台灣地區作戰計畫(代號OPLAN5077-04) (二)----(二下)
第三部分
五
底下建州派將引用現實派的國際政治與國際關係學界巨擘Walt及再度引用另一位現實派的學界巨擘Mearsheimer的論著，這兩位學者在對以色列的立場上，與新保守派不同，建州派對他們在以色列的立場衝突一事上無法保持中立，因為周威霖個人在這個問題上與新保守派較接近。
Mearsheimer教授這篇演講與文章十分精彩，本應全文貼出，但如此一來，篇幅將會過長，所以只能張貼我們認為相關的部分。
"The Gathering Storm: China's Challenge to US Power in Asia"
By John J. Mearsheimer
http://sydney.edu.au/news/84.html?newsstoryid=5351
5 August 2010
(Transcript of the fourth annual Michael Hintze Lecture in International Security
Delivered by Professor John Mearsheimer, 4 August 2010)
The United States has been the most powerful state on the planet for many decades, and has deployed robust military forces in the Asia-Pacific region since the early years of World War II. America's presence in your neighborhood has had significant consequences for Australia and for the wider region. This is how the Australian government sees it, at least according to the 2009 Defence White Paper: "Australia has been a very secure country for many decades, in large measure because the wider Asia-Pacific region has enjoyed an unprecedented era of peace and stability underwritten by US strategic primacy." The United States, in other words, has acted as a pacifier in this part of the world.
However, according to the very next sentence in the White Paper, "That order is being transformed as economic changes start to bring about changes in the distribution of strategic power." The argument here, of course, is that the rise of China is having a significant effect on the global balance of power. In particular, the power gap between China and the United States is shrinking and in all likelihood "US strategic primacy" in this region will be no more. This is not to say that the United States will disappear; in fact, its presence here is likely to grow in response to China's rise. But the United States will no longer be the preponderant power in your neighborhood, as it has been since 1945.
The most important question that flows from this discussion is whether China can rise peacefully. It is clear from the Defence White Paper—which is tasked with assessing Australia's strategic situation out to the year 2030—that policymakers here are worried about the changing balance of power in the Asia-Pacific region. Consider these comments from that document: "As other powers rise, and the primacy of the United States is increasingly tested, power relations will inevitably change. When this happens there will be the possibility of miscalculation. There is a small but still concerning possibility of growing confrontation between some of these powers." At another point in the White Paper, we read that, "Risks resulting from escalating strategic competition could emerge quite unpredictably, and is a factor to be considered in our defence planning." In short, the Australian government seems to sense that the shifting balance of power between China and the United States may not be good for peace in the neighborhood.
I would like to argue tonight that Australians should be worried about China's rise, because it is likely to lead to an intense security competition between China and the United States, with considerable potential for war. Moreover, most of China's neighbors, to include India, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Russia, Vietnam, and yes Australia, will join with the United States to contain China's power. To put it bluntly: China cannot rise peacefully.
It is important to emphasize, however, that I am not arguing that Chinese behavior alone will drive the security competition that lies ahead. The United States is also likely to behave in aggressive ways, thus further increasing the prospects for trouble here in the Asia-Pacific region.
Naturally, not everyone will agree with my assessment of the situation. Many believe that China can rise peacefully, that it is not inevitable that the United States and a powerful China will have confrontational relations. Of course, they assume that China will have peaceful intentions and that welcome fact of life can help facilitate stability in this region, even though the underlying balance of power is expected to change dramatically.
The Case for China's Peaceful Rise
I would like to examine three key arguments that are often employed to support this optimistic prognosis. First, some claim that China can allay any fears about its rise by making it clear to its neighbors and the United States that it has peaceful intentions, that it will not use force to change the balance of power. This perspective can be found in the Defence White Paper, which states: "The pace, scope and structure of China's military modernization have the potential to give its neighbors cause for concern if not carefully explained, and if China does not reach out to others to build confidence regarding its military plans." In essence, the belief here is that Beijing has the ability to signal its present and future intentions to Australia and other countries in compelling ways.
