Structural Sources of China's Territorial Compromises

Abstract

More than a decade ago, in a review of Jack Snyder's Myths of Empire, Fareed Zakaria noted: After over a decade of vigorous debates about realism, structural realism, neoliberal institutionalism, and hegemonic stability theory, political scientists are shifting their attention to the internal sources of foreign policy. Some even contend that realism's dictum about the 'primacy of foreign policy' is wrong, and that the domestic politics of states are key to understanding world events. Innenpolitik is in.' evidenced by Taylor Fravel's Regime Insecurity and International Cooperation: Explaining China's Compromises in Territorial Disputes, Innenpolitik is still in.2 In Fravel's words, Regime insecurity best explains China's pattern of cooperation and delay in its territorial disputes between 1949 and 2004 (p. 81). According to the regime insecurity hypothesis, Internal conflict often creates conditions for cooperation, producing a 'diversionary peace' instead of war (p. 49). Given the domestic vulnerability of the Chinese Communist regime during periods such as the revolt in Tibet and the upheaval that followed the Tiananmen crisis, Chinese leaders reached territorial compromises to extend their tenure in office (p. 51). Although intuitively plausible, Fravel's regime vulnerability argument is flawed, for two reasons. First, his confidence in the empirical accuracy of the domestic insecuritydiversionary peace theory rests on a realist straw man, arguing that China's behavior is inconsistent with the predictions of realist theories because China has not used its power advantages to bargain hard over contested land, especially with its weaker neighbors (p. 46). When properly construed and understood, realist theories can explain territorial compromises as well as conflict. Realist theories suggest that strong states exploit the weak, but only under certain conditions because powerful states often face powerful incentives not to exploit their weaker neighbors: As Stuart Kaufman suggests, the logic of self-help under anarchy 'encourages strong powers to absorb