Crouching Tiger: Mearsheimer Interview

Just been reading this and I think there are some fundamental flaws in Mearsheimer's reasoning, and I think it's important to rebut these, before they become a self-fulfilling prophecy.



He only looks at dominance from a military point of view, and therefore thinks that China's neighbours "will work overtime to try to contain China and prevent it from dominating Asia."

However, China is already in the position of being the world's largest economy in terms of output, and is the world's largest trading nation AND is now also the world's largest outbound investor. Note that China already sits at the centre of all the trade flows in Asia.

And if we follow Mearsheimer's thought experiment of a future China which is wealthy and developed in say 20+ years, it will be some 3x larger than the US or the rest of Asia.

Then we will end up with a situation where the health of the Chinese economy and access to the Chinese economy is paramount for every Asian country, whilst access to the US economy would merely be nice to have.

Therefore the China's economic dominance in Asia will prevent the US from creating an effective balancing coalition in Asia, because China will have so many economic levers to show its displeasure at countries who think of doing so.

And that economic pain is simply not worth it, given that China has reached the natural limits of its territorial expansion and knows it. To the North is freezing Siberia, in the West are the sparsely populated Muslim steppes and deserts, to the South are the Himalayan mountains and the jungles of SE Asia.

Remember that China rules a territory which is the same size as the USA which spans a continent.

So the remaining territorial disputes comprise uninhabited Himalayan borderlands with India, Taiwan, and a bunch of small insignificant islands in the SCS/ECS.

I also take offense at Mearsheimer's view that China should be kept poor, as everyone in the world should have the opportunity to pursue a happy and prosperous life.

Plus I don't see China pursuing a serious arms race with the US for the forseeable future. China is still focused intensely on internal economic development, so they're devoting less than half as much as the US spends on the military. But that still gives China significant military capabilities.

And if we look at the USSR, Imperial Germany or Imperial Japan - they looked at building huge militaries in order to dominate their surroundings - but their economies were never large enough to sustain a dominant military force.

In comparison, China does have the prospect of building a dominant military force in Asia. But that military force will only come into being if China's economy becomes much larger and wealthy - and we've already seen how China (now and in the past) is adept at using its economy to overawe its neighbours and modify their behaviour with both sticks and carrots.

So I don't simply don't see China following the USSR, Imperial Germany or Imperial Japan and making the same mistake of going down the military dominance route - when the economic route offers far more leverage and options that China can actually use.

Let me guess: another neocon warmonger who failed to learn their lessons from their experiences from Vietnam to Syria? One thing China should do though, is to build up their nuclear strike capability as soon as possible. I'm afraid that China's nuclear minimal deterrence strategy no long works today, judging by the noises from the hawks who want to "preempt" the Chinese military. The size of the Soviet Union's economy had never been greater than 50% of that of the America's. Yet they have maintained a nuclear strike force that rivals the U.S. It would be too late for China if they do not start now, and then one day finding out that they have to solve the Taiwan problem militarily.

supercat said:

Let me guess: another neocon warmonger who failed to learn their lessons from their experiences from Vietnam to Syria? One thing China should do though, is to build up their nuclear strike capability as soon as possible. I'm afraid that China's nuclear minimal deterrence strategy no long works today, judging by the noises from the hawks who want to "preempt" the Chinese military. The size of the Soviet Union's economy had never been greater than 50% of that of the America's. Yet they have maintained a nuclear strike force that rivals the U.S. It would be too late for China if they do not start now, and then one day finding out that they have to solve the Taiwan problem militarily.

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How do you know that this is not another "star war" claim to scare China into entering an arms race? to distract China into diverting from its current encouraging direction?

Peter Navarro has been trying to make a career as a delusionist and he's failing. I use to see him as an "expert" on CNN and MSNBC. Haven't seen him in a long time on those news channels. Now I see him writing for the National Interest. Not much credibility with that tabloid either. But it's great that he finally admits the anti-China agenda has nothing to with countering Chinese aggression but everything to do with maintaining American dominance around the world. Who's the one that's evil when his side advocates keeping people poor just so they don't have a natural economic influence. I thought they just hate the government. Another truth revealed. They hate the people too to want to see suffering in poverty. China with a large number of consumers is naturally going to be dominant economic player. That kind of unnatural economic relationship they desire is in the ball park of slavery.

Here's an article on the flip side of delusion. A long article on Obama's view of the world. Of course it's always what others do that make situations worse...

