John J. Mearsheimer: Can China Rise Peacefully?

[Music] thank you all for coming out to hear me just speak tonight it's a great privilege to be here at Reed and uh I've had a very interesting day and I look forward to the Q&A session after I talk tonight uh the subject as Alex said is can China rise peacefully and what I want to do is start with two preliminary comments and then go into the heart and soul of my talk my first preliminary comment is that I think there are two big questions surrounding the rise of China the first is Will China continue to rise over the next 30 or 40 years the way it has risen over the past 30 years in other words is it likely that China will continue its impressive rise and then the second question is if China does rise if it continues to rise can it rise peacefully with regard to the first question which is of great importance I am agnostic I have no idea what the answer is to that question I've talked to all sorts of people and to my amazement there are very smart people on both sides of that debate I'm always amazed when I go to China and I talk to Scholars and policy makers who think that China is not going to continue to rise in an impressive way they believe that China has structural problems that make that extremely unlikely there are other people who argue exactly the opposite I'm agnostic all I'm doing here is assuming that China is going to continue to rise and then I'm going to the second question which I think will be the most important question of the 21st century should China continue to rise I think this is an enormously important question especially for the United States but for China's neighbors and for China itself so that's the question second preliminary point the only way you can answer the question is with a theory and the only reason the reason you can only answer it with a theory is because we have no facts about the future right they just no facts the future hasn't happened yet this is an exercise in prediction so when I go to Washington I sometimes run into people who will say I was in Beijing last week I talked to person XY persons XY and z and after talking to those three people I'm convinced that China can rise peacefully I say this is a bunch of hoie persons X Y and Z will probably be six feet under by the time this question's operative and furthermore the people who will be running China are probably in high school now and how do you know what they're going to be thinking in 20 years or 30 years just can't know we have no facts about the future because it hasn't happened yet therefore what we need is a theory we need a theory about great power politics we need a theory about Rising great powers that we are confident can explain the past and the present and therefore we'll be good at explaining the future so this says that what I have to do tonight is I have to lay out my theory of great power politics that's the first thing that I have to do then the second thing I'm going to do is I'm going to give you a synoptic version of American foreign policy since 1783 and what I'm going to try and do and giving you that synoptic version of American foreign policy is convince you that it coincides with my theory that my theory fits neatly with American foreign policy since 1783 and that's designed to give you confidence that my theory makes good sense and it has some predictive power then the third thing I'm going to do is I'm going to take the theory and I'm going to apply it to China and not only am I going to apply it to China I'm going to ask what the United States and what China's neighbors are likely to do in addition to what China is likely to do so again there are three parts to my lecture first you're going to get my theory a great power politics second part is I'm going to take that theory and apply it to American foreign policy from 1783 up to the present third part is I'm going to take the theory and apply it to the rise of China talk about China and what it's going to do and of course my argument will be you're all smart enough to figure this out that China will imitate the United States and the United States acts according to the theory therefore China acts according to the theory right so that's the exercise so let me start with my Theory my theory begins with five simple assumptions about the world and I take those five assumptions and I put them in the blender and I hit the on switch mix them up and get three forms of behavior and what those three forms of behavior tell you is that we live in a very competitive world where great Powers compete with each other to be the biggest and baddest dude on the Block okay so let me start with the five assumptions and then tell you how I reach that conclusion first assumption is that states are the principal actors in the International System and that system is anarchic that means that there's no higher authority that sits above States Anarchy is the opposite of hierarchy most of you probably think Anarchy means murder in mayham that's not what Anarchy means in my story Anarchy in my story is simply the opposite of hierarchy it says that there's no higher authority that sits above States states are the principal actors in the system and they're like pool balls on a table second assumption is all states have some offensive military capability obviously a country like Belgium a country like mosambique a country like Guatemala has very little offensive military capability and in contrast countries like the United States countries like Israel countries like Britain countries like Russia have considerable offensive military capability but the point is every country has some offensive military capability third assumption which is of great importance has to do with intentions remember the first assumption that states are the principal actors and they operate in an anarchic system no hierarchy second was all states have some offens of military capability third assumption had to do with in has to do with intentions and there the assumption is you can never be certain about the intentions of other states now this is an enormously important assumption in my theory and that's why I want to spend a couple minutes unpacking it this assumption about intentions the reason that intentions are so difficult to Divine is because they're in the heads of policy makers and you can't see them they're very different than capabilities during the Cold War when we used to look at the Soviet Union we used to be trying to figure out number one what were Soviet capabilities and two what were Soviet intentions capabilities were never hard to figure out we could see these material capabilities we could count how many attack submarines how many ss8 how many foxbats how many Armored Division equivalents the Soviets had we had a really good sense of what their capabilities were we could never figure out what their intentions were we had huge debates as to what was inside Nikita kev's head or what was inside Leonard brn's head some people said X some people said y others said Z you just couldn't know because you can't see them so intentions are very hard to Divine now some people would disagree with me on that say you can get a pretty good sense of what intentions are today my Sunday punch in response is even if you think you could figure out what intentions are today there's no way you can know what future intentions are there's no way you can know what Future Leaders of any country will be be thinking and a good example that illustrates this has nothing to do with ir has to do with divorce think about divorce when two people get married they invariably think that the person they're marrying is wonderful I mean who would get married to someone you didn't think was wonderful you think that person has benign intentions towards you right well you know we have a 50% divorce rate in America that means that 50% of the people are guessing wrong right that it means that they think they're marrying a person who's going to think they're the cats meow as my mother would say forever and ever and that proves not to be the case this is actually a very depressing thought but if you think about it you can never be certain that the person you're marrying won't turn out to be a till of the Hun now I want to be clear this is not to say you can be certain that the person will turn out to be a tahan because after all 50% of the people do live happily ever after it's just to say you can't be certain that that person won't turn out to be in T the Hun and the same thing is true with regard to the intentions of States you cannot know I believe what the intentions of states are now but you certainly can't know over the long term okay so three assumptions on the table system is anarchic got States in this system is the principal actors and it's an anarchic system they all have some offensive capability and number three you can't be certain about intentions fourth assumption which will be common sensical to all of you folks is that the principal goal of states is to survive and this is not to say that survival is the only goal it's to say it's the most important goal and it's the most important goal for the obvious reason that if you don't survive you can't pursue the other goals fifth assumption is states are rational actors states are strategic calculators this is a way of basically saying that states are good at figuring out clever strategies for maximizing their prospects of survival it's the rational actor assumption those are the five assumptions you take them in the blender take them put them in the blender you hit the on switch you mix them up you get three forms of behavior first is States fear each other they fear each other because there's always the danger you'll end up living next to a state that has significant offensive military capability and malign intentions toward you because you can't be certain about intentions and some states have a lot of offensive capability you end up living next door to Adolf Hitler you live end up living next door to Imperial Japan it is not going to be pretty right so that's the first reason you fear other states second reason is in the International System when you dial 911 you know who's at the other end nobody because it's an anarchic system there's no 911 you fear other states obviously that level of fear varies from case to case but fear is always there the 911 problem points to the second form of behavior States quickly figure out that the best way to survive in this system is to depend on themselves the International System as we say in political science speak is a self-help system or as my mother used to say when I was a little boy God helps those who help themselves that's how the state system works why because you can never trust that somebody will be there for you if you're a Ukrainian are you going to trust the Americans please you want to trust the Russians you know trust anybody do it for yourself provide for your own security it's a self-help system so the first form of behavior is fear second is self-help third is that states in this system quickly figure out that the best way to survive is to use rhetoric I've already used that we used in New York City when I was a little boy is to be the biggest and baddest dude on the Block because if you're the biggest and baddest dude on the Block nobody fools around with you how many you people go to bed at night worrying about Canada or Mexico attacking us have you ever thought about that you worry about Canada or Mexico attacking us or maybe you worry about Guatemala or the Dominican Republic come on it's inconceivable that any state in this region would attack us why because we are incredibly powerful in an anarchic system where you cannot be certain about the intentions of other states you want to be extremely powerful because it's the best way to survive you want to maximize your relative power you want to be the hedgemon now I want to unpack this a bit more I believe that no state can become a global hegemon simply because the globe is too big and there's too much water I believe that the best you can do is be a hedgemon in your region of the world you dominate your region of the world and this of course is what the United States does the United States is the only Regional hedgemon in modern history we dominate the Western Hemisphere but the goal is to be a regional hedgemon to be so powerful that you don't have to go to bed at night worrying about anybody in your neighborhood attacking you but you have a second goal the second goal is to make sure that there is no other Regional hedgemon in the world to put it in Pentagon e you want to make sure you don't have a peer competitor you want to make sure that Imperial Germany does not dominate all of Europe you want to make sure you the United States dominate the Western Hemisphere but nobody dominates their region of the world the way you dominate yours now you're probably saying to yourself I can understand given what John has said about Anarchy and uncertainty about intentions why you want to be a hegemon and your region but why does it matter if you have a hedgemon in another region it all has to do with the concept I call Freedom to Ram most of you have never thought about this I'm sure one of the reasons that the United States is running all over God's Little Green Acre sticking its nose in everybody's business is not simply because we're powerful but because we're free to roam we have no security threats in the Western Hemisphere and because because we have no security threats in the Western Hemisphere we don't have to commit any forces we don't have to commit resources to this region we're free to roam and we roam all over the place just think about you're in China you're looking out along your Coastline you see the US Navy out there you see the US Air Force out there you see Army troops in Korea you see ground troops Marines in particular in okanawa you go to Europe the Americans are in Europe the Americans are in the Gulf the Americans are Here There and Everywhere why because we're free to roam well if you're the United States of America you don't want anybody else to be free to roam why because they'll roam into your backyard right so what my theory says is that if you're great power you have two goals one to be a regional hedgemon and two sure you have no peer competitor there's no other Regional hedgemon that's my theory and it's based on those five assumptions second part of my talk American foreign policy from 1783 to the present when the United States got started after we won our independence from Britain in 1783 we were comprised of 13 measly colonies strung out along the Eastern Seaboard over the next 60 plus years we marched across North America murdered huge numbers of Native Americans stole their land went to war with Mexico in the 1840s stole from them which is now the southwest of the United States in 1812 we invaded Canada with the express purpose of making Canada part of the United States the reason that Toronto is not the capital of Canada and Ottawa is is the British ran that place at the time expected us to pay a return visit and they didn't want the capital close to the American Border they wanted it further back that's why otta was the capital we had a voracious appetite for Conquest we wanted the Caribbean very badly the southern states were desperate to move South and the only reason we didn't move South the only reason the Caribbean is not part of the United States today is because of the slavery issue is many of you know sugar was the principal crop in the Caribbean sugar is even more labor intensive than cotton and tobacco that meant there were even more slaves in the Caribbean than there were in the American South and the northern states did not want any more slaveholding states in the union that's what held us up from going south right we had a voracious appetite for conquest and annexation it's no accident that when Adolf Hitler went into the Soviet Union on June 22nd 1941 for the next few months he talked frequently about imitating what the Americans did he said these are a people who know how to create laan's realm he referred to the vulgar River as our Mississippi for purposes of creating Regional Hony we not only had to conquer all that territory in North America that was called Manifest Destiny we also had another task and that was is to throw the European great powers out of the hemisphere and keep them out you all know that in 1823 old President James Monroe basically told the European great Powers we're not strong enough to throw you out now we're eventually going to throw you out and we're not going to let you back in this is our Hemisphere and you are not welcome here that's what the Monroe Doctrine was all about it wasn't until 1898 that we finally finished off the Spanish and the Spanish americ war and we clearly established Hemy in the Western Hemisphere the British were godone French were godone there were no European great Powers left and there are enough people in this audience who were old enough to remember during the Cold War when the Soviet Union used to Monkey around in Cuba you remember how that used to drive us Stark raving crazy who are these people to come in our hemisphere we own the Western Hemisphere that's what the Monroe Doctrine is all about so the Manifest Destiny po policy and the Monroe Doctrine policy that was the essence of establishing Regional hegemony now as I told you great Powers have two goals one is to establish Regional hegemony and two is to make sure you don't have a peer competitor in the 20th century 20th century after we established Regional hity we had four potential peer competitors Imperial Germany Imperial Japan Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union the United States played a key role in putting all four of those countries on the scrap peap of history in the spring of 1917 when it looked like Germany might win World War I we intervened and I would make the argument if I had three more hours that we tipped the balance in favor of the allies and help defeat Imperial Germany we were not going to let them dominate Europe in World War II we beat the japanes single-handedly in the Pacific we had no intention of letting Japan dominate East Asia and with regard to Nazi Germany we played a key role the Soviets of course played the key role but excuse me the United States played the key role defeating played a key role defeating Nazi Germany in World War II and then during the Soviet during the Cold War we played the principal role containing the Soviet Union and then when it collapsed we ushered it down the toilet bowl and shortly thereafter the George HW Bush Administration made it clear that we were number one and we had every intention of remaining number one what I'm trying to say to you here is if you look at American history in a cold and calculating way it's quite clear that the United States has behaved according to the dictates of my the third part of my talk I want to talk about China again we're assuming that China continues to grow economically you don't think China is going to try to dominate Asia you know the Chinese refer to the period roughly between 1850 and 1950 is the century of national humiliation China was very weak you know what happens when you're very weak in the International System other states take advantage of you the Japanese the Americans with their open door policy the Europeans they all took advantage of the Chinese they did Terrible Things to the Chinese the Chinese remember it this is why Chinese nationalism is such a dangerous force today that centy of national humiliation nause at them well getting back to the realist Story the balance of power story you don't think the Chinese are going to Care greatly about being so powerful in Asia that nobody can fool around with them again I bet they are I bet they're really going to Care you go up to your average Chinese policy maker and you say you have two choices choice Number One China can be 20 times more powerful than than Japan Choice number two Japan is 20 times more powerful than China do you think it matters what do you think the Chinese policy maker is going to say he going to say we'll take that first option every time we want to be much more powerful than Japan we remember what happened the last time we were weak what about the Americans in East Asia you think the Chinese are happy about having the Americans running aircraft and ships up and down their Coastline you think that makes them happy it doesn't we have a Monroe Doctrine you don't think they're going to have a Monroe Doctrine they're already talking the Chinese about pushing us out beyond the first island chain and then when they get powerful enough pushing us out beyond the second island chain it's Monro Doctrine mentality I don't blame him one bit if I was the National Security advisor in Beijing and the president asked me what we should do with the Americans I'd say we should figure out how to get them out of here the same R same way as if I was in Washington I'd be a staunch proponent of the Monroe Doctrine I don't want the Chinese Germany Soviet Union Japan I don't want anybody monkeying around in the Western Hemisphere why because the best way to be secure in an anarchic world where you can't be certain about the intentions of other states is to be a regional hedgemon so why shouldn't the Chinese have their own Monroe Doctrine why shouldn't they try to push the Americans out as my mother taught me when I was a little boy what's good for the goose is good for the gander well if it's good for us to have a Monroe Doctrine please exlain to me why it's not good for them to have Monroe Doctrine they're going to have one believe me they're going to try and dominate Asia and then not going to want us in their backyard and that gets to another issue if they do dominate Asia and this is going to be a very powerful country if they grow economically right if they dominate Asia they will be free to roam and they will roam into the Western Hemisphere and this will not make us happy see so that's why we and this brings us to the Americans This is why the Americans will go to Great Lengths to prevent China from dominating Asia so I'm telling you that what Chinese will do if they continue to grow economically is they'll translate that economic might into military might and they'll try to dominate Asia and what the Americans will do is the Americans will try to contain them and ultimately wreck them that's what we did with Imperial Germany Imperial Japan Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union you think we're going to let them dominate Asia think we just stand by and let that happen you've all heard of the pivot to Asia what do you think the pivot to Asia is all about we're pivoting to Asia for a very good reason we're scared of the Chinese and by the way we're not the only country that scared the Chinese virtually all of China's neighbors except for North Korea and Pakistan are scared of China you can see the balancing Coalition already beginning to form for those of you who have doubts go home and Google Japan and India Str Ric cooperation Japan India strategic cooperation Google it you'll be amazed at how many articles come up Japanese and the Indians are talking the Americans and the Vietnamese are talking Vietnamese have been talking us about coming back to camon Bay Philippines the Cold War ended the Philippines said adios to the Americans don't come back they're singing a completely different tune now go to Singapore very different world they're all nervous can you blame them they are living next door to a very big and very powerful country the balancing Coalition will be South Korea Japan Taiwan of course the United States Vietnam Singapore Indonesia Malaysia Russia be the balancing Coalition Myanmar for those of you have doubts just watch the newspapers over the next two years and watch us working on Myanmar what we're trying to do with Myanmar now is peel them away from the Chinese right the Chinese and the Burmese have been quite friendly for a long time and we're trying to peel away Myanmar so what I'm telling you is that as China continues to rise what's going to happen is you're going to have an intense security competition the Chinese on one side the Americans and their Asian allies on the other side now what's going to make this an especially intense competition is what we call in international relations the security dilemma the security dilemma basically says that anything that one country does for defensive purposes appears offensive in nature to the other country and vice versa let me give you an example the pivot to Asia if you were to ask Barack Obama is this offensive or defensive in nature he would say of course behind closed doors because we're not allowed to talk publicly in an honest way about what we're doing here in America right he would tell you again behind closed doors that we're pivoting to Asia for purposes of containing China and it's being done for defensive reasons and I believe that he genuinely believes it and I believe that from an American perspective it's correct but if you're seeing in Beijing and you see the Americans pivoting to Asia it does not look defensive in nature to you it looks offensive in nature to you and the Americans say well it's just containment the Chinese say it doesn't look like containment to us when I listen to John M Sher talk it sounds like encirclement before World War I the French the Russians and the British put together the triple anant the triple anant was designed to contain to deter Imperial Germany if you were sitting in Berlin in those days what you would say is these countries are not containing us they are encircling us Moscow used to say the