacific, including the South and East China Seas;
  • The US must upgrade its military capabilities, maintain its regional defense alliances, and respond confidently to challenges; and
  • The US must seek a balance of common interests and avoid threatening China and do so by upgrading the mechanisms of collaborative management.

So sans possibly the rhetoric and the threatening behavior, this looks a lot like Aaron Friedberg’s US grand strategy.  In other words hedging and balance.  Well maybe there is no alternative.  But I think not.

Traditional grand strategy seems to suggest two poles – hegemony by the United States or balancing by the United States.  But there is another strategy – that interestingly enough – some realists and now some liberals and even some neoconservatives – suggest is the grand strategy in Asia – “offshore balancing”.  So let’s turn to that approach in the next post.

Image Credit: Official logo of ASEAN

The Fear of the “Boogey Man” And Other Thoughts – China as a Great Power

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I suppose it is partly due to US electoral season but the “China Threat School” has been rather busy in the last while.  Stephen Walt blogger  at foreignpolicy.com and professor of international relations at Harvard has noticed it as well.  In a recent blog post “Inflating the China Threat” he chronicles stories  from several mainstream media where the talk is all about China raising its nuclear deterrent capability.  As Walt argues:

The discussion is all pretty Strangelovian, of course, but nuclear strategists get paid to think about all sorts of elaborate and far-fetched scenarios.  In sum, those fiendish Chinese are doing precisely what any sensible power would do: they are trying to preserve their own second-strike deterrent by modernizing their force, to include the development of multiple-warheads missiles that would be able to overcome any defenses the United States might choose to build.

I won’t dwell in the ‘ghoulish world’ of counterforce, countervalue, first strike and second strike capabilities, but international relations’ experts remain dogged in their efforts to describe the Grand Strategies for the United States and China and to establish a path for both to avoid the rivalry, competition and even conflict that historically has occurred in great power relations with so-called power transitions.

It is that vein that I recommend back-to-back pieces by two American experts writing in the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs.  First there is the piece by Aaron Freiberg a professor of the Woodrow Wilson School of Princeton University who previously served in the George W. Bush Administration as the Deputy Assistant of National Security Affairs in the Office of the Vice-President – yes, the Darth Vader of the Bush Administration.  The article is “Bucking Beijing: An Alternative U.S. China Policy”. The other perspective is tackled by well known China expert Andrew J. Nathan of Columbia University and his co-author Andrew Scobell at the Rand Corporation – their article “How China Sees America: The Sum of Beijings Fears”.

It is now common to describe the China-US relationship as the most important relationship of the 21st century.  In this instance this common declaration is in fact – right.  But then how each should engage the other remains opaque. It is particularly difficult when when it comes to China.  The fact is China experts or others are unable to see into the “blackbox” of Chinese decision-making.  Most critically, we  have little idea of how the Chinese military influences China’s Grand Strategy.

But then we don’t really  have a good handle on what China’s Grand Strategy is, anyway.  Think how we’ve been speculating in the last few years on what China’s core interests are? Whether China since 2010 has exhibited a “new assertiveness”? Or what military modernization strategy China is following – and to what end?

Into that opaque environment the China Threat School wades in with relative ease.  For realistically in the face of such uncertainty a “hedging strategy” is not unreasonably a favorable option.

Now Aaron Freiberg’s analysis provides a sophisticated two-headed US hedging strategy. This strategy is two-headed because it requires the US to both balance China’s growing power and to seek economic engagement as well. As he declares:

Developing and funding a credible strategy for countering China’s [military] buildup and adopting a tougher approach to economic engagement will both be important. So, too, will be continuing to stand firm on issues of principle. … What China’s current leaders ultimately want—regional hegemony—is not something their counterparts in Washington are willing to give.  …  Short of Beijing’s genuine democratic transition, however, Washington will not willingly abandon its policy of balancing and withdraw from the region.

Freiberg then underscores the vital nature of  firm US actions in this region:

The stakes could hardly be higher. Since the mid-1990s, China has been piecing together what Pentagon planners describe as asymmetric “anti-access/area-denial” (A2/AD) capabilities. … Absent a strong U.S. response, Chinese planners might eventually come to believe that their growing A2/AD capabilities are sufficiently impressive to scare the United States off from intervening or provoking a confrontation in the region. Worse still, they might convince themselves that if the United States were to intervene, they could cripple its conventional forces in the western Pacific, leaving it with few options other than the threat of nuclear escalation. Maintaining stability requires reducing the likelihood that China’s leaders could ever see initiating such an attack as being in their interest.  A direct U.S.-Chinese military confrontation is, of course, extremely unlikely. But the aim of the balancing half of U.S. strategy must be to ensure that it remains so, even as China’s power grows.

