The Next Great War, Cold Peace, or Mutual Gain?

Abstract

Asian Perspective 40 (2016), 161-171 BOOK REVIEW ESSAY The Next Great War, Cold Peace, or Mutual Gain? Walter C. Clemens Jr. Richard N. Rosecrance and Steven E. Miller, eds. The Next Great War? The Roots of World War I and the Risk of U.S.-China Conflict. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2014. Aaron L. Friedberg. A Contestfor Supremacy: China, America, and the Strugglefor Mastery in Asia. New York: W. W. Nor­ ton, 2011. Wang Jisi and Kenneth G. Lieberthal. “Addressing U.S.-China Strategic Distrust,” Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, John L. Thornton China Center Monograph Series, No. 4 (March 2012), www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2012 /3/30-us-china-lieberthal/0330_china_lieberthal .pdf. Thomas J. Christensen. The China Challenge: Shaping the Choices ofa Rising Power. New York: W. W. Norton, 2015. Henry M. Paulson. Dealing with China: An Insider Unmasks the New Economic Superpower. New York: Hachette, 2015. Jeffrey Lewis. Paper Tigers: China’ s Nuclear Posture. London: International Institute for Strategic Studies and Routledge, 2014. Lyle J. Goldstein. Meeting China Halfway: How to Defuse the Emerging US-China Rivalry. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2015. Morton Abramowitz and Stephen Bosworth. Chasing the Sun: Rethinking East Asian Policy. New York: The Century Foun­ dation, 2006. A CENTURY AFTER THE BEGINNING OF WORLD WAR I IN 1914, SOME observers are asking whether China and the United States are des­ tined to fight for hegemony, as did Germany and Great Britain in 161 162 The Next Great War 1914 and, more than two millennia earlier, Sparta and Athens. Other analysts question whether anything—including these wars—is inevitable in human affairs. These issues give rise to competing hypotheses and answers as well as to still more ques­ tions. Whether readers agree or disagree with the works reviewed here, each deserves attention for its contribution to fathoming and shaping the alternative futures open to China, the United States, and indeed all humanity. The future relationship between China and the United States is one of the mega-changes and mega-challenges of our age. China’s rise is the geopolitical equivalent of the melting polar ice caps: gradual change on a massive scale that can suddenly lead to dramatic turns of events. Were there factors contributing to the Great War that suggest lessons for Sino-US relations today? Four­ teen authors address these questions in The Next Great War? None of these chapters purports to provide the entire picture or even a definitive facet. Still, each embodies a deep analysis rich in heuristics that can spark further research on Sino-US relations, though most of the chapters debate the origins of World War I. Taken together, the essays provide a broad catalog of the many factors that produced the guns ofAugust 1914 and that could con­ duce to other wars. The factors are wide ranging, from familiar doctrines about the shifting balance of power to the mental and emotional qualities of leaders and the cult of the offensive espoused by many strategists. Graham Allison’s chapter argues that China and the United States must work to escape the “Thucydides Trap”—the “dangers that can arise when a rising power challenges a ruling power—as Athens did Sparta . . . and as Germany did Britain a century ago.” Describing the interactions of Athens and Sparta and other Greek city-states, Thucydides asserted, “It was the rise ofAthens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made the [Peloponnesian] war inevitable.” Some of the events described by Thucydides in The Peloponnesian War do not square with the inevitability thesis. Still, the sentence quoted has spawned a theory ofhegemonic war, a theory dear to structural realists. They typically predict that ris­ ing powers will seek to deliver a quietus to a weakening hegemon, or that the hegemon will wage a preventive or preemptive war against challengers before it becomes too late. Walter C. Clemens Jr. 163 A similar “trap” has often recurred, according to Allison: “In twelve of sixteen cases in the past 500 years when a rising power challenged a ruling power, the outcome was war.” Since war was avoided in four cases, Allison concedes that hegemonic war is not inevitable. But since China has...