Unfortunately, states can never be certain about each other's intentions. They cannot know with a high degree of certainty whether they are dealing with a revisionist state or a status quo power. For example, there is still no consensus among experts as to whether the Soviet Union was bent on dominating Eurasia during the Cold War. Nor is there a consensus on whether Imperial Germany was a highly aggressive state that was principally responsible for causing World War I. The root of the problem is that unlike military capabilities, which we can see and count, intentions cannot be empirically verified. Intentions are in the minds of decision-makers and they are especially difficult to discern. You might say that Chinese leaders can use words to explain their intentions. But talk is cheap and leaders have been known to lie to foreign audiences. Thus, it is hard to know the intentions of China's present leaders, which is not to say that they are necessarily revisionist.
But even if one could determine China's intentions today, there is no way to know what they will be in the future. After all, it is impossible to identify who will be running the foreign policy of any country five or ten years from now, much less whether they will have aggressive intentions. It cannot be emphasized enough that we face radical uncertainty when it comes to determining the future intentions of any country, China included.
A second line of argument is that a benign China can avoid confrontation by building defensive rather than offensive military forces. In other words, Beijing can signal that it is a status quo power by denying itself the capability to use force to alter the balance of power. After all, a country that has hardly any offensive capability cannot be a revisionist state, because it does not have the means to act aggressively. Not surprisingly, Chinese leaders often claim that their military is designed solely for defensive purposes. For example, the New York Times recently reported in an important article on the Chinese navy that its leaders maintain that it is "purely a self-defense force."
One problem with this approach is that it is difficult to distinguish between offensive and defensive military capabilities. Negotiators at the 1932 Disarmament Conference tried to make these distinctions and found themselves tied in knots trying to determine whether particular weapons like tanks and aircraft carriers are offensive or defensive in nature. The basic problem is that the capabilities that states develop simply to defend themselves often have significant offensive potential.
Consider what China is doing today. It is building military forces that have significant power projection capability, and as the Defence White Paper tells us, China's "military modernization will be increasingly characterized by the development of power projection capabilities." For example, the Chinese are building naval forces that can project power out to the so-called "Second Island Chain" in the Western Pacific. And they also say that they are planning to build a "blue water navy" that can operate in the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean. For understandable reasons, they want to be able to protect their sea-lanes and not have to depend on the American navy to handle that mission. Although they do not have that capability yet, as Robert Kaplan points out in a recent article in Foreign Affairs, "China's naval leaders are displaying the aggressive philosophy of the turn-of-the-twentieth-century US naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan, who argued for sea control and the decisive battle."
Of course, most Chinese leaders think that their navy is defensively oriented, even though it has considerable offensive capability and will have much more in the future. Indeed, they refer to their naval strategy as "Far Sea Defense." As Kaplan's comments indicate, it seems almost certain that as the Chinese navy grows in size and capability, none of China's neighbors, including Australia, will consider it to be defensively oriented. They will instead view it as a formidable offensive force. Thus, anyone looking to determine China's future intentions by observing its military is likely to conclude that Beijing is bent on aggression.
Finally, some maintain that China's recent behavior toward its neighbors, which has not been aggressive in any meaningful way, is a reliable indicator of how China will act in the decades ahead. The central problem with this argument is that past behavior is usually not a reliable indicator of future behavior, because leaders come and go and some are more hawkish than others. Plus circumstances at home and abroad can change in ways that make the use of military force more or less attractive.
The Chinese case is illustrative in this regard. Beijing does not possess a formidable military today and it is certainly in no position to pick a fight with the United States. This is not to say that China is a paper tiger, but it does not have the capability to cause much trouble in this region. However, that situation is expected to change markedly over time, in which case China will have significant offensive capability. Then, we will see how committed it is to the status quo. But right now we cannot tell much about China's future behavior, because it has such limited capability to act aggressively.
