Can America and China be friends again?

Strategic rivalries on the international stage do not last forever. Eventually, they simply end. There comes a day when perpetual rivals stop obsessively searching for ways to anihiliate each other and focus on other areas. This happens for a variety of reasons - the balance of power in the region or the world may have changed. An unexpected technological breakthrough may have occurred. An internal model of governance may have collapsed, or it may have happened as a result of a war: a kinetic one between opponents or one in which just one of the rivals is involved. Finally, it may have happened as a result of one of the rivals achieving a perceived goal, a goal that does not necessarily involve the complete annihilation of the existing enemy.

In 1805, Britain and France fought fiercely for dominance in Europe. In contrast, just three decades later, they jointly fought off Russian imperialism in the Crimean Wars, giving rise to a geopolitical partnership that survived the bloody 20th century and continues to this day. Similarly, the US and Japan fought one of the most powerful naval campaigns in history during World War II, only to become one of the closest allies in a short while.

Meanwhile, the perception of the current major global rivalry between the dominant world power, the United States of America, with an emerging contender, the People's Republic of China, leads one to think of an almost endless conflict, a permanent state of Cold War, in which the world will be divided into hostile camps in chronic competition. Like the empires of Oceania, Eurasia and East Asia looking at each other with hatred in George Orwell's book 1984. But… that empirical evidence contradicts this view.

In How Rivalries End, authors Karen Rasler, William Thompson and Sumit Ganguly demonstrate that since 1816, of the great powers' rivalries, only three have lasted longer than a century. On average, they ended after 60 years. Applying this statistic to the Sino-American confrontation, we must first determine the moment we take as the beginning of the rivalry. If we assume 1921 - that is, the founding of the Chinese Communist Party - or 1949 - the founding of the People's Republic of China - we are long past the average duration of the rivalry, which statistically would mean that it is at the end of its existence. However, given the Nixon period and the subsequent economic relaxation between Washington and Beijing, such an assumption would be unwarranted.

Realistically, 2001 - that is, China's entry into the World Trade Organization, or 2008 - that is, the economic crisis marking the end of the era of hyperglobalization, better indicate the beginnings of strategic rivalry. This means that we are already past ¼ of the rivalry period, or that we are even approaching the halfway point. This rather unintuitive thought is nowhere near the "permanent state of war" often predicted for us in the coming decades or even centuries.
However, the rivalry will certainly not end in one case - when we do not know what will characterize its end. In such a version, it could drag on indefinitely. There are as many opinions as there are opinion makers. The more aggressive hawkish arm opts for the classic "winner-takes-all" form of the game, while the balanced "owl camp" seeks to argue that by opting for a strategy of competition with cooperative elements, both powers will better serve their national interests. Hawks or owls? Who is right and how do the two sides define the potential end of the Sino-U.S. strategic rivalry, which will certainly not last indefinitely.

Self-fulfilling prophecy

The climate between the world's two largest economies has been deteriorating for a long time. The Americans went through periods of rising awareness of the Chinese challenge and tried to persuade Beijing to play by the rules set by Washington. When it became clear that the Chinese were gaining advantages - through their own diligence, but also through unfair practices such as dumping and intellectual theft, among others - the Americans sought dialogue and bilateral agreements. When that also failed, they went on the active defensive with sanctions and tariffs. But today, as the neo-emperor Xi Jinping administration has made no secret of its global ambitions and has broken with the doctrine of "hiding one's capabilities," Washington is facing demands of an ultimate nature that it has not faced in 75 years, including a hot war in the Pacific in defense of Taiwan or allies in the region.

For clarity, let's go back to basics. Why are the Americans and the Chinese at each other's throats? And why is the war between the two powers, as some call it, a "self-fulfilling prophecy"?

We must realize that the way the superpowers see the world is different from the way the average person does. The ultimate goal of any state, regardless of size, is one thing - survival. Small and medium-sized states, facing this challenge, first try to balance their position in the regional environment while at the same time striving over maximum productivity to increase their chances of endurance at the moment of trial. But large states, especially the superpowers, see it differently. Of course, they do the same as smaller actors, but their power and potential allow them to actively influence the entire system in which the world operates. At this level of causality, actors treat the game as a limited set.

