Culture

A New Age in Strategic Cooperation?

By Sean Nelson

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Anyone interested in China's growing power in world politics would be well-advised to take a look at the new issue of Foreign Affairs, one of the most respected publications on international relations published in the West. Three of the articles provide useful recommendations for the United States to proceed with its bilateral relations with China in a way in which each article's author(s) reinforces the other authors' points. The first article, authored by John L. Thornton and entitled "Long Time Coming: The Prospects for Democracy in China," looks at the extent of political liberalization in China over the past few years and the ways that the US can help to encourage this without alienating the Chinese leadership. G. John Ikenberry authored the second article, "The Rise of China and the Future of the West: Can the Liberal System Survive?," which discusses ways in which the Western liberal powers in general and the United States in particular can influence the rise of China in a way that integrates China into the existing world system via cooperation and avoid a great power war. The third article, "Reconsidering Revaluation: The Wrong Approach to the U.S.-China Trade Imbalance" by David D. Hale and Lyric Hughes Hale, says that politicians in DC are focusing on the wrong economic issues with regard to China when they complain about an undervalued currency and should instead shift their focus to "properly integrating China into the global economy," noting that "taxation reform, the restructuring of the corporate and banking sectors, the gradual opening of capital accounts, and the encouragement of domestic consumer spending would each have a more measurable and lasting effect on China's current account surplus."

Perhaps the greatest lesson one can take from these writings is that when crafting foreign policy, one has to be acutely aware of both the vast array and limits of the policy tools that a state has at its disposal. During the 1990's, neoconservative writers like Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post declared that the United States had entered a unipolar moment in which it was so much more powerful than any other nation that willpower alone would allow the US to change the world according to the neoconservatives' preferences. In practice, as Ikenberry and other scholars have elaborated elsewhere, unipolarity turned out to be more of a mirage than a reality. Once the United States tried to unilaterally take advantage of the "unipolar moment," as it was often called, reality got in the way of the neoconservatives' strategic vision.

As such, American policy makers have to face the reality that China is a powerful nation and is likely to get more powerful in the future. The policies that have worked to influence less powerful nations since the fall of the Soviet Union are unlikely to work vis-à-vis China to realize American goals. Seeing that such a collection of essays can appear in Foreign Affairs, perhaps the most influential publication among the American foreign policy elite, is a step forward. The extent of the influence Foreign Affairs has among the American foreign policy elite is best highlighted by noting that George Kennan decided to publish his famous article "The Sources of Soviet Conduct" that laid out what became known as the doctrine of containment in Foreign Affairs. In addition, the authors are some of the most noteworthy writers on politics in the United States today. Ikenberry, the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, is one of the most influential academics writing on international relations today and co-led the prestigious and influential Princeton Project on National Security. Thornton is the Chair of the Board of the Brookings Institution, one of the most well-regarded think tanks in the US. Both of the Hales are respected and successful entrepreneurs with careers focused in part on the Chinese market. They are the type of people likely to serve in a future American presidential administration or to influence the type of people who will hold such positions.
 
The issues that the authors raise all lead to one central question: will the United States and China in the 21st-Century see each other more as partners or as rivals?No two states ever have their strategic interests line up perfectly. However, this does not mean that the new century will have to be one of ongoing conflict between the world's two most powerful countries. A new Cold War would be in no one's interest and would likely just create unnecessary conflict. There are a number of issues where these two powers need to work together to find common ground, especially on the issue of global warming. As a recent series in the New York Times notes, as heavy industries move from Western nations to China, Western nations will have the opportunity to reduce their environmental footprints by switching to a post-industrial information- and service-based economy. However, this will also mean that China's emissions will continue to rise with further industrialization even as its per capita emissions remain much lower than in the West. Western nations can help China control its emissions through joint research and technology transfers, among other tools. It will be up to leaders in both countries to take advantage of opportunities to find common ground and work towards common goals. Both countries' populations – and those of the rest of the world's nations – will be watching and hoping for the best.

Vocabulary:
Foreign affairs: 外交 wài jiāo
International relations: 国际关系 guó jì guān xī
Neo-conservatism: 新保守主义 xīn bǒo shǒu zhù yì
Strategic interests: 战略利益 zhàn luè lì yì
Global warming: 全球变暖 quán qiú biàn nuǎn

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