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No risk of deteriorating relations enough to trigger impact—cyclical pattern and multiple checks

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No risk of deteriorating relations enough to trigger impact—cyclical pattern and multiple checks Gojree 15 (Mehraj Uddin, analyst for Eurasia Review, “US-China Strategic Cooperation Or Strategic Competition: An Overview,” Eurasia Review, 12/10/2015, http://www.eurasiareview.com/10122015-us-china-strategic-cooperation-or-strategic-competition-an-overview/) KC More particularly, the US military strategists are of the view that even though Beijing’s absolute military power is not formally equal to those of the United States, China has the ability to pose unacceptable risks in a conflict with Washington. Moreover, China is increasingly developing sophisticated means to negate traditional US advantages and this could eventually lead to the creation of China-centric Asian bloc which would ultimately dominate Western-Pacific.6 Thus, according to them, the US and Chinese interests are destined to clash as China continues its rise and, in coming decades, reaches economic and military parity with the US.7 These apprehensions are also implicitly reflected in various US defense strategy reports. Amidst of these views from both sides, the US policy toward China has swung back and forth and finally converged around the middle. The current approach therefore, seeks to combine engagement with containment or in other words the US is engaging China but even as it does so, it is preparing itself for the eventuality of the future conflict. On the other side, the provoking/challenging interpretations in China fallow an opposite logic. In China’s threat perception, the United States is regarded as one of the most important and serious security threat to its interests. They are also convinced that the US as a declining power is determined to thwart the rise of any challenger, of which China is the most credible.8 Thus it is widely held in China that the primary goal of the US is to “westernize, split, and weaken” China. Some Chinese argue that in spite of intense cooperation which Beijing seeks with Washington, its fixed objective is contain the rising China by increasing its military forces around China’s periphery and thus preventing China from playing its historic role as the “Middle Kingdom”.9 Many Chinese strategists also believe that even the “engagers” within the US would like to see China evolve towards a politically pluralistic democratic system. The difference between those who advocate engagement and containment in the US policy is therefore, only of strategy and not of goals – and the main goal of the US strategy is to perpetuate its own global dominance and to thwart any attempt by any state particularly China to alter that status quo.10 Despite all these threats — perceived or actual — China has deliberately sought to maintain good relations with the United States. It due to the fact that China’s leadership are aware of the fact that maintaining good relationship with the United States and downplaying the negative trends will be more beneficial for the China’s interests in the long run. Thus for the time being, China’s leadership has adopted Deng Xiaoping’s advice – “be calm, keep low profile, hide your capacities and bide your time” as the guiding principle of their approach towards the US.11 For the United States too, the relationship with China is extremely important irrespective of whether China is seen as strategic partner or a competitor. China’s growing economic and military power, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, a nuclear weapons state, and a regional power with significant influence in Asia is something which the US cannot ignore. Moreover, the economic links forged between the two states in the last two decades provides strong foundation to the relationship. In spite of some trade and economic frictions between the two, both sides benefit from these economic links and neither would like to see deterioration in the relationship which would undermine these benefits. As Brookings Institute scholars Richard Bush and Michael O’ Hanlon noted, “Most hypothetical causes of war between the United States and China turn out, upon inspection, to have little or no basis. The two countries will not duke it out simply to settle the question of who will ‘run the world’ in the twenty-first century”.12 They further argue that especially the economic cooperation create a potent incentive for cooperative and sensible behavior between the two countries.13 From the above discussion, it can be asserted that the US-China relationship reflect the dual characteristics wherein it leads to the observation that the relationship is increasingly one of “coopetation” and “competitive co-existence”. It implies that while the two powers coexist, they do so in an increasingly competitive manner. However, sometimes the cooperative dimension is more apparent, at others the competitive dimension is more visible. David Shambug beautifully illustrates such a complex and dual type of US-China relationship in these words, “if one simply conceptualizes the extremes of conflict and accord at the two ends, then the middle is composed of the band between competition and cooperation. The US-China relationship today operates in the spectrum between the competition-cooperation bands, never achieving real accord and (hopefully) avoiding conflict”.14 Figure 1 illustrates a Simple Spectrum of U.S-China Relations adopted by David Shambag Figure 1 illustrates a Simple Spectrum of U.S-China Relations adopted by David Shambag Thus, both the powers are likely to find it increasingly difficult to coexist – yet they do not have any other option. This uneven relationship, marked by twists and turns, can be further interpreted as an unhappy marriage where the two dare not to divorce each other or as one expert remarked, “the two huge powers have divergent interests but also deep interdependence. Working together is hard and frustrating, but not working together is worse”.15 As long as there is no fundamental conflict of national interests, the US and China will continue to manage this sort of relationship as depicted above. Download 357.18 Kb. Share with your friends: