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The National Bureau of Asian Research has published a long essay I wrote about the emerging Sino-American security competition. To anyone following the news, it is readily apparent that China intends to pursue interests at variance with our own. They have chosen to back North Korea against the wishes of Washington and all of our allies. Their maritime claims in Southeast Asia and around Japan keep expanding and their military intimidation of Taiwan continues unabated. Unfortunately, it seems we are in for a long-term rivalry with China complicated by the fact of our deep economic interdependence (though China will of course be constrained by interdependence as well).
Given this set of facts, I argue that assessments of the military competition between China and the United States are badly needed but mostly missing. Our security elites and scholars are inhibited in thinking seriously about rivalry with China because of a harmful “self-fulfilling prophecy” theory of our relationship which in its most extreme permutations claims that even thinking about China as a possible enemy will turn it into one. This is a big mistake. When it comes to Sino-American relations, the first job of our political leaders is to gauge our relative power against China’s and to make the necessary adjustment to ensure our advantage. Doing so gives us much more of a chance to preclude conflict. More at:
http://blog.american.com/?p=23782
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