Imperialism Kritik Index
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- ANSWER TO: China is a Threat
ANSWER TO: Permutation[___] ( ) The perm doesn’t solve – engagement is always accompanied by military force.Ahn, 2014 [Christine Ahn, policy analyst with expertise in Korea, globalization, militarism, women’s rights and philanthropy. “Open Fire and Open Markets: The Asia-Pacific Pivot and Trans-Pacific Partnership.” January 14, 2014. http://fpif.org/open-fire-open-markets-asia-pacific-pivot-trans-pacific-partnership/] Like the United States, the future of China’s economic growth lies in the Asia-Pacific region, which by all indicators will be the center of economic activity in the 21st century. By 2015, according to a paper from the conservative Foreign Policy Research Institute, “East Asian countries are expected to surpass NAFTA and the euro zone to become the world’s largest trading bloc. Market opportunities will only increase as the region swells by an additional 175 million people by 2030.”¶ Enter the TPP. By increasing U.S. market access and influence with China’s neighbors, Washington is hoping to deepen its economic engagement with the TPP countries while diminishing their economic integration with China.¶ Obama’s “Pacific Pivot” also seeks to contain China militarily. By 2020, 60 percent of U.S. naval capacity will be based in the Asia-Pacific, where 320,000 U.S. troops are already stationed. The realignment will entail rebuilding and refurbishing former U.S. facilities in the Philippines, placing 2,500 marines in Australia, transferring 8,000 marines and their families from Okinawa to Guam and Hawai’i, and building new installations like the one on the tiny Pacific island of Saipan. Meanwhile, the U.S. military regularly stages massive joint military exercises involving tens of thousands of troops and nuclear-powered aircraft carriers with its key allies — and China’s neighbors — Japan and South Korea. It has been regularly conducting Cobra Gold exercises with Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, and even Myanmar.¶ Official Washington seems to believe that these are necessary precautions. According to the RAND Corporation, for example, 90 percent of U.S. bases in the region are “under threat” from Chinese ballistic missiles because they are within 1,080 nautical miles of China. But who is threatening whom? The Chinese have precisely zero bases in the Asia-Pacific outside of their own borders.¶ Some U.S. analysts insist that a more robust U.S. military presence is necessary to curb China’s ambitious territorial claims in the region. Without a doubt, China has recently taken a more aggressive stance in regional territorial disputes over dwindling natural resources, angering many of its neighbors. But by turning to the United States as a check against China, less powerful nations invite a bargain with the devil as Washington will advance its own strategic interests. And by getting itself involved, Washington risks encouraging China’s rivals to behave more provocatively, as well as angering China itself. According to Mel Gurtov, “While accepting that the United States is a Pacific power, Chinese authorities now resist the notion that the United States has some special claim to predominance in Asia and the western Pacific.”¶ A One-Two Punch¶ “The hidden hand of the market,” as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman famously wrote in the 1990s, “will never work without a hidden fist.” The Asia-Pacific Pivot, a one-two neoliberal-militaristic punch, packs both. ANSWER TO: China is a Threat( ) China’s not a threat – the only possibility for conflict lies in America’s continued pursuit of dominance in East Asia.Glaser, 2015 [John Glaser, researcher in Washington, DC. He has been published in the Washington Times, Reason, The Huffington Post, Al Jazeera, The American Conservative, and the Daily Caller, among other outlets. “The Ugly Truth About Avoiding War With China.” December 28, 2015. http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-ugly-truth-about-avoiding-war-china-14740] The United States pursued dominance in East Asia long before any concerns about a Chinese superpower, so continuing to justify primacy on those grounds is somewhat fishy. But even assuming China’s continued economic growth, the prospect of China achieving regional hegemony is no sure thing, an insight that should temper the inflated level of threat supposed by primacists.