Avoiding War With China: Two Nations, One World by Amitai Etzioni

Author:Amitai Etzioni [Etzioni, Amitai]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, History & Theory
ISBN: 9780813940045
Google: sLORDQAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 34916386
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Published: 2017-05-02T00:00:00+00:00

7

TO CONTAIN OR NOT? WHEN AND WHERE IS THE QUESTION

The United States often says that it seeks a constructive, cooperative, and comprehensive relationship with China. To provide but one example, President Obama stated in March 2016 that “the United States welcomes the rise of a peaceful, stable, and prosperous China, working with us to address global challenges.”1 However, American actions often reveal moves toward containment. These actions include reopening American military bases in the Philippines, forming military alliances with Vietnam, stationing more naval vessels in the Pacific, positioning marines in Australia, building a missile defense shield in South Korea, conducting military exercises that practice invading a country like China, and above all, encouraging the military buildup of Japan.

These are all legal acts as far as international law is concerned, and have been carried out with the consent of the nations involved. However, to China they give the appearance of the United States and its allies marshaling military forces along its borders, with the United States giving these nations a finger on the trigger that could start a major US-China confrontation.

I am not arguing that China’s feelings should decide American foreign policy. If the United States has concluded that it cannot or is unlikely to work out its differences with China in a peaceful manner, containment might well be warranted. However, it seems that since China is, at the very least, a decade away from posing any kind of military threat to the United States and its allies, containment is premature, and it has considerable costs. It undermines the credibility of America’s statements that it seeks diplomacy and negotiated solutions to differences with China, it costs billions of dollars that are direly needed for nation building at home, and it leads to some very unwise moves, to put it mildly. The most troubling of these moves is discussed next. It concerns the acceleration of the nuclear arms race between India and Pakistan, and the increasing probability that terrorists will get their hands on nuclear weapons—all in order to push India to play a role in containing China. This effort, as we will see, has cost the world a great deal in terms of safety, but achieved rather little in terms of containment.

The Threat (Background)

It is widely agreed that a major threat to the security of the United States and its allies is the combination of terrorism and nuclear arms. Currently, the most likely place for terrorists to acquire such a weapon is in Pakistan. Although various measures have been undertaken to improve the security of Pakistan’s weapons, the West is concerned about its safety, given that Pakistan, suspicious of the United States, has rejected America’s offers to help further secure these arms. Western powers realize that they are unaware of the location of all these weapons. And attacks on Pakistani military bases raise concerns that one day nuclear weapons may get into the wrong hands.

This is not a hypothetical scenario; there have already been several attacks by terrorist groups at Pakistani nuclear facilities.

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