It is a get tough/stay tough kind of policy – with effective military pushback from the United States and a credible commitment to allies in the region and avoid any incipient appeasement by these allies toward China:

In the absence of strong signals of continuing commitment and resolve from the United States, its friends may grow fearful of abandonment, perhaps eventually losing heart and succumbing to the temptations of appeasement.  …  When it comes to Asia, the United States does not have the option of what The New Yorker first described as the Obama administration’s penchant for “leading from behind.

So a renewed firmness – apparently that has slide in the recent Obama years. But suggests Freiberg there is the need to promote engagement with China as well.  But this economic engagement needs to be “righted”.  Freiberg declares:

Rather than treating engagement as desirable for its own sake, the United States needs to take a more clear-eyed and results-oriented approach. The place to start is trade. The bilateral economic relation- ship still provides benefits to both sides, but it has recently grown increasingly lopsided. Beijing uses its currency policy and subsidies of various kinds to boost its exports.

Here it is then – strong on defense, strong on balancing against the rise of China, and a tough but fair economic policy.

So let’s look across the divide to the piece by Nathan and Scobell.  Shortly.

Image Credit: WWE – the Boogeyman

 

 

 

 

 

“Pivots” and Great Powers – Both Sides Now

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I could not resist – and a big thanks to Joni Mitchell and Judy Collins for the reference to their famous tune.  I f you recognize the reference – well you know …

In 2009 I think  – the draft of this book chapter was done in 2008 – Zhang Yunling of CASS – “Mr. APEC” in China –  and myself wrote a chapter on the regional dimension in the US-China relationship in an edited volume by Gu Guoliang and Richard Rosecrance called Power and Restraint: A Shared Vision for the US-China Relationship.   Zhang Yunling and I tried to capture the US-China relationship this way at the time:

China’s strategy is based on three principles: first, China recognizes the United States as a superpower; indeed the current sole superpower; second , China will cooperate with the United States in as many areas as possible; and third it would seem China will continue to increase its strength, including military strength, and raise its status both regionally and globally.  From China’s perspective, as long as the United States recognizes and takes into account China’s interests, China is unlikely to challenge the overall US leadership. In the final analysis, the most significant question for China is, how can it balance its support for democracy, domestically and externally, with the defense of sovereignty whether Taiwan, Central Asia or the Asia-Pacific generally?

Well, that was then and this is now!  It would not appear to me that these constitute the bedrock “rules” that define this most important bilateral relationship.  But let’s take a look at the rules and where the relationship is today.

The context has changed a great deal since the full onset of the global financial crisis of 2008.  It appears that the “Chinese foreign policy elite” – I am not sure exactly who these people are – but there is a view from western experts – I know these folks far better – that there is a from Beijing the view that the US is in decline and that it is losing its hegemonic status.  Furthermore, and more ominously, as a result in  part of the US Administration’s “Asian pivot”, these same China experts have a heightened suspicion that the US is unwilling to adjust to its relative decline and China’s rise.  As Brooking’s Kenneth Lieberthal recently described it at ForeignPolicy.com:

In Chinese eyes, the United States has always been concerned primarily with protecting its own global dominance – which perforce means doing everything it can to retard or disrupt China’s rise.  That America lost its stride in the global financial crisis and the weak recovery since then while China in 2010 became the world’s second-largest economy has only increased Beijing’s concerns about Washington’s determination postpone the day when China inevitably surpasses the United States to become the world’s most powerful country.

So it would seem that China has drawn back from the view that the US is the only superpower. Instead many China experts now suggest that China is a global power as presumably is the United States.  Quite honestly I haven’t s clue what a “global power” is – and I suspect it is simply a way for Chinese experts to assert that China is a superpower – without having to actually proclaim it.  There is little question that both states are great powers – lord knows no one would question each being in the G20 etc., but then including India also makes sense. Clearly India is not yet a “global power”.  It seems to me to be disingenuous to manufacture this new category – especially if you compare the two by military or economic metrics – it ain’t so.  I think too many experts distort time lines.  It more than a decade, possibly two, before China’s economy will match the US so let’s not conflate that future with the present.  And as for the military and strategic partnerships – not even close.

Though it is true that the US and China have sought to cooperate in a number of critical areas – especially in the global economy, notably China’s leaders urging collective effort to resolve the eurozone crisis and to avoid grater turbulence – in other areas there is no collaborative spirit.  Most puzzling is China’s determination to support Russia to the bitter end on Syria.  It is unnecessary and with little that would suggest that there is a Chinese interest in playing “poodle to Putin”.

