Via MSN, this from the New York Times, presumably a letter to the editor:
In these works, the antagonists are bound for strife because China has become too strong or because it is weakening; because America is too hubristic or too insecure; because leaders make bad decisions or because the forces of politics, ideology and history overpower individual agency. A sampling of their titles — “Destined for War,†“Danger Zone,†“2034: A Novel of the Next World War†and “The Avoidable War†— reveals the range and limits of the debate.
I don’t know if the United States and China will end up at war. But in these books, the battle is already raging. So far, the war stories are winning.
The U.S.-China book club is insular and self-referential, and the one work that all the authors appear obliged to quote is 2017’s “Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?†by Graham Allison, a political scientist at Harvard. He looks at the war between ascendant Athens and ruling Sparta in the fifth century B.C. and echoes Thucydides, the ancient historian and former Athenian general, who argued that “it was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable.†Sub in China for Athens and the United States for Sparta, and you get the gist.
Allison, best known for “Essence of Decision,†his 1971 study of the Cuban missile crisis, does not regard a U.S.-Chinese war as inevitable. But in his book he does consider it more likely than not. “When a rising power threatens to displace a ruling power, the resulting structural stress makes a violent clash the rule, not the exception,†he writes. He revisits 16 encounters between dominant and ascendant powers — Portugal and Spain fighting over trade and empire, the Dutch and British contesting the seas, Germany challenging 20th-century European powers and other confrontations — and found that in 12 of them, the outcome was war.
I don’t believe that war with China is inevitable, desirable, or in the U. S. interest. China has its own national interests; we have ours. In some points they are congruent; in others not; in some they are in direct conflict.
I think our prime enemy is reflected by the late, great Walt Kelly in that clip from Pogo in April 1970. IMO it is even more relevant now than then and in more ways. Obtaining critical strategic materials from China is only prudent if China is a U. S. satrapy and that is in complete conflict with Chinese national interests as they see them. Since no other country is content with being a U. S. satrapy, we must necessarily produce them ourselves along with the entire supply chain that supports that production. That is the U. S. national interest. Not American empire.
Therefore my view is that we should be a lot less concerned with what China does or does not do and a lot more concerned about what we do or do not do.
The examples cited in the quote portion of the piece all tend to be neighboring powers, including Athens and Sparta, unlike the US and China.
On what, would we or they, go to war? Taiwan is the only obvious answer that I can see at this point, and that doesn’t primarily revolve around the Thucydides trap. A second option is something akin to Japan’s rationale to strike the US in WW2 – access to resources, but I’m skeptical that applies today.
Why are we facilitating war if not actually making it against Russia? We don’t neighbor Russia or Ukraine and had virtually no interest in Ukraine while Crimea in particular is a vital national interest of Russia’s.
I guess my answer would be that our neighborhood is pretty broad these days.
Proxy war is not the same thing as a direct conflict. I think some kind of proxy war with China (we already had that in a sense in Korea) is more likely than a direct conflict.
I do agree that our neighborhood is pretty broad. But in Ukraine, Russia is the one that attacked. If China did something similar (and similarly stupid), I think we would act similarly. If we decided to invade North Korea, I would bet that Chinas would not sit on its hands.
Looking at the region, I don’t see much opportunity for this type of conflict beyond Taiwan.
Thucydides trap is way overused. People seem to think it makes them sound educated.
Steve
Just remember; in Thucydides day; Athens and Sparta weren’t considered neighbors either.
Besides Taiwan; a second Korean War would prob draw in both countries on opposite sides; I think a conflict in mainland Southeast Asia; like in Thailand would become a proxy conflict. Finally, increasingly a war between the China and India would draw the US in as well.
Don’t let the past 50 years fool you; the peaceful arrangement in Asia was mainly because the US and China were rowing in the same direction vs fighting each other the previous 30 years (1945-1975) and the US was involved in multiple wars in that theater.