Yup all the armchair general and warmonger should read this piece by Prof Hugh White to bring them back into reality.
They all assume that China will back down . What happened if that is not the case?

its-time-we-talked-about-war-china-

Whether Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull intended it or not, his new has been widely interpreted as sending a clear message that Australia is willing to join our allies in using armed force if necessary to defend the “rules based global order” from China’s strategic ambitions in Asia. Moreover, most people apparently think that’s a good message to send.

So it seems wise to ask whether this message is really true. Would we go to war with China over any of the issues which now loom as tests of the future order in Asia—in the Spratlys, or the Senkakus, or even Taiwan?

Most people who approve of the White Paper's message probably do so with complete confidence that the issue will never arise. They assume war won’t happen because they are sure the Chinese would always back down rather than risk a clash. Maybe they are right. Confronted with U.S. and allied resolve, Beijing might decide that even Taiwan was simply not worth the immense costs of conflict.

But we shouldn’t bet on that, because the Chinese probably think the same about America and its allies. They think a war would be just as costly to us as to them, and they believe the issues at stake matter more to them than to us. So they are likely to assume that, whatever we say now, on the brink we would back off rather than fight. And the more confident they are of that, the less likely they are to back down. It has happened before: in an escalating crisis, both sides assume the other will step back, and so neither does before it's too late. This is exactly what happened in July 1914.

Remember, the stakes are high for both sides. This is a contest over the future of the Asian order, and we should not for a moment assume that China is any less committed to building a new order than we are to preserving the old one. Unless one side or the other abandons its core objective, the chances of a crisis in the Western Pacific escalating to the point that we face a decision about going to war is already quite high, and is growing steadily.

So we ought to think seriously about what war with China over one of these issues would actually look like.

It is easy to start a war expecting a quick fight and an easy win. But America and its allies do not have overwhelming military superiority, and nor does China. That means neither side would be likely to win decisively after a short, contained conflict.

Both sides would therefore soon face a new choice: to escalate and accept the much higher costs of a big and protected war, or give up. Again, it is easy to assume that China would back off first, but we can't bet on that. China has an immense capacity to both inflict and absorb damage, and we cannot expect it to be any less committed to victory than we would be.

So would we back off and accept defeat to avoid escalation, if China didn't? This choice carries grave consequences, because both sides have nuclear forces, and there is a real risk of an escalating conflict crossing the nuclear threshold. Of course no one can imagine it coming to that, but it could unless one side backed down. And how can we be sure the Chinese would back down if we wouldn't? Alternatively, if we were capable of backing down, wouldn't it be better never to have started the war in the first place?

Even without a nuclear exchange, this would soon become the biggest and most costly war since 1945, and the end of all we envisage for the Asian Century, even if we won. And what would ‘winning’ even mean? Neither side has any chance of a decisive victory, so it is hard to imagine how a war with China ends. That alone should give pause to those who think it might be a good idea to start one.

In fact, I think it is unlikely Australia would go to war with China in any situation short of the outright invasion of the undisputed territory of another sovereign state. I think it is quite unlikely America would either, once a president was brought face to face with the military realities. So we are just bluffing, and our bluff is being steadily and systematically called by China.

None of this is to deny that Australia, like others, has a huge stake in the way Asia's regional order evolves, and that we need to do whatever we can to prevent changes in the order that affect our truly vital interests. Moreover, it is not to deny that some principles of regional order would be worth going to war with China to defend.

But we do have to ask whether the costs and risks of such a war are justified to defend every element of the so-called ‘rules based global order’ in places like the South China Sea. More realistically, we will have to accept some changes in the regional order to accommodate China. We all find the idea of making such an accommodation uncomfortable, even scary. But is it scarier than war with China? It is time to think carefully about that. And it is time to stop talking tough when we don't mean it. It is undignified as well as dangerous.

Hugh White is a Professor of Strategic Studies at the Australian National University. His work focuses

I'll add here, as time goes on, a new generation of American policymakers and voters will have a greater appreciation of the limits of American power.

The policymakers will have grown up in the shadow of the debacles in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. And over the past 20 years, the studies show that the vast majority of American voters haven't seen their living standards increase, as the gains have mostly accrued to those already at the top. Plus America is continuing on the trend of becoming a minority-majority country - and minorities in the USA have a very different view of American supremacy than Whites do.

That will breed a more humble and realistic foreign policy view towards China and the rest of the world.

Here is a recent article from VOX, on how the neo-conservatives took over foreign policy decision-making in the Republican party from the realists who dominated during the cold war. And how the rigid neo-con adherence to ideology results in foreign policy fantasies that don't work in the real world - and which is being repudiated by the voters.

