The rise of China, balance of power theory and US national security: Reasons for optimism?

ABSTRACT

When and why might a rising China challenge the power and security of a relatively declining United States? Conventional wisdom argues that China – like other rising states – is apt to adopt an increasingly ambitious strategy that imperils US interests as its relative power grows. Drawing on balance of power theory, I instead argue that the threat of Chinese predation is overstated. Rising in a crowded geopolitical neighbourhood, China faces incentives to avoid preying on the United States, and may even have reason to cooperate with the United States over the long term.

Acknowledgements

The author gratefully acknowledges the input of Paul Avey, Michael Beckley, Taylor Fravel, Eugene Gholz, Eric Gomez, Ketian Chang, Jennifer Erickson, Joe Nye, Christopher Layne and Benjamin Valentino.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ For strategies of rising states, see Randall Schweller, ‘Managing the Rise of Great Powers: History and Theory,’ in Alastair Iain Johnston and Robert Ross (ed.), Engaging China: The Management of an Emerging Power (New York: Routledge, 1999), 1–31.

² I use the terms ‘rising’ and ‘declining’ states to refer to great powers at either the regional or global level experiencing a shift in the distribution of capabilities that strengthens (rising states) or weakens (declining states) their relative position. What constitutes a ‘great power’ is a long-standing question in international relations. For the purposes of this analysis, I use it to refer to a state with sufficient material capabilities to affect the security of most other actors either regionally or globally if it so chose. On similar definitional debates, see Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, ‘The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers in the Twenty-First Century: China’s Rise and the Fate of America’s Global Position’, International Security 40/3 (Winter 2015–2016), 7–53. A closely related problem concerns whether states must perceive a shift in the distribution of power for the change to affect policy; for discussion of this issue, see Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson, Rising Titans, Falling Giants: How Great Powers Exploit Power Shifts (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2018), 3.

³ As Schweller describes, rising powers ‘are expected to be outward-looking, to show competitive international faces, to expand when and where they can;’ Randall Schweller, ‘Opposite but Compatible Nationalisms: A Neoclassical Realist Approach to the Future of US-China Relations’, Chinese Journal of International Politics 11/1 (March 2018), 32. For other work using this assumption, see Robert J. Art, ‘The United States and the Rise of China: Implications for the Long Haul’, Political Science Quarterly 125/3 (Fall 2010), 359–91; Aaron L. Friedberg, A Contest for Supremacy: China, America, and the Struggle for Mastery in Asia (New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 2011); Sumit Ganguly and Manjeet S. Pardesi, ‘Can China and India Rise Peacefully?’ Orbis 56/3 (Summer 2012), 470–85; National Intelligence Council, Global Trends 2030: Alternate Worlds, December 2012, NIC 2012–001; The White House, ‘Remarks by President Obama at the University of Queensland’, 15 November 2014, https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/11/15/remarks-president-obama-university-queensland.

⁴ This includes work in research programs as diverse as hegemonic stability theory, liberal institutionalism and dyadic applications of balance of power theory. For a good summary, see Schweller, ‘Opposite but Compatible’, 32–37.

⁵ John J. Mearsheimer, ‘The Gathering Storm: China’s Challenge to US Power in Asia’, The Chinese Journal of International Politics 3/4 (December 2010), 381–96; Graham Allison, ‘The Thucydides Trap: Are the U.S. and China Headed for War?’, The Atlantic, 24 September 2015.

⁶ William Clinton, ‘Remarks at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies’, 8 March 2000, online by Gerhard Peters and John Woolley, The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=87714&st=china&st1=wto;; G. John Ikenberry, ‘The Rise of China and the Future of the West: Can the Liberal System Survive?’, Foreign Affairs 87/1 (Jan. 2008), 23–37; Aaron L. Friedberg, ‘A New U.S. Economic Strategy Toward China?’, The Washington Quarterly 40/4 (Dec. 2017), 97–114; Nina Silove, ‘The Pivot Before the Pivot: U.S. Strategy to Preserve the Balance of Power in Asia’, International Security 40/4 (Spring 2016), 45–88.

⁷ Ludwig Dehio, Germany and World Politics in the Twentieth Century (New York: Knopf, 1959), 14–15; Gordon Craig, Germany, 1866–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 310–314; Imanuel Geiss, German Foreign Policy, 1871–1914 (London: Routledge, 1976), esp. 29–43, 57–71, 110–18, 149–57.

⁸ Robert Hathaway, Ambiguous Partnership: Britain and America, 1944–1947 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981); Shifrinson, Rising Titans, Falling Giants, chaps. 3–4; quote from Vladimir O. Pechatnov, The Big Three After World War II: New Documents on Soviet Thinking About Post-War Relations with the United States and Great Britain, Cold War International History Project Working Paper 13, May 1995, 5. See also the discussion below.

⁹ Paul Kennedy, The Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, 1860–1914 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1980).

¹⁰ For distillations of US policy, see Jeffrey Bader, Obama and China’s Rise: An Insider’s Account of America’s Asia Strategy (Brookings Institution Press, 2012); Thomas Christensen, The China Challenge: Shaping the Choices of a Rising Power (New York: Norton, 2015).

¹¹ Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, trans. Rex Warner and M. I. Finley (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1972), bk. 1:23.

¹² For scholarly assumptions, see Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (New York: Cambridge, 1981), chap. 5; Robert Powell, In the Shadow of Power (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 115–117; John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: Norton, 2001), 33–34, 401–402. For application to China’s rise, see Aaron Friedberg, ‘The Future of U.S.-China Relations: Is Conflict Inevitable?’, International Security 30/2 (Fall 2005), 16–24; U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCESR), Annual Report 2017 (Washington: GPO, 2017), 6–8; Joel Wuthnow, ‘Asian Security Without the United States? Examining China’s Security Strategy in Maritime and Continental East Asia’, Asian Security (2017), 3; Dingding Chen, Xiaoyu Pu, and Alastair Iain Johnston, ‘Correspondence: Debating China’s Assertiveness’, International Security 38/3 (Winter 2013–2014), 177.