What all of this tells us is that there is no good way to divine what China's intentions will be down the road or to predict its future behavior based on its recent foreign policies. It does seem clear, however, that China will eventually have a military with significant offensive potential.
Imitating Uncle Sam
What does America's past behavior tell us about the rise of China? In particular, how should we expect China to conduct itself as it grows more powerful? And how should we expect the United States and China's neighbors to react to a strong China?
I expect China to act the way the United States has acted over its long history. Specifically, I believe that China will try to dominate the Asia-Pacific region much as the United States dominates the Western Hemisphere. For good strategic reasons, China will seek to maximize the power gap between itself and potentially dangerous neighbors like India, Japan and Russia. China will want to make sure that it is so powerful that no state in Asia has the wherewithal to threaten it. It is unlikely that China will pursue military superiority so that it can go on the warpath and conquer other countries in the region, although that is always a possibility. Instead, it is more likely that Beijing will want to dictate the boundaries of acceptable behavior to neighboring countries, much the way the United States makes it clear to other states in the Americas that it is the boss. Gaining regional hegemony, I might add, is probably the only way that China will get Taiwan back.
A much more powerful China can also be expected to try to push the United States out of the Pacific-Asia region, much the way the United States pushed the European great powers out of the Western Hemisphere in the nineteenth century. We should expect China to come up with its own version of the Monroe Doctrine, as Imperial Japan did in the 1930s. In fact, we are already seeing inklings of that policy. Consider that in March, Chinese officials told two high-ranking American policymakers that the United States was no longer allowed to interfere in the South China Sea, which China views as a "core interest" like Taiwan and Tibet. And it seems that China feels the same way about the Yellow Sea. Last week the US and South Korean navies conducted joint naval exercises in response to North Korea's alleged sinking of a South Korean naval vessel. Those naval maneuvers were originally planned to take place in the Yellow Sea, which is adjacent to the Chinese coastline, but vigorous protests from China forced the Obama administration to move them further east into the Sea of Japan.
These ambitious goals make good strategic sense for China. Beijing should want a militarily weak Japan and Russia as its neighbors, just as the United States prefers a militarily weak Canada and Mexico on its borders. No state in its right mind should want other powerful states located in its region? All Chinese surely remember what happened in the last century when Japan was powerful and China was weak. Furthermore, why would a powerful China accept US military forces operating in its backyard? American policymakers, after all, express outrage whenever distant great powers send military forces into the Western Hemisphere. Those foreign forces are invariably seen as a potential threat to American security. The same logic should apply to China. Why would China feel safe with US forces deployed on its doorstep? Following the logic of the Monroe Doctrine, would not China's security be better served by pushing the American military out of the Asia-Pacific region?
Why should we expect China to act any differently than the United States has over the course of its history? Are they more principled than Americans are? More ethical? Are they less nationalistic than Americans? Less concerned about their survival? They are none of these things, of course, which is why China is likely to imitate the United States and attempt to become a regional hegemon.
And what is the likely American response if China attempts to dominate Asia? It is crystal clear from the historical record that the United States does not tolerate peer competitors. As it demonstrated over the course of the twentieth century, it is determined to remain the world's only regional hegemon. Therefore, the United States can be expected to go to great lengths to contain China and ultimately weaken it to the point where it is no longer a threat to rule the roost in Asia. In essence, the United States is likely to act toward China similar to the way it behaved toward the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
China's neighbors in the Asia-Pacific region are certain to fear its rise as well, and they too will do whatever they can to prevent it from achieving regional hegemony. Indeed, there is already substantial evidence that countries like India, Japan, and Russia, as well as smaller powers like Singapore, South Korea, and Vietnam, are worried about China's ascendancy and are looking for ways to contain it. India and Japan, for example, signed a "Joint Security Declaration" in October 2008, in good part because they are worried about China's growing power. India and the United States, which had testy relations at best during the Cold War, have become good friends over the past decade, in large part because they both fear China. Just last month, the Obama administration, which is filled with people who preach to the world about the importance of human rights, announced that it was resuming relations with Indonesia's elite special forces, despite their rich history of human rights abuses. The reason for this shift was that Washington wants Indonesia on its side as China grows more powerful, and as the New York Times reported, Indonesian officials "dropped hints that the group might explore building ties with the Chinese military if the ban remained."