Twilight of the neoconservatives
The movement's unlikely 20-year reign over the GOP could now be coming to an end.

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Mearsheimer Makes a LOT of logical fallacies and unwarranted assumptions, but at least he is genuinely thoughtful. Navarro is just an idiot, which should be clear to all from the silly loaded questions he asks.

As such, I won't waste any of my time on Navarro, and will instead focus mainly on Mearsheimer's arguments.

The biggest mistake he makes is selection bias. Co-incidence does not prove correlation. Picking examples from just before the start of WWI or WWII because WWI and WWII is just about to break out, and then using those Wars as evidence of the inevitability of war is just plain circular reasoning.

Yes, all the warring parties traded heavily with each other before war broke out. But there are also plenty of real life examples where previously hostile powers didn't go to war with each other as trade between then increased.

The UK, France and Spain used to be arch enemies who constantly warred against each other. Was it one side dominating and keeping the others poor and backwards what solved that problem and turned them from enemies to friends and eventually allies?

Focusing exclusively on capability with zero regard towards intentions is just idiotic. By that reasoning no one should be even allowed to have a sharpened stick or heavy rock since one could use those as weapons to kill people if one really wanted to.

Feeling the compunction to keep everyone else down in order to maintain your own position is also inherently tyrannical, and just plainly not going to work.

Rather than focus so much on WWI and WWII and lament on the inevitability of conflict and war, western strategists would serve themselves and their countries far far better by looking at historical examples where great powers were able to accommodate each other and co-exist peacefully and seeing how to implement that with China.

In pretty much every such case one could find, you will see that compromise, self-restraint and mutual respect are the keys.

The 'problem' is that all of that requires America to change and reign in its own behaviour, which is probably why it's not that attractive to American thinkers and leaders, when it's so much easier to insist others change or be forced to change to accommodate them instead.

China has already proven it has great restraint and pragmatism and has done pretty much all one could reasonably expect of it (my definition of reasonableness is whether others would be prepared to accept those terms if they were in China's position, so don't anyone go making stupid demands they would never expect their own country to accept in China's place).

I think the key issue to determine whether China's peaceful rise can be successful is if America is willing to make the necessary concessions and accommodation to treat China as a true equal.

AndrewS said:

I'll add here, as time goes on, a new generation of American policymakers and voters will have a greater appreciation of the limits of American power.

The policymakers will have grown up in the shadow of the debacles in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. And over the past 20 years, the studies show that the vast majority of American voters haven't seen their living standards increase, as the gains have mostly accrued to those already at the top. Plus America is continuing on the trend of becoming a minority-majority country - and minorities in the USA have a very different view of American supremacy than Whites do.

That will breed a more humble and realistic foreign policy view towards China and the rest of the world.

Here is a recent article from VOX, on how the neo-conservatives took over foreign policy decision-making in the Republican party from the realists who dominated during the cold war. And how the rigid neo-con adherence to ideology results in foreign policy fantasies that don't work in the real world - and which is being repudiated by the voters.

Click to expand...

I think a more sophisticated sense of fairness and empathy towards others, which would be the source of any humility, is going to be the likely driver for any new American foreign policy thinking assuming the US manages to positively handle its domestic ethnic diversity and wealth/opportunity distribution changes and issues.

plawolf said:

Mearsheimer Makes a LOT of logical fallacies and unwarranted assumptions, but at least he is genuinely thoughtful. Navarro is just an idiot, which should be clear to all from the silly loaded questions he asks.

As such, I won't waste any of my time on Navarro, and will instead focus mainly on Mearsheimer's arguments.

The biggest mistake he makes is selection bias. Co-incidence does not prove correlation. Picking examples from just before the start of WWI or WWII because WWI and WWII is just about to break out, and then using those Wars as evidence of the inevitability of war is just plain circular reasoning.

Yes, all the warring parties traded heavily with each other before war broke out. But there are also plenty of real life examples where previously hostile powers didn't go to war with each other as trade between then increased.

The UK, France and Spain used to be arch enemies who constantly warred against each other. Was it one side dominating and keeping the others poor and backwards what solved that problem and turned them from enemies to friends and eventually allies?

Focusing exclusively on capability with zero regard towards intentions is just idiotic. By that reasoning no one should be even allowed to have a sharpened stick or heavy rock since one could use those as weapons to kill people if one really wanted to.

Feeling the compunction to keep everyone else down in order to maintain your own position is also inherently tyrannical, and just plainly not going to work.

