One of the most important questions about China’s rising military and economic power is whether this trend will eventually lead to confrontation with the United States in the future or if China will become even more deeply integrated into the contemporary world order. John Mearsheimer’s theory of offensive realism claims that great powers relentlessly maximize their power in a highly competitive anarchical world in order to assure their survival by trying to achieve regional hegemony at the expense of other powerful actors.
China’s rise is one of the most important issues in contemporary global politics due to its profound impact on the international relations in and outside Asia. The crucial question is: what will be the attitude of the sole contemporary hegemony, the United States, towards rising China, and what impact will a further strengthening of China’s position in global politics have on a US-led liberal world order?
China has emerged as an economic powerhouse (projected to have the largest economy in the world in over a little decade ago) and is taking an ever-increasing role when it comes to matters of global governance. Its rise has been met with mixed reactions. For optimists, the rise of China makes a world that has seen a long peace that is even less likely to see war/conflict. Others take a more cautious approach and argue that what the future holds cannot be predicted. China’s rise may give lead to conflict or it may not. For pessimists, the rise of China is likely to or will inevitably cause instability and war.
John Mearsheimer is one of these pessimists and arguably one of the most prominent skeptics of China’s “peaceful rise” (referring to China’s foreign policy which has sought to mitigate the “China Threat” school of thought). Underpinning his skepticism of China’s peaceful rise is a compelling formulation of offensive realism theory.
According to Mearsheimer (2001), he argues that; in an international system that is filled with such uncertainty regarding states’ intentions, the nature of states’ military capabilities and other states’ assistance in a struggle against hostile states, the best way for great powers to ensure their survival-a goal which is favored above all others – is to maximize power and pursue hegemony. The pursuit of regional and global hegemony among all great powers gives rise to constant security competition with the potential for war. This is the so-called “Tragedy of Great Power Politics”, where security-seeking states are forced to engage in conflict to ensure their security.
It is against this background that this essay seeks to examine John Mearsheimer’s assertion that “China’s rise is likely to lead to an intense security competition between China and USA, with considerable potential of war”.
Mearsheimer’s theory is built on five assumptions. The first assumption is that, there is anarchy in the international system, which means that there is no hierarchically superior, coercive power that can guarantee limits on the behavior of states. Second, all great powers possess offensive military capabilities, which they are capable of using against other states. Third, states can never be certain that other states will refrain from using those offensive military capabilities. Fourth, states seek to maintain their survival (their territorial integrity and domestic autonomy) above all other goals, as it is the means to all other ends. Fifth, states are rational actors which mean that, they consider the immediate and long-term consequences of their actions, and think strategically about how to survive (Mearsheimer 2001).
Mearsheimer’s offensive realist theory starts out with similar assumptions as Kenneth Waltz’s (1979) defensive realist theory, but reaches dissimilar conclusions for the anarchy assumption; for the capabilities assumption; for the uncertain intentions assumption; for the survival assumption; and for the rationality assumption.
However, a central conclusion reached by Waltz is that of a “balance-of-power”. His theory postulates that a recurrent pattern of balancing occurs wherein states ally with weaker states to balance stronger states (Waltz 1979). This balancing should prevent states from pursuing hegemony as it would lead other states to join together against the bidder for hegemony. Waltz (1989) consequently argued that states were not power maximizers but rather security maximizers. Once states had enough power to be secure, they were contented and would not pursue greater power. After all, given the inevitability of a balance-of-power, states bidding for hegemony would provoke other states in the international system to join an encircling alliance against the rising power, hence compromising the bidder’s security.
However, Mearsheimer (2001) rejects this conclusion and argues instead that states can never truly be secure and that only through power maximization can states ensure their survival. Contrary to the defensive realist logic of Kenneth Waltz, there is no amount of power that a state can be contented with. The reason why Mearsheimer rejects the inevitability of balance-of-power is due to the collective action problems involved in balancing. As states are wary of incurring the costs of challenging strong states by allying with weaker states, they will buck-pass (meaning that they let other states balance the threatening power) until their own security is in grave danger.
For example, the US reluctance to get fully involved in World War II until the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Axis threat, which could have arguably been nipped in the bud earlier, had by then grown so as to pose a serious threat to the United States. As with collective action problems in the economic sense, rational behavior on an individual basis (in this instance, the US letting European and Asian powers deal first with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan) led to a collectively inefficient outcome Olson (1965). Hence, from my personal point of view, the tragedy that Mearsheimer speaks of, could therefore simply be called an inefficient outcome.
This means that aggressive states like the United States cannot be as easily curtailed as Waltz thinks. As balancing is an unreliable constraint on great power ambitions, there are lower disincentives to bidding for hegemony in Mearsheimer’s world than in Waltz’s. Given these lower disincentives and the threats that other states pose, the best way to ensure a great power’s survival, Mearsheimer argues, is to pursue hegemony. While becoming hegemony like U.S is difficult, globally more so than regionally according to Mearsheimer (2010), he insists that power maximization is the best way to ensure states’ survival Mearsheimer (2001).
Mearsheimer essentially assumes that states always assume that other states have the worst intentions. The fact that “we have no way to know what (China’s intentions) will be in the future” does not, however, give us reason to assume that they will have the worst intentions. Uncertainty about China’s intentions might make states fear China but how states deal with that fear cannot be predicted.
Some scholars and policy experts argue that China’s rise could be accommodated by increasing its economic, political, and institutional interdependence with the rest of the world. China’s domestic leadership goals are necessarily connected to a stable international environment and it is therefore in the PRC’s (People’s Republic of China’s) own interest to be able to grow and be on peaceful terms with other states at the same time Bernstein and Ross (1997).
Mearsheimer’s predictions can also be corroborated by recent changes in China’s foreign policy, especially after Xi Jinping took over the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (2012). For decades, since the start of the Reform era (1978), the Chinese were gauging their grand strategy according to the late Deng Xiaoping’s dictum “taoguang yanghui” (usually paraphrased as “keeping low profile”), meaning that the PRC would focus on domestic issues and shun international disputes and burdensome global responsibilities. But when Xi came on the scene there was a palpable change of rhetoric to more assertive foreign policy, pushing forward vague concepts of “China’s Dream” and “great national rejuvenation,” i.e., bringing back the past glory that has been lost since the internal turmoil of the 19th and first half of the 20th century.
Last but not least, despite being mutually most important business partners, for the past several years Shino- American relations have been plagued by significant trade disputes, bordering on full-scale trade war. Even though these events have not concluded, many predict that the United States is willing to sacrifice deep economic interdependence for short-term political goals. Economic relations between the United States and China have grown more competitive since the global financial crisis due to changes in China’s economic model, which now presents more serious competition to the United States and other major economies in the most sophisticated sectors of the economy.
Conclusively, the essay agrees with John Mearsheimer’s assertion that “China’s rise is likely to lead to an intense security competition between China and USA but likely not to directly translate into a full-scale war.
Written and compiled by Musana Jafali
Researcher
