Is War Inevitable Between the US and China?

Introduction

Realism offers the pessimistic conclusion that in a Hobbesian world where; ‘everyone in a state of nature fears for his safety and is out to injure the other before he is injured himself’ (Waltz, 1959:85), violent conflict is not just inevitable, but it is a fundamental expression of the human condition. Realism offers a diverse theoretical framework, but its central precepts ─ based on self-interested human desire, the need to project and balance power, and the underlying state of anarchy ─ provide the basis for the statement. Realists believe that violent conflict between great powers is inevitable, making realism the logical starting point for deconstructing this proposition.

In this essay, I will argue that by re-examining the foundational stones of realist philosophy and appealing to the ideas of scholars and statesmen such as Morgenthau, Carr, Kissinger and De Gaulle, diplomatic positions can be developed which avoid war. In part one of this essay, I describe classical realist approaches to the causes of war. In part two, I critique alternative perspectives from classical realism’s conceptual counterpoint, liberalism, and its modern corollary, structural realism. This comparative analysis reveals the applicability and limitations of each framework to foreign policy formulation. In part three, I apply realist analysis to the rising tension between the U.S. and China. I conclude by demonstrating how specific policy choices that acknowledge conditions in contemporary world politics can generate the needed conciliation to eschew conflict.

Realism and war

Realism can trace its canonical heritage to the writings of Thucydides, Hobbes and Machiavelli. In these discourses, the importance of fear and insecurity in forming predictable reactions is a central principle, as Hobbes articulates the correlation between insecurity and a restless desire for power:

Political laws originate in this explanation of human nature, they are a projection of human anxieties which make the struggle for strength, wealth and power the primary concern of the state and the use of force to protect power assets, the ultimate determiner of authority (Algosaibi, 1965: 221-256). From these foundations, a conceptual framework emerges which foregrounds human nature against the condition of an anarchic international system. The absence of a supreme authority shapes relations within this system so that state security can only be assured through self-assertive policies.

As states compete, they exert pressure on other states’ borders. A strong, dynamic state may set no limits to its ambition but as its realm expands, it must seek to secure its new frontiers (Spykman, 1942:20). This behaviour can disturb the status quo enjoyed by the preponderant power, invoking the fear described in this essay’s epigraph, that a rising power must be viewed as a probable danger. Through the pursuit of power, a state may become so strong that it creates an empire, or if no state becomes powerful enough to achieve that goal, the tendencies of the most aggressive state must be kept in check by the actions of the international community through the operation of a balance of power (Kissinger, 1994:20). Machiavelli describes the consequences for states which fail to check the advances of a rising power:

Whoever is responsible for another’s becoming powerful ruins himself, because this power is brought into being either by ingenuity or by force, and both of these are suspect to the one who has become powerful (1532/1961:15).

Historically, balancing has taken on a militaristic dimension, but fortifying defences against a rising power exacerbates suspicions and fears which lead to the cyclical and deadly escalation of armament races, creating a security dilemma (Herz, 2003:411-416). The structural stress which is placed on the rivalry between a well-armed established power and a progressive rising power can lead states into the Thucydides Trap, just as Athenian assertiveness swelled into hubris, whilst Spartan insecurity descended into paranoia until finally violent conflict was the ‘least bad option available’ (Allison, 2017:40).

Prima facie, the realist narrative polarises the world into enmities and alliances, and precepts which problematise international relations. A perfunctory interpretation of Hobbesian anarchy and the materialist motivations of states presents an enduring explanation as to the inevitability of war but it can also lead to a reductionist caricature, wherein power politics and the capability to exert violence becomes the central goal of states. Arguably, this limits the theory’s usefulness in how to deal with emerging threats other than through a self-fulfilling prophecy of violent confrontation. This amounts to a misunderstanding of a tradition of realpolitik which seeks to provide a rational outline of politics, to locate peaceful settlements. Realists such as E.H. Carr, Morgenthau and Kissinger seek to understand the world through acceptance of the whole historical process, precluding moral judgement on it, but not ignoring ideas and legitimacy (Vasquez, 1999:6, Carr, 1940:86). Whilst classical realists place interests defined in terms of power as central to politics, and insist that states acknowledge the reality and consequence of rising power, they will also consider the ‘black box’ of complex domestic variables which drive state behaviour; such as historical processes, leadership, political order and social mobilisation (Williams, 2005:8). Carr insists that the achievement of realism has been ‘to reveal not merely the determinist aspects of the historical process, but the relative and pragmatic character of thought’ (1940:65). According to Kissinger, understanding the legitimacy of motivations which drive state behaviour is the essence of diplomacy:

Hans Morgenthau described this ‘distinctive character of realism’ as ‘a particular way of thinking about politics in general and foreign policy in particular, but not a commitment to any kind of foreign policy’ (Cited in Gewen, 2020:175). This is a critical revelation of a mode of thought which is ideologically unbiased and empirically led and which therefore allows for considerable discretion in policy design.

Realism, liberalism and causes of war

Liberalism shifts the focus from the autonomy of states to an international system and the importance of a network of international institutions that regulate restless power by marshalling the international community with laws to constrain the potential for conflict. World politics is not simply states operating in anarchy – it is an active political order with rules, institutions and accumulated understandings and expectations (Ikenberry, 2019:5-19).

On the causes of war, liberalism ‘does not stress imbalances of power… [or] bargaining failure under incomplete information’, instead liberalism assumes that irresistible revisionist preferences are usually the cause of war, or the exploitation of underrepresented political constituencies (Moravcsik, 2008:235). Liberalism is underpinned by a Kantian imperative wherein the common binding force of morality makes a perpetual peace achievable. Thus, violent conflict is made less inevitable with the spread of equalising liberal reforms, and confrontation is averted through economic interdependence and protective internationalism. Liberalism is contrasted with realism as being optimistic and utopian. This provides liberalism with its emotive narrative power but is also a source of its criticism. Rooted in an Atlanticist repertoire of ideals which assume universality, such as principles of democracy, liberalism is weighed down by its normative biases, so that it takes on the characteristics of an ideology shaped by interests and desires rather than by logic and empiricism. Liberalism and realism’s fundamental divergence rests on their ability to assess the probability of violent conflict. It is the inclination of liberalism to ignore what is, in contemplation of what should be, and to build policies around an imagined world rather than the realities of the world (Carr, 1940:12). As in the case of U.S. vs China, clinging to idealistic preferences of what the world order should be, cloaked in the rubric of a moralising crusade, risks a failure to acknowledge power, to adjust strategy to a major change in power relations, and unleashes the creative destruction of a “crusading frenzy” (Morgenthau, 1978:4-15).

Structural realism and conflict

Waltz’s critique of classical realism argues that ‘Morgenthau and Kissinger are… scholars turned toward history and concerned more with policy than with theory and scientific methods’ (1979:63). Structural (neorealist) theories share classical realism’s intellectual cornerstones that the international system is anarchic and that great powers fear each other, but scholars such as Waltz and Mearsheimer foreground the scientific analysis of states as interacting units in the distribution of power system, and largely eliminate other variables;

This polemic has little use for a state’s ‘black box’. Mearsheimer’s theory of offensive realism rejects the assertion that states may have an innate ambitiousness and argues that faced with powerful incentives to continuously attempt to gain more power, ‘[states] behave aggressively not because they want to, or because they possess some inner drive to dominate, but to maximise their odds of survival’ (2003:13). Such an unequivocal proclamation insists that violent conflict is inevitable in a simplistically hydraulic international system.