¹³ Fareed Zakaria, From Wealth to Power: The Unusual Origins of America’s World Role (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 3; Gilpin, War and Change, 187. Domestic politics may play a role here, too, as a state’s growing power may enable nationalist or expansionist coalitions to dominate domestic political life. For discussion of this process and the conditions under which it is particularly likely, see Jack L. Snyder, Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991).

¹⁴ Art, ‘Rise of China’, 361–362; Jack Levy, ‘Declining Power and the Preventive Motivation for War’, World Politics 40/1 (October 1987), 87.

¹⁵ For the tradeoffs declining states face, see Samuel Huntington, ‘Coping with the Lippmann Gap’, Foreign Affairs 66/3 (Jan. 1987): 453–77; Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (New York: Cambridge, 1981), 187–207.

¹⁶ Copeland, Origins, 4; also Jeffrey W. Legro, ‘What China Will Want: The Future Intentions of a Rising Power’, Perspectives on Politics 5/3 (Sep. 2007), 515–34.

¹⁷ Allison, ‘The Thucydides Trap’.

¹⁸ The only direct study on this topic is Shifrinson, Rising Titans, Falling Giants, which reports results similar to those here.

¹⁹ Jonathan DiCicco and Jack Levy, ‘Power Shifts and Problem Shifts: The Evolution of the Power Transition Research Program’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 43/6 (December 1999), 694.

²⁰ See, inter alia, Douglas Lemke and William Reed, ‘War and Rivalry among the Great Powers’, American Journal of Political Science 45/2 (Apr. 2001), 457–69; Douglas Lemke and Suzanne Werner, ‘Power Parity, Commitment to Change, and War’, International Studies Quarterly 40/2 (Jun. 1996), 235–260; Indra de Soysa, John R. Oneal, and Yong-Hee Park, ‘Testing Power Transition Theory Using Alternative Measures of National Capabilities’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 41/4 (Aug. 1997), 509–28. Seen in this light, Allison’s work on the ‘Thucydides Trap’ – finding that war occurred in ‘12 of 16 cases over the past 500 years’ in which a ‘rising power rivals a ruling power’ resulted – is the exception. Given, however, the ad hoc manner in which Allison compiled his cases (https://www.belfercenter.org/thucydides-trap/case-file), it seems doubtful his results challenge the broader finding.

²¹ Douglas Lemke, ‘Power is Not Satisfaction: A Comment on de Soysa, Oneal, and Park’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 42/4 (Aug. 1998), 511–16; Woosang Kim and Scott Gates, ‘Power Transition Theory and the Rise of China’, International Area Studies Review 18/3 (Sep. 2015), 220–22; Steve Chan, ‘Can’t Get No Satisfaction? The Recognition of Revisionist States’, International Relations of the Asia-Pacific 4/2 (Aug. 2004), 207–238.

²² John A. Vasquez, ‘When Are Power Transitions Dangerous? An Appraisal and Reformulation of Power Transition Theory’, in Jacek Kugler and Douglas Lemke (ed.), Parity and War: Evaluations and Extensions of the War Ledge (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996), 35–56; Richard Ned Lebow and Benjamin Valentino, ‘Lost in Transition: A Critical Analysis of Power Transition Theory’, International Relations 23/3 (Sept. 2009), 389–410.

²³ In fact, in the most extensive assessment of shifting power and war, Copeland finds that declining states are more likely than rising states to pursue competitive strategies that promote conflict Copeland, Origins, 3 and chap. 2.

²⁴ On revisionist states seeking allies, see Randall Schweller, ‘Bandwagoning for Profit: Bringing the Revisionist State Back In’, International Security 19/1 (Summer 1994), 72–107.

²⁵ For these states as revisionist and dissatisfied, see Schweller, ‘Managing’, 22, figure 1.1.

²⁶ Stephen M. Walt, ‘The Progressive Power of Realism’, American Political Science Review 91/4 (1997), 931–35.

²⁷ Canonical works include Hans Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations; the Struggle for Power and Peace, 3rd ed. (New York: Knopf, 1963); Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Pub. Co, 1979); Stephen M. Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987); John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: Norton, 2001).

²⁸ Waltz, Theory, 166–168; Jack Levy, ‘What Do Great Powers Balance Against?’, in T.V. Paul, James Wirtz and Michel Fortmann (ed.), Balance of Power: Theory and Practice in the 21st Century (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), 32–33.

²⁹ Copeland, Origins, 2–3. For similar analysis drawing on the logic of power transition theory, see Steve Chan, ‘Exploring Puzzles in Power-Transition Theory: Implications for Sino-American Relations’, Security Studies 13/3 (Spring 2004), 105, 118–119.

³⁰ As Norrin Ripsman and Jack Levy observe, preventive wars are most likely if a riser is seen as ‘rapidly rising, hostile, and likely to surpass then in military strength and then resort to military force’ – conditions that might occur if a rising state assertively challenges declining states; Norrin Ripsman and Jack Levy, ‘British Grand Strategy and the Rise of Germany,’ in, Jeffrey W. Taliaferro, Norrin M. Ripsman, and Steven E. Lobell (ed.), The Challenge of Grand Strategy: The Great Powers and the Broken Balance between the World War (New York: Cambridge, 2012), 174. For over-expansion and ‘self-encirclement,’ see Snyder, Myths of Empire, 6–9. On insecurity spirals and the closely-related security dilemma, Robert Jervis, ‘Cooperation Under the Security Dilemma’, World Politics 30/2 (Jan. 1978), 167–214.

³¹ David G. Hermann, The Arming of Europe and the Making of the First World War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), esp. 190–194; David B. Ralston, The Army of the Republic (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1966), 301–15, 347–71.