Let's look at this mechanism as a game with 100 chips. If a chip falls to a rival, automatically it means that I don't have it. If the rival collects more chips, it means that he is playing the game better and can influence the global system more effectively. If he takes all or almost all of my chips - I am threatened with the worst consequences: see the collapse of the Soviet Union. Some call this process a "zero-sum game," a term used primarily by representatives of the realist school of international politics.

That this is not the only way to interpret reality is a subject for a separate episode, but the fact is that this is often how reality is perceived in the cabinets of Washington or Beijing. Especially when two ideologically different camps are competing. The success of one automatically means the systemic failure of the other. The success of China's mix of autocracy, communism, and Confucianism naturally undermines the foundations of liberal democracy on which the Western order is based, and vice versa. Even today, people in the West wonder if the Chinese model isn't better because China has grown so quickly to its current power.

In practical and geographical terms, this means that the U.S. is always trying to control the key economic or strategic chokepoints of the world. This is because they realize that this is where the foundations of the entire international system (i.e., the aforementioned game) lie, including their own might as a superpower. This is why the Americans fought wars with the Spanish or the British, first for control of North America, and later for the entire Western Hemisphere, recognizing that this was a necessary step for American strategic interests and the accumulation of more chips.

This is why the Americans entered the First and Second World Wars. Theoretically, they may have considered these to be distant conflicts not worth the bloodshed. But recognizing the historical and natural productivity advantages of the combined continents of Europe and Asia over North and South America, they could not allow a unified force to emerge in the region that could undermine the global position of the emerging American superpower. A force that, in the worst case, could have the potential to take all the chips away from the Americans. Therefore, they concluded that it would be easier to nip German or Japanese imperialism in the bud than to allow it to grow to uncontrollable proportions. A similar motivation drove Cold War 1.0. If the Soviets had seized control of Western Europe's economic and human potential during the Cold War years, the Americans would not only suddenly have fewer chips, they would be in danger of losing them all, along with the communist wave making its way across the Atlantic.

In other words, the Americans, retaining control over the world's major economic keystones, treat as their main strategic interest, and that means countering the emergence of competing centers of power, especially in places where the world is most productive.

Asian alpha tiger

Today, the Asia-Pacific region accounts for 2/3 of global GDP growth and about 40% of total global GDP. That's about as much as the European Union - 16% and the United States about 25%, taken together. When a dominant power sees that this potential can be dominated by a single player, it naturally steps in to contain its growth. This manifests in economic wars, rearming itself and its partners, forming containment coalitions, or proxy wars.

Meanwhile, the emerging contender, not without its own rationale, treats these actions as hostile, threatening its existence, so it actively undertakes its own empowerment efforts. China is carrying out the largest and fastest military buildup since World War II, is actively engaged in challenging the current order created by the Americans, and is using its economic power to radiate to the region from its position as the chosen one of the heavens, as the Zhongguo Emperor has always referred to himself.

In this process we come to the chicken or the egg kind of problem. Is it China's dishonest practices and hostile actions in the international arena that provoked the Americans to respond? Or is it the Americans who, by "meddling" in China's development, have made it necessary for China to respond? Each camp has its answer to this question, and generally both sides have logical arguments on their side. Nevertheless, this is irrelevant. On the ground of realist-school geopolitics, "right" or "truth" is merely a tool used to win in a zero-sum game. In this light, both sides are right because they are fighting over limited resources.

We can only seek rationality at the level of individual perception - I or you may think that one of the powers has the right to act in this way because we consider its model of governing society to be "closer to the truth”. Truth understood as a way in which states should organize the lives of their citizens, the way closest to human nature and internal growth. Ultimately, any of us can imagine the victorious entity exporting its own dominant ideology to weaker actors, making them adapt it because it helps the victor managing the game it has created and contributes to its primary goal - the survival of the state in the best possible position. The cynical view that the reality school often dictates is therefore often mixed with the perspective and views of the individual. It is no different now.

Circling hawks

In almost every case of conflict of interests at the level of states, we will find in the commentariat two positions of approach to a given problem: the sharper and the smoother. The former are usually called "hawks". The latter, let’s call "owls". It is by no means the case that one of these positions is more appropriate and dominates the other - it all depends on the conditioning of the moment and the appropriate balancing act.