More contentious are the growing demands and “police” encounters in the South China Sea between China a number of Asian countries.  China has asserted a broad territorial claim that encompasses much of the South China Sea.  In addition there are territorial clashes between China and the Japan in the East China Sea. Many in Washington have declared a new China assertiveness threatening regional stability.  The US has meanwhile – without declaring sides on the territorial claims, has insisted on freedom of navigation and a multilateral approach to resolving the territorial demands.  China has in turn rejected this approach – and at least for now has insisted that these territorial claims should be settled by the contending parties only – bilaterally in other words.

The new assertiveness has enabled many in Washington to focus on the growing military modernization in China’s armed services and calls to meet such military challenges.  The point here is that the so-called new assertiveness has drawn close attention to China’s military threats and the consequences of the growing military modernization.

Where then do the two great powers need to go? Here are some actions that the two can adopt that are likely to lower the temperature on the competition, lead to a new set of rules and can be accomplished largely without the other:

  • Both take a deep breath and limit the degree of hedging each proposes for the other.  Hedging focuses on worst case and frequently results in outcomes  each is concerned to hedge against;
  • The US de-emphasize rhetorically the Asian pivot; work more quietly with ASEAN allies to generate a Code of Conduct acceptable to both sides;
  • China turn down the volume on the South and East China Seas and at least in the case of the South China Seas propose concretely joint development agreements with the parties – Vietnam, Philippines, and others.  These agreements enable the parties to side step the territorial claims for the present; and
  • China needs to rethink its Syria position in the UN and consider abstention as opposed to veto.

I was fortunate enough early in the week to hear former Australian Prime Minister and Foreign Minister speak on the Rise of China.  If you take a look at the NewStatesman.com the article entitled “The West Isn’t Ready for the Rise of China”, the piece fairly reflects his remarks at the Munk School of Global Affairs.  I thought I’d just provide a quick sense of the approach that Rudd brings to this critical relationship:

So, what then is to be done?  Is it possible for the west (and, for that matter, the rest) to embrace a central organizing principle as we engage China over the future of the international order?  I believe it is.  But it will require collective intellectual effort, diplomatic co-ordination, sustained political will and most critically, continued, open and candid engagement with the Chinese political elite.  So, what might the core elements of such an engagement look lie?

I will turn to Rudd’s perspective.  This should allow me to describe the new rules of collaboration required for the US-China relationship.

For this particular “thought exercise”, I will try and describe what are the rules of behavior that can ensure that the competitiveness and rivalry can be contained – that rivalry and competition do not escalate to heightened and sustained rivalry – and then even to conflict.

 

Image Credit: abc.net.au

The Current Heart of China “Assertiveness” and the United States “Pivot”

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This past week ASEAN ministerial meetings popped up repeatedly in Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh.  These meetings served as diplomatic and political backdrop to the growing clash of interests in the seas east, west and south of China.

ASEAN has been a central player in Asian diplomatic and economic affairs since its formation in the late 1960s.  But on its face this is not necessarily more than a important regional organization.  Now, however, at least since 2008, one of the key ASEAN players, Indonesia, has also become a member of the G20 Leaders Summit.  The ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) a security dialogue forum has reached out to include key players in Asia – most notably China and the United States.  And the growing territorial claims especially, but not only, in the South China Sea have drawn in these key players to the security dialogue.  Given that there is no larger security organizational setting where not just regional powers but also the great powers engage here, the ASEAN meetings do appear to fit into the global summitry galaxy of institutions.

Much attention has been paid to the continuing tension that has hung over this region now for several years with contending territorial claims to the South China Sea by China, and various ASEAN and members including the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Brunei and for good measure Taiwan.  There have also been clashes between Japan and China over the East China Sea.  The maritime area is a key for the global transport of goods and vital energy resources.  Over half the world’s total trade transit through the area.  And  there have been increasing signs of resource riches – especially oil and gas – in the area as well.

The clash of interests was very much in evidence at, or surrounding the 45th ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ meeting in Phnom Penh early in the week followed by the ASEAN Regional Forum meeting.  The ARF is one of the few diplomatic settings for security dialogue in Asia.  This year’s ARF meeting – the 19th –  includes not only ASEAN Foreign Ministers but dialogue countries including – Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, the People’s Republic of China, the European Union , India, Japan, North Korea, Republic of Korea, Mongolia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Russia, East Timor, United States and Sri Lanka – 26 countries plus the EU in all.

Both meetings have highlighted the tensions between ASEAN and its allies and China. The United States has used these meetings to display rhetorical support for ASEAN countries without necessarily supporting any of the specific claims of these ASEAN countries.  The US efforts would appear to be an effort since at least 2010 to insinuate itself in East and Southeast Asia – and draw closer to various ASEAN states especially Vietnam and the Philippines.

In the South China Sea the ASEAN FM have been pushing to engage China in a long standing effort to resolve conflicts between the various states.  On Monday the FM sought to complete wording for a document to set out a Code of Conduct.  The Philippines have pressed for wording that would include measures to resolve territorial disputes and to raise the conflict in the Scarborough Shoal between the Philippines and China.

