The New Cold War | John Mearsheimer | Tom Switzer | CIS

hello and welcome to the center for independent studies i'm tom switzer and it's always lovely to have your company well john meerscheimer is one of the world's most distinguished foreign policy intellectuals he's been a professor of political science at the university of chicago for decades his prominent books include the tragedy of great power politics that was published in 2001 and the great delusion liberal dreams and international realities that was published in 2019. john was a guest at cis back in 2019 when he spoke to sold out events in both sydney and canberra and last year in a virtual cis forum john debated the prominent former singaporean diplomat kishore mabulbani on the question has china won well rarely in history has an academic been as intellectually vindicated as our guest as i wrote in the australian newspaper in 2020 quote two decades ago meersheimer's bold thesis was that great power rivalry was not over like many prophets misheimer was ignored but he accurately foresaw the intense sino-american security competition that the coronavirus crisis has exposed and with that it's a great pleasure to welcome professor john maysheimer back to cis hi there john hello tom i'm glad to be back well john in the current edition of foreign affairs magazine that's the november december 2021 edition it's titled the inevitable rivalry america china and the tragedy of great power politics you make a provocative thesis summarize succinctly your argument basically the article deals with how the united states dealt with china during the unipolar moment from the time the cold war ended up until president trump took office in january 2017. and my basic argument is in the last decade of the cold war it made eminently good sense for the united states to ally itself with china and to help china grow economically because that would make china more powerful and it would allow china to be a good ally for purposes of balancing against the soviet union but then when the cold war ended in 1989 the question on the table was how should the united states think about dealing with china and the fact is that china was a very poor country in 1989 but it had a huge population advantage over the united states and therefore there was a real danger if we help china grow economically given its population advantage if it became rich if it became prosperous with all those people it would be a threat to the united states in effect it would be a pure competitor what happened over the course of the 90s and really the first 20 years of this new century is that the united states foolishly pursued a policy of engagement which was designed to make china richer to make it wealthier just very important to understand that we helped china we the united states and of course the australians the japanese and so forth and so on went along with us we made china into a powerful country in east asia and china is now at a point where it is determined to dominate all of asia to become a regional hegemon the united states of course and the australians are bent on preventing china from dominating asia for good strategic reasons but the end result of all this is that we're effectively in a new cold war we have an intense security competition on our hands and this is a very dangerous competition okay so succinctly summarize your argument is that once china grew wealthy as a result of western engagement particularly u.s engagement in the 1990s and the 2000s that a u.s china great power competition was inevitable and had u.s policy makers understood the realist logic your logic john a great power conflict in the early 1990s they would have tried to slow down chinese growth and maximize the power gap between beijing and washington that's your line right that's exactly right tom and the fact is as you well know in the early 1990s most people thought that realism was dead or the balance of power politics was dead great power war was off the table forever and that people like me were dinosaurs so when i made the argument uh loudly and clearly starting in early 2001 uh that we were in trouble and we should do what we can to slow down china nobody wanted to hear that oregon okay so instead of fostering harmonious relations between china and the us as the conventional wisdom said it would in the 1990s and 2000s all engagements done is led to this intense security competition the question here is what course then should have been conducted and how would that have changed where we are now well it's very important to understand that in 1990 china was a backward country economically it had 175th the per capita gnp of the united states and per capita gnb is a really good indicator of just how wealthy a country is this was a backward country but it was deeply committed to growing economically to becoming prosperous so the question is what should the united states do a good realist like me would say that it's obvious that what the united states should do is do everything possible to slow down chinese economic growth and here we're talking about the fact that china depended on u.s markets u.s technology and u.s capability to grow and with regard to those markets we should have gone to great lengths uh to slow down trade with china to not give them any special deals which we didn't do we certainly should have not welcomed him in to the wto and as far as technology is concerned we should have gone to great lengths to prevent technology transfers to china and we should have gone to great lengths to limit foreign direct investment in china and we did none of those things and in fact we did the opposite and the result is we're now in deep trouble you say and there is little we can do to change the situation tell us more look the fact is tom from beijing's point of view it makes eminently good sense to want to dominate asia just the way the united states dominates the western hemisphere the chinese have no interest in having the americans in their backyard any more than we the united states have an interest in having china in our backyard that's why we have the monroe doctrine so once you take a country with