Every cultural group and power center has its default position. Just as escalation, or tooth-for-tooth tactics, is usually the way to go for Russian or Israeli policymakers, EU leaders find it difficult to act decisively and set firm limits when necessary. In both cases, overreach is usually costly. This is no different for the United States and China, which, by virtue of its own resources and the far-reaching effects of its actions, have perhaps learned best in the world to combine the two positions.

American culture and rapidly achieved dominance (on the global timeline) naturally predisposed Washington to a hawkish position, but maintaining the world system required at the same time an "owlish" balancing act. However, when there is too much balancing and retreat, the hawk wing is naturally activated - thereby creating an automatic control mechanism. We also see this in the case of China.

„Power is the Answer in US Competition with China” - The title of Michael Mazza's article for Foreign Policy essentially says everything about the author's attitude to the rivalry with the People's Republic of China. The author begins by recalling the text of Melvyn Leffler, who wrote that the United States inherited a "strategy of preponderance" after World War II.

Leffler pointed out that “preponderance did not mean domination. It meant creating a world environment hospitable to U.S. interests and values; it meant developing the capabilities to overcome threats and challenges; it meant mobilizing the strength to reduce Soviet influence on its own periphery. […] to seek less than preponderant power would be to opt for defeat.”

On this basis, Mazza draws an analogy to the present. China, by this definition, seeks its own preponderance - which means limiting U.S. interests and values in order to create better conditions for the interests and values promoted by the Chinese Communist Party.

“We will resolutely safeguard the security of China’s state power, systems, and ideology” – Xi Jinping said in 2022, at the 20th Party Congress, somehow confirming the author's conjecture.

Mazza is echoed by Matt Pottinger and Mike Gallagher in the article "No Substitute for Victory”.

„The United States shouldn’t manage the competition with China; it should win it. ” and then „Washington will need to adopt rhetoric and policies that may feel uncomfortably confrontational but in fact are necessary to reestablish boundaries that Beijing and its acolytes are violating. That means imposing costs on Chinese leader Xi Jinping for his policy of fostering global chaos.”.

In a similar vein, Matthew Kroenig commented in FP. „ In any other competition, such as the 100-meter dash, the purpose is not just to manage, but to win.”

To potential critics, American hawks bascially say: Look around you. Your (i.e., Americans') prosperity is based on the existing world system, which is broadly based on Western values - democracy, civil rights, freedom of speech, and so on. Meanwhile, what does China do? They support all the actors who most viciously attack and oppose these values and this system.

Labor camps and no opportunities in North Korea? China is here to help. 30 years of one-man dictatorship and brutal suppression of any opposition in Belarus? Sounds like the way to go for that country, let's have a joint exercise in Europe. Bloody religious fundamentalism in Iran? No problem, let me buy your oil. Or finally attacking a country 10 times smaller, kidnapping and killing its children? That's nothing, the Sino-Russian friendship is stronger than that.
So the hawks, not unreasonably, make it clear that all the problems of the Western world today essentially have one source - China.

„The most important characteristic of the world is, in a word, ‘chaos” - Pottinger and Gallagher recall Xi's words in 2021, adding that Xi considered this, a positive phenomenon for China. It would therefore not be an abuse to call the Middle Kingdom a modern-day "sponsor of chaos."

A subdued American attitude toward the Chinese characterized virtually the entire previous decade. How did it end?
On February 4, 2022, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping announced the formation of a strategic partnership "without limits and without prohibited areas of cooperation." Most observers believe that Vladimir Putin then finalized his plans to invade Ukraine, which happened three weeks later. He may also have informed his Chinese counterpart of his intentions. In other words, Mazza, Kroenig, Pottinger and Gallagher agree that China should not be controlled or managed. It should be classically defeated. But what does victory actually mean?

Victory by knockout

George Kennan wrote in 1947 that U.S. policy was designed “to promote tendencies which must eventually find their outlet in either the breakup or the gradual mellowing of Soviet power”. George H.W. Bush, on the other hand, said that the American goal was a Europe free and at peace, and that this required a successful partnership with the USSR or its disintegration.

Goal Achieved, Option Number Two.

