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ABSTRACT
Many contemporary academics and policy analysts have revisited the Anglo-German rivalry before 1914 to predict what may await China and the United States in the twenty-first century. However, few, if indeed any, have specified in what sense this comparison can be made. This paper attempts to fill this gap with a detailed analysis of the strategic parallels between the Anglo-German rivalry then and the China–US competition now through the lens of the Crowe Memorandum. The author argues that the basic parallel between the rise of Germany and the rise of China lies in the challenges they posed or pose to the dominant maritime power and system leader – Great Britain then and the United States today. This parallel also explains the similarity between the Triple Entente initiated by Great Britain prior to 1914 and the Rebalance to Asia launched by the United States in 2011. Furthermore, as in the case of the Anglo-German rivalry before 1914, the most crucial problem underlying the mounting China–US competition in recent years has been America’s deepening apprehension about the development of China’s anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) and naval capabilities. This development, from the US perspective, is threatening to deprive the US of its most crucial instrument to influence the strategic equilibrium on the East Asian littorals. Based on the lessons of the Anglo-German rivalry prior to 1914, the essay also examines the potential for mitigating, if not eliminating, the mounting competition and misgivings between China and the United States.
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank Professor Toshi Yoshihara and Professor John H. Maurer for their kind help with the original draft. The author also sincerely thanks the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and constructive suggestions.
Notes
1 Zara Steiner and Keith Neilson, Britain and the Origins of the First World War (New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2003), 106.
2 George Kennan, The Decline of Bismarck’s European Order (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979), 6.
3 Eyre Crowe, ‘Memorandum on the Present State of British Relations with France and Germany, January 1, 1907’, in G.P. Gooch and Harold Temperley (eds), British Documents on the Origins of the War, Vol. 3, The Testing of the Entente, 1904–6 (London: HMSO 1928), 397–420.For Sir Eyre Crowe’s life and career, see: J.S. Dunn. The Crowe Memorandum: Sir Eyre Crowe and Foreign Office Perceptions of Germany, 1918–1925 (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars 2013); T.G. Otte, ‘Eyre Crowe and British Foreign Policy: A Cognitive Map’, in T.G. Otte and Constantine A. Pagedas (eds), Personalities, War and Diplomacy (London: Frank Cass 1997), 14–37; Edward T. Corp, ‘Sir Eyre Crowe and Georges Clemenceau at the Paris Peace Conference, 1919–20’, Diplomacy and Statecraft 8/1 (1997), 10–19; Sibyl Crowe & Edward Corp, Our Ablest Public Servant: Sir Eyre Crowe, 1864–1925 (Braunton: Merlin Books 1993); Keith M. Wilson, ‘Sir Eyre Crowe on the Origins of the Crowe Memorandum of 1 January 1907’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 53/134 (1983), 238–41; Edward T. Corp, ‘The Problem of Promotion in the Career of Sir Eyre Crowe, 1905–1920’, Australian Journal of Politics & History 28/2 (1982), 236–49; Edward T. Corp, ‘Sir Eyre Crowe and the Administration of the Foreign Office’, Historical Journal 22/2 (1979), 443–54; Richard A. Cosgrove, ‘The Career of Sir Eyre Crowe: A Reassessment’, Albion 4/4 (1972), 193–205; Sibyl E. Crowe, ‘Sir Eyre Crowe and the Locarno Pact’, English Historical Review 87/342 (1972), 49–74; Richard A. Cosgrave, ‘Sir Eyre Crowe and the British Foreign Office, 1905–1914’, PhD dissertation, University of California, Riverside.
