Daily Times

A conflict pitting a rising power — China — against a dominant one — the United States (US) — could be forestalled through strategic reassurance. James Steinberg and Michael E. O’Hanlon postulate this as a central theme in their book, “Strategic reassurance and resolve: US-China relations in the Twenty-First Century”. In conjunction with O’Hanlon who is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution that specializes in national security policy, Steinberg, a professor of social science, international relations and law at Syracuse University, has managed to author an excellent opinion piece on reassurance.

The writers believe reassurance to be an act of dispelling someone’s doubts or fears and further shed light on four tools — restraint, reinforcement, transparency, and resilience — that may contribute to strategic reassurance from pages six to 10. While resolve has been said to follow reassurance, both are considerably comprehensible in their nudity than in the shadow of strategic domain. It is the resolve of a country to keep on reassuring its eventual adversary not to be fearful of its intent and actions but keep considering its intents and actions as cooperative. Thus, reassurance is considered helpful when the mere perception of fear surpasses the fear itself. This necessity for relying on reassurance is mentioned on page 2 as the authors link the phenomenon to the Peloponnesian War in the words of Thucydides, an Athenian historian. Thucydides believed that, “What (had) made the war inevitable was the growth of Athenian power and the fear which this (had) caused (in) Sparta.” An ancient Greek city-state, Sparta, had earlier defeated Athens in the 5th century BC. However, on top of the rise of Athens, even the fear sprouting from its rise greatly terrified Sparta; consequently making war inevitable. Applying the same principle to the modern power relations, war between the two countries remains inevitable not only because of the rise of China but also due to the fear that this rise (of China) causes.

On the same page, Steinberg and O’Hanlon separate the rise of China from the fear of the rise of China by further saying, “The United States may not be fearful of China, per se, but its leaders certainly recognize the tectonic implications of the rise of the People’s Republic China (PRC) for international relations in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond”. The major implications are, hence, said to be targeting the Asia-Pacific region in particular where China aspires for a unification with Taiwan. It might be because of the fact that the military prowess of China is more palpable in this region than anywhere else. The writers also believe that the rise of a country is one thing whereas the fear attached to this rise is a different thing altogether. That is, both the rise and the attendant fear can be seen in isolation from each other. This point may be true if the rise of a country takes place, say, only on the economic front, as has been seen in Japan and Germany, but in case of China the corresponding rise has also taken place in military. Ergo, the vulnerability of the argument.

On page 4, they write, “Competition is inevitable in the US-China relationship… but few worry that these competitive dimensions of our relationship will lead to outright conflict … [for instance, in] the military and strategic spheres [at the core of which are] nuclear, conventional military, space, cyber, and maritime issues — that could trigger destabilising arms races, foster crises, and eventually lead to conflict”. Here, the issues identified are related to the rise of China and not to the fear of the rise of China. This is how Steinberg and O’Hanlon have strayed from the vital line of their own argument: bifurcation between the rise and the fear of the rise of China. They have also emphasised on creating a long distance between competition, which they consider to be inevitable, and conflict, which they optimistically consider avoidable with the use of restraint, reinforcement, transparency and resilience. Nevertheless, this paragraph also indicates that whether or not there is a fear of China or the fear of the rise of China, the fear of the US-China conflict is even higher.

In the book, Steinberg and O’Hanlon have tried to analyse US-China relations in a narrowed and recluse sphere while drawing some inferences from the relations between the US and the former Soviet Union during the Cold War. Nonetheless, the book has probably failed on three important counts. First, it is not only the established dominant power that feels insecure from a rising power but also the countries with stakes in the established dominant order that feel threatened. The possibility of an unpredictable future that could force readjustment by tinkering with a given comfort zone peeves the countries enjoying monopoly at a given time. The sheer possibility of the disorder — before a new order takes root — thus, unnerves the beneficiaries of an existing order. The formation of the NATO in April 1949 may be a case in point.

Secondly, aspirations of several countries also get attached to a rising power in any imminent emerging order, thereby, making the borders of the ensuing fear both broadened and diversified. The rise of a country like China may keep on marshalling the stakes of other countries. For instance, in July 2005, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) denied the US an observer status, which could have led to its full membership. Moreover, the SCO additionally asked the US to withdraw its forces from Uzbekistan as a severe backlash to the purported US involvement in supporting unrest in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan.

Thirdly, the fear of the rise of China can be minimized if irritants such as the issue of Taiwan already hurting the US-China relations are tempered or solved. On the one hand, on page 70, Steinberg and O’Hanlon write, “[M]aintaining Taiwanese de facto (if not de jure) independence is a major barrier to China’s military expansion beyond the so-called first island chain (and therefore key to continued US maritime primacy)”, while on the other hand, from pages 100 to 101, they assert, “China should not ‘need’ a defence budget more than half as big as that of the United States… Of course, such a 2:1 ratio could not be permanent… [T]his ratio would prove at most a temporary zone of convergence in a longer historical trajectory”. Here, Steinberg and O’Hanlon may put the US in China’s shoes to discover if the answer lies in reassurance.

The writer is a freelance columnist and can be reached at qaisarrashid@yahoo.com