CAMBRIDGE – This month marks the 40th anniversary of Henry Kissinger’s secret trip to Beijing, which launched the process of mending a 20-year breach in diplomatic relations between the United States and China. That trip, and President Richard Nixon’s subsequent visit, represented a major Cold War realignment. The US and China put aside their intense hostility in a joint and successful effort to contain an expansionist Soviet Union.
Today,
the Soviet Union has vanished, and Chinese power is growing. Some Americans
argue that China’s rise cannot be peaceful, and that the US, therefore, should
now adopt a policy of containing the People’s Republic. Indeed, many Chinese
officials perceive that to be the current American strategy. They are wrong.
After
all, Cold War containment of the USSR meant virtually no trade and little
social contact. Today, by contrast, the US not only has massive trade with
China, but also extensive social contact, including 125,000 Chinese students
attending American universities.
With
the end of the Cold War, the containment of the Soviet Union ushered in by
Kissinger’s visit could no longer serve as the basis for US-China relations.
Moreover, relations with China cooled after the Tiananmen Square shootings in
1989, and the Clinton administration had to devise a new approach.
When
I was supervising the Pentagon’s East Asia Strategy Review in
1994, we rejected the idea of containment of China for two reasons. If we
treated China as an enemy, we were guaranteeing an enemy in the future. If we
treated China as a friend, we could not guarantee friendship, but we could at
least keep open the possibility of more benign outcomes.
In
addition, it would have been difficult to persuade other countries to join a
coalition to contain China unless China resorted to bullying tactics, as the
Soviets did after World War II. Only China, by its behavior, could organize the
containment of China by others.
Instead
of containment, the strategy that the Clinton administration devised could be
termed “integrate but hedge” – something like Ronald Reagan’s “trust but
verify” approach to strategic agreements with the Soviets. On one hand, the US
supported China’s membership in the World Trade Organization and accepted
Chinese goods and visitors. On the other hand, the Clinton-Hashimoto
Declaration of April 1996 affirmed that the US-Japan security treaty, rather
than being a Cold War relic, would provide the basis for a stable and
prosperous East Asia.
Clinton
also began to improve relations with India, a strategy that has enjoyed
bipartisan support in the US. The Bush administration continued to improve
bilateral relations, while deepening and formalizing the economic dialogue with
China. Then Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick made clear that the US
would accept the rise of China as a “responsible stakeholder.” That policy
continues to guide the Obama administration, which has broadened the annual
economic consultations with China to include security issues.
As
I argue in my new book The Future of Power, one of the major power
shifts of the twenty-first century is Asia revival. In 1800, Asia represented
half the world’s population and half the world’s economy. By 1900, the
industrial revolution in Europe and North America drove down Asia’s share of
global output to 20%. By the middle of this century, Asia should again
represent half the world’s population and GDP.
This
is a natural and welcome evolution, as it enables hundreds of millions of
people to escape from poverty. At the same time, however, it has given rise to
fears that China will become a threat to the US.
Such
fears appear exaggerated, particularly when one considers that Asia is not one
entity. It has its own internal balance of power. Japan, India, Vietnam, and other
countries do not want to be dominated by China, and thus welcome a US presence
in the region. Unless China develops its “soft power,” the rise in its military
and economic power is likely to frighten its neighbors into seeking coalitions
to balance its rise. It is as if Mexico and Canada sought an alliance with
China to balance US power in North America.
After
the 2008-2009 financial crisis, as China recovered rapidly and resumed 10%
annual economic growth, some Chinese officials and commentators urged a more
assertive foreign policy to reflect China’s new strength. Many mistakenly
believed that the US was in decline, and that the crisis presented new
strategic opportunities for China.
For
example, China began pressing territorial claims in the South China Sea, as
well as escalating a longstanding border dispute with India. The net result is
that over the past two years, China has worsened its relations with Japan,
India, South Korea, Vietnam, and others – quite a remarkable record that confirms
the US strategic premise that “only China can contain China.”
But
it would be a mistake to focus only on the hedging part of American strategy.
The US and China (as well as other countries) have much to gain from
collaborating on transnational issues. One cannot devise and implement
solutions to global financial stability, climate change, cyber terrorism, or
pandemics without such cooperation.
If
power is the ability to obtain the outcomes one wants, it is important to
remember that sometimes our power is greater when we act with others
rather than merely over others. This important dimension of a
“smart power” strategy for the twenty-first century is not captured by the
concept of containment. When Kissinger landed in Beijing four decades ago, he
ushered in not only a Cold War transformation, but also a new era of US-Chinese
engagement.
