To counter a rising China, the US must show its powers are not in decline

Whether a response to a perceived decline in the US or in itself, China’s policies are increasingly aggressive, raising the threat of war
The US must take Chinese criticism on the nose and strengthen its democracy, society and ties with allies to peacefully show it is still a force to reckon with

Gregory Mitrovich

Published: 1:30am, 17 Apr 2021

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One of the most perplexing aspects of the intensifying US-China rivalry is the absence of key flashpoints or strategic drivers that normally precipitate great-power crises.

Concerns over Germany’s future and the escalating nuclear arms race engendered the Cold War and raised the risk of a hot war that would have destroyed the world. For nearly 40 years, US and Soviet Union military forces would stand eyeball to eyeball in the disputed city of Berlin, armies would face each other along the boundary separating East and West Germany, and both nations engaged in a nuclear arms race.

However, no comparable tensions exist between the United States and China. Beijing retains only a small strategic nuclear capability and, for now, its conventional power poses a regional, but not global, threat. Taiwan has emerged as the biggest potential risk factor; however, the island lacks Berlin’s geostrategic importance: Americans feared its abandonment would convince the West Germans to renounce Nato and declare neutrality in the Cold War.

Why, then, are tensions between China and the US escalating to the point that many debate whether war is inevitable?

02:23

Gloves off at top-level US-China summit in Alaska with on-camera sparring

Domestic politics offers one answer as political elites use foreign threats to distract attention from problems at home. However, the beliefs and images the US and China hold of each other provide an even more crucial driver of US-China relations.

It has long been recognised that the way national elites view their adversaries shapes their national security strategies. Is their adversary an aggressive power bent on expansion, as Americans viewed the Soviet Union? Or a weak nation capable of being bullied, as Nazi Germany considered both Britain and France at the 1938 Munich peace conference?

According to The Economist, China’s increasingly aggressive policies are predicated on the belief that America is in a state of irreversible decline and that Beijing believes it now has the opportunity to seize the mantle of world leadership from Washington. American opinions of China remain somewhat divided, with some agreeing that China is soon to become the world’s hegemonic power and that the West must accommodate that reality.

02:50

Biden says China won't become ‘the most powerful country’ on his watch

However, a growing number of scholars counter that China’s power may have peaked. Parag Khanna, author of The Future is Asian, argues that, “convinced it can do no wrong, China’s decline may have begun before its rise is complete”. Hal Brands and Michael Beckley agree, warning that China’s decline may force it to move more aggressively in expanding its power now before its decline becomes manifest.

Such divergent images are not unusual. By the end of the 19th century, Imperial Germany believed itself ascendant and Britain in decline, only to be stunned a decade later as Britain defeated it in one of the most notable naval arms races in history, one that ensured Germany’s downfall in the first world war.

Similarly, during the Cold War, the US and Soviet Union believed with equal fervour that the other faced collapse. Persuaded by Marxist ideology, the Soviet leadership remained convinced that the “correlation of forces” portended the collapse of American capitalism and the ascent of Soviet Communism, while US leaders believed the “containment” of Soviet expansion would lead to the collapse of the Soviet system.

Ironically, these beliefs ultimately proved a force of stability as the threat of nuclear destruction increased. After all, why risk a nuclear war when you are already convinced of the other side’s eventual demise?

Absent the threat of nuclear war, China sees its rising power as an invitation to escalate its pressures around the world, to browbeat nations into toeing China’s line, and to play increasingly dangerous military games in the South China Sea, intimidating its neighbours and ramping up threats of invasion against Taiwan. Chinese diplomats used their first meeting with President Joe Biden’s national security team to lecture on the failings of American democracy and its historic problems with race relations.

03:36

Beijing hits back at Western sanctions against China’s alleged treatment of Uygur Muslims

The Chinese are so confident in their growing power that they imposed sweeping sanctions on the European Union in response to narrower sanctions imposed by the EU regarding Muslim repression in Xinjiang, including sanctioning EU delegates who were to vote on the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment between the EU and China.

In response, the EU suspended ratification of the agreement. However, it appears that the Chinese believe this will only be a temporary setback as they remain convinced the EU will need substantial Chinese investment and trade to recover from the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.

In contrast to China’s apparent unanimity of its rise, the divide within American beliefs about China has hindered the formulation of a response. Those who advocate “restraint” in American foreign policy contend the US must respect the shifting balance and cede China its sphere of influence – presuming they know what China considers to be its sphere of influence.

Those who fear that China’s aggression is a product of its own decline warn that the US and its allies must prepare themselves for an increasingly hostile Chinese foreign policy with the attendant risks of war.

Ultimately, the US must take up the gauntlet China has thrown down. Much Chinese criticism about American democracy is accurate and Americans should use it to motivate changes at home, just as Soviet denunciations of America’s racial problems convinced American leaders to support the various civil and voting rights acts that would become hallmarks of American democracy.

It is by strengthening American democracy and society at home and working with allies abroad that the US will, over the long term, put to rest Chinese beliefs that the US is a nation in decline, while doing so peacefully.

Gregory Mitrovich was co-principal investigator for the project “Culture in Power Transitions: Sino-American Confrontation in the 21st Century”, funded by the United States Department of Defence, Minerva Research Initiative