4 Henry Kissinger, On China (New York: Penguin Press 2011), 367.
5 Michael Neiberg, ‘The 1914 Analogy at War’, Orbis 58/4 (2014), 488.
6 For the analogy between the Anglo-German rivalry and Sino-U.S. relations, see: John H. Maurer, ‘A Rising Power and the Coming of a Great War’, Orbis 58/4 (2014), 500–20; Edward N. Luttwak, The Rise of China vs. the Logic of Strategy (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press 2012); Douglas C. Peifer, ‘China, the German Analogy, and the New Air–Sea Operational Concept’, Orbis 55/1 (2011), 114–31; Robert J. Art, ‘The United States and the Rise of China: Implications for the Long Haul’, Political Science Quarterly 125/3 (2010), 359–91; James R. Holmes and Toshi Yoshihara, ‘History Rhymes: The German Precedent for Chinese Seapower’, Orbis 54/1 (2010), 15–34; Renée Jeffery, ‘Evaluating the “China Threat”: Power Transition Theory, the Successor-State Image, and the Dangers of Historical Analogies’, Australian Journal of International Affairs 63/2 (2009), 309–24; Steve Chan, China, the U.S., and the Power-Transition Theory: A Critique (New York: Routledge 2008); Richard Rosecrance, ‘Power and International Relations: The Rise of China and Its Effects’, International Studies Perspectives 7/1 (2006), 31–35; Aaron L. Friedberg, ‘The Future of U.S.–China Relations: Is Conflict Inevitable?’, International Security 30/2 (2005), 7–45; Steve Chan, ‘Exploring Puzzles in Power-Transition Theory: Implications for Sino-American Relations’, Security Studies 13/3 (2004), 103–41; David Hale and Lyric Hughes Hale, ‘China Takes off’, Foreign Affairs 82/6 (2003), 36–53; David Rapkin and William Thompson, ‘Power Transition, Challenge, and the (Re)emergence of China’, International Interactions 29/4 (2003), 315–42.For critiques of the facile uses of the historical analogy in general, and the Anglo-German analogy in particular, see: Andrew Mumford, ‘Parallels, Prescience and the Past: Analogical Reasoning and Contemporary International Politics’, International Politics 52/1 (2015), 1–19; Neiberg, ‘The 1914 Analogy at War’; Ja Ian Chong and Todd H. Hall, ‘The Lessons of 1914 for East Asia Today: Missing the Trees for the Forest’, International Security 39/1 (2014), 7–43.Though they may have conceded the analogy between the Anglo-German rivalry then and the Sino-U.S. competition today on private occasions, Chinese scholars, in general, have rejected the legitimacy of the Anglo-German analogy on the grounds that China’s rise has been peaceful while Germany before 1914 had a long record of aggressive wars, conquests, and annexations. That is why few Chinese scholars have employed the analogy to analysing current Sino-US relations.
7 Mumford, ‘Parallels, Prescience and the Past’, 6.
8 Chong and Hall, ‘The Lessons of 1914 for East Asia Today’, 19.
9 After all, the outbreak of the Great War was more contingent than preordained; see: Christopher Clark, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 (New York: HarperCollins 2013); Richard F. Hamilton and Holger H. Herwig (eds), The Origins of World War I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2003);Annika Mombauer, The Origins of the First World War: Controversies and Consensus (London: Pearson 2002).
10 For analogical reasoning and the inherent intellectual traps in the process, see: Jeffrey Record, ‘The Use and Abuse of History: Munich, Vietnam and Iraq’, Survival 49/1 (2007), 163–80; Aidan Hehir, ‘The Impact of Analogical Reasoning on US Foreign Policy towards Kosovo’, Journal of Peace Research 43/1 (2006), 67–81; D.P. Houghton, ‘The Role of Analogical Reasoning in Novel Foreign Policy Situations’, British Journal of Political Science 26/4 (1996), 523–52.
11 Otte, ‘Eyre Crowe and British Foreign Policy’, 18–19.
12 Cosgrove, ‘The Career of Sir Eyre Crowe’, 196–97.
13 Crowe, ‘Memorandum on the Present State of British Relations with France and Germany’, 402.
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid., 403.
