But it isn’t, as some people suggest, a simple choice between accommodating China’s growing power or resisting it.
It is a much more complex choice about how far to support the United States as it pushes back against China’s increasingly assertive regional conduct, or whether to step back and leave the United States to confront China’s challenge alone.
None of us in these countries want to live under China’s shadow. But few, if any, believe that we can avoid making some kind of accommodation with China’s growing power and ambition. We accept that one way or another China is going to take on a greater leadership role in Asia. At the same time all of us want the United States to stay engaged in Asia, to help balance China’s power and set limits on how far its regional leadership develops. We look to the United States to ensure that by accommodating some of China’s ambitions we do not end up submitting to its hegemony.
Our problem is that the United States sees China’s challenge very differently from the way we in Asia do. For most people in Washington, any serious accommodation of China’s ambitions is unthinkable. And those few who do advocate accommodation seriously underestimate how far it would have to go to meet even the most modest of China’s ambitions.
The only basis for a stable and sustainable relationship between the world’s two most powerful states must be based on a mutual sense of parity between them. The United States must treat China as an equal power, with an equal share in regional leadership.
To most of us in Asia this seems self-evident. Few if any of the region’s leaders or foreign-policy elites welcome it because they understand how much we have all benefited from the US’ leadership of Asia since the 1970s. But they also recognise that China’s rise is simply too big to ignore. Asia cannot be transformed economically without major changes to the way it works strategically and politically.
That is the reality that Washington is yet to accept. Instead the assumption there remains that the only possible goal of US policy in Asia is to preserve its own regional primacy and that this is what President Obama’s pivot to Asia aims to do.
How is the pivot supposed to work? The underlying logic of the policy is simple. It assumes that China can be persuaded to abandon its challenge to US leadership in Asia by concerted regional diplomatic pressure, backed by equivocal threats to use armed force if that pressure fails.
The hope is that if the rest of the countries in Asia support the United States in demanding that China returns to its former acceptance of US regional primacy, and if the Chinese sense that there is even the remotest chance that otherwise it will face a military clash with the United States, then Beijing will back off.
The appeal of this approach is clear. Diplomatic posturing is cheap, and so is military posturing. If that is all that is needed to presence US leadership in Asia, then the price is clearly worth it. But its limitations are even clearer. The kind of actions which carry little cost or risk for the United States and its supporters impose equally small costs and risks on China.
Beijing is not reckless in its pursuit of a large regional role, but it is very determined. This is a central part of Xi’s vision of China’s future, and it seems to be shared by the vast majority of his people. They will not be deterred by empty gestures. So the United States and its friends can only deter Chinese assertiveness by taking actions that impose very real costs on China, and any such action inevitably imposes equally severe costs and risks on the United States and its supporters.
So while US policymakers and analysts remain committed to perpetuating US leadership in Asia, they are not willing to seriously discuss what would be needed to achieve it. They continue to assure their friends and allies in Asia that they can support the United States to effectively resist China’s ambitions without seriously damaging their own relations with China.
That is most unlikely to be true, which leaves countries like Australia, Singapore and others in a very difficult position. We are keen for the United States to stay engaged in Asia, but we are reluctant to support the current policy with its combination of excessive aims and inadequate means. Nor do we want to encourage the United States to ramp up the kind of pressure that would be needed to force China to back off and accept the old status quo, because we fear that would lead to confrontation and conflict.
But equally we worry that if we do not support Washington’s current approach, and leave it trying to deal with China unsupported, the United States might start to withdraw from Asia — this is no longer unthinkable, whoever wins in November.
So there is our choice. Do we in Asia support a very flawed US policy that offers little hope of a stable future US–China relationship as the foundation of regional order in Asia? Or do we fail to support it, and risk American withdrawal from any major strategic role in the region? But there is a third option — to start a really frank discussion with Washington about how we see things in Asia and what approach we would really like the United States to take.
Hugh White is Professor in the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at The Australian National University.
A version of this article was first published here in Straits Times.
First of all, I do not believe that a choice between China and the US must necessarily be made at all and I do not know what you mean by “..live under China’s shadow”.
I for one do not wish for the US to stay engaged in the Pacific so as to balance China’s so called ‘power’ so perhaps it is not wise to speak for everyone. And why is it that you and others are quite willing to ‘submit’ to US hegemony and not China’s, though I myself do not believe China can play the role of a ‘hegemon’.
You mention that ‘we’ have all benefited from US leadership in Asia since the 1970’s; Firstly I never knew that the US did in fact lead Asia as you say and secondly, how have ‘we’ benefited?; assuming that you are referring to Australia and everyone in Asia (or shall we just say ‘Asians’ since you have confirmed that you are indeed Asian RE:”to most of us in Asia….”
Your article appears to be premised on two ideas; that is to say, a realist kind of argument whereby China is potentially menacing whilst harbouring ambitions to be become a hegemon; and that there is the threat of war, or a ‘clash’, however one wishes to call it, between China and the US. The US, as you believe, has no intentions to accommodate these so called ambitions and yet you contradict yourself by saying or hoping that the US can somehow, miraculously as it were, see China as an equal. If this were to be the case, would that not obviate the need for the US to be in Asia? It would appear that you are alluding to some kind of ‘cold war’ game. Your fear of ‘China’ is most strongly reflected by the fact that you mention that you are worried should the US withdraw from Asia, however unlikely this is, that ‘we’ (whoever you are referring to) would be left to fend for ourselves. You have not mentioned though what would happen if the US withdrew their present deployments (assuming that this is what you mean by withdrawal) from the Asia-Pacific, though this would be rather absurd because where then would they deploy their military? Would they simply dismantle it?