that larger population and you make it really wealthy it is going to have the wherewithal to take efforts or to take measures to try to dominate its region of the world and of course the united states is going to try to prevent that so what we did was we created a situation where china was powerful enough or is powerful enough to try to dominate asia you make the point obviously that as a result of all this washington and beijing will now wage a very intense security competition that can best be managed on the margins to prevent disaster we'll get to that later on but let's test your thesis and go back to the 1990s john of course this is the time of the end of the cold war at the collapse of the soviet union charles krauthammer coined the unipolar moment to describe an era of u.s primacy in the international system our old friend frank fukuyama the end of history all of that and there was a bipartisan consensus a very strong bipartisan consensus in washington in canberra indeed most of the west that believe that we needed to integrate china into the global economy and this was a view held by liberals as well as conservatives on left and right of the political spectrum and of course at the time this was a tremendous economic opportunity that china presented to the west the question here is what did the widespread rejection of everything you've been saying of strategic realism what did the widespread rejection of realism tell us about western public discourse during the 1990s and the 2000s i think there are two points here the first is i i think that the frank fukuyama view of the world won out uh once the cold war ended uh people in the west believe that the united states and its allies had fought fascism in the first half of the 20th century and defeated it and then in the second half we mainly in the west here and this would include countries like japan and australia as part of the west i'm using that term loosely that we had defeated communism and that what the future held in store was nothing but liberal democracy as time went by more and more countries would become liberal democracies to put it in slightly different terms we had the wind at our back and people like me who argued that realism was still alive great power politics would still matter in the future were seen as dinosaurs people who had an outdated view of international politics so the fact is tom there was absolutely no chance given um people were thinking at the time that we could sell an argument that it made sense to slow down chinese economic growth and in fact most people believe that if china grew economically it would eventually become a liberal democracy and because liberal democracies don't engage in violations of human rights and because liberal democracies don't fight each other once china was a liberal democracy we would all live happily ever after this is the story that people told themselves we told that at cis we're a classical liberal think tank we subscribe to that orthodoxy too in fact we were unashamedly championing it no of course that's true i think by the way that you basically thought my views didn't make a lot of sense in the early 2000s when you first heard them and i think that was true of most people but see a lot of people listening into this would say quite rightly if we followed your approach in the 1990s and the 2000s what effect would have that had on the economies of the us australia japan and other countries that engaged heavily with china that would have hurt us surely economically well first of all with regard to china it would have delayed for a long time the point at which china became a great power remember during the cold war china was not a great power we lived in a bipolar world there were two great powers on the planet the united states and the soviet union so china was not a great power in 1990 it would have taken much longer than it has for china to become a great power and furthermore i believe once it became a great power let's say that happened in 2025 or 2030 that great power would have been much weaker than the one that we're facing today so we could have slowed down chinese economic growth and delayed its achievement of great power status okay now your point is that the united states and australia and japan would have suffered as a result of this i think there is some truth in that there is no doubt that we would not be as prosperous today as we are but we would not have suffered as much as china did and the relative power gap which is of enormous importance the relative power gap would have been much more favorable for the united states for australia and for japan and that matters greatly we would not have committed tom we would not have created tom a pure competitor yeah yeah yeah and your argument is that essentially in the 90s and 2000s we in the west were feeding the beast i get that but let's return to 2021 and that beast you argue in foreign affairs magazine quote this sino-american rivalry will test u.s policy makers more than the original cold war did as china is likely to be a more powerful competitor than the soviet union in its prime that's what you say in foreign affairs magazine but let me put this to you john the soviet union was physically located in europe and east asia and directly adjacent to the persian gulf thus the u.s competed with moscow in all three regions okay however china is physically located in asia alone and there's a long distance from those other two strategically important region so the question here is why do you think this cold war will test policymakers more than the last cold war john misheimer there's no doubt tom that your description of the soviet union is correct and the united states did have its hands full uh dealing with the soviet union in the sense that it was physically located both in europe and asia and adjacent to the gulf as you say and china's not but that's not the most important dimension of the conflict what makes the conflict between china and the united states more dangerous than the conflict between the united states and the soviet union has to do with where the central focus of the competition was during the first cold war