Today, the Joe Biden administration's National Security Strategy speaks similar language: without placing Europe at the center of the challenge, it seeks "to achieve a better future of a free, open, secure, and prosperous world”. Mazza adds a U.S. perspective to this definition: "a world in which the physical safety of the American homeland is secured, the American way of life thrives, and the American people prosper. Of course, the main obstacle to achieving this goal is China. The means to defeat the adversary are clear in the eyes of any hawk. They include:

• investing more and more wisely in the military
• exploiting economic advantages, de facto escalating the trade war
• Building alliances around China and pushing partners to "shoulder more of the burden”
• Fighting for the developing world and not abandoning the idea of promoting democracy and standing up to growing autocratic tendencies.

When properly implemented, as Pottinger and Gallagher write, „China’s communist rulers would give up trying to prevail in a hot or cold conflict with the United States and its friends. And the Chinese people—from ruling elites to everyday citizens—would find inspiration to explore new models of development and governance that don’t rely on repression at home and compulsive hostility abroad.”.

The researchers add that the best U.S. strategy, which found its ultimate synthesis during the Reagan years, was to convince the Soviets that they were on the road to failure, which in turn exacerbated doubts about the entire Soviet model of governance.

Mazza even writes „The grand prize for China’s people—is a liberal democratic China in which the Chinese people can live prosperously, freely, and peacefully. ” This would be the result of an effective "preponderence strategy." Matthew Kroenig on the other hand points to even more direct definition: "winning means getting to a point where the Chinese government no longer has the will or the ability to harm vital U.S. interests. In other words, Washington should aim for the capitulation or incapacitation of the Chinese threat."

Kroenig sees three ways to achieve this goal.

First, the Americans can simply do everything better than the Chinese. Defeat them in the standard competition in all areas: economic, technological, ideological, demographic, diplomatic, and military. If the U.S. does this, the Chinese will naturally lose the will for further confrontation, and the strategic rivalry will come to an end. It would be a classic rivalry of systems, reminiscent of the days of the rivalry with the Soviets.

The second possible path could be to convince the Chinese leaders who come after Xi (the author believes that the current leader's views will not change) that the path of conflict and confrontation with America and its partners is too costly, and they will simply choose the path of greater accommodation and cooperation. Logically, option 2 must include option 1. Only empirical evidence could convince the Chinese that a change in approach is warranted.

The third way is the drastic option - internal collapse or even disintegration. The author argues that autocratic regimes are fragile, and China today spends twice as much on internal police forces as it does on the army (in the case of the US, these proportions are reversed). China's major internal problems would naturally end the strategic rivalry, and the hegemon would defend its position.

In search of a positive-sum game

But for Michael Mazarr of RAND, this definition of victory is suboptimal. He believes that seeking victory over China in every area will not only fail to end the rivalry, but may even lead to a permanent state of confrontation. Mazarr adopts a balanced attitude towards the aforementioned opinion makers, which allows us to place him in the camp of the "owls".

The author quotes the words of Jake Sullivan, the current National Security Advisor, who wrote in an essay for Foreign Affairs in 2019: "Rather than relying on assumptions about China’s trajectory. American strategy should be durable whatever the future brings for the Chinese system. It should seek to achieve not a definitive end state akin to the Cold War’s ultimate conclusion but a steady state of clear-eyed coexistence on terms favorable to US interests and values."

A permanent state of strategic rivalry - this is the idea of one of the most important people in shaping the global security agenda. However, Mazarr believes that a state of open rivalry without a clear goal has many disadvantages.
First, it makes it difficult to set priorities. Since America has no defined goal, everything becomes equally important, while resources are not unlimited. Moreover, “everywhere on the horizon” war mindset reinforces fatalistic tendencies and makes the rival feel encircled. Hyper-nationalistic waves are on the rise, helping the regime to "rally people around the flag". Mazarr also criticizes ultimate goals such as those proposed by Pottinger and Gallagher, Mazza and Kroenig, who indirectly, seek the overthrow of the Chinese regime and the establishment of their own dominant system.

So if the answer is not Sullivan's endless rivalry, nor Pottinger's desire to overthrow the Chinese Communist Party, and certainly not an admission of defeat and loss of primacy, what is it?

The author seeks the answer in a study called "The Fates of Nations," which he co-authored. The RAND analysts examined the ways in which turbulent rivalries have evolved over time into friendly relations between powers. The study found that there are seven such paths.

