Dale Copeland

Part 1 of my series: The Future of U.S.-China Relations: Lessons from History and Theory. Today's episode: "Some Orienting Thoughts".

Sorry but at the end of the just posted thread is an extra statement about 1914 that I didn't mean to add. (Still getting used to posting on BlueSky!)

Thus a big part of its power projection via naval power is a function of avoiding "economic encirclement" (of the kind that got Germany into a war in 1914).

I'm going to stop here to avoid going on too long. But in a few days I delve more deeply into some of the overhanging issues of US-China relations going forward.

Cheers, Dale

(If interested, see my "Highlights" page on my X profile for a previous series on US-China-Taiwan.)

(In 1996 over Taiwan, China "swerved" when Clinton move the Seventh Fleet closer to the island and told Beijing to cut it out.) But now that China is at least a Winnebago in East Asia, and might use this to challenge U.S. commitments to Taiwan over the next few years.

Because it is always good to be the "bigger vehicle" in a Chicken game, the Americans have sought to maintain their "Mack truck" status in East Asia and around the world compared to the Chevy van that had been China up until recently.

(JFK and Khrushchev in the Cuban Missile Crisis, for example.)

Yet because states care about their projections of resolve and status, they may indeed at times want to suggest to others that they are willing to take the risk of an actual nuclear war in order to ensure the other doesn't press its luck over key competing interests.

In short, U.S.-China relations at the strategic level are a classic "Chicken Game" where the "crash" is unacceptable, and "swerving" to avoid the crash is always, in the end, preferred to war.

Third and last point for now, and it's an obvious one: both China and U.S. have enough nuclear weapons to make any real war between them a "mutual disaster" (if not a Mutually Assured Destruction).

China thus must play a delicate game of expanding its commercial access (Belt and Road, global navy, etc.) even as it avoids causing others to align against its growth and try to constrain it (let alone "contain" it).

They will thus want to balance against it militarily and use threats to its commercial access (e.g., through the Malacca Strait) to coerce it into good behavior.

Of course, the tension here is that the more China does to compensate for its bad geography -- remember the US has had a two ocean buffer for centuries -- the more other states will see China as a rising threat.

Thus a big part of its power projection via naval power is a function of avoiding "economic encirclement" (of the kind that got Germany into a war in 1914).

Second, we must remember the "geopolitical" aspect of the US-China competition -- especially the fact that China is bottled up in East Asia (surrounded by islands and states like India) that make it hard for China to feel good about its commercial access to vital goods and markets.

In the short term, this is leading to the "dumping" of many products -- including ironically gas-powered vehicles as Chinese consumers buy more EVs -- and thus concerns for Chinese "dominance" in global economic affairs.

China now has huge "economies of scale" in so many areas (half of all the world's steel producing capacity, for example), and it needs cheap raw materials and markets for its surplus production capability to avoid diminishing marginal returns (growth, but at a decreasing rate).

This three-decade move to project naval power everywhere in support of China's commerce (largest trade partner for >100 countries) and China's "prestige" is a straight-forward Mahanian strategy (after Alfred T Mahan's theory of naval power and global trade that so many countries adopted after 1895).

China's naval power is now basically equal to the U.S. in East Asia and is starting to close the gap in global power projection (still less than half of America's number of air craft carrier groups, but establishing bases on both coasts of Africa and in Black Sea, to complement the one in S. Lanka.

In terms of productive capacity, China is now the world's largest exporter of cars and of course a leader in key subsectors such as EVs (electric vehicles), self-driving vehicles, electric battery production, and other things that we need to help reduce global warming (solar panels, etc.).

First off, I think we must face the fact that the "unipolar moment" of the period after the US-Sov Cold War ended is over. China's economy is now close to the size of America's, and depending on whether China can get its economic act together, could overtake the U.S. in relative GDP by 2030-35.

I begin the series with some orienting thoughts about what kinds of factors and issues we should be paying most attention to when we want to think about (a) whether U.S. and China will get into a full-blown "Cold War" over the next 10 years, and (b) whether actual war will occur during this time.

Part 1 of my series: The Future of U.S.-China Relations: Lessons from History and Theory. Today's episode: "Some Orienting Thoughts".

Watch for the first one in the series tomorrow -- that is, if I can figure out how to do this "thread" this for pieces where individual paragraphs will have to be continually cut down to <300 characters. 🙂

The goal is to explore to what extent one can draw from the history of great power politics going back hundreds of years, as well as from IR Theory, to understand contemporary U.S.-China relations and the conditions under which the current peace can be stabilized.

Hi All, I'm back on BlueSky for the first time since my initial posting many months ago. What I thought I'd do, just to get things going, is to put up a few postings on a "series" I've been working on lately, called "The Future of U.S.-China Relations: Lessons from History and Theory".

Hi all, This is my first posting with BlueSky, which I just joined five minutes ago. (And if someone out there wants to help me figure out how to add my photo, that would be great.)

Check out my new book, _A World Safe For Commerce_ (Princeton UP) on Amazon.com.

Congratulations Didac. Looks very interesting. Can't wait to read it. (Perhaps after I figure out how to post my picture on BlueSky, which I just joined five minutes ago!)