Will Free China Be Our Friend?

Not necessarily, says James P. Pinkerton:

The Chinese know that the Communist Party, for all its faults, has succeeded in reversing an economic and political slide that lasted for five centuries. The Chinese flag is respected. Foreigners are again bringing tribute to the Middle Kingdom -- some $500 billion in foreign direct investment since 1980.

The other source of legitimacy for the party is nationalism. The Beijing government reclaimed Hong Kong and Macau in the 1990s. For the first time since the 16th century, no foreign colonies exist on Chinese soil. That means a lot in a land where the words ai guo zhe -- love of country -- are heard as often as "God Bless America" in the United States.
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Here in China, absent honest elections, there's no way to know the truth for sure, but it seems that the party's single biggest foreign-policy plank -- the re-incorporation of Taiwan into "The Motherland" -- is a political winner among ordinary Chinese. Which is to say, the United States, which supports Taiwan's continued independence, has probably found itself on the wrong side of China's emerging political majority.

This is an issue we should be paying more attention to - do our interests coincide with China's? How do we adapt when they don't? How do we resolve any coming conflict over resources, for example?

I'm reading Dale Copeland's The Origin of Major War for school, and Copeland has a very interesting reading of World Wars I and II. Basically, Copeland argues that both wars were Germany's rational reaction to growing Russian power. Copeland goes so far as to say that World War II wasn't Hitler's doing, fundamentally. According to Copeland, if you put a democratic leader in charge of Germany in the 1930s, he would react to the USSR in the same way. Needless to say, Copeland has been very controversial among historians.

I have to go in to his theory a bit. "Dynamic Differentials" (Copeland's theory) says that war among major powers is most likely when you have a dominant power whose power has peaked (or is in decline) and is faced with a growing threat or rival. In this reading, World War I was started by Germany in August 1914 (and not during one of the many previous crises) because that was when Germany had it's best chance to win against Russia.

Why had Germany concluded that war with Russia was necessary? Well, Russia had four times Germany's population, and 40 times it's land mass. Germany's economic growth had slowed in the previous decade, while Russia's reorganization and rearmament post-1905 had accelerated it's growth. Given these facts, among others, German leaders decided that war with Russia was necessary to maintain German supremacy in Europe.

Fast forward to 2005. The US is still the hegemonic power in the world, yes. But in the last 10 years, US relative power has declined significantly. We've gone from the French talking about hyperpuissance to talk about a multi-polar world. The most dangerous point, according to Copeland, is when a falling power and a rising power approach parity - this is when the dominant power is likely to resort to war as a last resort.

The caveat here is that war is most dangerous to the aggressor in a multipolar world - you might only attack China, but you might end up fighting Europe, Japan, whoever. So, to put words in Copeland's mouth, in a time of a declining hegemon, it is in the interest of a peaceful world for subordinate powers to organize in to multiple poles of power.

I've written before, I think this explains the relatively recent formation of regional trading blocs. The next step is for these trading blocs to become military alliances. If this were to occur in the EU, Europe would acheive near-parity with the US in terms of military numbers. It would, however, still be a limited offensive machine.

The first sign that a declining power has decided on a war path is that it's leadership will start exacerbating various crises, in the hopes of achieving a military solution to its decline. Look at Iraq, Iran, Korea, and I think you can see this as a possible explanation. Especially in the case of Iran and North Korea, the US is inflaming tensions in areas of Chinese interest. If US leaders are reading Copeland, they may have decided that war should happen now, while the US could still win, rather than later, when the US can't.