same thing during the Cold War just to switch gears a bit let's go to Beijing Beijing sees what's going on sees that its neighbors are increasingly distrustful the Japanese are spending more money on defense the American pivoting to Asia so the Chinese say what we have to do is spend more money on defense to defend ourselves well what is the Pentagon interpret this as they're building offensive military capability this is evidence that they have aggressive intentions remember I told you you can't tell what intentions are intentions are very hard to read but you can see capabilities so what happens is the Chinese the American capabilities increasing the Americans see Chinese capabilities increasing and because they can't really figure out what intentions are they use capabilities as a proxy okay this is the essence of the security dilemma and the end result is that both sides are going to spend a lot more money on defense and each side is going to interpret the other side to be doing it for offensive purposes while they're doing it for defensive purposes this is the security dilemma so what that is going to do is it's going to fuel the arms race it's going to fuel that competition and it's going to make the likelihood of War reasonably High not very high do live in the nuclear world but reasonably High be very dangerous like the cold war let me conclude by returning to the subject of theory as some of you know our theories in the social sciences are crudee instruments our theories are not very good uh we have no choice but to employ Theory to make sense to the world we just need Theory but nevertheless our social science theories are not very good I often tell students uh if your theory gets it right 75% of the time you're in the Hall of Fame so you come up with a theory Theory you get it right 75% of the time you're in the Hall of Fame let's assume that my theory is Right 75% of the time and I'm in the Hall of Fame this makes me feel good of course may not be true but let's just assume that that means however that my theory is wrong 25% of the time other words there are cases that come up where my theory can't explain it and that happens 25% of the time given The Bleak story that I've told you here tonight let's hope that the rise of China falls in the category of those 25% of cases where my theory fails thank you I'd be happy to take questions is there a mic oh there's a microphone phone right there why don't we start with this gentleman here yes is it work can you hear me yeah you know I uh am a little bit disturbed because you haven't answered the question that this evening was intended to answer can China rise peacefully it seems to me that one of the problems is that it's the wrong question the real question is will this country the united states allow China to rise peacefully because the way you've described uh our situation to maintain the regional Edon it means that it's uh basically our relatively aggressive moves against China to contain it rather than any aggressive move by China which say interests that we will defend but they are not heton so again I think the question should be reversed will this country allow China to rise peacefully well from China's point of view the best way to achieve hegemony is to do it peacefully right there's no question about that uh you know the Chinese have been involved in a number of crises in recent years and my view is that other countries precipitated all of those crises that the Chinese have precipitated remarkably few crises I think the Chinese have overreacted when other countries have precipitated the crisis but nevertheless the Chinese have not precipitated the crisis and the reason is time is on China's side right China just gets more and more powerful with time so if you're China you don't want to start a fight now over some islands in the East China Sea or the South China SE if you're the Philippines or you're Vietnam or you're Japan and time is not on your side you want to start the trouble now when Uncle Sam is really much more powerful than China is so the Chinese have a vested interest in Rising peacefully and by the way given that they will have roughly four times the popul ation of the United States in the year 2050 if they turn into a giant Hong Kong or a giant South Korea this is going to be a superpower like we've never seen before right oh my God I mean it I'm just sort of embellishing your point that you know they may rise peacefully uh and they have a vested interest in doing peacefully we will not let them right the United States as I tried to make clear is a ruthless great power you want to remember this is a slightly different subject doesn't have to do with containing China the Cold War ended in 1989 that was 25 years ago we have been at War for two out of every three years since the Cold War ended and we have fought six different Wars and we're itching to fight Wars in places like Syria and Iran right so the United States is a tough customer just one other story story on this when I go to China I've given this talk in China many times uh Chinese are very realist uh when I go to China I often start my Talks by saying it's good to be back among my people uh because I'm a realist I'm a realist and the Chinese are realists it's unlike going to Washington when I go to Washington it's like an alien culture I don't know Alex has been in Washington for the past two years I don't know how you can stand right just pagon a little different he's in the Pentagon I don't know about that either but the Chinese the Chinese talk my language and I don't mean Chinese I mean realism so but the Chinese do not like what I have they basically don't like the story I have to tell because they want to think that they can rise and live happily ever after which is completely understandable however there's one part of my story that they love and that's when I say that the United States is an incredibly ruthless great power the Chinese response is finally an American who tells the truth right so they like what you just had to say and uh I basically agree with you sir you should should just hang on just for one second thank you um how does the tremendous economic interdependence between America and China complicate things I think aren't they our largest trading partner and aren't they the largest finer of our government I mean how can we fight with somebody like that yeah uh I I've given this talk probably a hundred times uh and uh when it comes to counterarguments that is always the number one counter argument to me it's really quite interesting U and just to embellish a bit the argument is uh it's it's what we call in the IR World economic interdependence Theory and his argument is that the United States and China are both hooked on capitalism they're both getting rich and they're both trading extensively with each other their economy is dependent on ours our economy is dependent on theirs and we could throw the Japanese in the Australians and we can tell an even bigger story to support your thesis and the argument is that going to war would be sheer lunacy because you'd be killing the goose that lays the golden eggs right so who's going to start a war now my response is that I would be foolish to say that there would never be any cases that don't conform to your theory right I think they're going to be some cases that conform to your theory that your theory has some explanatory power but my my argument is your theory has truly limited explanatory power and is not a sound basis for peace now the question is why does John say that to a large extent it has a lot to do with how you think about the relationship between politics and economics and your argument is basically privileging economics over politics you're basically saying that in a political crisis or in a crisis over political issues right economic considerations Will trump political considerations right I actually don't believe that I believe that politics trumps economics in most cases again not all cases because I caned that there will be cases that fit your theory but in most cases politics trumps economics some of you are probably saying what is exactly is he talking about let me give you two examples both involving China the best one is Taiwan the Chinese say that if Taiwan declares its independence they will go to war like that so in other words if next week Taiwan were declare its independence China goes to war against Taiwan it's just not happening the Chinese fully admit that this would have significant negative Economic Consequences along the lines you're talking about but their view is