³² Noel E. Firth and James H. Noren, Soviet Defense Spending: A History of CIA Estimates, 1950–1990 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1998), 129–130 table 5.10; ex post revelations from Soviet leaders suggest defence spending may have been as high as 20 per cent of Soviet national income; see Firth and Noren, Soviet Defense Spending, 188–189. For U.S. recognition that the distribution of power was shifting in its favor, see Shifrinson, Rising Titans, Falling Giants, 102-104.

³³ As Paul Schroeder and Patricia Weitsman note, states may also cooperate to gain influence over another’s foreign policy and clarify their threat environment. Insofar as states seek to minimise threats and increase their influence, these arguments are consistent with balance of power logic and provide another reason for rising states to pull their punches; Paul Schroeder, ‘Alliances, 1815–1945: Weapons of Power and Tools of Management’, in, Klaus Knorr (ed.), Historical Dimensions of National Security Problems (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1976), 227–62; Patricia Weitsman, Dangerous Alliances: Proponents of Peace, Weapons of War (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), 17–33.

³⁴ Put differently, rising states may try to buckpass to declining states. On buckpassing, see Thomas Christensen and Jack Snyder, ‘Chain Gangs and Passed Bucks: Predicting Alliance Patterns in Multipolarity’, International Organization 44, no 2 (Spring 1990), 141.

³⁵ For using concessions to entice other states into alignment and deny them to adversaries, see Timothy Crawford, ‘The Alliance Politics of Concerted Accommodation: Entente Bargaining and Italian and Ottoman Interventions in the First World War’, Security Studies 23/1 (Winter 2014), 113–147.

³⁶ Geography is one of the core modifiers added to balance of power theories to explain whether and to what extent states influence one another. The proximity of states to one another is especially important: the closer states are to one another, the more they can project power that can harm one another and absorb one another’s attention. When a rising state evaluates a declining state’s utility, it thus considers the decliner’s proximity to other powerful states – the closer a declining state to other actors, the more likely a declining state can help offset these threats. On the importance of proximity and location, see Christopher Layne, The Peace of Illusions (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006), 20; Jeffrey Taliaferro, ‘Security Seeking Under Anarchy: Defensive Realism Revisited’, International Security 25/3 (Winter 2000–2001), 137 .

³⁷ For domestic politics and alignment choices, see Randall L. Schweller, Unanswered Threats: Political Constraints on the Balance of Power (Princeton: Princeton University, 2006). For the problems a state’s alignment with one’s other opponents can pose, see Crawford, ‘Wedge Strategies’.

³⁸ Put differently, these factors cumulatively increase the likelihood that a declining state will pose less of a challenge and appear less dangerous to a rising state than other prospective threats, thereby making support a reasonable course.

³⁹ Geoffrey Wawro, A Mad Catastrophe: The Outbreak of World War I and the Collapse of the Habsburg Empire (New York: Basic Books, 2014), chaps. 1–2.

⁴⁰ William L. Langer, ‘The Franco-Russian Alliance (1890–1894)’, The Slavonic Review 3/9 (March 1925), 565–75; D.W. Spring, ‘Russia and the Franco-Russian Alliance, 1905–1914: Dependence or Independence?’ The Slavonic and East European Review 66/4 (Oct. 1988), 583–90.

⁴¹ Pechatnov, Big Three After World War II. For further details, see Alexei Filitov, ‘Problems of Post-War Reconstruction in Soviet Foreign Policy Conceptions during World War II,’ in Francesca Gori and Silvio Pons (ed.), The Soviet Union and the Cold War, 1943–53 (London: Macmillan, 1996), 3–22.

⁴² Memorandum by the Acting Department of State Member to the State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee, 1 April 1946, FRUS 1946: General, The United Nations, Volume 1 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1972), doc. 591. For background, see Paul Nitze, ‘The Grand Strategy of Containment’, in S. Nelson Drew (ed.), NSC-68: Forging the Strategy of Containment (Washington: National Defense University Press, 1994), 7.

⁴³ For US policy in this period, see Hathaway, Ambiguous; Terry Anderson, The United States, Great Britain, and the Cold War, 1944–1947 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1981); Elisabeth Barker, The British Between the Superpowers, 1945–1950 (London: Macmillan 1983).

⁴⁴ Using the definition of rise and decline noted earlier, the United States’ rise at this time stemmed heavily from the Soviet Union’s decline, which caused the United States’ lead in economic and military capabilities over the USSR to expand.

⁴⁵ Mary Sarotte, 1989 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009); Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson, ‘Deal or No Deal? The End of the Cold War and the U.S. Offer to Limit NATO Expansion’, International Security 40/4 (Spring 2016), 7–44.

⁴⁶ Hal Brands, What Good Is Grand Strategy? (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014), 123.

⁴⁷ Brooks and Wohlforth, ‘Rise and Fall’; Barry R. Posen, ‘Emerging Multipolarity: Why Should We Care?’, Current History 108/721 (Nov. 2009), 347–352.

⁴⁸ William C. Wohlforth, ‘The Perception of Power: Russia in the Pre-1914 Balance’, World Politics 39/3 (Apr. 1987): 353–81.

⁴⁹ The canonical statement along these lines is Robert Jervis, The Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution: Statecraft and the Prospect of Armageddon (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989); For the nuclear revolution and state behaviour, see Kenneth A. Oye, ‘Explaining the End of the Cold War: Behavioral & Morphological Adaptations to the Nuclear Peace’, in Thomas Risse-Kappen and Richard Ned Lebow (ed.), The End of the Cold War & International Relations Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995); Mark S. Bell, ‘Beyond Emboldenment: How Acquiring Nuclear Weapons Can Change Foreign Policy’, International Security, 40/1 (Summer 2015), 87–119.

⁵⁰ For rising states as easily threatened, see Miranda Priebe, ‘Fear and Frustration: Rising State Perceptions of Threats and Opportunities’, (PhD Dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2014).