Manila appears to be leading the ASEAN push to persuade China to accept a Code of Conduct (COC) that would go some way to resolve the territorial disputes themselves. There has been a ten-year effort to complete a code of conduct which most ASEAN leaders have see as a legally binding document that would govern the behavior in the various seas and “establish protocols for resolving future disputes peacefully”. (see the WSJ “Beijing Defends Sea Claims as Clinton Visits Region” by Patrick Barta July 11, 2012)

China has been unwilling to discuss such a document signalling instead that it would be prepared only to discuss a more limited code aimed at “building trust and deepening cooperation” but not one that settles the territorial disputes, which it insist would be better negotiated with each country separately.  In the current diplomatic settings China has urged that officials leave discussions off the agenda.

For China, the collective ASEAN effort to promote a binding  COC has posed unwelcome interference in what Beijing has described not as territorial disputes between China and ASEAN but only disputes with some ASEAN states.  China has insisted that resolution of these conflicts be undertaken bilaterally.

Since the 2010 ARF meeting the United States Secretary of State has made it clear that the United States supports a multilateral solution and insists on the freedom of the seas:

Issues such as freedom of navigation and lawful exploitation of maritime resources often involve a wide region, and approaching them strictly bilaterally could be a recipe for confusion and even confrontation.

The Chinese position has remained adamant in the run-up to the ARF that US and various ASEAN positions were “deliberate hype” and intended to interfere with relations between China and ASEAN.   The Foreign Ministry continued to insist that the issue be left off the ARF agenda.

Meanwhile in the East China Sea tension rose significantly after two Chinese patrol vessels entered waters claimed by Japan. This incident followed an announcement that the Japanese government was considering buying the Senkaku Islands (referred to by the Chinese as the Diaoyu Islands).  Though the announcement was part of a complicated negotiation by the current Noda government caused by strong domestic political interests, the announcement and tensions quickly engaged both Japan and China.

A full blown diplomatic row at the ARF was only avoided when the ASEAN countries failed to reach agreement on the language of the COC.  But the tensions and potential conflict remain.

China has certainly not backed away from the its diplomatic positions.  And as the most recent East China Sea incident with Japan suggest is prepared to exert measured “military” action to underpin its assertion of interests.  Meanwhile has expressed a view that inserts itself into the regional conflict – and likely garners ASEAN country support – but at a low immediate cost while not directly challenging China – yet.

For the moment US-China engagement retains the “upper hand”.  But the position could well sour were military action – even though likely of a rather limited sort and unlikely to be between the US and China – were to occur.

Miscalculations and mistakes happen.

Image Credit: Stratfor 2009

Steve Clemons and the Revisionist Liberal American Foreign Policy Voice

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So returning to Steve Clemons’s and his review of grand strategy approaches in the Atlantic with his “Rebuilding America’s Stock of Power” which itself is a lead in for Steve to lead an  Atlantic Live session that will be streamed live on January 11th.  Well, I hope to get there but meanwhile let me attempt a partial review of Steve and his review of various ‘in the beltway’ types in the most recent issue (Issue 23, Winter 2012) of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas.

Steve has an outsized personality that is a Washington and New York presence.  Now Steve is a realist – a ‘happy realist’ – but a realist nevertheless.  The ‘bug-a-boo’ for Steve is the rise of China.  As Steve points to:

China is driving realities in the global economic sphere today; not the United States – and America, to revive its economy, needs to figure out how to drive Chinese-held dollars (along with German and Arab state held reserves) into productive capacity inside the United States while not giving away everything.

America must knock back Chinese predatory behaviors by becoming more shrewdly predatory and defensive of America’s core economic capacities.  Without a shift in America’s economic stewardship – which also means a shift in the macro-focused, neoliberal oriented, market fundamentalist staff of the current Obama team – the US economy will flounder and on a relative basis, sink compared to the rise of the rest.

For these experts, and for Steve I suspect, it is all about finding restraint in a new US grand strategy.   With the end of the Iraq War for the US and a growing intensity to end their military involvement in Afghanistan, there is a loud and growing chorus of voices in Washington to husband US resources.  Turn down the urge to go abroad to slay dragons.  The attack is on against unrestrained US interventionism which Steve argues is, as he calls it, “the dominant personality” of both US political parties.  So for the Democrats you have the humanitarian interventionists – read that as Libya – and for the Republicans you have the neoconservatives’ regime change – read that as Iraq.  The critique from Steve:

Neoconservatives and liberal interventionists put a premium on morality, on reacting and moving in the world along lines determined by an emotional and sentimental commitment to the basic human rights of other citizens – with little regard to the stock of means and resources the US has to achieve the great moral ends they seek.