that from a political point of view Taiwan on becoming independent is so thoroughly unacceptable that they would fight and they would pay that economic cost right another example uh is the South China excuse me the East China Sea you know the Japanese and Chinese are barking at each other over these rocks Japanese call them the Saku Islands the Chinese call them the diao islands right and I was in Beijing in November talking to a lot of academics uh and they're very worried that war could break out uh at any point over the Saku Dia Islands they're not saying it's likely they're just worried and the argument that people make is that nationalism is a very powerful force in China it's a very powerful force in Japan nationalism means these rocks really matter to both sides and you could get into a fight and what they're saying is that politics trumps economics right I'll give you one more examp example Ukraine uh a lot of people think we should put sanctions on Ukraine right excuse me sanctions on Russia we should make Russia pay a significant economic cost for what it did especially with regard to Crimea the argument I make is first of all we don't have that kind of Leverage but let's assume we did have the leverage let's assume we could really make the Russians hurt uh with economic sanctions they'd bear the cause they' bear the cost because the Strategic calculations the Strategic considerations that are involved in the situation are such that they cannot afford the Russians cannot afford to allow Ukraine to drift into the West's orbit right so political considerations political considerations I believe would dominate economic considerations in that case I think Putin and Company would just swallow the costs the economic cost then my final example is World War I which is the classic counter example to your position there was a huge amount of economic interdependence in Europe before World War I and you still have World War I so I think that economic interdependence will not save the day but again I may be wrong let me come to this woman right here hi um I'm just a little curious uh where in this uh sort of nice system of independent states rationally acting where would uh separ organization or terrorist organizations sort of fit in or states that act arguably non rationally sort of fit in with the rise of China or the hedge of money of the United States okay there's sort of two questions there where do terrorists fit into my story and number two we're the states that are not rational fit into my story just with regard to terrorists terrorists don't fit into my story right two points there first of all it's a theory that focuses on States not terrorists secondly I think terrorism is a pimple on the heiny of humanity right it's it's a minor problem I I know most of you Americans have been brainwashed uh over the past uh 15 years to believe that there's this great terrorist threat out there and that you know they're going to get us tomorrow and they'll probably use a nuclear weapon this is just a bunch of hoie right the terrorist threat is not a significant threat uh and terrorist organizations are not that big a problem uh Al Qaeda got a lucky shot in on September 11th it was truly regrettable but uh the idea that we're sort of Under Siege and that these people are going to get us again next week or five years down the road is just not going to happen and they're not going to get nuclear weapons either so the theory doesn't have anything to say about terrorist groups and doesn't matter because terrorist groups don't matter states are the principal actors in the system with regard to rational actor calculation it's very interesting my theory is based on five assumptions the fifth assumption as I made clear is that states are rational actors obviously some states are not rational actors some of the time this gentleman is absolutely correct that's why my theory is wrong at least 25% of the time I wish that weren't true as Alex knows we all like to have theories that are right 100% of the time but it's just not the way social science works and you're pointing to a very important problem the fact that states don't always act rationally and therefore the theory doesn't always apply why don't we come to this woman right here and then you should just wait to seconds for the microphone just so everybody can hear your question uh do you really believe um China economically is that such a big play I mean it's a big player but is it so strong that as people describe it and or just you know the media and the politicians uh drip up the numbers or whatever so they can you know keep the defense budget and or even increase it because I mean to me China economically is I don't believe the number two numbers okay well her this is gets back to my first preliminary point I don't know what to believe in all honesty uh I don't know whether China is going to continued to grow and is growing today much like it did 10 or 15 years ago it's just very hard for me to say and when I talk to experts who study the issue they're all over the map so it's just hard for me to say my second and more important point is I hope the Chinese economy does not grow I hope the Chinese economy flat lines you understand that's the implication of my analysis I gave a talk in Taiwan in December and uh I was talking about taiwan's future taiwan's future is very Bleak if China continues to grow because T Taiwan is a small island very close to the Chinese Mainland and the Chinese have made it clear they are eventually going to take Taiwan back so this is bad news for Taiwan and what I pointed out was that Taiwanese businessmen in the 1990s and throughout the 2000s were ecstatic about the fact that China was growing economically because they saw it as a wonderful business opportunity my view at the time and of course my view now is this is crazy if you're Taiwan East the last thing you want is for the Chinese economy to grow and grow and grow because you're going to disappear as a de facto independent state right and you know this gets back to this gentleman's question about economic independence see a lot of people believe that as China grows and grows and grows it'll never start a war against Taiwan against anybody for these kinds of reasons you follow the argument right this is sort of the counter to me John if China continues to grow economically right because of economic independence there you'll have no war my response to that this gets back to your question marries it for this one is we cannot be certain about what China's intentions will be so you're basically telling me that what we're going to do this is why I say the people who argue against me you're telling me that what we're going to do is we're going to help China turn into a behemoth when we can't know what its intentions are this is crazy no state in its right mind would do it if it was rational right you wouldn't do this we want China to be weak you want all the other countries in the system to be weak and you want to be Godzilla simply because that's the best way to survive in an anarchic system where you can't know another States intentions right and by the way in the case of Taiwan we know what their intentions are anyway this gentlemen yeah it would bring to your left there's a I like um I uh the logic your assumptions and isach for because even though the intentions of a state are not unitary they're politically mixed up and diverse uh there are any number of examples of local hedgemon that have overplayed their hand and destroyed their position and that should be part of the logic of indeed any rational or temporarily rational actors how do I avoid becoming a great and Britain and expending my wealth and losing everything how do I avoid become Germany and uh etc etc yeah this is a great question uh just to unpack this just a bit uh my argument is that as you grow more powerful economically what you should do is turn that economic might into milit AR might and try to dominate your region of the world the counterargument that my realest friends make these are my realest friends the counterargument that they make against me is John look at what happened to all the countries that tried to follow your theory Imperial Germany Imperial Japan Nazi Germany the Soviet Union they all ended up on the scrap heap of history and John there's only one country that pulled it off off and that's the United States of America and we were in a very special situation because there were no other great Powers physically located in this region of the world so we kind of had a free hand especially as