16 Ibid., 404.
17 Ibid.
18 Ibid., 405.
19 Ibid., 406.
20 Kissinger, On China, 370.
21 Otte, ‘Eyre Crowe and British Foreign Policy’, 26.
22 Crowe, ‘Memorandum on the Present State of British Relations with France and Germany’, 414.
23 Otte, ‘Eyre Crowe and British Foreign Policy’, 28.
24 Crowe, ‘Memorandum on the Present State of British Relations with France and Germany’, 418.
25 Cosgrave, ‘Sir Eyre Crowe and the British Foreign Office’, 110.
26 Crowe, ‘Memorandum on the Present State of British Relations with France and German 417.
27 Ibid., 418.
28 Ibid., 403.
29 Otte, ‘Eyre Crowe and British Foreign Policy’, 29.
30 Crowe, ‘Memorandum on the Present State of British Relations with France and Germany’, 407.
31 Ibid., 418.
32 Cosgrave, ‘Sir Eyre Crowe and the British Foreign Office, 111.
33 Ludwig Dehio, The Precarious Balance: Four Centuries of European Power Struggle (London: Chatto & Windus 1963), 85.
34 Halford J. Mackinder, Democratic Ideals and Reality (New York: W.W. Norton 1962), 66.
35 Walt W. Rostow, The United States in the World Arena (New York: Harper & Row 1960), 543.
36 Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York: Simon & Schuster 1994), 192.
37 Kissinger, On China, 367.
38 Nicholas J. Spykman, America’s Strategy in World Politics (New York: Harcourt, Brace 1942), 124. For further clarifications on this parallel, see: Francis P. Sempa, Geopolitics: From the Cold War to the 21st Century (New Brunswick NJ: Transaction 2002); Nicholas J. Spykman, The Geography of Peace (New York: Harcourt, Brace 1944).
39 George F. Kennan, American Diplomacy 1900–1950 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1951), 5.
40 Frank Ninkovich, The Wilsonian Century: U.S. Foreign Policy since 1900 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1999), 125. For further clarifications on this point, see: Robert J. Art, A Grand Strategy for America (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press 2003); Rostow, The United States in the World Arena.
41 Christopher Layne, The Peace of Illusions: American Grand Strategy from 1940 to the Present (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press 2006), 33. For further clarifications on this point, see: Art, A Grand Strategy for America; Melvyn P. Leffler, A Preponderance of Power (Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 1992).
42 Spykman, The Geography of Peace, 34.
43 For contemporary American perception of the nature of China’s threat, see: David Gompert, Sea Power and American Interests in the Western Pacific (Santa Monica CA: RAND 2013); Kenneth Lieberthal and Wang Jisi, Addressing U.S.–China Strategic Distrust (Washington: Brookings 2012); Aaron L. Friedberg, A Contest for Supremacy: China, America, and the Struggle for Mastery in Asia (New York: W.W. Norton 2011).
44 Robyn Lim, The Geopolitics of East Asia: The Search for Equilibrium (London: Routledge, 2003), 2.
45 Friedberg, A Contest for Supremacy, 7.
46 For the relationship between Sir Eyre Crowe and British foreign policy, see: Corp, ‘The Problem of Promotion in the Career of Sir Eyre Crowe’; Cosgrove, ‘The Career of Sir Eyre Crowe’.
47 For background to the ‘pivot’ or ‘rebalance’, see: Hillary Clinton, ‘America’s Pacific Century’, Foreign Policy, November 2011, <www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/10/11/americas_pacific_century>; Tom Donilon, ‘America Is Back in the Pacific and Will Uphold the Rules’, Financial Times, 27 November 2011, <http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4f3febac-1761-11e1-b00e-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1lvbgzfyEc>; Barack Obama, ‘Remarks by President Obama to the Australian Parliament’, 17 November 2011, <http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/11/17/remarkspresident-obama-australian-parliament>.
48 For background to the new round of Britain’s strategic adjustment in the early twentieth century, see: James M. Beck, The Double Alliance versus the Triple Entente (New York: Hardpress 2012); Fiona K. Tomaszewski, A Great Russia: Russia and the Triple Entente, 1905 to 1914 (Westport CT: Praeger 2002); Bradford Perkins, The Great Rapprochement: England and the United States, 1895–1914 (New York: Scribner 1968); Ian Nish, The Anglo-Japanese Alliance: The Diplomacy of Two Island Empires, 1894–1907 (London: Athlone Press 1966).
49 Paul M. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York: Vintage Books, 1987), 252.
50 A.J.P. Taylor, The Struggle for Mastery in Europe, 1848–1918 (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1954), 455.
51 F.R. Bridge and Roger Bullen, The Great Powers and the European States System 1814–1914 (Harlow: Pearson 2005), 356.
52 Clark, The Sleepwalkers, 199.
53 For American strategic interests in East Asia since 1898, see: Friedberg, A Contest for Supremacy; Art, A Grand Strategy for America; Lim, The Geopolitics of East Asia; Kennan, American Diplomacy; Spykman, The Geography of Peace.