and where it is during the second cold war during the first cold war asia and the gulf did not matter that much the focus of u.s attention was on the central front in europe most of soviet military power was concentrated in europe most of american military power was concentrated in europe that was the focal point the focal point today is in east asia as you said almost exclusively and it involves places like taiwan the south china sea and the east china sea and my argument tom is that during the cold war it was highly unlikely that we would have a war in central europe at that focal point in large part because both sides had massive armies massive amounts of tactical air and were armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons therefore it was difficult almost impossible to imagine those two military forces crashing into each other so the cold war cold war number one was dangerous for sure but it was not that dangerous because the focal point the central front would have resulted in a conflict that was so horrible that was hard to imagine getting it started to begin with now let's move to east asia today very different situation there's no central front the points of potential conflict are places like south china sea the east china sea where you have these rocks that the japanese and the chinese fight over and then taiwan those are the three focal points in east asia well it's easy to imagine a war breaking out between the united states and china over those three pieces of real estate in large part because it would not involve a massive conflict involving large armies and thousands of nuclear weapons this is why everybody today is talking about the danger of a war over taiwan or a dane or the danger of a war over the south china sea so this new cold war is going to be more dangerous than the first cold war which is not to say it is axiomatic that this cold war the new one will become a hot war but i'm just saying i believe it's more likely than the first cold war because of the geography as you say accidents or miscalculations in the taiwan straits or the east and south china seas goodness what could happen but what about china some of our members and colleagues say that there's a real danger here that people like you are overstating uh china's strengths and you're overlooking its weaknesses and limitations let me put a few things to you china faces a litany of these domestic challenges john sluggish growth an ever increasing debt burden china's stalling population growth add to this china faces mounting environmental concerns and of course an energy crisis as we speak that is forcing power rationing to be implemented across the country question won't these domestic challenges constrain china's ability to fulfill its strategic ambitions i think there's no doubt that they will constrain them the 64 thousand dollar question as we used to say when i was a kid is how much they will constrain if you believe that these problems that you described are going to greatly damage chinese economic growth in future years that they are in effect going to hit the flat of the curve then you're right that that's going to make it almost impossible for china to dominate asia i hope that happens i'm hoping that the chinese economy hits the flat of the curve the last thing i want to see is chinese the chinese economy grow by five to six percent annually for the next two or three decades that would not be good from an american or an australian point of view but i am not confident that china is going to hit the flat of the curve the chinese have done an impressive job of fostering economic growth for at least the last 30 years and i see no reason to be confident that the scenario you described will happen while nevertheless hoping you're right and we should also stress that this is a country that is pumped up on nationalism as you have made clear in your various writings now we have a question here from stephen loosley long time friend and supporter of cis and he asks is the trajectory of chinese strategic policy inextricably linked to the leadership and personality of one xi jinping no [Music] as a good realist i believe that what is driving the train here is the structure of the international system i believe that if you tom switzer were in charge in beijing today that you would behave hardly differently from the way xi jinping oh i'm a classical liberal john [Laughter] i believe that even if you were a classical liberal listen just let's talk a second about joe biden when joe biden got elected president he had been a classical liberal he had been a staunch proponent of engagement as head of the senate foreign relations committee and when he was vice president under uh barack obama so he was a staunch liberal what happened when joe biden replaced donald trump did he go back to those liberal policies or did he continue the more realist policies of donald trump the answer is followed in trump's footsteps so i think you the liberal tom switzer if you were placed in charge in beijing you would behave largely the way xi jinping is behaving just be careful when you call me a liberal it's not an american liberal it's a classical liberal in the enlightenment european sense but i get your point but back to the point the xi jinping because a lot of commentators in australia try to explain the new more menacing more assertive china because of its leader you're saying it's the structure of the system that's at play listen in the west this includes australia and the united states most commentators refuse to accept basic realist logic and they end up defining the behavior of particular leaders in terms of their personality or their ideology all sorts of people are going to argue that china is aggressive because it's not a democracy it's not uh like the united states my argument is just look at how the united states has behaved okay but let's talk about the united states i mean obviously to keep in check china's regional ambitions the us needs to be deeply committed to the indo-pacific region i mean is this likely we have several australian skeptics in this country john the academic historian james curran the loewy