⁵¹ That is, declining states will eventually be unable to sustain competition and either need to retrench, wage war, or surrender; see Huntington, ‘Coping with the Lippmann Gap’, 453–77.

⁵² Alan P. Dobson, Anglo-American Relations in the Twentieth Century: Of Friendship, Conflict, and the Rise and Decline of Superpowers (New York: Routledge, 1995), 17–41; D.C. Watt, Succeeding John Bull: America in Britain’s Place, 1900–1975 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 24–39, 69–89.

⁵³ See Brands, Sarotte, and Shifrinson, op. cit.

⁵⁴ These cases are detailed in Shifrinson, Rising Titans, Falling Giants chap. 3 and conclusion.

⁵⁵ As Ely Ratner puts it when describing Chinese ambitions, China’s preferred outcomes involve ushering in a world that would leave the United States with “weaker alliances, fewer security partners and a military forced to operate at greater distances. US firms would be left without access to leading technologies and markets, and disadvantaged by new standards, investment rules and trading blocs. Inert regional institutions would be unable to resist Chinese coercion, and the world would see a steady decline in democracy and individual freedoms. The net result would be a less secure, less prosperous United States that would be less able to exert power in the world;” Ely Ratner, ‘There Is No Grand Bargain With China’, Foreign Affairs Snapshot, 27 November 2018, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2018-11-27/there-no-grand-bargain-china.

⁵⁶ Michael Yahuda, ‘China’s New Assertiveness in the South China Sea’, Journal of Contemporary China 22/81 (January 2013), 446–459; Joel Wuthnow, ‘Beyond Imposing Costs: Recalibrating U.S. Strategy in the South China Sea’, Asia Policy 24 (July 2017), 125–130.

⁵⁷ Edmund J. Burke and Astrid Cevallos, In Line or Out of Order: China’s Approach to ADIZ in Theory and Practice (Santa Monica: Rand Corporation, 2017).

⁵⁸ Michael Clarke, ‘The Belt and Road Initiative: China’s New Grand Strategy?’, Asia Policy 24 (July 2017), 71–79.

⁵⁹ Christopher Bodeen, ‘What We Know About China’s Increased Defense Spending in 2018’, Associated Press, 5 March 2018.

⁶⁰ Ali Wyne, ‘The Greater Danger of US-China Trade Tensions’, The Diplomat, 9 May 2018, https://thediplomat.com/2018/05/the-greater-danger-of-us-china-trade-tensions/; Julie Makinen, ‘China’s Crackdown on Dissent is Described as Harshest in Decades’, 10 August 2016, http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-china-crackdown-snap-story.html.

⁶¹ Avery Goldstein, Rising to the Challenge: China’s Grand Strategy and International Security (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005); Alastair Iain Johnston, ‘How New and Assertive Is China’s New Assertiveness?’, International Security 37/4 (April 2013), 7–48; Evan S. Medeiros, China’s International Behavior: Activism, Opportunism, and Diversification (Santa Monica: Rand Corporation, 2009); David Shambaugh, ‘U.S.-China Rivalry in Southeast Asia: Power Shift or Competitive Coexistence?’, International Security 42/4 (Spring 2018), 85–127.

⁶² For Chinese claims and approaches, see Ryan D. Martinson, Echelon Defense: The Role of Seapower in Chinese Maritime Dispute Strategy (Newport: U.S. Naval War College, 2018), Chinese Maritime Studies Report No. 15, 6–11; Wuthnow, ‘Asian Security Without the United States’, 4.

⁶³ Michael D. Swaine, ‘Chinese Views and Commentary on the East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone (ECS ADIZ)’, China Leadership Monitor 43, February 2014,  3–11, http://carnegieendowment.org/files/CLM43MSCarnegie013114.pdf.

⁶⁴ Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), ‘SIPRI Military Expenditure Database 2017’, https://www.sipri.org/databases/milex (last accessed 19 November 2018). Although uncertainties surround Chinese military spending, SIPRI’s data encompasses both official and unofficial sources, and would presumably reflect growth in Chinese military allocations.

⁶⁵ Fiona S. Cunningham and M. Taylor Fravel, ‘Assuring Assured Retaliation: China’s Nuclear Posture and U.S.-China Strategic Stability’, International Security 40/2 (Fall 2015), 7–50. That China has the capacity to develop a much larger and more ambitious nuclear strategy makes China’s nuclear forbearance particularly interesting.

⁶⁶ As Adam Liff notes, China fears being contained by the United States and its allies but has yet to advance ‘concrete, viable alternatives’ for regional security structures; Adam Liff, ‘China and the U.S. Alliance System’, The China Quarterly 233 (March 2018), 154.

⁶⁷ Li Xiaokun, Zhang Yunbi, and Chen Weihua, ‘Xi: World Big Enough for two Great Nations’, China Daily USA, 10 July 2014, http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/2014-07/10/content_17697610.htm; ‘China State Media Warns Trump Again Isolationism, Calls for Status Quo’, Reuters, 10 November 2016, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-china-media-idUSKBN1350P6.

⁶⁸ Christopher Layne, ‘The Waning of U.S. Hegemony – Myth or Reality?: A Review Essay’, International Security 34/1 (Summer 2009), 147–172; Layne, ‘This Time It’s Real’.

⁶⁹ Scholars debate what the most relevant features of state economic strength encompass in a post-industrial economy. Critics allege that GDP is a less useful indicator of a state’s economic health than per capita GDP or net wealth. That said, it seems equally true that growing GDP will translate into greater wealth and, potentially, per capita income. For the debate over metrics, see Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson and Michael Beckley, ‘Debating China’s Rise and U.S. Decline’, International Security 37/3 (December 2012), 172–181.

