This month marks the 40th anniversary then US national security advisor Henry Kissinger’s secret trip to Beijing, which launched the process of mending a 20-year breach in diplomatic relations between the US and China. That trip, and former US president Richard Nixon’s subsequent visit, represented a major Cold War realignment. The US and China put aside their intense hostility in a joint and successful effort to contain an expansionist Soviet Union.
Today, the Soviet Union has vanished, and Chinese power is growing. Some Americans argue that China’s rise cannot be peaceful, and that the US, therefore, should now adopt a policy of containing China. Indeed, many Chinese officials perceive that to be the current US strategy. They are wrong.
After all, Cold War containment of the USSR meant virtually no trade and little social contact. Today, by contrast, the US not only has massive trade with China, but also extensive social contact, including 125,000 Chinese students attending US universities.
Graphic: TT
With the end of the Cold War, the containment of the Soviet Union ushered in by Kissinger’s visit could no longer serve as the basis for US-China relations. Moreover, relations with China cooled after the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989, and former US president Bill Clinton’s administration had to devise a new approach.
When I was supervising the Pentagon’s East Asia Strategy Review in 1994, we rejected the idea of containment of China for two reasons. If we treated China as an enemy, we were guaranteeing an enemy in the future. If we treated China as a friend, we could not guarantee friendship, but we could at least keep open the possibility of more benign outcomes.
In addition, it would have been difficult to persuade other countries to join a coalition to contain China unless China resorted to bullying tactics, as the Soviets did after World War II. Only China, by its behavior, could organize the containment of China by others.
Instead of containment, the strategy that the Clinton administration devised could be termed “integrate, but hedge” — something like former US president Ronald Reagan’s “trust, but verify” approach to strategic agreements with the Soviets. On the one hand, the US supported China’s membership in the WTO and accepted Chinese goods and visitors. On the other hand, the Clinton-Hashimoto Declaration of April 1996 affirmed that the US-Japan security treaty, rather than being a Cold War relic, would provide the basis for a stable and prosperous East Asia.
Clinton also began to improve relations with India, a strategy that has enjoyed bipartisan support in the US. Former US president George W. Bush’s administration continued to improve bilateral relations, while deepening and formalizing the economic dialogue with China. Then-US deputy secretary of state Robert Zoellick made clear that the US would accept the rise of China as a “responsible stakeholder.” That policy continues to guide US President Barack Obama’s administration, which has broadened the annual economic consultations with China to include security issues.
One of the major power shifts of the 21st century is Asia revival. In 1800, Asia represented half the world’s population and half the world’s economy. By 1900, the industrial revolution in Europe and North America drove down Asia’s share of global output to 20 percent. By the middle of this century, Asia should again represent half the world’s population and GDP.
This is a natural and welcome evolution, as it enables hundreds of millions of people to escape from poverty. At the same time, however, it has given rise to fears that China will become a threat to the US.
Such fears appear exaggerated, particularly when one considers that Asia is not one entity. It has its own internal balance of power. Japan, India, Vietnam and other countries do not want to be dominated by China, and welcome a US presence in the region. Unless China develops its “soft power,” the rise in its military and economic power is likely to frighten its neighbors into seeking coalitions to balance its rise. It is as if Mexico and Canada sought an alliance with China to balance US power in North America.
After the 2008 and 2009 financial crisis, as China recovered rapidly and resumed 10 percent annual economic growth, some Chinese officials and commentators urged a more assertive foreign policy to reflect China’s new strength. Many mistakenly believed that the US was in decline, and that the crisis presented new strategic opportunities for China.
For example, China began pressing territorial claims in the South China Sea and escalating a longstanding border dispute with India. The net result is that over the past two years, China has worsened its relations with Japan, India, South Korea, Vietnam and others — quite a remarkable record that confirms the US strategic premise that “only China can contain China.”
However, it would be a mistake to focus only on the hedging part of US strategy. The US and China (as well as other countries) have much to gain from collaborating on transnational issues. One cannot devise and implement solutions to global financial stability, climate change, cyber terrorism or pandemics without such cooperation.
If power is the ability to obtain the outcomes one wants, it is important to remember that sometimes our power is greater when we act with others rather than merely over others. This important dimension of a “smart power” strategy for the 21st century is not captured by the concept of containment. When Kissinger landed in Beijing four decades ago, he ushered in not only a Cold War transformation, but also a new era of US-Chinese engagement.
Joseph Nye was assistant secretary of defense in former US president Bill Clinton’s administration and is a Harvard University professor.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
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