institute's sam rogervine for instance they say america lacks the resolve to be seriously engaged in the region after all america is deeply divided and polarized are those doubts about us staying power justified no i i think that all of the available evidence is that the united states is committed to upping the ante in east asia just look at what's happening with regard to u.s taiwanese relations the united states is moving closer and closer to a firm commitment to defend taiwan no matter what could you ask for better evidence that we are not going home furthermore with regard to afghanistan a lot of australians and a lot of people around the world say this is evidence that the united states has lost its will uh to fight uh uh around the world that it's you know going home this is isola this is evidence of isolationist american play this is ridiculous australians should be thrilled that the united states ended the war in afghanistan not only because it was a stupid war to begin with and it was a lost war but also because it now freezes up to concentrate more resources on east asia more resources to contain in china which is in australia's interest in your foreign affairs essay john you say the u.s quote sees china's ambitions as a direct threat and is determined to check the country's continued rise that's your line but several american foreign policy realists whom you know very well uh barry poston professor barry poston andy basovich mike desh among others they don't want to contain china and moreover let me push this back to you you might call it an isolationist argument but it's quite plausible when you think about it isn't the u.s secure because it's separated from the world by these two giant oceans the pacific ocean and the atlantic ocean it also has a vast nuclear arsenal which of course is the ultimate deterrent plus there's a strong isolationist tradition tradition in america as you well know so why should the us given all this go to great lengths to check china's regional ambitions john i think that theoretically you can make a powerful case for isolationism uh i think you can argue that the united states is manifestly secure in the western hemisphere it has two giant moats to its east and to its west it has thousands of nuclear weapons that's my point yeah that's right you can make that case but the fact is nobody is seriously arguing that the united states should adopt an isolationist policy number one and number two what people should care about is not what the chattering classes are saying who cares what the chattering classes are saying the question is what is the deep state doing we just want to know what is joe biden and company doing and the answer is that joe biden and company just like donald trump and company are deeply committed to containing china you know i hear all this talk about taiwan people are saying should we defend taiwan or not this is a meaningless debate the train has left the station we are defending taiwan we meaning the united states period in the story the deep state has decided that so all this talk about isolationism and restraint in terms of dealing china is to me largely of interest to the chattering classes but is not meaningful yeah and in fairness to your thesis the quad us australia india japan uh orcas this is the recent us uk australia security arrangement that reaffirms your point about the u.s commitment to the region and polls show in this country john in australia orcas is overwhelmingly popular but not everyone agrees the former prime minister paul keating who was our prime minister from 1991 to 1996 he says the agreement constitutes quote a dramatic loss of australian sovereignty because quote it would rob australia of freedom of choice in a future conflict where the u.s goes to war keating's not alone reassure those australians who are worried about the loss of australian sovereignty as a result of getting too close to uncle sam well i i disagree with uh mr keating's rhetoric uh the fact is australia is not giving up its sovereignty it's not giving up its right to choose what kind of foreign policy it wants it's not giving up its right to choose whether it wants to ally with the united states or china australia is free to align with china if it was australia is free to sit on the sidelines if it wants you're not giving up your sovereignty what's happening here is australians or at least the deep state in australia has decided that it is in australia's interest to align with the united states that's why you're doing it and it makes perfect sense the united states has decided that it's in its interest to contain china and i think if you go back to the australian case and what keating said he's wrong when he says that australia is abandoning its sovereignty or giving up its sovereignty it's not it's just made a particular choice keating also says that in a western pacific conflict john the u.s would have little chance against china with its supply chains far too strained now you debated kishore mabulbani on a cis youtube event last year more than 440 000 views asking the question has china won so are keating and mabulbani right here is australia backing the wrong horse john misheimer i think the argument that china is going to whip the united states is not a serious argument that may be true in 20 or 30 years the united states is the most powerful state on the planet militarily at this point in time it has huge numbers of resources in asia at this point in time if you talk about the balance between submarines on the chinese side and on the american side it favors us decisively the fact that we control taiwan makes it remarkably difficult for china to project power beyond the first island chain i don't want to argue that china has no military capabilities i don't want to argue that china wouldn't put up a good fight against the united states today but the argument that we're a pushover we the americans were pushover and the chinese could easily dispose of us in a fight is not a serious argument okay what about the views of another uh former prime minister malcolm fraser who died in 2015 i'm just putting these views to you to test your thesis