So restraint and husbanding resources – economic and military – is the new objective.  And each of the experts, in their own way, urge it.  Thus Charlie Kupchan declares that in order to rebuild American leadership the US must:

  • restore the American consensus  on foreign policy and the rebuilding of its economy;
  • work with the newly emerging market powers to create a new global order and protect a liberal international order;
  • revitalize the transatlantic relationship; and then
  • judiciously retrench and deal with the overextension of US global commitments.

In a similar vein  a quick look at this recent press release at the CFR website for Richard Betts’s  new book entitled,  American Force: Dangers, Delusions, and Dilemmas in National Security, Betts too recommends, “the United States exercise greater caution and restraint, using force less frequently (“stay out”) but more decisively (“all-in”)”.

Bruce Jentleson performs a reprise of his and Steve Weber’s approach in The End of Arrogance.  In the journal article Bruce narrates a Ptolemaic versus Copernican world, where the central image is the displacement of the US from the center of the universe.  Now contrary to more realist interpretations, this diffusion of power as described by Bruce, anticipates that China too – the new rising power – will be unable to exert hegemonic power in this new 21st century global system.  As Jentleson declares,”Peaceful rise is one thing, assertive dominance quite another.” The Copernican world, according to Jentleson, is a disorderly place, but a global order that, “… means demonstrating the capacity to implement policies that reduce our vulnerabilities, enhance our competitiveness, and cultivate a shared sense of purpose.”

Diffusion of power, the end of hegemony or at least the enlargement of leadership with the inclusion of the rising powers like Brazil, India and China, and a requirement that the United States husband its resources – economic and military.

Steve argues that he holds a line similar to the Kupchan approach though he criticizes Kupchan for holding to such neatly drawn pillars of action for the US.  But it seems to me that constraint has been the mantra of the US before – back to the 1970’s and the end of Vietnam.  It is not a strategy and it is apt to be forgotten, or ignored, by a new political leadership especially across the political divide that exists in the US.  The dilemma that exists today is not a search to enunciate some new grand strategy, but an effort, and here I tend to agree with Bruce Jentleson, to ‘lead’ in initiating collective behavior – the impetus for collective action.  And there needs to be a concerted to avoid the China Threat syndrome that is embedded in Washington.  Restraint will evaporate unless US policy makers find a way to open a political space for China. This is the overwhelming need in US foreign policy.  In the coming years, according to the review of Richard Betts’s book

China is the main potential problem because it poses a choice Americans are reluctant to face. Washington can strive to control the strategic equation in Asia, or it can reduce the odds of conflict with China. But it will be a historically unusual achievement if it manages to do both,” notes Betts. Although conflict with China is not inevitable, “the United States is more likely to go to war with China than with any other major power.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

What’s So Grand About Grand Strategy – Dan Drezner?

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So on this auspices July 4th, I want all my American friends to enjoy their Independence Day.  Meanwhile thought I’d focus on US policy.  The impact on global policy and the rising BRICSAM is always significant.  And this is not any policy – but US grand strategy.

Dan Drezner in a recent edition of Foreign Affairs has taken a bead on one of those classic subjects of international relations – grand strategy.  Now I don’t wish to cast any aspirations on the famous blogger, but what is this new-style IR man “slumming”  in the hoary field of grand strategy?

Now like any good classic IR theorist, Dan starts off with a definition.  As he describes it, “grand strategy”:

… consists of a clear articulation of national interests married to a set of operational plans for advancing them. Sometimes, such strategies are set out in advance, with actions following in sequence.  Other times, strategic narratives are offered as coherent explanations connecting past policies with future ones.  Either way, a well-articulated grand strategy can offer an interpretive framework that tells everybody, including foreign policy officials themselves, how to understand the administration’s behavior.

The notion of grand strategy seems pretty critical to foreign policy action and possible foreign policy success but as Dan admits, “…most of the time it is not.” According to Dan grand strategy is only important when it indicates a change in policy.  And even there, according to Drezner, the true reserve currency is “power” – would you expect any difference from an IR type?

If then power is the sine qua non of influence, why so much attention to grand strategy.  The petty reason for such attention, says Dan, is that IR theorists all want to become George Kennan and write the next “Mr. X” article. Hmm.

The substantive reason for paying attention to grand strategy is that every once and awhile grand strategy does matter.  Says Dan: “Ideas matter most when actors are operating in uncharted waters.” Massive global disruptions for one or “power transition” for a second are both times of evident uncertainty in international  relations and paying attention to grand strategy may provide useful information to determine the behavior – and critically the intentions – of key great power actors.  And  – lo and behold – this a period where both conditions exist.  This lowly blogger has commented on both but especially on the power transition question – given the rise of China.