immigration kicked in and the country got bigger and bigger so if we follow your theory John we're going to end up getting destroyed therefore if you're rational right and I do have a rational actor assumption you will not do what John says which is maximize your relative power you'll expand ever so gently but not push too far at all okay that's the counterargument to me my counter counterargument is that there is no question that in the case of china and all these other cases that they will meet resistance right they will meet resistance but what happens is that States look for opportunities to overcome that resistance they just don't sit there they push and they push and they push and they invariably get away with it for quite a while especially as you get really powerful and then usually what has happened in the past is they tripped and they didn't achieve Regional hity leaving the United States is the only example in modern history of a state achieving uh that vaunted goal but I think what will happen in the Chinese case is they will try uh and I think they will try because the logic that I laid out is so powerful that's a self-serving statement but I'm just telling you how I think about it and if they're smart if they're rational going back to the rational actor assumption they'll only push so far and then they'll stop because they understand that Uncle sugar and his Asian allies are so powerful that they can't push any further so my great hope is that we will contain them and there will be no war because the Chinese will recognize the logic that you're laying out but at the same time I do want to emphasize I think the Chinese will constantly be probing they'll be looking for opportunities and the problem is that sometimes you end up getting a war in those situations there also okay no if you just let the person back there then we can come up here sorry uh thank you um it seems like most of the examples that you've given could you talk into the microphone oh sure sorry I can't tell a little louder um it seems like most of the examples that you've given hinge on uh revisionist Powers seeking some form of territorial expansion uh that is like China taking over Taiwan uh the way that America engaged in several wars during the 19th century over neighboring territories um I'm wondering if you could but the problem with territorial expansion is is that that kind of expansion is often very likely to provoke some kind of armed conflict uh I'm wondering if you could speak to the potential of economic expansion provoking similar levels of armed conflict that is you look at the way that China has done a huge amount of investment in uh subsaharan Africa and in various natural resource rich countries there um and in an age of of of capital flows being able to move across countries and National borders very easily it's much much easier to invest a huge amount of money in a country than it is to send a lot of troops there to take it over politically yeah let me make a whole slew of different points just in response to that excellent question first of all remember I said the United States started out as 13 measley colonies and then it had to conquer all this territory China is already a giant land mass so it doesn't have to go out and you know conquer the equivalent of North America uh it is a big country geographically already second point I'd make to you is they do have a handful of territorial disputes where they are pretty bushy on the fact that they plan to settle those uh territorial disputes on their own terms third point I'd make is getting back to my response to this gentleman I think that they would much prefer not to do that with a war and I think they understand that from their point of view the smart strategy is to grow economically and militarily and just become so powerful that you just dictate the terms of a settlement if in the year 2050 China has turned into a giant Hong Kong it is really rich and it's got all those people and it translates that economic might into a lot of military might if they decide that they own the South China Sea there's nothing we can do about it there's nothing this is taiwan's problem right so in a very important way they do have an interest in growing economically and avoiding War this is the point that I was making to this gentleman I was actually just repeating his or embellishing his point they have a vested interest in not fighting a war that's just the best way to do it right and they don't need much more territory they do have these territorial disputes they are five of them by the way they have a border dispute with India they have a border dispute with Bhutan not very significant Taiwan those rocks in the East China Sea Sako and da diao Islands uh and uh five is the South China City right which involves water and a handful of islands as well those are the five territorial dispute not a lot of territory in dispute there and uh and again from their point of view the best way to do it is economically just make one more point on this I I said before I think that the that China's neighbors have precipitated almost all the crises that China has been involved in in recent years uh but I do think the Chinese have overreacted I've said that to them when I go over there I think they overplay their hand and they end up scaring everybody it just much smarter just to sit back and continue to grow economically and uh at some point you just become so powerful that there's nothing anybody can do you don't have to be a Marxist to understand that economic might is the basis of military might yes this woman here and then I'll come to I'll come to you next okay I just wondered um that in the one of your assumptions which is that countries are anarchic where do the multilaterals in the UN fit into that do you just it doesn't sound like you take them seriously at all uh that's a little too strong but not not by much uh the UN is not very powerful it International in institutions are just not very powerful international law is not very powerful just think about the United Nations you know at the heart of the United Nations is the security Council and the security Council basically is an institution within an institution where the Russians and the Americans and the Chinese all have a veto so in a tough situation if the Chinese aren't happy with what the un's going to do they just veto whatever is on the table and we just veto what's ever what's on the table you follow what I'm saying I mean the UN just has no real power and then furthermore what kind of military power does the UN have there's not an independent un Army it's comprised of the member states and the member states that really have power the United States the Chinese and the Russians so this institution this thing qu the UN just doesn't have much power it can't push great Powers around and you remember when we went to war against Yugoslavia or Serbia in 1999 we didn't get a UN resolution we broke the law you're not allowed to go to war without a UN resolution we went to war we broke the law so what who did anything you remember when we invaded Iraq in 2003 you you know that war was illegal you think we cared we didn't care this is why when I hear George Bush and not George Porsha Barack Obama and uh Samantha power and all these people complaining about the Russians violating international law you just sort of say to yourself did these people ever look in the mirror come on you know John kery had that famous statement don't the Russians understand this is the 21st century and you never invade another country without a UN resolution say do you remember Iraq John you voted for it anyway it's regrettable that we live in a world where international law doesn't matter for very much and these institutions don't have much power but that's just the way it is and by the way you know who writes the rules we write the rules he of often we don't sign the treaty that's correct yeah as I often say we write the rules and if we like them we obey them and if we don't like them we either disobey them or rewrite the rules that's the way it works this gentleman has been very patient yes I keep ignoring him he probably has a Zinger question I'm gonna put the pressure on you really putting me on the spot all right John I know um I know I know something about you because I attended the Ukrainian um panel this afternoon went right home and looked you up on Wikipedia one I don't know what they're saying about me these days on wikip well one thing I I guessed the first time you started to speak this afternoon is that you and I are obviously