Aaron Friedberg offers thoughts on how to contain China.
In the most recent issue of Foreign Affairs, Aaron Friedberg, a China expert and adviser to the Romney campaign, published a long piece arguing that it was time for the U.S. to get tougher with China. Friedberg begins by describing America's current strategy:
Although U.S. policymakers have grown more circumspect in recent years, they have long hoped that trade and dialogue would help eventually transform China into a liberal democracy. The other half of Washington's China strategy, the balancing half, has looked to maintain stability and deter aggression or attempts at coercion while engagement works its magic.
But this isn't working, he writes:
The CCP's determination to maintain control informs the regime's threat perceptions, goals, and policies. Anxious about their legitimacy, China's rulers are eager to portray themselves as defenders of the national honor. Although they believe China is on track to become a world power on par with the United States, they remain deeply fearful of encirclement and ideological subversion. And despite Washington's attempts to reassure them of its benign intentions, Chinese leaders are convinced that the United States aims to block China's rise and, ultimately, undermine its one-party system of government.
What's odd here is that Friedberg is essentially arguing that China's leaders have it right: they have correctly understood American strategy (as stated by Friedberg in the first graf). Whatever Washington is doing to reassure them, it's clear (from the Communist Party's standpoint) that America's intentions are not benign. Friedberg's advice largely hinges on making the Communist Party feel even less secure - on the grounds that if a little insecurity and sense of besiegement have not produced Washington's desired outcome, doubling down on the strategy will do the trick.
An alternative (better?) strategy might be to disaggregate America's concerns for how China is governed - an issue that is not properly Washington's business anyway - with how China behaves abroad. Many insist on drawing linkages between the two - and undoubtedly some do exist - but it's hard to see how a democratic China becomes less interested in natural resources in the South China Sea or less immune to the nationalist urge to make expansive and aggressive claims on other nation's territorial waters. By objecting not just to China's behavior, but to the legitimacy of its very system of government, the U.S. takes an already difficult problem and makes it infinitely harder to manage.
Friedberg also offers some suggestions for how to right the military balance in Asia. Much of it makes sense - the U.S. should harden its facilities in range of China's increasingly sophisticated missiles and develop new capabilities that are less vulnerable to Chinese attack. But the advice is anchored in what I'd argue is a very questionable assumption:
Failing to respond adequately to Beijing's buildup could undermine the credibility of the security guarantees that Washington extends to its Asian allies. In the absence of strong signals of continuing commitment and resolve from the United States, its friends may grow fearful of abandonment, perhaps eventually losing heart and succumbing to the temptations of appeasement. To prevent them from doing so, Washington will have to do more than talk. Together, the United States and its allies have more than sufficient resources with which to balance China. But if Washington wants its allies to increase their own defense efforts, it will have to seriously respond to China's growing capabilities itself.
Won't this have precisely the opposite effect - i.e. the more America does, the less its allies will do? Haven't we already seen the script play out already in Europe? Why yes we have.
In fact, Asian militaries have been bulking up since before the Obama administration made its famous "pivot" to Asia. There is every reason to believe that Asian states will continue to invest in their defenses and that American moves to beef up their own defenses, particularly the kind of lavish, Cold War-style commitment Friedberg advocates, would take the pressure off. At a time when the U.S. is up to its eyeballs in red ink, this hardly makes much sense.
Friedberg's reasoning flies in the face not just of the very recent and relevant history of European defense spending, but in the face of his party's own orthodoxy when it comes to how incentives work. To understand how discordant this is, imagine Mitt Romney saying that the best way to get people to work is to give them lavish unemployment benefits and promise to support them no matter what they do.
However Friedberg is right to note that the trajectory of the U.S.-China relationship appears rocky and that some form of security competition is already underway. Anyone seeking some ideas of how a prospective Romney administration might approach this competition would do well to grapple with his arguments.
(AP Photo)
