How to avoid a contest for supremacy in East Asia

Abstract

This article challenges the increasingly dominant narrative of an inevitable quest for supremacy in contemporary East Asia. It argues that the narrative rests on a foundation of power transition theory that is conceptually and historically flawed, and that it risks an unnecessary war. The article contends that strategists should instead start thinking about constructing a system in which power and privileges in East Asia are held in equilibrium in a manner conceptually similar to the associative balance/shared hegemony of the Long Nineteenth Century. In such a system, Asia would not be “America’s,” but neither would it be “China’s.”