So then what is the Obama grand strategy?  For that Dan quotes Ben Rhodes from the Obama Administration:

If you were to boil it all down to a bumper sticker, it’s ‘Wind down these two wars, reestablish American standing and leadership in the world, and focus on a broader set of priorities, from Asia and the global economy to a nuclear-non-proliferation regime.’

Well it’s the biggest bumper sticker we would have ever seen.  And it doesn’t sell me that this is a grand strategy – or that the Obama Administration actually has one.  Indeed I think Dan inadvertently hits the nail on the head: first the Obama Administration has been moving from one grand strategy to another.  The Administration has reset several times and the latest version seems to be a more assertive counter punching strategy – the US reinsertion in the South China Seas trouble for example – more on that in an upcoming blog post – and a continuing effort to restore American strength at home.  On the latter, the politics of the US and the continuing sour taste in US domestic politics makes Obama efforts seem weak and ineffective.  On the counter punching it is hard to identify such a strategic direction when US efforts in Libya seem so difficult to fit such a grand strategy and where the best explanation for it is “leading from behind.”

Dan’s efforts are heroic but ultimately inapt.  At best the Obama Administration follows a course of pragmatism – and as such pragmatism is incapable of describing any grand strategy at all.  I’m afraid you walk away from Dan’s good efforts shaking one’s head and muttering – ‘he’s trying too hard.’

Not George Kennan yet; but don’t blame Dan; blame the Administration.

 

Is it America or is it the Liberal World Order That is Passing

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[Editor’s note:  I’d like to thank Arthur Stein, UCLA and Richard Rosecrance, Harvard for the early discussions we held on the issues raised in this blog post.  They are not responsible for any of the opinions expressed here. ASA]

Pronouncements of American decline miss the real transformation under way today. What is occurring is not American decline but a dynamic process in which other states are catching up and growing more connected.

The above excerpt is the opening to the concluding section of John Ikenberry’s precis – his article in the recent May/June edition of Foreign Affairs, “The Future of the Liberal World:  Internationalism After America”  of his most recent book, Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order.

It may well be that a final evaluation of Ikenberry’s examination of the evolving global governance system will require a close reading of the book.  But for the moment let me assume that this FA is a relevant summary of the Liberal Leviathan’s thesis.

The question that John poses is whether we are witnessing  just the decline of the United States – or I suppose slightly more correctly the ‘rise of the rest’ – or, in fact, we are also witnessing the decline of the liberal world order promoted most fiercely by the United States. If the latter is true then the global order will not only look less American but less liberal. As the newly emerging states become more central to the world order, they will bring a more illiberal – less open, less rules-based and less democratic – world order.  As John identifies this:

Rather, the struggle will be between those who want to renew and expand today’s system of multilateral governance arrangements and those who want to move to a less cooperative order built on spheres of influence.

The global governance system of the future will be more fragmented, less multilateral and more mercantilist.  But John argues that this is not the future of the international order.  And he suggests this more illberal outcome is not necessarily in our future by  distinguishing and separating the current multilateral order from the United States.  So while the global governance system has been built by the United States and supported by its traditional allies, liberal internationalism, “openness and rule-based relations enshrined in institutions such as the United Nations and norms such as multilateralism” will continue to exist without the United States as the hegemon. While the US, according to John, will not rule in the way it has in the decades since World War II, it will still be able to lead – and presumably it will do so.  And the reason for this is:  the rising powers – the Chinas, Brazils and Indias – are also wed to the global governance order of liberal internationalism.

For John the current global order is built on two ordering principles – the first  built on the evolution of states and the principles of state sovereignty and and norms of more or less collaborative great power relations.  And the second is built on the liberal order of a open, rules-based and and democratic international order.  Indeed the building of the state system was necessary for the building of the second – the liberal order.

Now international relations specialist have long debated whether a hegemon – the UK in the 19th century and the United States in the second half of the twentieth century – is a necessary element for maintaining a liberal order.  With John’s identified bifurcation, we need to determine whether the evolving international system of great powers is able to maintain a stable international order and to promote a liberal order.

John is certainly right that there is no strong evidence that the current Chinese leadership – the exemplar of the newly arrived rising states – rejects either element of the order – that is collaborative great power relations and as well a liberal order of open trade and a rules-based system.  But not having rejected the order as it currently exists is not the same thing as saying the Chinese leadership accepts and is prepared promote these norms and mechanisms of the global order.  And it it is possible that China might accept one principle – say great power stability – and yet fail to promote the other – the liberal order.  John acknowledges that stability is required for a liberal order.  But could it be that the evolving system may promote stability and great power accomodation – of a rather classic form – without necessarily promoting or even maintaining the current liberal order.

