THE STABILITY SCHOOL:

STRATEGIC IMPLICATIONS OF CHINA’S BOOMING ECONOMY (Srdja Trifkovic, January 21, 2004, Chronicles)

China’s phenomenal growth also begs the question of its future role in the world. By 2025 it will be a great power of the first order. Its population will reach 1.5 billion, its GDP will be in the $7 trillion range—on par with that of the United States or the European Union a decade ago—and it will have access to the most advanced technologies. In foreign affairs its leaders will continue to attach little importance to international organizations and alliances, trusting China’s wealth and power as a means of achieving diplomatic objectives and treating a strong defense as an outgrowth of a strong economy.

China’s wealth and power will make it the dominant power in Southeast Asia, and the nations of the region will be hard pressed to negotiate the terms and conditions of an acceptable relationship with Peking that would fall short of China’s outright hegemony. All along the reunification with Taiwan will remain Peking’s top priority. The country’s growing energy needs, impossible to satisfy from its limited domestic resources, will turn it into a player of growing importance on the international energy stage. Its leaders see access to the largely untapped reserves of oil and natural gas in Central Asia as a cornerstone of China’s economic policy for the next two decades. They also may harbor long-term geopolitical designs in Siberia, underpopulated and rich in energy and minerals. If on the other hand China opts for a cooperative relationship with Russia, their partnership could reshape the Asian architecture and turn China into a distribution hub for oil and gas exports to South Korea and Japan, two of the largest energy importing states in the world. This in turn may result in Japan’s strategic realignment. Ikuro Sugawara, an analyst with the Japan National Oil Corporation, says that “Japan, which is an integral part of the Asian market and is as dependent as its neighbours on the Middle East for oil, will not be able to follow the US line as closely as it has in the past.”

None of these long-term objectives and policies likely to be pursued by China are necessarily detrimental to the interests of the United States. And yet four years ago a Pentagon report, “Asia 2025,” used similar premises to outline alarming scenarios of an unstable Asia dominated by an increasingly self-assertive China. The report’s authors, led by the veteran futurist Andrew W. Marshall, contended that the world’s most populous nation cannot be anything but a “persistent competitor to the United States,” regardless of its strength: “A stable and powerful China will be constantly challenging the status quo in Asia. An unstable and relatively weak China could be dangerous because its leaders might try to bolster their power with foreign military adventures.”

The underlying premise of such thinking, that any change of the status quo in Asia would be detrimental to American interests, is flawed. No vital interest of the United States is involved in the question who rules Taiwan—but for China this is a vital issue over which it would be prepared to fight. If it is seen to waver over the status of Taiwan, its hold over Sinkiang, Tibet, or even Manchuria may become tenuous. By disentangling itself from its many security commitments around the globe the United States may regain its ability to define a strategic doctrine based on its genuine national interests, and rediscover a foreign policy attuned to a balance between rational objectives and limited resources. [...]

As China continues to transform itself into a global economic power, it should be accepted that it has legitimate regional interests, security concerns and aspirations. The task of U.S. policy in East Asia should be to consider whether, and to what extent, those aspirations are compatible with American interests. Contemplating a consensual, jointly managed and internationally agreed reunification of China with Taiwan would be a constructive first step.

Never mind the fact that if this projection is correct China will still have an economy less than half of ours in 2025, why should we view their interest in dominating democracies like Japan, Taiwan, etc., as legitimate rather than try exploiting what the author himself describes as China's inherent instability? What useful purpose is served by helping to prop up an incoherent, unsustainable empire that considers itself our geo-strategic rival?

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 5, 2004 8:35 AM