In his Washington Post column, greatly impeded by a lack of knowledge or intuition into China (or the United States, for that matter), David Ignatius engages in a “thought experiment” to look at the idea that war between an established power and a rising power is inevitable AKA “the Thucydides trap” from the Chinese perspective:
- Economic and cultural power is no substitute for military power. China was a dominant economic and intellectual force when it first encountered European power, but it lacked technologically backed military muscle. Mistake.
- Weakness breeds contempt. Western powers made a show of pledging loyalty and tribute to China’s rulers and warlords, but this masked hostile intent. The Chinese were wooed and corrupted by the West’s influence. Mistake. Allison quotes Thucydides’ precept: The weak (and by extension, the corrupt) suffer what they must. Rooting out (or at least controlling) corruption is a central Chinese task.
- The West preached openness as the way for China and other Asian nations to absorb advanced technology and Western know-how. But the West exploited that openness to create dependence. Even Japan, which built an astonishing manufacturing base, remained dependent on Western raw materials and energy supplies. Mistake. The result was a catastrophic war.
- Networks of aid and assistance are good covers for expanding influence and military power. The Marshall Plan was a sublime scheme for spreading U.S. influence and blunting the Soviet Union, in the name of relieving humanitarian suffering. China is devising similar outreach through the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the cooperative development project known as “One Belt One Road.†The United States has done everything it can to prevent other nations from signing up to China’s initiatives. Mistake. Asian development is the handmaiden of Chinese power.
- The United States argues that transparency and an international rules-based order are the best guarantee of security for all sides. But what this really means, through modern history, is that the United States makes the rules and others obey the orders. Adherence to the “rules†would have checked China’s expansion into the South China Sea (allowing perpetual U.S. domination). And if last year’s Philippine arbitration ruling had been enforced, it would have rolled back China’s projection of power through reclaimed islands and military bases. Mistake. History teaches that China should proclaim that its intentions are limited, benign and non-military — even as its power expands and it creates the military bases that will allow it to challenge U.S. naval power in the South China Sea.
I wouldn’t be bold enough to put words in the mouths of the Chinese leadership but do they really put all laowai into one big bundle? That’s what Mr. Ignatius is doing in those paragraphs. He’s jumbling the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany, the United States and Europe, into one heap. I suspect that the Chinese leadership is intelligent enough and well-educated enough to recognize that’s an over-simplification to say the least.
The idea of “the West” has been propaganda for the last 2,500 years. Originally, it was used by Plato to distinguish between the Greeks and the Persians or the Egyptians. Its modern incarnation is about 80 years old and was proposed by the Germans to distinguish between themselves and Western Europe and the rest of the world. That alone should give us pause.
For most of the 19th century Americans were conflicted about their relationship with Europe in general and Britain in particular. We contrasted ourselves with the Europeans as frequently as we aligned ourselves with them but you’ll frequently find reference to a shared heritage.
In the late 1930s the Brits and their American admirers promoted the idea to attract the U. S. into the war on their side and it meant “Western Europe plus the United States” excluding Germany. After the war “the West” was used to distinguish between Britain, France, the United States, etc. and the communist east. Its present incarnation, which includes Poland but not Russia, is about 30 years old.
Said another way this “The West preached openness as the way for China and other Asian nations…” is hooey at best and circular propaganda at worst.
As to the “Thucydides trap” itself that, too, is hooey at best and propaganda at worst. If there were something inevitable about war between established powers and rising ones, why didn’t we go to war with Britain after 1812 which decidedly does not fit the model? In 1914 who was the “established power” and who the “rising power”? Germany a rising power? It is to laugh. Wannabes.
Whether Sam Clemens said it or not, that history doesn’t repeat itself but it does rhyme has it right. Human events across the ages have resonance with each other because they are human actions. Historical inevitability is a beard used to justify actions decided on for other reasons. If the Chinese think that war with the United States is inevitable, they’ll find a reason.