Singapore, which sits astride the critically important Straits of Malacca and worries about China's growing power, badly wants to upgrade its already close ties with the United States. Toward that end, it built the Changi Naval Base in the late 1990s so that the US Navy could operate an aircraft carrier out of Singapore if the need arose. And the recent decision by Japan to allow the US Marines to remain on Okinawa was driven in part by Tokyo's concerns about China's growing assertiveness in the region and the related need to keep the American security umbrella firmly in place over Japan. Most of China's neighbors will eventually join an American-led balancing coalition designed to check China's rise, much the way Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and even China, joined forces with the United States to contain the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
Contrasts with the Cold War
底下建州派將引用現實派的國際政治與國際關係學界巨擘Walt及再度引用另一位現實派的學界巨擘Mearsheimer的論著，這兩位學者在對以色列的立場上，與新保守派不同，建州派對他們在以色列的立場衝突一事上無法保持中立，因為周威霖個人在這個問題上與新保守派較接近。
Mearsheimer教授這篇演講與文章十分精彩，本應全文貼出，但如此一來，篇幅將會過長，所以只能張貼我們認為相關的部分。
"The Gathering Storm: China's Challenge to US Power in Asia"
By John J. Mearsheimer
http://sydney.edu.au/news/84.html?newsstoryid=5351
5 August 2010
(Transcript of the fourth annual Michael Hintze Lecture in International Security
Delivered by Professor John Mearsheimer, 4 August 2010)
The United States has been the most powerful state on the planet for many decades, and has deployed robust military forces in the Asia-Pacific region since the early years of World War II. America's presence in your neighborhood has had significant consequences for Australia and for the wider region. This is how the Australian government sees it, at least according to the 2009 Defence White Paper: "Australia has been a very secure country for many decades, in large measure because the wider Asia-Pacific region has enjoyed an unprecedented era of peace and stability underwritten by US strategic primacy." The United States, in other words, has acted as a pacifier in this part of the world.
However, according to the very next sentence in the White Paper, "That order is being transformed as economic changes start to bring about changes in the distribution of strategic power." The argument here, of course, is that the rise of China is having a significant effect on the global balance of power. In particular, the power gap between China and the United States is shrinking and in all likelihood "US strategic primacy" in this region will be no more. This is not to say that the United States will disappear; in fact, its presence here is likely to grow in response to China's rise. But the United States will no longer be the preponderant power in your neighborhood, as it has been since 1945.
The most important question that flows from this discussion is whether China can rise peacefully. It is clear from the Defence White Paper—which is tasked with assessing Australia's strategic situation out to the year 2030—that policymakers here are worried about the changing balance of power in the Asia-Pacific region. Consider these comments from that document: "As other powers rise, and the primacy of the United States is increasingly tested, power relations will inevitably change. When this happens there will be the possibility of miscalculation. There is a small but still concerning possibility of growing confrontation between some of these powers." At another point in the White Paper, we read that, "Risks resulting from escalating strategic competition could emerge quite unpredictably, and is a factor to be considered in our defence planning." In short, the Australian government seems to sense that the shifting balance of power between China and the United States may not be good for peace in the neighborhood.
I would like to argue tonight that Australians should be worried about China's rise, because it is likely to lead to an intense security competition between China and the United States, with considerable potential for war. Moreover, most of China's neighbors, to include India, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Russia, Vietnam, and yes Australia, will join with the United States to contain China's power. To put it bluntly: China cannot rise peacefully.
It is important to emphasize, however, that I am not arguing that Chinese behavior alone will drive the security competition that lies ahead. The United States is also likely to behave in aggressive ways, thus further increasing the prospects for trouble here in the Asia-Pacific region.
