Keeping China down, continued

Gee, I didn't mean to keep blogging about this, but this stuff keeps coming up. via DefenseTech, it looks like the Indians have handed the Americans their asses, again. (The first time was during war games last year.)

The more interesting element is that the Indians seem to have bested American F-16s with Russian Mig-21s and Su-30s. The Chinese, incidentally, have been buying and building SU-30s as fast as they can.

Obviously there have been no US-China war games to test our hypothesis, but I wouldn't bet on the Chinese doing much worse than the Indians.

Staying with China, John Mearshemier has a piece about the rise of China, and he's not optimistic:

If China continues its impressive economic growth over the next few decades, the US and China are likely to engage in an intense security competition with considerable potential for war. Most of China's neighbours, to include India, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Russia and Vietnam, will join with the US to contain China's power.

Um... what makes Mearsheimer think that Russia will side with the US, really? For that matter, South Korea isn't a sure thing either: Seoul has been so badly mistreated by the Bush Administration, I honestly wouldn't assume the South would be on Washington's side. This is especially so if the US continues to encourage Japanese re-militarization.

India, Japan, Singapore and Vietnam I buy trying to beat China, however. More Mearsheimer:

Specifically, China will seek to maximise the power gap between itself and its neighbours, especially Japan and Russia. China will want to make sure that it is so powerful that no state in Asia has the wherewithal to threaten it. It is unlikely that China will pursue military superiority so that it can go on a rampage and conquer other Asian countries, although that is always possible.

Instead, it is more likely that it will want to dictate the boundaries of acceptable behaviour to neighbouring countries, much the way the US makes it clear to other states in the Americas that it is the boss. Gaining regional hegemony, I might add, is probably the only way that China will get Taiwan back.

I think Mearsheimer underestimates the powerful attraction a rising power has - look at the example of Austria and Germany in the 1920s and '30s. The Austrians were happy to be annexed (at the time) because they saw it as a natural union with a large and growing power. Similarly, I wouldn't be surprised if the Taiwanese eventually saw reunification as in Taiwan's best interests. It's even more likely if Beijing manages to make a transition to some kind of democratic government.

Of course, Mearsheimer doesn't really care who's running China - and neither do most American scholars of international relations. This is, I think, a serious mistake. Most IR thinkers seem to think that China is a threat, period. I'm no fan of the Beijing regime, but they aren't going to be around forever. There's no reason for the US and China to go to war now, and there's even less if China's a democracy.

Articles like Mearsheimer's don't help matters. Ever hear of self-fulfilling prophecies? If everyone's convinced that a war is inevitable, well...