both from Brooklyn because of our accents okay but that's not it doesn't have anything to do with my question my question is I discovered that you've written extens ly about other hot spots in the world in particular the Palestine Israeli conflict so my question is of all the hot spots in the world which is the most dangerous to World Peace which could trigger uh the third world war yeah okay uh Israel Palestine not dangerous for uh precipitating a major war uh there's no Arab state that would pick a fight with Israel uh Israel is Godzilla right as the most powerful conventional forces in the region by far it's the only state with nuclear weapons it's joined at the hip with the United States right nobody's going to pick a fight with them uh the Palestinians may start another inapa I doubt that I'm not 100% certain I doubt that but an inod is not a war uh and the United un States and no other great power is going to get dragged into that conflict so I don't view Israel Palestine as a hot spot the way I do lots of other places I think Ukraine Russia is not much of a hot spot right I think there's no way we're getting involved right I think it's unlikely the Russians will go into eastern Ukraine if they do go into eastern Ukraine the war will be confined to Ukraine versus Russia and the Russians will have in effect jumped into a Brier patch uh because Conquest is so hard these days but so I don't view Russia Ukraine as that big a hot spot the hot spots are in Asia right it's the Sako and diao Islands right very dangerous there is it likely that we'll have a war no is it possible can you tell plausible stories yes South China Sea makes me nervous Korean Peninsula makes me nervous so Asia is the king and let me just say another word about this in link your question and my answer so far to the rise of China if you go back to the Cold War one of the reasons that we never had a hot war between the United States and the Soviet Union is because the conflict centered on the middle of Europe what we used used to call the central front and in the center of Europe you had two giant military machines armed to teeth with nuclear weapons staring at each other eyeball to eyeball across the inter German border there was no way when we used to run war games that we could get a war started in Europe you know that we couldn't get a war started in Europe when we ran war games because it would be World War War 3 with nuclear weapons right and we would all get vaporized remember I told you the fourth assumption survival survival it's a very powerful assumption remember hobbs' state of nature the importance of survival right so it was just Unthinkable that the United States the Soviet could fight this war so we went to Great Lengths to avoid it the situation in Asia is fundamentally different because of geography there is no Central front and when you talk about fighting Wars out in the middle of the East China Sea over a bunch of rocks it's much easier to see how a war can get started or were you're talking about North Korea and South Korea getting into a fight on the Korean Peninsula and the Americans and the Chinese coming in and for you young people who are not old enough to remember this you want to remember that the Korean War started in 1950 when North Korea invaded South Korea by the winter of 19551 the South Koreans and the North Koreans were not the two principal Fighting Machines it was the Americans and the Chinese we fought China from 1950 late 1950 until the war ended in 1953 so the Americans and the Chinese did get sucked in to the Korean War so you can again hypothesize not likely but PA ible scenarios where War breaks out on the Korean Peninsula and the Chinese and the Americans get pulled in right and again the nuclear Dimension the the threat of World War II with nuclear weapons just isn't there taiwan's another case it's easy to imagine Wars between China and the United States involving Taiwan so my argument is that the likelihood of war between the United States and China in the story that I just told you is not great I don't want to overstate the case the security competition will be intense as it was in the Cold War the likelihood of war is not great but nevertheless I think it's much greater than it was during the Cold War and therefore a real cause of concern so I think Asia is the place where we have to be really careful not so much Europe and with regard to Israel Palestine I don't think that's a big problem at all for the question that you asked I'll take this gentleman and then I'll take the person in front of uh you said earlier that the the best situation with respect to uh China's growth rate is that it's closed down or flat lines yes um you know we see just in terms of Wall Street uh China's growth rate Falls from 7.5 to 7.4 and Wall Street goes down 300 points and there goes your 401k so I'm not quite sure that the average American would necessarily agree with you on that point yeah the average American would not agree with me and most people inside Washington would not agree with me but that doesn't mean they're wrong they're right right I opposed the Iraq War most people I knew favored the Iraq War I was right they were wrong am I always right no I I going to be very clear as I told you my theory my theory is fallible I'm wrong at least 25% of the time if you ask my kids more like 95% of the time right but I'm not infallible but I would just say sometimes the conventional wisdom is wrong and I think on this one the conventional wisdom is wrong and I think just to go back to Taiwan which is my favorite example I think more and more people in Taiwan are coming to realize that they were foolish to think that the rise of China was was a good thing right if you lived in a world where there were no security threats war was not a possibility it was a world of pure economic interdependence and that was all that mattered then the rise of China would have been wonderful for Taiwan but unfortunately that's not the world we live in right so I think you're correct that most people would disagree with what I have to say by the way I often go to audiences and I say you know what you want to do is go home and think about this question you have two choices the Chinese economy flat lines or the Chinese economy goes up uh at a steep rate for the next 30 Years which would you choose and I always say that I think most people would choose what you said they would choose well that's yeah that's one advantage of being old right right right that's right yeah we we probably won't be around to see whether I'm right or wrong this gentleman here okay um you talked about the likelihood of a hot war in Asia being greater than that during the Cold War so what do you consider the most most likely intensity of destructive conflict in East Asia and how destructive will that be especially for um East Asian States yeah his his question was which one of those conflict scenarios that I described that I think would be the worst and you know how bad would it get this is a really good question the truth is that because of nuclear weapons I think the war cannot purposely spin out of control right in other words if a war starts between China and Japan and the United States comes in all three players have a profound interest in preventing it from escalating because again we're dealing with nuclear weapons so you cannot fight in my opinion World War II in Europe ex EXC me in Asia for the same reasons you couldn't do it in Europe but what I'm saying you can do in Asia that you could not do in Europe is you can fight limited Wars but they have to stay limited okay and they assuming control of the escalation process they will remain limited the fly in the ointment is inadvertent escalation right my friend Barry Posen who teaches at MIT brilliant guy wrote a book at the end of the Cold War that nobody read because the Cold War ended but the title of posen's book is inadvertent escalation and what he did in the book was he talked about how a conventional war in Europe could escalate to a nuclear war because what you see is that those conventional and nuclear forces are kind of all bound up and inextricably linked with each other in funny kinds of ways so that if you fight a conventional War a limited conventional War it can spin out of control in unanticipated ways and you end up with the nuclear war right sort of World War III with nuclear weapons now my again my argument is there will be powerful incentives to prevent that from happening but who can know for sure sir pardon oh okay we'll come up there you and I you're handling one