Naturally, not everyone will agree with my assessment of the situation. Many believe that China can rise peacefully, that it is not inevitable that the United States and a powerful China will have confrontational relations. Of course, they assume that China will have peaceful intentions and that welcome fact of life can help facilitate stability in this region, even though the underlying balance of power is expected to change dramatically.
The Case for China's Peaceful Rise
I would like to examine three key arguments that are often employed to support this optimistic prognosis. First, some claim that China can allay any fears about its rise by making it clear to its neighbors and the United States that it has peaceful intentions, that it will not use force to change the balance of power. This perspective can be found in the Defence White Paper, which states: "The pace, scope and structure of China's military modernization have the potential to give its neighbors cause for concern if not carefully explained, and if China does not reach out to others to build confidence regarding its military plans." In essence, the belief here is that Beijing has the ability to signal its present and future intentions to Australia and other countries in compelling ways.
Unfortunately, states can never be certain about each other's intentions. They cannot know with a high degree of certainty whether they are dealing with a revisionist state or a status quo power. For example, there is still no consensus among experts as to whether the Soviet Union was bent on dominating Eurasia during the Cold War. Nor is there a consensus on whether Imperial Germany was a highly aggressive state that was principally responsible for causing World War I. The root of the problem is that unlike military capabilities, which we can see and count, intentions cannot be empirically verified. Intentions are in the minds of decision-makers and they are especially difficult to discern. You might say that Chinese leaders can use words to explain their intentions. But talk is cheap and leaders have been known to lie to foreign audiences. Thus, it is hard to know the intentions of China's present leaders, which is not to say that they are necessarily revisionist.
But even if one could determine China's intentions today, there is no way to know what they will be in the future. After all, it is impossible to identify who will be running the foreign policy of any country five or ten years from now, much less whether they will have aggressive intentions. It cannot be emphasized enough that we face radical uncertainty when it comes to determining the future intentions of any country, China included.
A second line of argument is that a benign China can avoid confrontation by building defensive rather than offensive military forces. In other words, Beijing can signal that it is a status quo power by denying itself the capability to use force to alter the balance of power. After all, a country that has hardly any offensive capability cannot be a revisionist state, because it does not have the means to act aggressively. Not surprisingly, Chinese leaders often claim that their military is designed solely for defensive purposes. For example, the New York Times recently reported in an important article on the Chinese navy that its leaders maintain that it is "purely a self-defense force."
One problem with this approach is that it is difficult to distinguish between offensive and defensive military capabilities. Negotiators at the 1932 Disarmament Conference tried to make these distinctions and found themselves tied in knots trying to determine whether particular weapons like tanks and aircraft carriers are offensive or defensive in nature. The basic problem is that the capabilities that states develop simply to defend themselves often have significant offensive potential.
Consider what China is doing today. It is building military forces that have significant power projection capability, and as the Defence White Paper tells us, China's "military modernization will be increasingly characterized by the development of power projection capabilities." For example, the Chinese are building naval forces that can project power out to the so-called "Second Island Chain" in the Western Pacific. And they also say that they are planning to build a "blue water navy" that can operate in the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean. For understandable reasons, they want to be able to protect their sea-lanes and not have to depend on the American navy to handle that mission. Although they do not have that capability yet, as Robert Kaplan points out in a recent article in Foreign Affairs, "China's naval leaders are displaying the aggressive philosophy of the turn-of-the-twentieth-century US naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan, who argued for sea control and the decisive battle."
Of course, most Chinese leaders think that their navy is defensively oriented, even though it has considerable offensive capability and will have much more in the future. Indeed, they refer to their naval strategy as "Far Sea Defense." As Kaplan's comments indicate, it seems almost certain that as the Chinese navy grows in size and capability, none of China's neighbors, including Australia, will consider it to be defensively oriented. They will instead view it as a formidable offensive force. Thus, anyone looking to determine China's future intentions by observing its military is likely to conclude that Beijing is bent on aggression.