54 For US foreign policy towards East Asia in the twentieth century, see: Francis Pike, Hirohito’s War: The Pacific War, 1941–1945 (New York: Bloomsbury 2015); S.C.M. Paine, The Wars for Asia, 1911–1941 (New York: Cambridge University Press 2012); Lim, The Geopolitics of East Asia; Chen Jian, Mao’s China and the Cold War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press 2001); James Mann, About Face: A History of America’s Curious Relationship with China (New York: Alfred Knopf 1998).
55 Friedberg, A Contest for Supremacy, 7. For further clarifications on this point, see: Art, A Grand Strategy for America; Jakub J. Grygiel, Great Powers and Geopolitical Change (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press 2006).
56 For strategic limits inherent in America’s Rebalance to Asia, see: Robert E. Kelly, ‘The “Pivot” and Its Problems: American Foreign Policy in Northeast Asia’, Pacific Review 27/3 (2014), 479–503; Nick Bisley and Andrew Phillips, ‘Rebalance to Where?: U.S. Strategic Geography in Asia’, Survival 55/5 (2013), 95–114; Robert S. Ross, ‘The Problem with the Pivot: Obama’s New Asian Policy Is Unnecessary and Counterproductive’, Foreign Affairs 91/6 (2012), 70–82.
57 For China’s neighbours and the US rebalance, see: David A. Shlapak, ‘ Towards a More Modest American Strategy’, Survival 57/2 (2015), 59–78; Ashley Tellis, ‘Balancing without Containment: A US Strategy for Confronting China’, Washington Quarterly 36/4 (2013), 109–24; Ely Ratner, ‘Rebalancing to Asia with an Insecure China’, Washington Quarterly 36/2 (2013), 21–38; Aaron L. Friedberg, ‘Bucking Beijing: An Alternative U.S. China Policy’, Foreign Affairs 91/5 (2012), 48–58.
58 Cosgrave, ‘Sir Eyre Crowe and the British Foreign Office’, 166.
59 Crowe, ‘Memorandum on the Present State of British Relations with France and Germany’, 416, 417.
60 James E. Auer and Robyn Lim, ‘The Maritime Basis of American Security in East Asia’, 43.
61 For geostrategic asymmetries and its relevance in East Asia, see: Evan Braden Montgomery, ‘Contested Primacy in the Western Pacific: China’s Rise and the Future of U.S. Power Projection’, International Security 38/4 (2014), 115–49; Christian Le Mière, ‘The Specter of an Asian Arms Race’, Survival 56/1 (2014), 139–56; Thomas J. Christensen, ‘Posing Problems without Catching up: China’s Rise and Challenges for U.S. Security Policy’, International Security 25/4 (2001), 5–40; Auer and Lim, ‘The Maritime Basis of American Security in East Asia’.
62 For further clarifications on imperial Germany’s risk fleet and its strategic aims, see: Patrick J. Kelly, Tirpitz and the Imperial German Navy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press 2011); Lawrence Sondhaus, Preparing for Weltpolitik: German Sea Power before the ‘Tirpitz’ Era (Annapolis MD: Naval Institute Press 1997); Holger H. Herwig, Luxury Fleet: The Imperial German Navy 1888–1918 (London: Allen & Unwin 1980); Jonathan Steinberg, Yesterday’s Deterrent: Tirpitz and the Birth of the German Battle Fleet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1965).
63 Sempa, Geopolitics, 15.
64 For further clarifications, see: Mackinder, Democratic Ideals and Reality; Spykman, America’s Strategy in World Politics.
65 For further clarifications, see: Lim, The Geopolitics of East Asia; Colin S. Gray, The Leverage of Sea Power: The Strategic Advantage of Navies in War (New York: Free Press 1992).
66 For further clarifications on this point, see: Toshi Yoshihara and James R. Holmes, Red Star over the Pacific: China’s Rise and the Challenge to U.S. Maritime Strategy (Annapolis MD: Naval Institute Press 2010), 50.