Where is the Chinese leadership?  There is no question that China has benefited dramatically from both elements of the order – international stability and openness – but China’s emergence as a great power and the perception – and I emphasize perception of US decline – may have led some of China’s current leaders to reassess China’s place in the global order and reflect on how it must act or indeed how others – especially the United States – must act.  Further, the perception of decline worryingly may have “infected” the next generation of leadership that will assume leadership in another year.

Let me look briefly at the second element of the current order – its Liberal nature.  Certainly China has become deeply integrated in the international economy – and that the degree of integration contrasts vividly with other rising powers of earlier decades.  But many suggest that China has dramatically benefited from advantages not employed by others.  China’s export trade policy has driven its economic growth – and it has been a boon to US multinational corporations as well, might I say – but the imbalances generated in the system are creating volatility and instability.  And it would appear the leadership – notwithstanding all the statements of a turn to a more domestic consumption-based model – is unwilling to abandon the export growth model that brought it such rapid economic growth.  Remember the leadership believes that it is essential to maintain high growth to avoid social unrest.

And as for democracy, the Party appears to determined to maintain one-party rule notwithstanding that the rule of law and democratic practices are the foundation of modernity.  While democracy may be the ideal there appears to be no appetite for it among the current leadership and there is nothing to suggest that the coming new generation of leadership is in any degree more enticed by the ideal notwithstanding the rise of a middle class in China. As a punctuation mark it is clear that China does not accept humanitarian intervention the newest aspect internationally of the liberal world order.

And as for multilateralism and the acceptance of restraint and collaborative great power relations, the signs are there but unilateralism and regional dominance have not disappeared from Chinese policy.  Just when you think the Chinese have accepted collaborative great power relations and multilateralism, there are the behaviors, or lack of behaviors, over Korea, the South China Seas and military – to – military relations with the US.

So there is a large question mark and not an explanation mark on Chinese policy and its support for a liberal order.  But the question of the passing of a liberal order is not just to be laid at the doorstep of China.  It is also a question mark  that now lies over US policy.  The continuing illiberalism over trade policy – the assertion continuously of a lack of a level playing field   – is a marked contrast in US foreign policy to earlier periods of liberal leadership.  The so-called “leading from behind” strategy – whatever that is – of the current US Administration leads to rising questions of US leadership – not just rule.  The chaos of domestic politics that undermines the prospect of the US dealing with its fiscal situation also raises concern that it will – and maybe cannot lead.

The saving element of this particular question – the maintenance of a liberal order, may come down to definition.  As one of my close colleagues Arthur Stein from UCLA asks “What is the liberal order?”  Maybe just as we have built a literature that examines the varieties of capitalism, so, according to Arthur, we must try and determine the varieties of liberalism that may still represent an international liberal order.   It may still be a liberal order notwithstanding more managed exchange rates and new rules on capital controls.  Or maybe not.

So the question of what is recognized as a liberal order may strongly influence whether we we are able to assess whether a liberal order can be maintained with or without the United States.  The likely reality is that the liberal order is not just built on US leadership but it surely includes US leadership.  It is a more open question whether we need China and others to sustain the liberal order.  But it too is a question that needs to be answered.

The liberal order – however defined – may survive China’s growing great power presence,  but I think it quite possible that without US participation not only will US leadership disappear but also the liberal order it built over the decades.  Then the remaining question will be, can we retain collaborative and accommodative great power relations.

 

 

The agenda for the renewal of the liberal international order should be driven by this same imperative: to reinforce the capacities of national governments to govern and
achieve their economic and security goals. … In this new age of international
order, the United States will not be able to rule. But it can still lead.

Meanwhile – The Beat Goes On

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My last blog post The Inflation Tiger Rising concerned the rising tide of inflation in the BRICS countries – and the government efforts in China and Brazil to rein inflation in.

This post examines the other side of that coin – the impact of the US dollar on global prices and interest rates. A recent article by Tom Lauricella at The Wall Street Journal (see “Dollar’s Decline Speed Up, With Risks for the US” (April 23, 2011) chronicles the decline of the US dollar.

The US dollar as we all know is the international reserve currency.  Most international transactions, and much of the key international pricing – oil for example – is done in US dollars.

The US dollar has declined 1 percent in the past week against a basket of of currencies, repeating a similar drop of the week before.  In the past week the dollar as measured by the ICE US dollar index hit its lowest point since the lowest point of the index on March 16, 2008 – the Index fell to 70.698 (the Index had begun in 1973 after the demise of the Bretton Woods System of fixed rates at 100.).  Just before the 2008 global financial crisis the dollar had lost some 40 percent of its value against the basket of 6 currencies including the Pound, Euro, Canadian dollar and Japanese Yen.  This low point in 2008 represented a a steady decline of six-years of the dollar’s value.  As noted above, the Index is approaching that low once again.

