US-China Rivalry More Dangerous Than Cold War?

The Diplomat ^ | 1/28/2014 | Zachary Keck

[mac_truck]

The prominent realist international relations scholar John Mearsheimer says there is a greater possibility of the U.S. and China going to war in the future than there was of a Soviet-NATO general war during the Cold War.

Mearsheimer made the comments at a lunch hosted by the Center for the National Interest in Washington, DC on Monday. The lunch was held to discuss Mearsheimer’s recent article in The National Interest on U.S. foreign policy towards the Middle East. However, much of the conversation during the Q&A session focused on U.S. policy towards Asia amid China’s rise, a topic that Mearsheimer addresses in greater length in the updated edition of his classic treatise, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, which is due out this April.

In contrast to the Middle East, which he characterizes as posing little threat to the United States, Mearsheimer said that the U.S. will face a tremendous challenge in Asia should China continue to rise economically. The University of Chicago professor said that in such a scenario it is inevitable that the U.S. and China will engage in an intense strategic competition, much like the Soviet-American rivalry during the Cold War.

While stressing that he didn’t believe a shooting war between the U.S. and China is inevitable, Mearsheimer said that he believes a U.S.-China Cold War will be much less stable than the previous American-Soviet one. His reasoning was based on geography and its interaction with nuclear weapons.

[freedom462]

And, sadly, I think the way things are progressing this will undoubtedly be the China century.

[mac_truck]

It will be interesting to see whether Japan steps into a leadership role and rallies the other Asian nations impacted by an emerging Chinese hegemony. I think the US should encourage this.

[freedom462]

Why would they? Wouldn’t that also mean for japan to be effective, they would need to build up their military power as well and start finally getting into the Navy power game? And if so, why would the US tolerate that, given, that it was still well under a century ago that a militarily influential Japan set out to eradicate much of humanity.

[cunning_fish]

>>>China has absolutely no desire to have an armed conflict with the United States, nor anything else that would upset its reliance on US markets for its cheap manufactured goods. If the US imposed a trade embargo on China, China’s economy would tank overnight. The Chinese “Communists” like money and capitalism too much to allow that to happen.<<<

Amen. It is absolutely true by now.
I have no idea if it is to be true in a couple decades.

[mac_truck]

Wouldn’t that also mean for japan to be effective, they would need to build up their military power as well and start finally getting into the Navy power game?

In a word yes, which is what the current Japanese administration is signaling they would like to do. This will eventually require Japan to alter their pacifist constitution, but they're already taking steps in that direction.