because keating and fraser although they represent a minority viewpoint they nevertheless represent a very loudy viewpoint particularly in certain media segments um fraser's interesting because he told me before he died that he was a massive supporter of your work john on russia nato and ukraine and he strongly admired your strong opposition to the iraq invasion of 2003. he was if you like a bit of a mirshama groupie but this is what he said before he died in 2015. people do not realize the extent to which we have been entwined in the united states policy in the last 15 or 20 years at a time when the cold war is over the united states is now in the process of establishing a new cold war in the pacific her military policies failed in vietnam failed in iraq failing in afghanistan the middle east is a mess and leaving all that behind they say they're going to shift their forces to the western pacific we are part of this part of the world and we don't want to be part of america's future mistakes in this region but has the government been frank with australians saying where it might lead saying that we're going to be asked to pay for a lot of it it's america trying to tie us into their policy of containment which is about the most dangerous position australia could possibly be the former prime minister malcolm fraser just before he died in 2015 john micheimer well i think with i think where mr frazier is absolutely correct and it's why our views were sympotico has to do with wars in developing countries like vietnam iraq and afghanistan we should have never gone to war uh and engaged in regime change in uh iraq and afghanistan and we should have never entered the vietnam war in 1965 and i think he and i are on the same page with regard to those conflicts however that's not what we're talking about here we're talking about great power competition we're talking about the united states up against pure competitors we're talking about the united states up against potential hegemons in places like asia and europe and the united states has gone up against four potential peer competitors in the past imperial germany imperial japan nazi germany and the soviet union in and in all four cases the united states prevailed we have a fundamentally different track record when it comes to great power politics than we do when it comes to intervening in developing countries and trying to do regime change what we're doing with regard to china is not synonymous with what we did in vietnam iraq or afghanistan thank goodness it's synonymous with what we did with the soviet union germany and japan and there we have a good track record this is not to say we will ultimately be successful in the decades ahead against china who knows how this one will play itself out i would not bet against the united states but our track record here is much better now with regard to his last point that this is a very dangerous situation and that he is an australian is very disturbed by the idea that australia is getting dragged into this security competition this dangerous security competition between the united states and china i don't blame him one bit i went to australia and i feel the same way but the question you have to ask yourself is what is the alternative yeah yeah yeah yep no go ahead no i'm just going to say but are we alone here though i mean another critic hugh white professor of strategic studies at the australian national university whom you know and you debated him at a cis event in canberra in 2019 in front of 500 people terrific night john but this is what he told the abc's 730 recently the fact is that most other countries in asia don't share our approach in america's approach to china so i think in southeast asia and for that matter further north there'll be a lot of people who who look at this they might not complain about it out loud but they'll look at it and see it as a negative development because it further entrenches the idea that we've got a new cold war in asia with america on the one side and china on the other they're stuck in the middle they don't want to choose they see that australia has made a choice now that's professor hugh white again on the abc john misheimer is that true are we australians more outspoken in our support for the for the us alliance than other asian states well i think if you look at the quad there are three asian states that have basically made it clear that they're with the united states they've chosen sides that's japan uh india and australia so i think there is a certain element of truth in what you said uh those other countries right and this includes countries like south korea the philippines and vietnam which i believe will eventually move decisively to the american side are trying to straddle the fence and i don't blame them right you saw this with australia for many years the australians did not want to be forced to pick sides it's completely understandable so there are a number of countries as you points out that are straddling uh the divide and eventually they will be forced to pick sides there's no way the south koreans and the filipinos are not going to be forced to pick sides and the vietnamese they're moving gingerly as are the singapores and others but they understand that i believe they understand i believe that in the end it's in their interest to side with the united states and this is part of your argument that america will increasingly form a coalition of states in the region to balance check contain china now it is an increasingly cyano intense sino-american security competition and one power that could be useful uh in being a counterweight to china of course is russia but as we know during the trump era we're all too often told that the putin regime is a thuggish corrupt and of course russia has shown it will play hardball to protect vital strategic interests in its near abroad why do you think washington is capable of winning over the russians in a balancing coalition against china well i'm not sure at the moment that we could win over the russians uh i think we made an egregious error in alienating uh russia in the first two decades of the 20th 21st century i i think