The US dollar depreciation is a product of a low and continuing interest rate policy and the the growth differentials with the emerging market countries.  The rising price of oil is also a product of the depreciating dollar adding to inflation fears in the US.  The inflation impulse in the BRICS could add another element in the decline of the dollar as well, of course, the fears of the US deficit and debt and the fears that US politics will make reaching a sensible deficit strategy almost impossible.

The declining US dollar has led China officials to allow a steady appreciation of the renminbi in the last few weeks.  While US officials have urged a significant appreciation in the renminbi,  it leads Chinese officials to be less needful of purchasing US dollar debt with China’s now outsized $3 trillion exchange surplus.

The vicious as opposed virtuous cycles of exchange remain.

Can the US Steer in Turbulent Waters?

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As I read the posts of two friends and colleagues, I realize how much I miss our conversations.  This exchange serves as a poor substitute.  The current prod for discussion is Henry Kissinger’s review of a new biography of Bismarck and what can be learned about how the US can manage a difficult and mixed-motive relationship (one that contains elements of conflict as well as cooperation) with China.  In his post, Alan Alexandroff puts the challenge as one of holding “irreconcilables together.”  And he concludes,

“If the policy is a product of a unique diplomatic skill – as proved to be the case with Bismarck – then such behavior and policy – keeping China as both a friend and a foe – will prove equally impossible.  The future then will be riven with competition and even conflict.  Not a happy thought.”

Dick Rosecrance’s reply to the possibility of an ambivalent and inconsistent policy towards China is to argue that the requisite Chinese reciprocity has not been forthcoming and that the US is already shifting towards a policy of linking with allies in the hope that “a stiffening of this enlarged Western position can produce a change in Beijing.”

I want to make only one observation, and that is to ask whether the kind of policy Bismarck pursued is possible in a polity such as the US.  Kissinger himself discovered, as National Security Advisor and as Secretary of State, that such inconsistency was difficult to sustain in the US political system.  In his review, Kissinger quotes from Jonathan Steinberg’s biography, noting that Bismarck accomplished what he did “without commanding a single soldier, without dominating a vast parliamentary majority, without the support of a mass movement, without any previous experience in government and in the face of national revulsion at his name and his reputation.”  Moreover, he served for 28 years, first as minister president of Prussia and then as chancellor of Germany.  Neither such continuity in office, nor such an independent ability to craft policy exists in the US today.

On the other hand, without a coherent grand strategy, and given the shifts in recent administrations, the US has generated plenty of inconsistency and ambivalence in our treatment of China.

Banishing “Scary Images” and Behavior in the China-US relationship

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I think it’s fair to conclude that the Hu Jintao State visit will be viewed in retrospect as a mild success.   Now in the context of the US-China relationship recently, that’s not bad.   The relationship didn’t go backwards and there was some sense that the two Leaders were working off the same page – building a comprehensive and closely coordinated bilateral relationship.

The key question is whether the two – through their speeches and actions –  helped to dispel each nation’s “Scary Image” of the other.

For the Chinese the true Scary Image is a US foreign policy that seeks to encircle and contain China.  In that regard of course there is the evident discussion of Taiwan – the continuing provision of Taiwan military with new weaponry – and the close-in approach of various US carrier flotillas in areas surrounding China, the tension over the South China Sea and of course the Korean Peninsula.

In this regard President Obama’s statement on the positive good that China’s rise can bring goes some way in assuring the Chinese people that the US is not focused on a containment strategy.  The following comment by President Obama was targeted directly at the containment view: “I absolutely believe China’s peaceful rise is good for the world, and it’s good for America.”  For good measure the President went on to declare that the United States wanted to sell all sorts of stuff to China – underscoring the need to broaden trade and increase American exports to China.

On the US side, the Scary Image of China is the new assertiveness of China being the product of American declinism.  In this scary image all the pessimism over the US economy and the growth of  China’s military leads China’s military in particular, or the leadership generally, to press the United States on various territorial and policy fronts in the belief that the US has been fundamentally weakened.  Such a view could give rise to miscalculations that might leave both sides unable to back down in a crisis.

But President Hu sought to counter this overly assertive China view.  As Jeffrey Bader, President Obama’s chief Asia adviser concluded in the NYT:

The message seems to be you don’t need to fear us, but you should also know that we can’t do do everything you want.

Again Bader concludes:

“The notion that they can challenge our supremacy in our lifetimes is not in the cards.  They can challenge us on certain technologies”, and militarily, “in areas close to their shores – but not globally, not for a long while.”

Now this won’t stop congressmen and those on the right from beating the drum of Chinese economic and military pressure, but the behavior and words of President Hu give no fodder to those who focus on “the China Threat”.

And that’s a positive outcome.