⁷⁰ Much discussion surrounds whether Chinese economic growth is overstated or relies on unsustainable macroeconomic choices. Yet, despite suggestions in the mid-2010s that Chinese growth was slowing, recent research suggests that estimates of China’s economy may have underestimated its growth. For claims that Chinese growth was slowing, see Neil Gough, ‘As China’s Economy Slows, Here’s a Look at What Could Happen’, New York Times, 18 October 2016; ‘China’s Economic Growth Dials Back’, Bloomberg News, 13 August 2017. For claims of higher than estimated growth, see Hunter Clark, Maxim Pinkovskiy, and Xavier Sala-i-Martin, ‘China’s GDP May Be Understated’, National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Working Paper 23323, April 2017.

⁷¹ Per capita GDP was $1500 in 1990 (in 2011 dollars) versus $12,600 in 2014; Robert Barro, ‘Economic Growth and Convergence, Applied Especially to China’, NBER Working Paper 21872, January 2016, Table 4. Recent World Bank figures reinforce the assessment, with Chinese per capita GDP reported at $888 in 1992 versus $7329 in 2017 (measured in constant 2010 dollars); see World Bank, World Development Indicators, last accessed November 2018.

⁷² Barro, ‘Economic Growth,’ 12. See also Robert W. Fogel, ‘Why China is Likely to Achieve Its Growth Objectives’, NBER Working Paper 12122, March 2006; World Bank, ‘World Bank Country and Lending Groups – Current Classification by Income’, http://databank.worldbank.org/data/download/site-content/CLASS.xls, last accessed 19 November 2018.

⁷³ For 2017, SIPRI reported that the United States allocated 3.1 percent of its GDP to military affairs, against 1.9 percent for China. Given the relative size of two economies (Table 1), equal spending rates would see a Chinese defence budget more than half that of the United States. For military spending, see SIPRI, ‘SIPRI Military Expenditure Database 2018’. For overviews of military spending and military power trends, see Michael D. Swaine et al., China’s Military & the U.S.-Japan Alliance in 2030: A Strategic Net Assessment (Washington: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2013). For the shifting military balance, see Evan Braden Montgomery, Reinforcing the Front Line: U.S. Defense Strategy and the Rise of China (Washington: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2017).

⁷⁴ Data from World Bank, World Databank, World Development Indicators, http://databank.worldbank.org/data/reports.aspx?source=world-development-indicators (last accessed 19 November 2018).

⁷⁵ Data from SIPRI ‘Military Expenditure Database 2018’.

⁷⁶ Geoffrey Blainey, The Causes of War (Basingstroke: Macmillan, 1988), 3^rd ed.; Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, 149–163.

⁷⁷ For argument that China remains less than a peer competitor, see Brooks and Wohlforth, ‘Rise and Fall’. For recent affirmation of growing US-China competition, see Kurt M. Campbell and Ely Ratner, ‘The China Reckoning: How Beijing Defied American Expectations’, Foreign Affairs 97/2 (March-April 2018).

⁷⁸ On changing alliances, see Evan S. Medeiros, ‘Strategic Hedging and the Future of Asia-Pacific Stability’, The Washington Quarterly 29/1 (Winter 2005–2006), 145–167; Victor D. Cha, ‘Winning Asia’s: Washington’s Untold Success Story’, Foreign Affairs 86/6 (November-December 2007), 102–110; Richard C. Bush, ‘America’s Alliances and Security Partnerships in East Asia’, Brookings Institution Report, 13 July 2016, https://www.brookings.edu/research/americas-alliances-and-security-partnerships-in-east-asia-introduction/. On military rebalancing, see Silove, ‘Pivot Before the Pivot’; Christopher M. Schnaubelt, ‘The Military Aspects of the US Rebalance to the Asia-Pacific’, in Alexander Moens and Brooke Smith-Windsor (ed.), NATO and Asia-Pacific (Rome: NATO Defence College, 2016), 39–60.

⁷⁹ Hal Brands, Dealing With Allies in Decline: Alliance Management and U.S. Strategy in an Era of Global Power Shifts (Washington: CSBA, 2017), 53–8; Eric Heginbotham and Richard J. Samuels, ‘With Friends Like These: Japan-ROK Cooperation and US Policy’, Asan Forum, 1 March 2018, http://www.theasanforum.org/with-friends-like-these-japan-rok-cooperation-and-us-policy/. Indeed, the United States’ ‘Third Offset’ strategy championed by the Obama administration was heavily driven by a perceived need to acquire military tools optimised for great power competition with China; see Paul McLeary, ‘The Pentagon’s Third Offset May be Dead, But No One Knows What Comes Next’, Foreign Policy, 18 December 2017, https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/12/18/the-pentagons-third-offset-may-be-dead-but-no-one-knows-what-comes-next/. For evidence that intra-regional cooperation might occur without the United States, see Satu Limaye, Weighted West, Focused on the Indian Ocean, and Cooperating across the Indo-Pacific: The Indian Navy’s New Maritime Strategy. Capabilities, and Diplomacy (Washington: CNA, 2017), 45–51.

⁸⁰ Aaron L. Friedberg, ‘A New U.S. Economic Strategy toward China?’ The Washington Quarterly 40/4 (Winter 2018), 97–110.

⁸¹ As Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Elbridge Colby explained when announcing the 2018 U.S. Defense Strategy, American efforts were not intended to be ‘a strategy of confrontation, but […] a strategy that recognizes the reality of competition;’ quoted in Jim Garamone, ‘DoD Official: National Defense Strategy Will Enhance Deterrence’, Department of Defense News, 19 January 2018.

⁸² Table 1.

⁸³ Table 2. In 2016, China spent approximately 465 percent more than Japan on military affairs. In contrast, the United States spent approximately 550 percent more on its military than China in 2010.

⁸⁴ Mike M. Mochizuki, ‘Japan’s Shifting Strategy Toward the Rise of China’, Journal of Strategic Studies 30/4–5 (Aug.-October 2007), 751–58. By the mid-2000s, Japanese officials began identifying China as a threat and trying to offset China’s rise; Evan S. Medeiros et al., Pacific Currents: The Response of U.S. Allies and Security Partners in East Asia of China’s Rise (Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 2008), 49–58.

