Our goose, China's gander

ARTICLE: 'Why TR Claimed The Seas', By Bret Stephens, Wall Street Journal, December 18, 2007, Pg. 20

Speaking of TR, a great piece by Stephens.

Too bad many like him can't see the same logic emerge for "rising China" and its "string of pearls" naval base approach to its growing energy dependency on distant regions.

Good for our goose is sensible for their gander, if you can remember across not just your own history but apply similar logic to the current trajectory of others.

Comments

[Lexington Green]

The problem is that very basic issue from Poli Sci 101, the "security dilemma". The other guy's effort to increase his security diminishes yours. In a system without a sovereign, security is zero sum. His self-perceived defensive measures are objectively offensive and diminish your security. This leads up an escalation ladder by its own logic.

In Teddy Roosevelt's day, the American naval construction was directed at Britain at the exact same moment that Britain was facing a German naval threat across the North See. Admiral Tirpitz saved the USA from a confrontation with Britain. Britain, with the deftness honed by centuries of diplomacy, determined that the USA was the lesser threat and accepted our challenge, and even quietly stopped making contingency plans for war against us. The USA defeated Britain in World War Zero and deposed Britain as the foremost Naval power without firing a shot. But the Chinese rise is not equivalent. There is no third power to compel us to accept it. Confrontation is built into the system.

This is a condition to be mitigated, not a problem with a solution.

Nuclear weapons help keep people focused on not getting too many rungs up the ladder.

[Bill C.]

Lexington Green:

Could we conclude from your analysis that future conflicts between the US and China -- much like the nuclear age conflict between the US and the USSR -- will consist of proxy wars in and over the Third World?

[Michael]

Yes and no, Lex, we DON'T have a mutual naval threat, but we DO have mutual interests-- namely, piracy, terrorism and other hazards effecting shipping on the high seas. Combine that with a lower-key naval policy aimed less as squeezing China out than at keeping them honest, and you have a possible non-zero-sum environment.

[Lexington Green]

Bill -- I think both sides will try to avoid open conflict entirely, but that if it occurs, mutual fear will push it toward indirect conflict, perhaps even the type of proxy warfare you describe. I hope it does not come to that.

Michael -- I agree that a non-zero-sum outcome is possible. I also agree on certain mutual interests. I merely point out two things. (1) Tom's analogy to the era of T.R. does not really work, unless we are willing to concede global naval dominance to China as Britain did to the USA, and I think we are far from that situation. (2) The prospect of a non-zero-outcome is going to require deft and hard-headed and historically-informed thinking, since there is an inherent process at work which will push us toward confrontation.

Statesmanship failed in the era of a century ago, and the rising powers of Germany and Japan were not successfully integrated into the world trading order built by Britain. (There is never just a "world economy"-- there is always a global built by somebody, that the other parties, to some degree, don't like.) Now Britain's Anglospheric successor has built a successor world economic order, commonly referred to as Globalization, though it is really Globalization 2.0. The challenge of our era is to integrate India and China and others into that order without conflict.

Thank God for nuclear weapons.

[Charles Ganske]

Stephens writes very well on many issues but I have to say I find him and the Wall Street Journal cognitively dissonant on Russia. I think it's hard to advocate kicking Russia out of the G-8 for its authoritarian tendencies while on the same page, condemning protectionism against the far more authoritarian People's Republic of China...but the WSJ does it.

In his remarks last year during the "Russia is Becoming Our Enemy Again" debate, Stephens listed Belarus as yet another victim of Russian "energy imperialism". That is, the poor Belarussians, like the Ukrainians, had to start paying about half of what Germans pay for the same gas...surely in punishment for their defiance of Moscow, just like those uppity alllies of Moscow the Armenians, the Azerbaijanis and...did I miss something, or is energy getting more expensive, and maybe even Gazprom had to do something about it? Starting painful adjustments in the near abroad is always an easier sell than starting at home. And perhaps even state owned behemoths can take steps towards market pricing...

As Tom has pointed out, the SWFs are investing far and wide. I think the Time magazine piece is part of a backclash against the hysteria we've seen about Russia in the last two years. And excluding them (whether they be Chinese, Gulf Arabs, or Russians) from some symbolic club is a rather silly exercise when they are the ones buying stakes in your biggest financial services companies.