what's happened uh is terrible because we have in effect we the americans have in effect driven the russians into the arms of the chinese tonight ow expansion all that yep it was nato it was it was a combination of of three factors nato expansion eu expansion and the color revolutions threatened we threatened the russians in ways that angered them greatly led to the war in georgia in august of 2008 and then led to the ongoing crisis in ukraine which broke out in february 2014. yeah but just a quick time out john they see a lot of our critics would say are you being too soft on russia and you're being too hard on china you're basically saying the americans push the american security guarantees right up to russia's doorstep upsetting the sensibilities of moscow but you're also saying america should be tougher on china so some some some of your critics might say you're being inconsistent here yeah but the problem with my critics is they're not thinking in terms of balance of power logic the fact is that russia is not a potential hegemon in europe or in asia russia is a declining great power it's not a threat to us meaning the americans certainly the australians in any meaningful way was a giant gas station that's holding europe to ransom during this energy crisis that may be true but who cares that is not strategically important for the united states what we care about is whether or not russia has the capability to dominate asia the way china looks like it's going to have the capability to dominate asia that's the key issue on the table we're not dealing with the soviet union here we're dealing with russia and the fact is that relations between russia and europe and russia and the united states are terrible today in large part because of the west policy towards russia and especially american policy towards russia and your question is can we turn this around yes what about india as a counterweight john raja mahan one of india's most distinguished security experts he's in the process of writing a paper for cis and it's tentatively called between geography and history delhi and canberra in indo-pacific security members should stay tuned for that paper by professor mohammed and his point is this let me read this out to you the whole idea of the indo-pacific as a strategic construct is about a recognizing that the old framework of u.s alliances in the region and asean multilateralism are no longer enough to secure the regional order and b that the u.s has worked hard to bring india the only rising great power with a scale to match china into the equation to help balance and deter china what about india john well i agree with what raj says the fact is that china is a threat not just in east asia which is what you and i have been talking about in large part because we have an australia-centric focus in this discussion as well as an american centric focus but the fact is that china is a threat to india and it's a it's a threat to india up in the himalayas there's a huge border dispute between india and china that is yet to be settled and furthermore china will eventually be a threat to india in the indian ocean because the chinese are building a blue water navy that's designed to project power into the persian gulf so the indians are deeply concerned about china and what we're trying to do with the creation of this notion of an indo-pacific theater is we're trying to tie east asia and india together and we want india to help as much as possible in east asia and of course we want these countries in east asia to help india as much as possible and of course the americans are the critical actor here because they have the military capability to throw their weight around both in the indian ocean and in east asia but that's what's going on here and just think about the quad who are the four countries in the quad australia japan india and the united states so you see very clearly how we're trying to sort of stitch together an alliance structure that includes not just east asia but the indo part of the indo-pacific john let's turn to some questions from some of our cis members andrew is a leading business figure in the sydney financial markets community and he just asks why should australia so openly support the us in its security competition with our largest trade partner and andrew goes on to say can't we in australia like the europeans effectively sit on the sidelines andrew asks why angered china and hurt our trade prospects which has helped sustain australian prosperity join me sharma well for australians you have a simple choice here uh for economic reasons for purposes of maintaining your prosperity uh it makes more sense to side with the chinese than with the americans but from a security point of view it makes eminently good sense for australia to side with the united states uh china is a threat to australia uh if china were to ever dominate asia the way the united states dominates the western hemisphere this would be terrible news for australia and i believe deep down all australians know that right so you have a choice here and choice is a rather simple one and the choice has been made you're going to lie with the united states and as i said before i think most countries in east asia will do the same europe is in a fundamentally different situation it goes back to your point tom that china is not a threat in europe and it is not at this point in time anyway a threat in the persian gulf right china is a threat in east asia and in the indian region right that's where it is a threat now in the indo-pacific region so the europeans can afford not to worry about china as a military threat and they can trade with china right they could think that they could have their cake and eat it too the americans will provide security for them nato will remain intact and they can continue to trade with china whereas the australians and the countries in east asia are in a much more difficult situation so geography geography explains the difference between europe and australia i get that geography the europeans are much less dependent on the uh on the us for its protection than australia i just say the europeans cosy up to