Human nature realism and offensive realism share the view that states are power maximisers with hegemony as their ultimate goal, but an over-reliance on cynical scientific method limits a deeper understanding of motivations and legitimacy, and as such classical realism offers a broader template for statecraft than pure scientific modelling. A diplomatic failure to recognise the pax-Germania ambitions and lack of legitimacy of Nazi Germany were due to overconfidence in the structural-level analysis of power relations in Europe. The Munich accords intended to rectify a structural mis-design resulting from the Treaty of Versailles by ceding territory to Germany in an inchoate attempt to accommodate the rising power and contain further aggression. Liberal sensibilities would have been encouraged by the proliferation of international laws since 1919, and the view embraced by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, that Germany desired re-entry to the international community and to its universal standards of justice, peace and security (Carr, 1940:142). Morgenthau however, could see that the totalitarian Nazis were something different;

Charles De Gaulle, architect of France’s Fifth Republic, invoked the Hobbesian image of anarchy to describe the natural state of human affairs:

For De Gaulle, this human wisdom is the essence of diplomacy. For while balance of power is essential to political efficacy, De Gaulle realised that a nation’s motivations are forged not by a process of reason, but in their ‘misfortunes, glories and ambitions’ (Ibid.). Could World War II have been avoided with a different policy lens? Perhaps, if the U.S. had acknowledged the ideological motivations of rising power signalled by the remilitarisation of the Rhineland, it would have understood the nature and scope of the challenge and balanced the threat earlier with European alliances; if it had admitted the redundancy of international treaties routinely ignored by Germany, and if the U.S. had overcome its status quo bias of isolationism, enshrined in its Neutrality Acts, through a reassessment of its national security interest.

Through a classical realist lens, is violent conflict inevitable?

China’s abandonment of its ancient Middle Kingdom mentality and embrace of economic reforms is probably the ultimate triumph of American-led liberalism, but America’s over-confidence in the seductive power of democracy led to the belief that ideological convergence would follow economic integration¹. China has not converged, it has ‘rejected the proposition that international order is fostered by the spread of liberal democracy’ (Kissinger, 2014:229). A realist would understand that in a country of 1.4 billion people, divergent civilisational values that emphasize social cohesion over individual rights are a bureaucratic necessity rather than an ideological effrontery.

The U.S. obsession of forcing liberal norms on China through relentless criticism and punishment for human rights abuses and territorial claims has had the unmistakable intention of constraining China. (Yang, 2020:419). Punitive trade tariffs and blacklisting Huawei evoke emotive reactions in Beijing, which the realist understands are moored in a century of humiliation by Western powers. China’s assertiveness has now swelled into belligerence; it has reneged on treaties by militarising the South China Sea, ended autonomy in Hong Kong, provoked Japan and Taiwan, harassed Philippine and Malaysian vessels and skirmished with India. China’s nominal defence spending has risen 86 percent since 2010² and it currently has the most active and diverse missile development programme in the world³, indicating an ambition to project firepower beyond the Indo-Pacific. China is the largest trading partner for over 130 countries, but as well as asserting foreign policy through debt diplomacy, it now has the ability and self-confidence to apply pressure militarily (Allison, 2017:21).

Since 1500 C.E., when a rising power has challenged an established power it has ended in violent conflict 80 percent of the time.⁴ This indicates that war between America and China is not inevitable, but it is highly probable. The applicability of structural analysis to the changes in relative strength and privilege in world order generates the principle anxieties and pressures that lead to war, but classical realism instead stresses the historical processes and biases that determine political action. Policymakers should realise that China is not Nazi Germany; in 2019, Xi Jinping stated, “Civilisations don’t have to clash, what is needed are eyes to see the beauty in all civilisations”, implying China will not use its role or influence to change the ideologies or political practices of other societies (Cited in Mahbubani, 2020:254-255). Neither is China nor the USSR; ‘The Chinese Communist Party is far more capable and adaptable than the Soviet Communist Party’ (Ibid, 271). China does not seek to export its political system around the world, its objective is international respect, not conversion; the grandest expression of Chinese power, the Great Wall, also denotes a consciousness of its limitations and vulnerability (Kissinger, 2014:214). Nevertheless, America is convinced of an existential threat to its hegemony and the emergence of new world order, which arguably has more to do with the failure of the liberal international order, and the misguided belief system that ‘the end-point of development and modernisation is defined by the contemporary West’ (Barkawi& Laffey, 2006:331). Those under attack feel compelled ‘to defend not only their territory but their basic way of life’ (Kissinger, 2014:366).