Rather than focus so much on WWI and WWII and lament on the inevitability of conflict and war, western strategists would serve themselves and their countries far far better by looking at historical examples where great powers were able to accommodate each other and co-exist peacefully and seeing how to implement that with China.

In pretty much every such case one could find, you will see that compromise, self-restraint and mutual respect are the keys.

The 'problem' is that all of that requires America to change and reign in its own behaviour, which is probably why it's not that attractive to American thinkers and leaders, when it's so much easier to insist others change or be forced to change to accommodate them instead.

China has already proven it has great restraint and pragmatism and has done pretty much all one could reasonably expect of it (my definition of reasonableness is whether others would be prepared to accept those terms if they were in China's position, so don't anyone go making stupid demands they would never expect their own country to accept in China's place).

I think the key issue to determine whether China's peaceful rise can be successful is if America is willing to make the necessary concessions and accommodation to treat China as a true equal.

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Just on the last part I don't think China is, nor is it trying or asking to be, the US' equal overall, but rather only in areas where China feels it has earned it and is hitting the glass ceiling of the status quo.

vesicles said:

How do you know that this is not another "star war" claim to scare China into entering an arms race? to distract China into diverting from its current encouraging direction?

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Currently, the size of China's economy is arguably the world's largest in PPP terms. The size of Russia's economy is only a fraction of China's. Yet they maintain a strong nuclear strike force that is comparable to that of the America's in size. China does not have to fall into the same old trap as the former Soviet Union did. All they have to do is to build up the size of their nuclear force so that is proportional to the size of their economy.

plawolf said:

Mearsheimer Makes a LOT of logical fallacies and unwarranted assumptions, but at least he is genuinely thoughtful. Navarro is just an idiot, which should be clear to all from the silly loaded questions he asks.

As such, I won't waste any of my time on Navarro, and will instead focus mainly on Mearsheimer's arguments.

The biggest mistake he makes is selection bias. Co-incidence does not prove correlation. Picking examples from just before the start of WWI or WWII because WWI and WWII is just about to break out, and then using those Wars as evidence of the inevitability of war is just plain circular reasoning.

Yes, all the warring parties traded heavily with each other before war broke out. But there are also plenty of real life examples where previously hostile powers didn't go to war with each other as trade between then increased.

The UK, France and Spain used to be arch enemies who constantly warred against each other. Was it one side dominating and keeping the others poor and backwards what solved that problem and turned them from enemies to friends and eventually allies?

Focusing exclusively on capability with zero regard towards intentions is just idiotic. By that reasoning no one should be even allowed to have a sharpened stick or heavy rock since one could use those as weapons to kill people if one really wanted to.

Feeling the compunction to keep everyone else down in order to maintain your own position is also inherently tyrannical, and just plainly not going to work.

Rather than focus so much on WWI and WWII and lament on the inevitability of conflict and war, western strategists would serve themselves and their countries far far better by looking at historical examples where great powers were able to accommodate each other and co-exist peacefully and seeing how to implement that with China.

In pretty much every such case one could find, you will see that compromise, self-restraint and mutual respect are the keys.

The 'problem' is that all of that requires America to change and reign in its own behaviour, which is probably why it's not that attractive to American thinkers and leaders, when it's so much easier to insist others change or be forced to change to accommodate them instead.

China has already proven it has great restraint and pragmatism and has done pretty much all one could reasonably expect of it (my definition of reasonableness is whether others would be prepared to accept those terms if they were in China's position, so don't anyone go making stupid demands they would never expect their own country to accept in China's place).

I think the key issue to determine whether China's peaceful rise can be successful is if America is willing to make the necessary concessions and accommodation to treat China as a true equal.

Click to expand...

Reading John Mearsheimer years ago contributed to getting me hooked on International Relations, and his brand of Offensive Realism is usually among the top of how I view short-term foreign relations. However, the biggest problem with Offensive Realism school of IR is it's deterministic and doesn't allow diplomacy to alter outcomes. Mearsheimer confirmed that in a debate with Kevin Rudd and Robert Daily on Intelligence Square recently. But, his thoughts on deteminism vs agency dovetails nicely into your last sentence on Sino-American relations. Namely, can US share power with China and treat it as an equal?

The answer to US-China power sharing will determine what happens in the short to medium run. But, there's a bigger problem in the long-run, and that is even if US embraces China as an equal, would it be enough, for China? I say that because the Middle Kingdom doesn't have a history of treating other states as equals, so what makes anyone believe it will do so when it returns to being the most powerful country once again?