By Fred H. Lawson
One influential line of argument advanced by scholars of international politics, commonly known as power transition theory, predicts that the rising economic, diplomatic, and military power of the People’s Republic of China will lead to war between the PRC and the United States in the near future. Skeptics of this argument point to clear signs that the PRC’s economy has started to stall, its global reputation remains tenuous, and its armed forces display crucial shortcomings, and conclude that the danger of a PRC-US war has been exaggerated. Hal Brands and Michael Beckley assert that both power transition theorists and their critics grasp important aspects of the contemporary world, but that the present situation is even more perilous than either camp claims.
Industrial expansion and technological prowess, particularly in computing and telecommunications, have propelled the PRC into the top rank of contemporary economies. Yet the Chinese Communist Party’s campaign to combat overpopulation by limiting family size has had disastrous consequences. The local workforce has sharply contracted, driving up production costs. The domestic market has shrunk, leaving companies heavily reliant on foreign markets. And the expense of supporting an aging population puts severe pressure on the public treasury. Meanwhile, the country has been unable to break its reliance on external suppliers of key inputs, most notably hydrocarbons and semiconductors. It therefore looks increasingly likely that the PRC’s meteoric rise is drawing to a close.
Leaders in Beijing apprehend the problem, yet they have chosen to keep aspiring to a dominant position in the global arena. This ambition arises partly from the profound, and often overlooked, humiliation that China has suffered at the hands of the European powers over the past two centuries. It also reflects the predispositions of the current president, Xi Jinping, whose sentiments differ profoundly from those of his more cautious predecessors. Furthermore, an energetic—if not actually aggressive—foreign policy might end up deflecting the widespread discontent that is percolating among the country’s increasingly restive urban workers and rural laborers.
Taken together, the leveling off of the PRC’s growth curve and the persistent drive to regain the august status that China enjoyed prior to the era of Western domination give Beijing a compelling incentive to use force to transform basic features of world affairs, before it misses its chance to do so. Like the US in the 1890s, Germany in the 1910s, Japan in the 1930s, and Russia today, the PRC can be expected to risk provoking general war in order to accomplish its strategic objectives in the face of rapidly deteriorating future prospects. The right moment for the PRC to act is precisely the 2020s; by the 2030s, the US, Europe, Japan, India, and Australia will have mobilized sufficiently to block Beijing’s initiatives. Already these formidable adversaries have taken steps to keep the PRC in a vulnerable and subordinate position.
So to paraphrase Lenin, what is to be done? Brands and Beckley advocate taking firm steps right away to protect the existing international order. The US and its partners must decide exactly which territories, resources, and values are most crucial and then make it clear that these will be defended without hesitation. At the same time, US policy-makers will need to be nimble enough to respond to changing and unexpected circumstances. Defenders of the status quo should not sit passively and allow Beijing to seize the initiative; as in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, “the only way to protect the free world [is] to make moves that antagonize powerful enemies.” And finally, never let current problems interfere with the ultimate goal—prevailing in the struggle against dictatorship and command economies.
Danger Zone lays out a compelling alternative to the implications of power transition theory, and reinforces the innovative analysis proposed by Dale Copeland in his under-appreciated The Origins of Major War (2001). Whether or not the policies that Brands and Beckley recommend might turn out to be disastrous is an open question. Will the leadership in Beijing react to forceful and assertive measures to contain the PRC by scaling back its ambitions and abandoning its provocative activities? The US Navy may well have succeeded in fending off an attack against the Republic of China in the autumn of 1958 by following this playbook, but a great deal of water has flowed through the Taiwan Strait since that moment.
Fred H. Lawson (ΦBK, Indiana University) is Professor of Government Emeritus of Northeastern University.