A realist recalibration of U.S. foreign policy around current national interest and a reassessment of whether its grand strategy of primacy is worth bleeding for may conclude that the U.S. has no necessity to confront China. America’s borders are not in danger of being breached, U.S. defence spending is still more than the next 10 countries combined and it remains the only superpower capable of projecting a military presence globally⁵. China’s territorial sphere remains limited to the Indo-Pacific region, ‘with more neighbours than any other country, it is deeply embedded in the Asian economic system’ and must balance multiple threats with nuclear powers on many fronts (Khanna, 2019:147). America must remain mindful that ‘War does not always arise from wickedness or folly. It sometimes arises from mere growth and movement (Murray, cited in Carr, 1940: 191). Washington should replace an improvisational China attitude rooted in exceptionalism, with a strategy to accommodate legitimate Chinese interests. It must strengthen, rather than withdraw from its Asian balancing alliances ‘forcing China to focus most of its attention closer to home’ (Walt, 2020) whilst also rebuilding diplomatic capability with China, and abandoning the temptation to view every Chinese action as inherently aggressive, rather as based on legitimate historical and domestic designs; ‘exaggerating the threat posed by small changes to the status quo and rejecting adaptation to the new balance of power in East Asia… could encourage the U.S. to adopt overly competitive policies’ (Glaser, 2019:52).

Power transitions do not have to erupt into conflict, in the early-twentieth-century London’s pragmatic foreign policy peacefully allowed the U.S. to achieve dominance in the Western hemisphere. The U.K. and United States shared deep ideological ties and Anglo-Saxon history, but the U.S. and China also share common challenges and opportunities; their economies and financial markets are intertwined, they are both tackling domestic terrorism and they share the greatest responsibility for reversing climate damage and making the world habitable. In contrast to Britain’s accommodation of rising U.S. power, triggering the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, ‘France made a strategic error common to ruling powers: taking action it believes will prevent a rising power from surpassing its position but in fact hastening the very reversal of fortune it most fears’, (Allison 2017:267-268).

As such, even though the U.S. remains militaristically and structurally dominant, it should pay attention to the diffusion of power and soften China’s ascendency rather than resort to Sinophobic bellicosity; ‘mutual accommodation [and] power-sharing bargains could stabilise relations, lower the mutual sense of threat, accord other powers space to grow and facilitate co-operation in areas of shared interest’ (Porter, 2019:9). With both economies decimated by the novel coronavirus, this shared interest must include rebuilding trade and global leadership through a new type of great power relationship. ‘In classical realism, defence is not a technical specialism practiced by a professional class but part of a struggle to define the common good’ (Porter, 2016:239-260). Harmonising national security policy with recovery efforts offers both states a legitimate social purpose alternative to war.

If Washington’s policymakers can overcome their status quo bias they will recognise that the end of America’s ‘unipolar moment’ does not empty it of influence or responsibility in a new multipolar system. Then they can decide whether enlarging democracy through foreign adventuring or pragmatic partnership diplomacy which enhances domestic wellbeing should guide foreign policy. The extent to which war can be avoided depends on the application of this classical realist approach which strengthens alliances to ensure that escalating aggression is balanced, but which also acknowledges American and Chinese motivations, seeks mutual accommodation and extends foreign policy from a position of legitimate national interest.

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Notes

1. How the West got China wrong, The Economist, March 1^st 2018.
2. Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS): China power project charts the cost complexity of China’s ascendancy: available at https://chinapower.csis.org/military-spending/
3. Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS): Missile defence project looks at a wide range of policy, program, and strategic issues related to missile defence: available at https://www.csis.org/programs/international-security-program/missile-defense-project
4. Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Centre for Science and International Affairs: Thucydide’s Trap Project: available athttps://www.belfercenter.org/thucydides-trap/case-file
5. Peter G. Peterson Foundation, Research into U.S. defence spending compared to other countries: available at https://www.pgpf.org/chart-archive/0053_defense-comparison