¶ Regional hegemony requires China to develop uncontested dominance in its sphere, but China is surrounded by major powers that would resist such a gambit. India, which harbors great power ambitions of its own, is protected by the Himalayas and possesses nuclear weapons. Japan is protected by the stopping power of water and is wealthy enough to quickly build up its military and develop nuclear weapons if it feels threatened by China. Russia can check Chinese power in Central Asia and draw Beijing’s focus away from maritime dominance in the Pacific inward toward the Eurasian heartland. China’s serious demographic problems as well as its restive provinces like Xinjiang and Tibet remain top level concerns for Beijing and add to the difficulty of obtaining true regional hegemony. The United States can withdraw from East Asia and still “have ample warning and time to form alliances or regenerate forces before China realizes such vast ambitions.”¶ There are several cogent reasons—economic interdependence, nuclear deterrence and the general obsolescence of great power war, among others—to be skeptical of warnings that conflict between the United States and China is inevitable, or even likely. Nevertheless, history shows that great power transitions are dangerous. If outright war is not in the cards, a long, drawn-out, burdensome cold war is quite plausible. If Washington is tempted to maintain or expand its reach in East Asia to contain China’s rise, the chances of conflict increase, as do the associated costs short of war, such as bigger defense budgets, strengthened security guarantees to allies and increased deployments. ANSWER TO: China is a Threat( ) China’s foreign policy is not aggressive.Glaser, 2015 [John Glaser, researcher in Washington, DC. He has been published in the Washington Times, Reason, The Huffington Post, Al Jazeera, The American Conservative, and the Daily Caller, among other outlets.. “Avoiding War With China: Revisited.” December 31, 2015. http://nationalinterest.org/feature/avoiding-war-china-revisited-14769] Kazianis writes that China has “[cast] aside the idea of a ‘peaceful rise’” and others similarly depict China as a rapacious expansionist that must be contained. But Beijing’s intentions are, at best, opaque. It’s true that China has employed a more assertive foreign policy in recent years. But many scholars see China’s foreign policy as fundamentally defensive.¶ Swaine writes that “Beijing’s de facto attempts to limit or end U.S. predominance along its maritime periphery are motivated almost entirely by uncertainties, fears, insecurities, and a certain level of opportunism, not a grand strategic vision of Chinese predominance.” Even scholars who advocate containment, like Princeton’s Aaron L. Friedberg, admit that “It is largely because they see the United States as the most serious external threat to their continued rule that they feel the need to constrict its military presence and diplomatic influence in the Western Pacific.”¶ In short, U.S. primacy in East Asia, argues Christopher Layne, “reinforces Beijing’s insecurities and its deep-rooted fears of Washington’s intentions and ambitions.”¶ This brings us to my concluding point and the core of my initial argument, which Kazianis disappointingly failed to address in his rebuttal. For the present strategy against China to be effective—or, for that matter, coherent—there must be an explanation of how we expect containment to work. In what scenario can we imagine China, whose relative power in the international system is rising, to give up its regional ambitions, overcome its fears of encirclement, and cede regional hegemony to the United States, whose relative power is declining? To use Mearsheimer’s more succinct formulation, “why would a powerful China accept U.S. military forces operating in its backyard?” And, furthermore, how high are we really willing to let this impending security competition escalate, especially when the U.S. can maintain its own unparalleled safety and security without a predominant military presence in the Pacific?¶ Mr. Kazianis is correct in one sense. He calls my proposal a “fantasy.” That is true. There is something fantastical about my policy preferences. But that is not because they don’t make good strategic sense. Rather it’s because we have built up an entire national security state, bureaucracy and political class that is committed to primacy for both ideological and economic reasons. Maintaining a global military presence and a defense budget that dwarfs the rest of the world is great for the political, bureaucratic and lobbying interests in Washington. They have little incentive to narrow the prevailing conception of U.S. interests, in which every nook and cranny of the globe is perceived to be of great strategic significance. People in government tend not to scrutinize the source of their wealth and power.¶ That said, the hope that a foreign policy of restraint will soon come into vogue in Washington is no more fantastical than believing that China will be easily pacified in response to America’s forceful reassertion of military hegemony in East Asia. 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