beijing on the economic front as they did late last year when they signed that commercial agreement with china and if the europeans get even closer to china how do you think the americans will treat the europeans who have been a long time strategic ally well it will enrage the americans i mean you're basically positing a scenario where the europeans do things economically that will help china to grow economically more powerful fading the based they'll feed the beast that's right and i i think that there is a reasonable possibility that some european countries maybe many european countries especially germany will feed the beast and i think this will enrage the americans and then you have to ask yourself tom what are the consequences for nato what are the consequences for transatlantic relations if that happens because you want to understand if they do feed the beast and the beast continues to grow the united states says then powerful incentives to move more resources out of europe to east asia for purposes of containing that growing beast indeed and let's remember most of those nato states still refuse to pay the two percent of the gdp on defence good point john now here's a question from my colleague sue uh sue windy bank here at cis whom you knew whom you met when you were out here two years ago john she says you say john that as china becomes richer and more powerful it's acting just like the united states did throughout its history one parallel i find as a sue i find striking is that today china talks increasingly of a new vision for leading reform of global governance a common destiny for mankind that's the destiny that will be decided in beijing sue asked the question is china now developing a theology of exceptionalism to justify its bid for hegemony just as the united states portrays itself as a force for good in bringing freedom and democracy to the world that is it talks like a liberal and acts like a realist are we seeing the same dynamics at play in china john i think sue's absolutely right that the chinese are talking about themselves as if they are an exceptional country but i would argue that this has a long-standing uh uh trade this is a long-standing tradition in the middle kingdom so to speak the chinese have always viewed themselves as having a superior culture they view themselves as being exceptional just like the americans view themselves as being exceptional and both countries are now playing that card and will continue to play that card the big difference however is that the americans have always been remarkably a droid when it comes to soft power and selling the american way of life selling american culture abroad the chinese on the other hand and you see this with their wolf diplomacy have really done a terrible job on the soft power front and when i look at how the chinese have dealt with australia over the past few years i really scratch my head and say what are the chinese thinking they've purposely alienated australians they've made it very difficult for australians to make the case that they should side with china over the united states with this wolf warrior diplomacy so on the exceptionalism point i think sue's exactly right but on the soft power side of things which i think matters even more the americans have done much better over time donald trump notwithstanding it's selling the american way of life that's selling american culture abroad uh following that bruce mckern one of our longtime members has asked i think it's a tongue-in-cheek question but i might be wrong bruce this is the question it goes like this should australia have worn those wolf warrior diplomacy threats and um and just pay tribute to beijing and accept the 12 demands that the chinese government made on our relationship um and and just withdraw from orcas no no the uh the australians did the right thing it's it my view as you know tom has long been that it's in australia's interest when security is a salient issue to side with the united states i think there's no question going back to malcolm frazier's rhetoric that australia has to be careful when you're dealing with the united states the united states tends to be a rogue elephant great powers tend to be rogue elephants the united states included so australia wants to go to great lengths to make sure that as it gets close to that rogue elephant it doesn't end up in a situation where the rogue elephant rolls over on top of australia and does great damage okay question here from allison though aren't china's strategic objectives limited to its near periphery taiwan south china sea east china seeing xinjiang this is her argument aren't you overstating china's capacity and intent to threaten the sovereignty of countries in like far away australia no i i think that what's going to happen here is that china is going to imitate the united states it's very important to understand that i'm basically arguing here that china is operating according to balance of power logic just the way the united states did when it created hegemony in the western hemisphere australia right australia is in east asia and the chinese want to dominate east asia this is not to say they want to invade australia and run its politics right but what they want to do is push the americans out of east asia they want to be by far the most powerful in east asia and they want to have a say in australian domestic politics just the way the united states has a say in the politics of every country in the western hemisphere it is not the case that every country in the western hemisphere can have its own foreign policy if you decide that you're going to have your own foreign policy you are going to pay a really serious price and if you have any doubts about that look at what's happened to cuba since roughly 1959 castro affected a revolution in that orange in venezuela in more recent times exactly and that's that's what australia has to worry about it's right and furthermore you want to remember that if china were to dominate east asia militarily and there was no united states let's assume the americans went home china over time would develop really formidable military forces that it could use