Finally, some maintain that China's recent behavior toward its neighbors, which has not been aggressive in any meaningful way, is a reliable indicator of how China will act in the decades ahead. The central problem with this argument is that past behavior is usually not a reliable indicator of future behavior, because leaders come and go and some are more hawkish than others. Plus circumstances at home and abroad can change in ways that make the use of military force more or less attractive.
The Chinese case is illustrative in this regard. Beijing does not possess a formidable military today and it is certainly in no position to pick a fight with the United States. This is not to say that China is a paper tiger, but it does not have the capability to cause much trouble in this region. However, that situation is expected to change markedly over time, in which case China will have significant offensive capability. Then, we will see how committed it is to the status quo. But right now we cannot tell much about China's future behavior, because it has such limited capability to act aggressively.
What all of this tells us is that there is no good way to divine what China's intentions will be down the road or to predict its future behavior based on its recent foreign policies. It does seem clear, however, that China will eventually have a military with significant offensive potential.
Imitating Uncle Sam
What does America's past behavior tell us about the rise of China? In particular, how should we expect China to conduct itself as it grows more powerful? And how should we expect the United States and China's neighbors to react to a strong China?
I expect China to act the way the United States has acted over its long history. Specifically, I believe that China will try to dominate the Asia-Pacific region much as the United States dominates the Western Hemisphere. For good strategic reasons, China will seek to maximize the power gap between itself and potentially dangerous neighbors like India, Japan and Russia. China will want to make sure that it is so powerful that no state in Asia has the wherewithal to threaten it. It is unlikely that China will pursue military superiority so that it can go on the warpath and conquer other countries in the region, although that is always a possibility. Instead, it is more likely that Beijing will want to dictate the boundaries of acceptable behavior to neighboring countries, much the way the United States makes it clear to other states in the Americas that it is the boss. Gaining regional hegemony, I might add, is probably the only way that China will get Taiwan back.
A much more powerful China can also be expected to try to push the United States out of the Pacific-Asia region, much the way the United States pushed the European great powers out of the Western Hemisphere in the nineteenth century. We should expect China to come up with its own version of the Monroe Doctrine, as Imperial Japan did in the 1930s. In fact, we are already seeing inklings of that policy. Consider that in March, Chinese officials told two high-ranking American policymakers that the United States was no longer allowed to interfere in the South China Sea, which China views as a "core interest" like Taiwan and Tibet. And it seems that China feels the same way about the Yellow Sea. Last week the US and South Korean navies conducted joint naval exercises in response to North Korea's alleged sinking of a South Korean naval vessel. Those naval maneuvers were originally planned to take place in the Yellow Sea, which is adjacent to the Chinese coastline, but vigorous protests from China forced the Obama administration to move them further east into the Sea of Japan.
These ambitious goals make good strategic sense for China. Beijing should want a militarily weak Japan and Russia as its neighbors, just as the United States prefers a militarily weak Canada and Mexico on its borders. No state in its right mind should want other powerful states located in its region? All Chinese surely remember what happened in the last century when Japan was powerful and China was weak. Furthermore, why would a powerful China accept US military forces operating in its backyard? American policymakers, after all, express outrage whenever distant great powers send military forces into the Western Hemisphere. Those foreign forces are invariably seen as a potential threat to American security. The same logic should apply to China. Why would China feel safe with US forces deployed on its doorstep? Following the logic of the Monroe Doctrine, would not China's security be better served by pushing the American military out of the Asia-Pacific region?
Why should we expect China to act any differently than the United States has over the course of its history? Are they more principled than Americans are? More ethical? Are they less nationalistic than Americans? Less concerned about their survival? They are none of these things, of course, which is why China is likely to imitate the United States and attempt to become a regional hegemon.