⁸⁵ Harry Gelman, The Soviet Far East Buildup and Soviet Risk-Taking Against China (Santa Monica: Rand Corporation, 1982), vii-viii.

⁸⁶ Huizhong Wu, ‘China Strengthening Air Defenses with eyes on India, Says State Media’, CNN, 22 February 2018; Hemant Adlakha, ‘China is Starting to See India as a Major Threat’, The Diplomat, 11 January 2018, https://thediplomat.com/2018/01/china-is-starting-to-see-india-as-a-major-threat/; Yin Guoming, ‘The Indian Military Has Again Threatened China; China Should Attach Great Importance to This Opponent’, Kunlun Policy Network, 21 December 2017, http://www.kunlunce.com/gcjy/zxzz1111111/2017-12-21/121772.html [translated via Google Translate]; Paul Staniland, ‘America Has High Expectations for India. Can New Delhi Deliver?’, War on the Rocks, 22 February 2018, https://warontherocks.com/2018/02/america-has-high-expectations-for-india-can-new-delhi-deliver/.

⁸⁷ Stephen Brooks and William Wohlforth, America Abroad: The United States’ Global Role in the 21st Century (Oxford University Press, 2016), 14–72.

⁸⁸ Conversations with Steven Brooks, Jennifer Lind, Daryl Press and Eugene Gholz were critical on this point.

⁸⁹ The paradigmatic case is Great Britain which, as Aaron Friedberg describes, at the height of its power in the mid-1800, expected to continue ‘dominating world trade and maintaining its lead in industry as far ahead into the future as anyone could possibly foresee’; Friedberg, Weary Titan, 29. Nevertheless, the United States and Germany cut into Britain’s lead after the 1880s. More recently, post-war US policymakers expected the Soviet Union would be unable to acquire a nuclear bomb until around 1950–1953 window, when the USSR actually exploded its first nuclear weapon in August 1949; Donald P. Steury, ‘How the CIA Missed Stalin’s Bomb’, Studies in Intelligence 49/1 (2005).

⁹⁰ Relatedly, see Michael Beckley, ‘China’s Century? Why America’s Edge Will Endure’, International Security 36/3 (Winter 2012), 41–78; Alastair Iain Johnston and Sheena Chestnut, ‘Is China Rising?’, in Global Giant: Is China Changing the Rules of the Game?, ed. Eva Paus, Penelope Prime, and Jon Western (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009), 237–60.

⁹¹ For discussion of US advantages and Chinese efforts to close the gap, see USCESR, Annual Report 2017, 507–596; Montgomery, Reinforcing, 19–29; Eric Heginbotham et al., The U.S.-China Military Scorecard: Forces, Geography, and the Evolving Balance of Power, 1996–2017 (Santa Monica: Rand Corporation, 2015), xxx. As these studies underscore, China has cut into the US lead in many arenas, but the United States still retains significant advantages.

⁹² For a similar analysis, see Robert S. Ross, ‘The Geography of the Peace: East Asia in the Twenty-First Century’, International Security 23/4 (Apr. 1999), 81–118.

⁹³ On Chinese-Indian conflict, see M. Taylor Fravel, Strong Borders, Secure Nation: Cooperation and Conflict in China’s Territorial Disputes (Princeton University Press, 2008), chap. 4; Jonah Blank, ‘What Were China’s Objectives in the Doklam Dispute?’, Foreign Affairs Snapshot, 7 September 2017, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/asia/2017-09-07/what-were-chinas-objectives-doklam-dispute. For the China-Soviet dispute, see Gelman, Soviet Far East Buildup.

⁹⁴ For Japan’s geographic position vis-à-vis East Asian sea lines, see Sean Mirski, ‘Stranglehold: The Context, Conduct, and Consequences of an American Naval Blockade of China’, Journal of Strategic Studies 36/3 (February 2013), 393–406; Ji Guoxing, ‘SLOC Security in the Asia-Pacific’, Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies Occasional Paper, February 2000, http://apcss.org/Publications/Ocasional%20Papers/OPSloc.htm; Tetsuo Kotani, ‘The Case for Japan’s Patrol in the South China Sea,’ CSIS Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, 29 July 2015, https://amti.csis.org/the-case-for-japans-patrol-in-the-south-china-sea/. On China’s limited ability to attack Japan, see Stephen Biddle and Ivan Oelrich, ‘Future Warfare in the Western Pacific: Chinese Antiaccess/Area Denial, US AirSea Battle, and Command of the Commons in East Asia’, International Security 41/1 (Summer 2016), 14.

⁹⁵ As Ross observes, ‘From Japan in Northeast Asia to Malaysia in Southeast Asia, the East Asian mainland is rimmed with a continuous chain of island countries that possess strategic location and naval facilities’, impeding power projection from mainland East Asia; Ross, ‘Geography’, 100–101.

⁹⁶ Ross, ‘Geography’, 105–06. For an argument that China’s neighbours are beginning to bandwagon, however, see Shambaugh, ‘U.S.-China Rivalry in Southeast Asia’.

⁹⁷ The combined GDP of Australia, Japan, India and South Korea was $11.5 trillion in 2017, versus $10.2 trillion for China (measured in constant 2010 US dollars). Total population in 2017 was 1.54 billion people versus 1.39 billion. Author calculations from World Bank, World Development Indicators, http://databank.worldbank.org/ (accessed November 2018).

⁹⁸ Of course, it is also true that China enjoys significant strategic depth due its size. This may afford it operational advantages by making it difficult for prospective opponents to invade the Chinese mainland.