to coerce countries like japan south korea and australia okay another question anthony carr another long time member of cis thanks for tuning in anthony asks a cheeky question but it's a good one john put you on the spot here if the deep state got it so wrong about china during the 1990s and the 2000s and 2010s the high point of engagement can we expect the now discredited deep state to get china right in the future well i think i have a one-word answer to that hopefully [Laughter] well your point's the structure in the system isn't it that's that's the point yeah yeah look the truth is tom as you and i have talked about before during the unipolar moment when the united states was super powerful it was possible for american elites american foreign policy elites to have delusions about international politics you could believe the kinds of ideas that frank fukuyama was purveying you could do that because we were so powerful however that world has gone away we are now in a very different world we're in a multi-polar world where there's one particular country out there china that is a pure competitor of the united states and that is focusing the mind another question from kevin i don't think it's an old sparring partner of yours kevin rudd the former prime minister who has actually spoken at cis many many years ago uh but he asked this question kevin many of us liberals believe that institut international institutions are vital in maintaining a rules-based liberal international order it's this system john miyashima not the 19th century power politics that you talk about it's the liberal international system that in the 21st century will provide a balancing mechanism to to constrain state actors so why can't a un led system keep in check a rising china john well i think that the problem with kevin's comment is that he is trying to separate great power politics from rules and from norms and what you want to remember is that we had rules and norms galore in the 20th century we had many many institutions in the 20th century and institutions are basically rules but the key point is it's the great powers who write the rules it's just very important to understand that the united states loves rules because the united states gets to write the rules what's going on with china today is china is trying to write new rules and furthermore what happens is that when the great powers don't like the rules they violate the rules so rules are inextricably bound up with great power politics now kevin talks about the united nations he talks about the united nations like the united states has divisions of its own he talks about the united nations like there's this institution out there that has 20 armored division equivalents nothing could be further from the truth the united nations is comprised of the countries around the world right that have come together to form this institution china and the united states are part of the u.n right and so when you talk about the un doing something you're talking about china and the united states doing something it's china and the united states who bring force to the u.n and the u.n is not going to be able to do anything to contain china because it has no divisions and because china part of the u.n yeah an old mutual friend of ours who passed away last year owen harris who was a senior fellow at cis in the 2000s he once said that the united nations does not replace power politics it disguises power politics owen was a very wise man and i think his words hit the nail right on the head well john we are out of time the foreign affairs essay this is in the next edition of foreign affairs the november december 2021 edition the title is called the inevitable rivalry america china and the tragedy of great power politics john on behalf of cis members my staff and our board it's always a thrill and honor to have you with us at cis thanks so much for being with us today it was my pleasure tom and thank you for having me on the show well for decades cis has been a fiercely independent voice working hard to promote sound classical liberal principles to be notified of future videos make sure you subscribe to our channel then click the notification bill we rely solely on the generosity of people like you for donations to advance our classical liberal cause check out the links on screen now to see how you can get involved [Music]

Channel: Centre for Independent Studies

Views: 451,286

Keywords: Centre for Independent Studies, CIS, AusPol, Australian politics, On Liberty, Classical Liberalism, freedom of speech, Liberal Policy, Classical Liberalist, China, USA, Mearsheimer, cold war, Beijing, Washington, AsiaPacific

Id: 8mCzbiF5TmQ

Length: 60min 26sec (3626 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 19 2021

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[u/Sir-Matilda]

In his new essay for the New York-based Foreign Affairs magazine, Mearsheimer argues that the US and China are locked in a dangerous security competition, more perilous than the first Cold War. In essence, once China grew wealthy, a US-China cold war was inevitable. Had US policymakers understood this logic in the early 1990s, they would have tried to slow down Chinese growth and maximise the power gap between Beijing and Washington.

However, the US did the opposite: it pursued a policy of engagement, which aimed to help China grow wealthier – based on the assumption that China would become a democracy and a responsible stakeholder, which would lead to a more peaceful world. Instead of fostering harmonious relations between China and the US, engagement led to an intense rivalry.

Is Australia and the world in deep trouble? Absent a major internal Chinese crisis, Washington and Beijing are consigned to waging a dangerous security competition. Can we manage on the margins to prevent disaster?

John Mearsheimer is professor of political science and international relations at the University of Chicago and author of The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001). He was a guest at the Centre for Independent Studies in 2019.

Host: Tom Switzer is executive director of the Centre for Independent Studies.