67 For why China’s naval strategy keeps focused on the near seas, see: Jonathan Dixon, ‘From “Pearls” to “Arrows”: Rethinking the “String of Pearls” Theory of China’s Naval Ambitions’, Comparative Strategy 33/4 (2014), 391,
68 Gompert, Sea Power and American Interests in the Western Pacific, 98.
69 For the shift of American military strategy, see: US Department of Defense, ‘Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense’, January 2012, <http://www.defense.gov/news/Defense_Strategic_Guidance>.
70 For the relationship between China’s A2/AD capabilities and the shift of American military strategy, see: Aaron L. Friedberg, ‘Beyond Air–Sea Battle: The Debate over US Military Strategy in Asia’, Adelphi Series 54/444 (2014), 11–155.
71 Ratner, ‘Rebalancing to Asia with an Insecure China’, 25.
72 Le Mière, ‘The Specter of an Asian Arms Race’, 154.
73 For the linkage between China’s foreign policy, especially its so-called ‘assertive diplomacy’, towards neighbouring countries in recent years and the US Rebalance to Asia policy, see: Le Mière, ‘ The Specter of an Asian Arms Race’; Ratner, ‘Rebalancing to Asia with an Insecure China’; Michael Green, ‘China’s Periphery: Implications for U.S. Policy and Interests’, Orbis 56/3 (2012), 357–69.
74 Luttwak, The Rise of China vs. the Logic of Strategy, 12.
75 For China’s ‘periphery diplomacy’ and its inherent problems, see: Aaron L. Friedberg, ‘The Sources of Chinese Conduct: Explaining Beijing’s Assertiveness’, Washington Quarterly 37/4 (2014), 133–50; Oriana Skylar Mastro, ‘Why Chinese Assertiveness Is Here to Stay’, Washington Quarterly 37/4 (2014), 151–70; Jonathan Holslag, ‘The Smart Revisionist’, Survival 56/5 (2014), 95–116; Le Mière, ‘ The Specter of an Asian Arms Race’.
76 Jeffrey Reeves, ‘China’s Unraveling Engagement Strategy’, Washington Quarterly 36/4 (2013), 140.
77 Michael Yahuda, ‘China’s New Assertiveness in the South China Sea’, Journal of Contemporary China 22/81 (2013), 454.
78 For China’s and America’s contradictory interpretations of the freedom of navigation, see: James Manicom, ‘China and U.S. Seapower in East Asia: Is Accommodation Possible?’, Journal of Strategic Studies 37/3 (2014), 345–71; Bernard D. Cole, The Great Wall at Sea: China’s Navy in the Twenty-First Century, 2nd edn (Annapolis MD: Naval Institute Press, 2010), Chapter 2; Mark Valencia, ‘The Impeccable Incident: Truth and Consequences’, China Security 5/2 (2009), 26–32.
79 Manicom, ‘China and U.S. Seapower in East Asia’, 363.
80 John Lewis Gaddis, ‘The Long Peace: Elements of Stability in the Postwar International System’, International Security 10/4 (1986), 124. For further clarifications on this point, see: Manicom, ‘China and U.S. Seapower in East Asia’; Joseph M. Parent and Paul K. MacDonald, ‘The Wisdom of Retrenchment: America Must Cut Back to Move Forward’, Foreign Affairs 90/6 (2011), 32–47.
81 Kissinger, Diplomacy, 27.
82 Crowe, ‘Memorandum on the Present State of British Relations with France and Germany’, 408.
83 Kissinger, On China, 372.
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Zhengyu Wu
Dr Zhengyu Wu is a professor of international politics in the School of International Studies at Renmin University of China (Beijing), where he has taught since 2002. He was a visiting professor in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, the Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, and the Department of Politics at Durham University. Professor Wu received his PhD in the Department of History at Nanjing University and completed postdoctoral study at London School of Economics. His research fields include theory of international politics, geopolitics and grand strategy, and East Asian maritime security. His major books include Geopolitics and Grand Strategy (2012), The Logic of Hegemony: Geopolitics and American Grand Strategy in the Postwar Era (2010), and A Study of Kenneth Waltz’s Theory of International Politics (2003). He is also the author of numerous Chinese and English articles and book chapters.