⁹⁹ USCSER, Annual Report 2017, op. cit. As the Rand Corporation notes, although ‘trend lines are moving against the United States across a broad spectrum of mission areas’, trends still ‘vary by mission’ and ‘in some areas, U.S. relative capabilities remain robust or even dominant.’ Ultimately, ‘the Chinese military continues to lag far behind that of the United States;’ Heginbotham, Scorecard, 21–22, also 322. See also Biddle and Oelrich, ‘Future Warfare;’ Owen R. Cote, Jr., ‘Assessing the Undersea Balance Between the U.S. and China’, MIT Security Studies Program Working Paper, February 2011, https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/127154/Undersea%20Balance%20WP11-1.pdf.

¹⁰⁰ International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), The Military Balance, 2018 (London: Oxford University Press, 2018), 33, 49, 252. China deployed a second aircraft carrier in early 2018; Steven Lee Myers, ‘China Launches Its First Domestically Made Aircraft Carrier’, New York Times, 13 May 2018.

¹⁰¹ IISS, Military Balance 2018, 32–33; Ankit Panda, ‘China’s Fifth-Generation Stealth Fighter is in Combat Service – But with Improved Fourth-Generation Engines’, The Diplomat, 13 February 2018; Alex Lockie, ‘China Appears to Have Rushed Its J-20 Stealth Fighter into Service with an ‘Embarrassing’ Flaw,’ Business Insider, 12 February 2018. As Montgomery notes, only 500 of China’s approximately 2000 fighter aircraft are 4^th generation units, whereas nearly all US aircraft are 4^th or 5^th generation forces; Evan Braden Montgomery, ‘Contested Primacy in the Western Pacific: China’s Rise and the Future of U.S. Power Projection’, International Security 38/4 (Spring 2014), 133.

¹⁰² Barry Posen, ‘Command of the Commons: The Military Foundation of U.S. Hegemony’, International Security 28/1 (Summer 2003), 12–14.

¹⁰³ Open-sources report that China only recently began seeking similar intelligence and surveillance systems; Kevin Pollpeter, ‘Testimony Before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission: Hearing on China’s Advanced Weapons’, 23 February 2017; Office of the Secretary of Defense, Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2017 (Washington: Department of Defense, 2017), 34–35.

¹⁰⁴ Montgomery, ‘Contested Primacy’, 133; also IISS, Military Balance, 2018, 5; Andrew Krepinevich, Preserving the Balance: A U.S. Eurasia Defense Strategy (Washington: CSBA, 2017), 44–53.

¹⁰⁵ Adam Segal, ‘Civil-Military Fusion: The Missing Link Between China’s Technological and Military Rise’, Council on Foreign Relations (Blog post), 29 January 2018, https://www.cfr.org/blog/civil-military-fusion-missing-link-between-chinas-technological-and-military-rise.

¹⁰⁶ Heginbotham, Scorecard, 345–50; Montgomery, ‘Contested Primacy’, 139–147; Jim Thomas, ‘Statement before the House Armed Services Committee Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee’, 11 December 2013; see also Joshua Rovner, ‘Two Kinds of Catastrophe: Nuclear Escalation and Protracted War in Asia’, Journal of Strategic Studies 40/5 (2017), 712.

¹⁰⁷ Suggesting the point is Krepinevich, Preserving the Balance, iv.

¹⁰⁸ Andrew Krepinevich, ‘How To Deter China: The Case for Archipelagic Defense’, Foreign Affairs 94/2 (Mar.-Apr. 2015), 78–86; Terrence Kelly, David Gompert, and Duncan Long, Smarter Power, Stronger Partners, Volume 1: Exploiting U.S. Advantages to Prevent Aggression (Santa Monica: Rand, 2016), 37, 133, 153–56.

¹⁰⁹ Eugene Gholz, ‘No Man’s Sea’ (draft article manuscript, January 2017); Michael Beckley, ‘The Emerging Military Balance in East Asia: How China’s Neighbors Can Check Chinese Naval Expansion’, International Security 42/2 (Fall 2017), 78–119. For study of what such forces would look like in the Japanese context, see Eric Heginbotham and Richard Samuels, ‘Active Denial: Redesigning Japan’s Response to China’s Military Challenge,’ International Security 42/4 (Spring 2018), 128–169.

¹¹⁰ For extensive discussion of the drawbacks and – especially – advantages of this approach, see Kelly, Gompert, and Long, Smarter Power, Volume 1.

¹¹¹ US assistance could also reinforce local actors’ strengths; Eric Heginbotham and Jacob Heim, ‘Deterring Without Dominance: Discouraging Chinese Adventurism Under Austerity’, The Washington Quarterly 38/1 (Spring 2015), 194–195.

¹¹² As Beckley notes, the ‘balance of power will remain stable for years to come, because China cannot afford the power-projection capabilities it would need to overcome the A2/AD forces of its neighbors;’ Beckley, ‘Emerging Military Balance’, 81.

¹¹³ On German relations with Britain, France and Russia, see Michael A. Glosny, ‘The Grand Strategies of Rising Powers: Reassurance, Coercion, and Balancing Responses’ (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2012), chap. 3–4; for relations with Austria-Hungary, see Shifrinson, Rising Titans, conclusion.

¹¹⁴ For China’s regional behaviour, see Fravel, Strong Borders, Secure Nation; Johnston, ‘New Assertiveness.’ On Indo-Chinese tensions, see Yogesh Joshi and Anit Mukherjee, ‘From Denial to Punishment: The Security Dilemma in India’s Military Strategy towards China’, Asian Security (online first view), 1–19.

¹¹⁵ Russo-Chinese relations are in flux amid signs the states may be aligning against the United States. Still, changes in US policy could suffice to drive wedges between the two sides given latent economic, territorial and strategic divisions between them. For discussion of Russo-Chinese relations, see Stephen Blank, ‘Toward a More Perfect Alliance: Russo-Chinese Ministerials in Moscow’, Eurasian Daily Monitor 15/59 (April 2018), https://jamestown.org/program/toward-a-more-perfect-alliance-russo-chinese-ministerials-in-moscow/; Paul Stronski and Nicole Ng, Cooperation and Competition: Russia and China in Central Asia, the Russian Far East, and the Arctic (Washington: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2018); Alexander Gabuev, ‘Why Russia and China are Strengthening Security Ties’, Foreign Affairs Snapshot, 24 September 2018, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2018-09-24/why-russia-and-china-are-strengthening-security-ties.