Lastly, I would like to say that there is another alternative which you may not agree with given your arguments in your article which may in fact be the only alternative available. This I am sure you know already.
Yes, Hugh White is a realist and his analyses are generally realist. I don’t really understand your confusion.
‘China’s so-call “power”‘ – does the rise of China really need explaining?
‘We in Asia’ – Yes, the author is indeed referring to the fact that Australia is geographically part of Asia (most at least agree)
‘US leadership since the 1970’s’ – err, yeah, you do realise East Asia has for the most part prospered in recent decades and that the regional order has been underpinned by US preeminence; Australia too has enjoyed that prosperity.
I suspect you simply don’t like American foreign policy. Fair enough. But you’re deluded if you think Chinese ambitions are totally benign and we should welcome a retrenched US from our region.
“The United States must treat China as an equal partner.” But nothing is so hard for China culturally and politically to accept as the international concept of international society being composed of legally equal members.
“U.S. regional primacy…is what President Obama’s pivot to Asia aims to do.” President Obama started his China policy eight years ago with the idea of the G2. China did not take it; it saw it as American weakness. The American pivot is a natural response to China. And what the U.S. sees equality and cooperation is seen by China American dominace by necessity due to China’s DNA of the Middle Kingdom consciousness.
“Beijing is not reckless.” I can agree with Prof. White on this. Beijing is not reckless. It fully knows, perhaps like North Korea, the American reluctance and lack of resolve of employing any military means.
I (Michi) posted a comment, It Is Not China’s Fault, Nov. 16, 2015, on Michael Pillsbury/The Hundred-Year Marathon, amazon usa. I would appreciate if anyone reads it.
China is a very fragile power. The leaders do not say this but they are keenly aware of it, oontrary to what they profess.
PS
The Obama adiministration’s policy of G2 was mistaken. It rested on an unrealistic estimation of China’s power. China did not and does not have competitiveness in soft power of politics and culture, in industrial technology and inventiveness, in international finance, in know-how for economic development of developing countries, etc.
Suppose here are a number of countries, A, B, C, D, etc. A is a country like the United States; B earns its money by exporting wheat and vegetables; C by exporting oil and natural gas like Russia; D by providing dubious people with secert bank accounts for their dubious money; E by cheap labour. Suppose these countries’ GDP is the same size. From this we cannot say each is as powerful as the other. China is not an A-type country.
Another interesting article.
1 “None of us in these countries want to live under China’s shadow.”
Australia, Japan and New Zealand won’t be living under the shadow of China in the future as she is pivoting to the West via high-speed rails over the Eurasia landmass, leaving a dying Pacific Ocean, as a result of 300 tons of cesium137 and strontium90 contaminated water pouring out of the 3 crippled Fukushina nuclear reactors every day, to Uncle Sam.
http://journal-neo.org/2016/10/04/the-eurasian-century-is-now-unstoppable-2/
2 “But there is a third option — to start a really frank discussion with Washington about how we see things in Asia and what approach we would really like the United States to take.”
This is a sensible option to consider as Australia, Japan, New Zealand should stay neutral in the South China Sea disputes since they are not claimant states.
Even President Duterte has not flaunted the favourable ruling from an ad hoc tribunal and has said that he will cooperate with China and even Russia. Does he know something that the leaders in Australia, Japan, and New Zealand don’t?
Professor White should experiment with using the first person pronoun from time to time.
For example, the statement that ‘we accept that one way or another China is going to take on a greater leadership role in Asia’ would be beyond dispute if redrafted ‘I accept that…’ Similarly, the sentence reading ‘all of us want the US to remain engaged in Asia’ could be redrafted to read ‘I want the US to remain engaged in Asia’. Finally, the sentence ending ‘the way we in Asia do’ could profitably be rewritten ‘the way I do’.
This simple redrafting exercise would not diminish the plausibility of Professor White’s argument. And it would help remove the suspicion that he is not qualified to speak on the behalf of vast numbers of people whom he may not have been able to consult.
To argue that a global superpower should share ‘leadership’ with another power in one particular region without suggesting what is to happen in the rest of the world seems incomplete. Because there has been only one other superpower, the Soviet Union, history doesn’t provide any guidance in this matter. The United States and the Soviet Union didn’t share regional leadership anywhere.
Is the US to retain ‘global leadership’ while consenting to China’s co-leadership in Asia? This is hard to visualise. Won’t shared leadership in Asia lead to shared global leadership?
Putting this issue aside, one really ought to confront specific examples of ‘sharing leadership’ sooner or later. For example, does granting ‘parity’ or ‘an equal share in regional leadership’ involve US military bases in Asian countries or even in Hawaii? Should part of our lobbying in Washington as Asia’s unelected spokesperson include the suggestion that Pine Gap, for example, should have PLA officers on site to help manage the facility?
How would Japan react to an American proposal for China to share command of its bases on Japanese soil?
I happen to disagree that, whatever the result of the US presidential election, the possibility that the US will start to withdraw from Asia is no longer ‘unthinkable’.
When Hillary Clinton is sworn in next January, the US will have a woman in the White House who prides herself on being able to respond correctly to emergency calls at 3am. She doesn’t look like the kind of president-to-be who will start the withdrawal from Asia. Trump’s ambiguous and inconsistent statements on foreign policy will probably be quickly forgotten.
Admittedly, President Duterte may well force some US withdrawal from his country, but can we be sure that Clinton won’t apply a regime change strategy to his government? In her eyes, at least, such a strategy worked well in Libya.