American Mistakes

This chapter examines the policy mistakes that the Obama administration made in managing the Sino-American relationship. The Obama administration developed no distinct China strategy and was in fact averse to developing such a strategy. It chose to embed largely reactive China policies within a regional strategy of the so-called “pivot” or “rebalance” to the Asia-Pacific region. While China was relegated to a management issue, the rebalance strategy damaged the US-China relationship by deepening strategic mistrust between the two countries and agitating China to seek strategic adventures in Asia. The rebalance did not cause Chinese assertiveness by itself, but the geopolitical setting it created served to exacerbate China’s already fermenting assertive inclinations and prompted its strategic adventurism.

Conclusions

Good analysis must meet three conditions: it must ask questions that have policy relevance; it must build on a plausible set of assumptions about how the world works; and it must recognize the determining nature of context. These conditions inform the book’s proposal for a holistic strategy of conflict management and resolution based on a judicious combination of deterrence, reassurance, and diplomacy. The uncertainty about foreign policy motives makes analysis more difficult, but also creates opportunities for policymakers. To the extent they free themselves from simple mindsets regarding others’ motives and recognize their complexity, they will become increasingly sensitive to the need to understand what motives are at play in any given situation. They will further recognize the possibility of positively influencing the motives of their adversary by reassurance and diplomacy. These strategies have the potential to reduce hostility and pave the way for rapprochement or accommodation.

Thinking Differently about Conflict Management

Competition between America and China has intensified since 2009. The authors contend that there are two underlying causes of conflict: Sino-American competition is more a clash of egos than of interests, and the faulty conceptions leaders and intellectuals in both countries use to understand one another’s motives and foreign policies ratchet up tensions. The authors challenge many of the principal strategies the two countries have pursued, not only the way in which they have been applied. Some of these strategies are based on superficial learning and false historical lessons. This chapter lays the foundation for an alternative set of conceptions that are more appropriate to Sino-American relations and whose application would make it possible for both nations to buttress their self-esteem in less confrontational ways.

Deterrence

Deterrence attempts to prevent an undesired behavior by convincing the party that may be contemplating it that the cost will exceed any possible gain. Deterrence thinking fails to grasp the causes of competition and conflict and consequently addresses only symptoms of strategic tensions. The American strategy of hegemonic deterrence and the Chinese strategy of active defense risk mutual escalation of suspicions, increase reliance on worse-case analysis, and intensify rather than ameliorate their competition. Deterrence has a role to play in security policy, but overdose is likely to be dangerous. This chapter proposes a strategy of minimal deterrence for both countries to reduce the harms of aggressive deterrence and to make room for the more productive strategies of reassurance and diplomacy.

Imagining the Worst, Hoping for the Best

The deterioration of Sino-American relations has become a matter of growing concern for policymakers and academics in both countries. This chapter offers a critique of the American realist and liberal positions on China and examines a diverse range of Chinese views, highlighting the importance of understanding Chinese concepts and perspectives. A common flaw of realist and liberal theories is that they do not attempt to understand Chinese foreign policy goals and means with reference to Chinese culture and history. But such reference is a starting point critical to any serious analysis. Of special importance is the traditional Chinese principle of wangdao, or humane authority, which is surprisingly similar to the ancient Greek understanding of hēgemonia. The overview of this chapter drives home the inadequacy of analyzing foreign policy in terms of power and relative power and draws attention to the importance of the goals that political elites seek and the ends they consider appropriate to them.

Reassurance

Reassurance seeks to alleviate causes of competition and conflict and induce accommodation and cooperation by reducing fear, mistrust, misunderstanding, and miscalculation between adversaries. This chapter identifies six forms of reassurance and assesses their value for managing Sino-American conflict: reciprocity, irrevocable commitment, self-restraint, norms of competition, limited security regimes, and trade-offs. All of them are useful for conflict management in four major areas of tension in the relationship: Taiwan, North Korea, Asian maritime tensions and disputes, and the US alliance system in Asia. This analysis of China’s response to the US alliance system suggests an additional form of reassurance: authority sharing.

Chinese Mistakes

This chapter evaluates Chinese mistakes in managing US policy by examining three critical junctures of the relationship during the Obama administration. In President Obama’s first year in office (2009), Beijing failed to fully reciprocate Obama’s positive signals for a cooperative relationship. The second juncture came in February 2012, when Vice President Xi’s visit to Washington ignited high-level diplomacy for building a new model of major-country relationship. With the third juncture in late 2013 and early 2014, the relationship once again took a turn for the worse, and it did not recover during the rest of Obama’s tenure. China lacked a productive strategy for managing its relations with the US, and contradictions between its US and Asia policies undercut its goal of building a new relationship with the US.

Diplomacy

Diplomacy is the third leg of a holistic strategy we propose for managing conflict between America and China. Some general conditions help to make it effective, although its specific operation is always context-dependent. Leadership commitment is often necessary for launching major diplomatic initiatives. Leadership commitment is often the result of internal or external incentives, reinforced by catalysts that highlight pressing challenges and the imperative of diplomacy. Effective diplomacy also requires sound strategic conceptions. A smooth decision-making process capable of coordinating disparate policy preferences and implementing supportive policies is also critical to effective diplomacy. Diplomacy has had major successes and regrettable failures in managing the Sino-American relationship in the past. Looking ahead, it faces both opportunities and constraints in managing competition between the two countries.