The uniqueness claim is that the United States is beginning to recognize the failure of engagement and is shifting towards
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Balancing solves China riseBalancing is the only choice – China’s rise is inevitable and engagement won’t preserve American primacy – loss of hegemony drives dangerous transition wars and revives interventionismTellis, 14—Ashley, senior associate @ Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, PhD from U Chicago, former special assistant to the president and senior director for strategic planning and Southwest Asia at the National Security Council. “Balancing Without Containment,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace PDF report, Jan 22, http://carnegieendowment.org/files/balancing_without_containment.pdf, p. 14-15 –br The prospect that China might one day become “the greatest power in the world,” riding to that apex on the back of American investments in maintaining a liberal international order, should be disturbing to the United States. Whatever else it may imply, the loss of American hegemony would be dangerous to U.S. security because it would entail a diminution of strategic autonomy, the first and most important benefit of possessing greater power than others in a competitive environment. Being the most powerful entity in the global system for over a century has not only increased U.S. safety by allowing the United States to defeat threats far from its shores but also permitted Washington to shape the international environment in ways that reflect its own interests. This capacity to configure the milieu in which it operates to its advantage in all arenas—economic, military, geopolitical, ideational, and institutional—implies that Washington can constrain the choices of other states far more than it is constrained by them. This critical measure of relative power affords the United States greater immunity than its competitors enjoy.37 The loss of American primacy to China, therefore, would put Washington at Beijing’s mercy far more than is currently the case. Consequently, as long as the international system remains rivalrous and harbors threats to U.S. security, the United States has no alternative but to preserve American hegemony. Such preeminence provides greater security than the alternative of equality with, let alone subordination to, others. It allows the United States to attract the resources necessary to maintain the most innovative economic system on the planet, a capacity that permits it to enjoy a high standard of living and produce the formidable military instruments that enable it to impose its will on rival powers. It affords the United States the luxury of being able to defend itself by conducting military operations closer to the homelands of its adversaries than to its own. It enables Washington to maintain a robust system of alliances that offers the promise of collective defense against common threats and provides significant reservoirs of capability for expeditionary operations abroad. It gilds the attractiveness of American ideas, customs, and fashions internationally and thus procures legitimation by means that go beyond mere force. And it permits the United States to protect its national equities through various international institutions that represent a “rule-based” order and secure favorable outcomes for Washington without it having to repeatedly apply raw power. The United States would lose many of these benefits were China to rival or replace it as the most powerful state in the international system. And China’s ascent to this pinnacle would be doubly painful because Beijing has benefited disproportionately from an international system that was originally intended—and is still meant—to advance American interests in the first instance. Concerns about the consequences of losing U.S. preeminence might matter less if it were certain that Chinese primacy would not fundamentally undermine American interests. Such an expectation, however, is absurd in any competitive system. For all their affinities, even the rising United States drove deep nails into the coffin of British hegemony, a reality that London, blinded by its illusions about its “special relationship” with Washington, often failed to see during America’s own ascent to power. As Correlli Barnett acidly concluded, “For the Americans—like the Russians, like the Germans, like the English themselves in the eighteenth century—were motivated by a desire to promote their own interests rather than by sentiment, which was a commodity they reserved for Pilgrim’s Dinners, where it could do no harm.”38 Naturally, American power in turn would be similarly threatened by Chinese ascendency, even if Beijing currently denies any intention to challenge U.S. preeminence. A balancing strategy is vital to preventing China’s hostile rise – increasing economic integration threatens US leadership and risks existential impactsTellis and Blackwill 15 (Ashley** and David*, senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations*, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, specializing in international security, defense, and Asian strategic issues**, “U.S. Grand Strategy Toward China”, Council on Foreign Relations, http://carnegieendowment.org/files/Tellis_Blackwill.pdf, April 13, 2015, NRG) The principal task that confronts U.S. grand strategy today, therefore, is adapting to the fundamental challenge posed by China’s continuing rise. Integration, the prevailing U.S. approach toward China and the one followed assiduously since the 1970s, has undoubtedly contributed to China’s rise as a future rival to American power. None of the alternatives usually discussed in the debates in Washington and elsewhere about how to respond to China’s growing strength satisfy the objective of preserving American primacy for yet another “long cycle” in international politics. These alternatives, which include embracing and participating with China, accommodating Beijing through some kind of a Group of Two (G2) arrangement, or containing China à la the Soviet Union, all have severe limitations from the viewpoint of U.S. national interests and could in fact undermine the larger goal of strengthening Washington’s preeminence in the global system.33 Accordingly, the United States should substantially modify its grand strategy toward China—one that at its core would replace the goal of concentrating on integrating Beijing into the international system with that of consciously balancing its rise—as a means of protecting simultaneously the security of the United States and its allies, the U.S. position at the apex of the global hierarchy, and the strength of the liberal international order, which is owed ultimately to the robustness of American relative power. There is no better basis for analyzing and formulating U.S. grand strategy toward China than connecting that strategy directly to U.S. vital national interests—conditions that are strictly necessary to safeguard and enhance Americans’ survival and well-being in a free and secure nation.34 U.S. vital national interests are as follows: ■ prevent, deter, and reduce the threat of conventional and unconventional attacks on the continental United States and its extended territorial possessions; ■ maintain a balance of power in Europe and Asia that promotes peace and stability through a continuing U.S. leadership role and U.S. alliances; ■ prevent the use and slow the spread of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, secure nuclear weapons and materials, and prevent proliferation of intermediate and long-range delivery systems for nuclear weapons; and ■ promote the health of the international economy, energy markets, and the environment. China’s Challenge to U.S. Vital National Interests
■ replace the United States as the primary power in Asia; ■ weaken the U.S. alliance system in Asia;35 ■ undermine the confidence of Asian nations in U.S. credibility, reliability, and staying power; ■ use China’s economic power to pull Asian nations closer to PRC geopolitical policy preferences; ■ increase PRC military capability to strengthen deterrence against U.S. military intervention in the region; ■ cast doubt on the U.S. economic model; ■ ensure U.S. democratic values do not diminish the CCP’s hold on domestic power; and ■ avoid a major confrontation with the United States in the next decade. President Xi signaled China’s aims to undermine the Asian balance of power at the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia in early 2014 when he argued that “Asia’s problems ultimately must be resolved by Asians and Asia’s security ultimately must be protected by Asians.”36 The capacity of the United States to deal successfully with this systematic geoeconomic, military, and diplomatic challenge by China to U.S. primacy in Asia will determine the shape of the international order for decades to come. Directory: wp-content -> uploads -> 2012 2012 -> The Case Against the nypd’s Quota-Driven ‘Broken Windows’ Policing What Is It? 2012 -> Aa and na members Dying from Tobacco 2012 -> [Baby Crying] 01: 04 [Ching 2012 -> Unit Name / Nom de l’unité uic / ciu dates 2012 -> What We Owe Jehovah’s Witnesses 2012 -> Oceans Challenge Badge 2012 -> Canadian cycling olympians 2012 -> Greg landry, june olkowski and tom lysiak 2012 -> William goldman 2012 -> Does translocation and restocking confer any benefit to the European eel population? A review Download 323.84 Kb. Share with your friends:
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