set of questions I'm handling okay perhaps you've answered uh being that nationalism is such a powerful force and perhaps uh irrational uh wouldn't that kind of tip things uh you know that uh inevit or make war more make war more likely and then the other thought was uh why did the Ukraine gave up their nuclear stockpile yeah yeah yeah uh I'll take them in reverse order as I said this afternoon uh at the talk on Ukraine I wrote a piece in 1993 uh that said in foreign affairs that said Ukraine should not give up its nuclear weapons I don't know how many of you know this but when Ukraine when the Soviet Union fell apart uh Ukraine ended up with thousands of nuclear warheads it had the third largest nuclear Arsenal on the planet and as I said this afternoon we gave the ukrainians compound fractures of all four limbs uh to force them to give up their nuclear weapons which they did they gave their nuclear weapons back to Russia uh and I said at the time that that was a huge mistake uh I think they did it because they got independence like that hadn't thought about this issue uh and the UN United States was so powerful and so influential at that point in time that we were able to coers them we also as somebody mentioned today uh gave them a quasi guarantee that we would protect them and so forth and so on so they gave up their weapons and uh I think if they had had nuclear weapons you wouldn't not have even had the crisis right the Americans would have gone to Great Lengths to make sure there was no coup in Ukraine because the idea of a coup in a nuclear armed State scares the living beesus out of us this is the Pakistan scenario you know we do not want to see the government overthrown in Pakistan when that all those nuclear weapons floating around so I think if Ukraine had a couple thousand nuclear weapons we would not have been fostering a cat but they gave them up uh your other question uh has to do with nationalism let me just say a few words about nationalism there's a whole literature on this that's worth looking at uh just to focus mainly on the Chinese case uh the problem that the Chinese government faces is that communism which has been the dominant ideology since 1949 just no longer has much legitimacy right uh I mean the Chinese can say they're communists but nobody takes it that seriously it's funny whenever I go to China and you talk to people about Marxism nobody takes it seriously it's like a joke uh and uh so they have a legitimacy problem and that legitimacy problem of course is also caused by the fact that it's not a democracy right so they rely on nationalism the elites rely on nationalism because nationalism is a glue it it holds people together and if you read literature on Chinese nationalism today the centerpiece of Chinese nationalism is the century of national humiliation and that is a huge source of trouble because who were the humiliators the Japanese the Americans so you get a crisis over the Sako or the diao islands and that's a crisis with Japan and the United States and you have a regime that does not have a lot of legitimacy and has to worry about being seen as weak because there's a lot of nationalism down bottom in Chinese Society right so the regime has to be tough with Japan and the United States given the century of national humiliation and therefore it doesn't have man much maneuver room it's going to be remarkably difficult for who's ever in charge of Beijing to back down right and of course in Japan you have a similar situation because nationalism is alive and well over there not going to talk about that but Japan's becoming increasingly nationalistic so you get the Japanese and the Chinese you know in a crisis and they have little maneuver room to back down uh really uh significant potential for trouble and this is why I think I was saying a few minutes ago when I was in Beijing in November uh I talked to a number of Scholars and these are people who normally are more optimistic than me right when I go to Beijing and talk to Scholars most Scholars think I'm too pessimistic John there's this factor that factor economic independence confusion culture da da but when I was there in November people were much more pessimistic than me because of the nationalism angle and the fact that they felt it would box the Chinese leadership in crisis because of the legitimacy issue okay I'd like to sharpen the question that my my neighbor here asked about uh Chinese resource uh um exploitation relationships um and also getting to the topic of of the talk can Chinese rice peacefully can China rise peacefully it part of the rise of China is is is securing resources um uh energy resources and relationships in the Middle East and in Africa and other portion is in securing food resources in our hemisphere so could you say what your thoughts are on can China continue to do or how can it continue to do both of those which seem to be very important to me your emphasis on the size of China they have serious environmental issues climate change and other things droughts they're not in they're not they're not buying soybeans in heavily in in South America because it's just cheap so can China continue to grow in in getting resources in our Hemisphere and can it continue can China oil continue to grow and develop or how will that's the question question yeah well I think that there's no question that to fuel the Chinese economy over time they're going to have to go outside of China itself outside of East Asia to get resources almost all of the studies show that they are now heavily dependent on oil from the Persian Gulf and that over time it's going to go up significantly they're going to be more dependent on oil from the Gulf not less and as you were saying they have all sorts of economic relations with countries in Africa and increasingly so in South America as well because they have a voracious appetite for these natural resources and that's only going to increase with the passage of time so I I think there's no question about that but what does that mean it means that having the freedom to Rome really matters to them they're going to build the Blue Water Navy they were already talking about building a blue water Navy we have a bluew Navy why do we have a blue water Navy because we have interests all over the world and we're interested in protecting our sea Lanes of communication or to put it in slightly different terms we're interested in commanding the sea the same thing is going to apply to them they think all the time about the fact that they sea lines of community communication from the Gulf back to East Asia are not very secure and how can they get around that should they build pipelines and ports and railroad lines in uh Pakistan in uh Myanmar I mean they're constantly thinking about this right so I think what's going to happen with the passage of time as they grow more powerful is that the conflict the competition let's put it that way security competition between the United States and China uh is going to spread uh globally just as it did with the Soviet Union during the Cold War remember just think about the atmology of the word superpower right William TR Fox is the man who invented this concept and he said that a superpower was a great power that could project significant military might outside of its region of the world andit un States and the Soviet Union were both superpowers because they could project power all over the planet and that's why the competition as you will remember between the United States and the Soviet Union was Global in nature we even barked at each other over places like Angola and Africa so forth and so on China right now is not a superpower because it does not have the capability to project power outside of its region it may have interests in Africa it may have interest in the Gulf but it does not have military might in those regions or the ability to project power into those regions I think what'll happen over time as they grow economically and translate that economic might into military might and build a blue water Navy they will be able to compete with us around the planet and God forbid they come into the Western Hemisphere this is the whole Monroe Doctrine story you were telling the story I think quite correctly about how they now have all these interests in South America that's true but we do not want them to have economic interests plus military capabilities in South America join [Applause]

Channel: Reed College

Views: 100,499

Keywords: Reed College, Portland, OR

Id: uJ4xZuaisxA

Length: 84min 42sec (5082 seconds)

Published: Wed May 01 2024