1. Conquest and occupation, as in World War II.
2. Loss of a major war without occupation (such as Germany during World War I)
3. Political transformation, revolution, or instability (the case of the collapse of the USSR)
4. Fragmentation of political subjectivity (Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires after World War I)
5. Acceptance of ones decline (the Netherlands, once a world power)
6. The abandonment of one or two rival parties to focus on another challenge (Britain and France allied against the rise of Germany).
7. The extinction of rivalries by both sides to better serve national interests (again, Britain in the late 19th and early 20th centuries - gradually reconciling with the rising United States without starting a major war).

Mazarr, thinking about China, immediately rejects the options of war or occupation, which would be the most disastrous scenario. He therefore rejects paths: 1, 2, 3 and 4. From the remaining three, he tries to form a possible solution for both rivals.

What are the ingredients of such a formula? Some form of change at the top of power in one or both capitals without plunging the country into chaos. The new power changes the optics of the conflict, crossing the Rubicon of viewing it as a zero-sum game. In addition to its own conviction that a protracted rivalry helps no one, other threats may be the motivation. Not necessarily geopolitical, but environmental, social, or technological.

What emerges from such a mix? The two sides will continue to compete in many areas and view each other with suspicion, but will not necessarily militarize and look forward to the coming hot war. Such "cool cooperation" could be reminiscent of the British and French after the reset in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars, or the British perspective on Germany during the Cold War. Optionally, it could carry elements of the U.S.-Japan relations of the 1970s and 1980s, when Tokyo and Washington competed fiercely in a number of areas to cooperate in others.

Such an approach would require a change in optics in both the US and China. The Americans would have to try not to strangle China's development in every field where it has the capacity to do so. It would also be useful not to suggest that the goal is regime change.

The Chinese would also have homework to do. It would be a nice gesture to stop supporting regimes that openly disrupt the world order and call for the fall of the US. The world order, within which, recall, China has come to its present-day power.

Chinese author Feng Zhang called China's potential new dispensation "ethical rationalism," which would draw more strongly from the Confucian tradition. Zhang's imagined China would take on a leadership role, but with treating other, smaller players in the system with respect. Today's China, in the eyes of Zhang, is selfish, while an unreflective approach to realistic foreign policy implementation weakens China's moral image in the eyes of the world and the Chinese people. It is not actually clear what values modern China wants to promote. Surely those implemented in Pyongyang, Minsk, Moscow, or Tehran?

But is such idealistic change even possible? Mazarr remains optimistic:

„As stark as such a transformation may seem, it would not be unusual in historical terms. Revolutionary and expansionist France became a status quo power in the 19th century. The imperialist Japan of the 1930s became the peaceful trading Japan of the 1970s. Modern China has already made the leap from radical revolutionary adventurism to globalisation-fuelled, get-rich-quick industrialisation. Compared to that, the makeover suggested here is not especially radical.”

The author therefore believes that the rivalry will end when both powers come to the conclusion that it simply does not serve them, and that the interests of both capitals are better taken care of by lowering the level of escalation. Or at least believes that such an end would be the most welcomed one.

So - the war of systems and a classic victory seeking, risking a further rise in tensions, or the more idealistic option of pursuing national interests by reducing the areas of rivalry and attempting to transcend the Rubicon of the "zero-sum game"? Whatever path the two powers take, their rivalry is bound to end at some point. What appears to us today as a frozen status quo will be a thing of the past, most likely replaced by another pressing problem to be solved. Statistics show that this will happen while most of us are still alive. The question is whether, on the first day of the "new world," the hegemon and its system will remain unchanged, or whether it will cede the palm of primacy to a state that believes its return to the top is merely a return to the natural course of things in this world.

Sources:

1. https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/03/31/us-competition-china-great-power-cold-war/
   
2. https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/06/24/usa-china-biden-xi-taiwan-competition-ccp-war/
   
3. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/no-substitute-victory-pottinger-gallagher
   
4. https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/imagining-the-endgame-of-the-us-china-rivalry/
   
5. https://thediplomat.com/2022/09/xi-jinpings-endgame-for-america/
   
6. https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/12/15/does-america-have-an-endgame-on-china
   
7. https://time.com/6971329/us-china-new-cold-war/
   
8. https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/disorderly-conduct
   
9. https://www.wsj.com/economy/the-u-s-finally-has-a-strategy-to-compete-with-china-will-it-work-ce4ea6cf