US vs. China, Part 1/3: Containment and Accommodation

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US vs. China

The US vs. China miniseries was first published on Lotuseaters.com in November 2020. We are now making the first part available for non-premium readers. This first piece is followed by parts two and three:

Part 2: China’s Multifrontal Rise

Part 3: Is China the New USSR?

This miniseries will explore the relationship between the US and China. With the US’ global hegemony perhaps coming to an end or at least being questioned, China might be the primary challenger in such a race. What, if anything, can the US do, faced with China’s rise - and should it do anything differently than what it has been doing in recent decades?

Part 1: Containment and Accommodation

Over the last decade, the increasingly prominent position of China on the global scene has become widely recognized. These days, it is clear that it aims to assume a more central role in regional and global politics. However, it is often disagreed as to how. While some experts state unambiguously that China’s goal is to surpass the US, first in Asia, then in the World1, others point to uncertainties regarding China, both when it comes to its current or projected power, as well as its future aspirations.2

In response to this (possibly vague and unclear) rise, two broad positions for the US to take are suggested – containment and accommodation – with other possible options being some variations or a combination of the two. Containment would mean a strong intervention on the international playfield by the US, preferably as soon as possible, to ensure its dominant position in the Asian region. Such an intervention would not necessarily have to be conducted through overly aggressive means, but would have to be robust and effective enough to prevent China from 1) building a military strong enough to compete with the US military, and 2) building diplomatic relations with other states in such a way as to circumvent or shut out the US from the conversation, possibly building alliances against it. 

The other option, accommodation, is commonly explained as aiming at building a dialogue with China to achieve a compromise in power relations without extensive arm-twisting and potential conflict. Under this scenario, the US would gradually give up its role of being a guarantor of a ‘regional peace’ in Asia, assuming a position of a major regional power alongside China instead.

Until now, the strategy that the US has been leaning towards more seems to be the latter, a more accommodating approach to China’s rise. The US has not prevented China from building up its reputation abroad and engaging in extensive international power and trade relations. On the other hand, China has not yet seriously challenged any of the US’ traditional strongholds in Asia, be it its strong alliance with Japan or the stalemate position of Taiwan, although with the recent development in Hong Kong, it is possible that this might start to change in the near future.

According to Luis Simón, a Research Professor of International Security at the Institute for European Studies, the academic and policy debate related to China’s rise revolves around the question “whether the pacifying effects of trade and economic integration are enough to trump the power political aspirations and needs of the great powers.”3 This framing is indicative of the situation the US finds itself in today, because already assumes that China’s becoming a great power is inevitable, as well as implies the so-far-accommodating approach of the US in the matter. 

Recent history having played out as it has, the US has arguably missed its ‘opportunity’ to quell China’s rise or redirect it so that China would land under the US’ own sphere of influence. At this point, the choices it seems to be faced with are either to accommodate China’s further rise to a superpower status and negotiate a peaceful ‘new world order’ with both in the driving seat, or to eventually escalate this power struggle into an armed conflict of world proportions. In any case, it seems like today almost everyone recognizes that preserving the status quo is not an option on the table. Regional power relations are going to change one way or another. The central question now is how this change will play out.

According to Thomas Christensen, an international affairs scholar and Director of the China and the World program at Columbia University, when it comes to the ‘routes’ the US can take in response to China, the diverging preferences of experts and officials for one or the other stem from fundamental differences in their approach to international relations.4 A positive-sum perspective would favour increased multilateral cooperation in Asia in response to China’s rise to power, where the greater economic integration resulting from it would in turn mean lower risk of conflict or “mutual security concerns”.5 The other side - the zero-sum perspective - would interpret China’s rise as an unambiguous risk for the interests of the US in the region, as its relative position would thereby weaken.6 Christensen characterizes China’s rise since the early 1990s as both having “reduced the dangers of mistrust and spirals of tension” and “increased China’s relative economic and political role in the region.”7 He proposes an “intelligent moderate position” for the US in this situation, maintaining a “robust presence in the region” while allowing China to build diplomatic relations with other powers in the region.8

While some authors are proposing more containment, others see more accommodation as the best way forward. The boldest suggestion in this direction, outlined by an international relations scholar at MIT, Charles L. Glaser, proposes a “grand bargain” which would end a military alliance between Taiwan and the US (effectively giving it up to be taken over by mainland China) in return for the peaceful resolution by China of its disputes in the South China and East China Seas.9 While Glaser admits that his bargain is unlikely to be realized, he considers it to be the most suitable and viable solution to the situation at the moment. He claims that with the resolution of these issues of core interest to China, “the pressures created by the international structure – the combination of material and information conditions that constrain states’ international options – should allow China to rise peacefully”10, because, he maintains, China is not after world domination but rather regional prominence.11 If that assumption is true, and the US can settle with its own no-longer-hegemonic power in the region, such ‘accommodation’ of Chinese economic and military power would be theoretically possible. If not, however, the US has a lot to lose by committing to this strategy.

The strategies for the US proposed by scholars and policy analysts necessarily rest on far-reaching assumptions about China’s real power and future aspirations. How far the field of possibility reaches is illustrated by the David Shambaugh, an expert on contemporary China at The George Washington University, who claims, in contrast to virtually everyone else, that “it is not so much an aggressive or threatening China with which the world should be concerned, but rather an insecure, confused, frustrated, angry, dissatisfied, selfish, truculent and lonely power.”12 Even though most people do not share Shambaugh’s view, it might very well be based on plausible data and information, which only underscores the unreliability of what can be seen or said about China in general.

In that spirit, Simón stresses that the US “cannot reasonably tell how threatening China is or will become”13, and therefore it cannot approach China with any definitive strategy. A ‘meta-strategy’ it can utilize, is to try to pursue a combination of all the options open to it, even if some of those are contradictory to one another. He sees that as the only way to act in response to the data and information from and about China, which tends to be contradictory in a similar way.14

References:

1. Yuen Foong Khong, ‘Primacy or World Order? The United States and China’s Rise - A Review Essay’, International Security, Vol. 38, Issue 3, Winter 2013/2014, p.154.

2. Luis Simón, ‘Between punishment and denial: Uncertainty, flexibility, and U.S. military strategy toward China’, Contemporary Security Policy, Vol. 41, Issue 3, 2020, pp.2,7.

3. Khong, p.163.

4. Thomas J. Christensen, ‘Fostering Stability or Creating a Monster? The Rise of China and U.S. Policy toward East Asia’, International Security, Vol. 31, Issue 1, Summer 2006, p.81ff.

5. Christensen, p.82.

6. Christensen, p.82.

7. Christensen, p.96.

8. Christensen, p.124.

9. Charles L. Glaser, ‘A U.S.-China Grand Bargain? The Hard Choice between Military Competition and Accommodation’, International Security, Vol. 39, Issue 4, Spring 2015, p.50.

10. Glaser, p.50.

11. Glaser, pp.63-64.

12. David Shambaugh, China Goes Global: The Partial Power, Oxford University Press, pp.316-317, quoted in Glaser, pp.66-67.

13. Simón, p.7.

14. Simón, pp.17-18.