¹¹⁶ Along similar lines, see Charles Glaser, ‘A U.S.-China Grand Bargain?’, International Security 39/4 (Spring 2015), 49–90; Joseph S. Nye, ‘The Cooperative Rivalry in US-China Relations’, Project Syndicate, 6 November 2018, https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/china-america-relationship-cooperative-rivalry-by-joseph-s–nye-2018-11.

¹¹⁷ On Chinese concerns vis-à-vis the United States, see Liff, ‘China and the U.S. Alliance System’, 143–44; Ren Xiao, ‘U.S. Rebalance to Asia and Responses from China’s Research Community’, Orbis 61/2 (2017), 238–254; Wu Xinbo, ‘Cooperation, Competition, and Shaping the Outlook: The United States and China’s Neighborhood Diplomacy’, International Affairs 92/4 (2016), 849–867. On the centrality of alliance concerns in US policy, see Chas W. Freeman, Jr. ‘A New Era in US-China Relations’, Remarks to the Watson Institute and the Fairbank Center, Harvard University, November 13–14, 2018, https://chasfreeman.net/a-new-era-in-us-china-relations/. Thanks go to Taylor Fravel for help on this point.

¹¹⁸ This prospect may seem remote in light of recent US-Chinese tensions. However, the potential for a US-China ‘condominium’ was discussed in the early 2010s, and other states still fear the prospect of a US-China bargain. See Richard C. Bush, ‘The United States and China: A G-2 in the Making?’, 11 October 2011, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-united-states-and-china-a-g-2-in-the-making/; Brendan Taylor, ‘A US-China ‘Shadow Condominium’?’, The Strategist, 25 October 2012, https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/a-us-china-shadow-condominium/; Kuniko Ashizawa, ‘“Keeping the United States In”: Japan and Regional Order in East Asia’ in Elena Atanassova-Cornelis, Frans-Paul van der Puttin (ed.), Changing Security Dynamics in East Asia: A Post-US Regional Order in the Making? (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 85; Michael J. Green, ‘Asia Awaits Trump’s Visit with Trepidation’, Foreign Policy, 27 October 2017, http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/10/27/asia-awaits-trumps-visit-with-trepidation/.

¹¹⁹ Interestingly, it was largely after US-Japanese relations tightened after the late 1990s and seemed to deny China an opening with the United States that Chinese leaders began questioning the utility of US engagement in Asia; Bonnie Glaser and Brittney Farrar, ‘Through Beijing’s Eyes: How China Sees the U.S.-Japan Alliance’, The National Interest, 12 May 2015, http://nationalinterest.org/feature/through-beijings-eyes-how-china-sees-the-us-japan-alliance-12864.

¹²⁰ ‘China State Media Warns Trump against Isolationism’.

¹²¹ Along these lines, see Mearsheimer, ‘Gathering Storm;’ Krepinevich, Preserving, 19–25.

¹²² Suggesting the point, Chinese leaders have apparently concluded that the United States’ maritime capabilities are a major impediment on China’s own maritime aspirations and a potential threat to Chinese maritime interests; Michael McDevitt, Becoming a Great ‘Maritime Power’: A Chinese Dream (Washington: CNA, 2016), v. For broader discussion of Chinese concerns, see Andrew Nathan and Andrew Scobell, ‘How China Sees America: The Sum of Beijng’s Fears’, Foreign Affairs 91/5 (Sep./Oct. 2012), 32–47.

¹²³ On this trade-off, see David M. Edelstein, Over the Horizon: Time, Uncertainty, and the Rise of Great Powers (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2017), 157–61.

¹²⁴ Indeed, the notion that states in a bipolar contest may pressure one another but are unlikely to take steps leading to war was one of Waltz’s central insights; Waltz, Theory, 174–75.

¹²⁵ See Shifrinson, Rising Titans, Falling Giants, 83–95.

¹²⁶ The Trump administration formally labelled China a ‘revisionist’ actor in its 2017 National Security Strategy; Donald J. Trump, National Security Strategy of the United States of America, December 2017, 25.

¹²⁷ Michael Swaine, Creating an Unstable Asia: The U.S. “Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy (Washington: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2018); Michael Green, Kathleen Hicks, and Mark Cancian, Asia-Pacific Rebalance 2025: Capabilities, Presence and Partnerships (Washington: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2016); Alan Rappeport, ‘In New Slap at China, U.S. Expands Power to Block Foreign Investments’, New York Times, 10 October 2018.

¹²⁸ Implicitly recognising this dilemma is Ely Ratner, ‘Rebalancing to Asia with an Insecure China’, Washington Quarterly 36/2 (Spring 2013), 21–38.

¹²⁹ See Liff, ‘China and the U.S. Alliance System’, 143–44.

¹³⁰ These concessions might include items such as preferential economic access or partnership, agreement on respective spheres of influence and a reduction in PRC efforts to compete with the United States militarily.

¹³¹ In fact, going beyond a minimal coalition might imperil the foundations of this strategy by seeing the US take on military dependencies that need protection while contributing little to a cost-imposition strategy themselves.

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Notes on contributors

Joshua Shifrinson

Joshua Shifrinson (corresponding author) is an Assistant Professor of International Relations with the Pardee School at Boston University. His research focuses on international security, US foreign policy, grand strategy and diplomatic history. Shifrinson is a graduate of Brandeis University (BA) and MIT (PhD). His most recent book, Rising Titans, Falling Giants: Rising States and the Fate of Declining Great Powers (2018), was published by Cornell University Press.