The U.S. Foreign Policy in East Asia Peculiar Relationship: Why Yellow Light with China is Inevitable and Essential

Abstract

As of today, where does the complex and consequential relationship between the United States and China stand? Relations between the two nations are enormously complex and broad now, from security, trade, and broader economic issues, to the environment and human rights. In fact, various periods of history are marked by equilibrium or disequilibrium2: Gilpin also demonstrated in his book War and Change in World Politics that international political change is the result of efforts of political actors to change the international system in order to advance their own interests.3 Whether or not China claiming itself as a peacefully rising state intended to change the ideological landscape of the international politics, its rise has certainly become a hot potato for the last few decades. After more than 30 years of its fastpaced economic growth, China is now the second-largest economy in the world after the United States. With its developing global strategic clout, China is now extending its reach not only economically but also militarily, especially in the South China Sea, in addition to its enormous leap in military technology. Whether to contain China as a threat or accommodate it as a rising superpower is an inevitable question that the U.S. policy makers should answer. Hence, this paper argues in support of the balance-of-power theory by suggesting that the U.S. policy makers should make a sensible diplomatic strategy of balancing its position towards China: maintaining a strategically critical policy of yellow light with Beijing. At the end of the day, working together is hard and frustrating, but not working together is worse. 1 Master in International Security '14, Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver 2 Viotti & Kauppi, International Relations Theory, Pearson, 2012. 3 Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics, Cambridge University Press; Reprint edition, 1983. 28 Journal of International Relations and Foreign Policy, Vol. 2(3 & 4), December 2014 U.S.-China Relations at the Crossroad: Highs and Lows With hundreds of policy issues from agriculture to cyber space joining American and Chinese interests, even with close look into some of the key issues, no convincing pattern emerges between two countries. One of the most dangerous or uncertain risks posed by Washington's confusion over deterrence lies in the avoidance of a choice one way or the other about the strategy when it comes to China. Realist adherents, especially power-transition theorists, see the international system hierarchically ordered, with the most powerful state dominating the rest and that war may be more likely when states are relatively equal, particularly when the differential growth in two states' economies brings a challenger close to the reigning hegemon's power. Thucydides also argued that the differential growth in power of the various states in the system causes a fundamental redistribution of power in the system. However, at the status quo, globalization and interdependence between states cannot be ignored and this is why balance of power is at the core of realist thought which inevitably embraces interactions among states. Moreover, it is also the reality of the U.S.-Chinese relations which should not be blindsided by thoughtless pursuit of deterrence and containment. According to Viotti, although peaceful engagement has become more prominent in US relations with China since the 1970s and the Russian Federation since its entry on the world stage in 1992, in the minds of American policymakers containment has remained an important part of their strategic calculus. 7 Snyder defines deterrence as in one deters another party from doing something by the implicit or explicit threat of applying some sanction if the forbidden act is performed, or by the promise of a reward if the act is not performed: thus conceived, deterrence does not have to depend on military force. In case of the U.S.-Chinese relations where numerous internal and external factors constantly facilitate and contain the foreign policy of two states it is tightly tangled in the complex web of national interests which coincide especially in economic arena. Some scholars argue that deterrence is a nonissue for the Sino-U.S. relations because the two states' economic interdependence precludes military conflict. 4 Richard Betts, The Lost Logic of Deterrence: What the Strategy that won the Cold War Can and Can't Do Now, Foreign Affairs (March/April 2013). 5 Viotti & Kauppi, International Relations Theory, Pearson, 2012. 6 Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics, Cambridge University Press; Reprint edition, 1983. 7 Paul Viotti, American Foreign Policy, Polity Press, 2010. 8 Glenn Snyder, Deterrence and Defense: A Theoretical Introduction, (191) (16pp.)