And what is the likely American response if China attempts to dominate Asia? It is crystal clear from the historical record that the United States does not tolerate peer competitors. As it demonstrated over the course of the twentieth century, it is determined to remain the world's only regional hegemon. Therefore, the United States can be expected to go to great lengths to contain China and ultimately weaken it to the point where it is no longer a threat to rule the roost in Asia. In essence, the United States is likely to act toward China similar to the way it behaved toward the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
China's neighbors in the Asia-Pacific region are certain to fear its rise as well, and they too will do whatever they can to prevent it from achieving regional hegemony. Indeed, there is already substantial evidence that countries like India, Japan, and Russia, as well as smaller powers like Singapore, South Korea, and Vietnam, are worried about China's ascendancy and are looking for ways to contain it. India and Japan, for example, signed a "Joint Security Declaration" in October 2008, in good part because they are worried about China's growing power. India and the United States, which had testy relations at best during the Cold War, have become good friends over the past decade, in large part because they both fear China. Just last month, the Obama administration, which is filled with people who preach to the world about the importance of human rights, announced that it was resuming relations with Indonesia's elite special forces, despite their rich history of human rights abuses. The reason for this shift was that Washington wants Indonesia on its side as China grows more powerful, and as the New York Times reported, Indonesian officials "dropped hints that the group might explore building ties with the Chinese military if the ban remained."
Singapore, which sits astride the critically important Straits of Malacca and worries about China's growing power, badly wants to upgrade its already close ties with the United States. Toward that end, it built the Changi Naval Base in the late 1990s so that the US Navy could operate an aircraft carrier out of Singapore if the need arose. And the recent decision by Japan to allow the US Marines to remain on Okinawa was driven in part by Tokyo's concerns about China's growing assertiveness in the region and the related need to keep the American security umbrella firmly in place over Japan. Most of China's neighbors will eventually join an American-led balancing coalition designed to check China's rise, much the way Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and even China, joined forces with the United States to contain the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
Contrasts with the Cold War
(美中爭霸戰與美俄冷戰之比較)
There will be important differences, however, between the superpower competition
during the Cold War and a future rivalry between China and the
United States. For starters, the Soviet Union was physically located in both
Asia and Europe, and it threatened to dominate both of those regions.
Therefore, the United States was compelled to put together balancing
coalitions in Asia as well as Europe. China, on the other hand, is strictly
an Asian power and is not likely to threaten Europe in any meaningful way.
As a result, the major European states are unlikely to play an active role in
containing China, but will probably be content to remain on the sidelines.
The United States and the Soviet Union also competed with each other in
the oil-rich Middle East. Both superpowers had allies in the region that
sometimes fought wars with each other, and the United States was seriously
worried about a Soviet invasion of Iran following the ouster of the Shah in
1979. Given China’s dependence on oil from the Persian Gulf, it is likely to
compete with the United States for influence in that strategically important
region, much as the Soviets did. But a Chinese invasion of the Middle East is
not likely, in part because it is too far away, but also because the United
States would surely try to thwart the attack. China is more likely to station
troops in the region if a close ally there asked for help. For example,
one could imagine China and Iran establishing close ties, and Tehran
then asking Beijing to station Chinese troops on its territory. In short,
while the Americans and the Soviets competed actively in Europe, Asia,
and the Middle East, China and the United States are likely to compete in
only the latter two regions.
Although the Soviet–American rivalry spanned most of the globe, the
main battleground was in the center of Europe, where there was the
danger of a large-scale conventional war for control of the European continent.
That scenario was especially important to both sides not only because
there was considerable potential for nuclear escalation in the event of a war,
but also because a decisive Soviet victory would have fundamentally altered
the global balance of power. It is hard to imagine similar circumstances
involving China and the United States, mainly because Asia’s geography
is so different from Europe’s. Korea is probably the only place where those
two countries could get dragged into a conventional land war; in fact, that is
precisely what happened between 1950 and 1953, and it could happen again
if conflict broke out between North and South Korea. But the stakes and the
magnitude of that conflict would be nowhere near as great as a war between
NATO and the Warsaw Pact for control of Europe would have been.
In addition to Korea, one can imagine China and the United States fighting
over Taiwan, over disputed islands or islets off China’s coast, or over
control of the sea lanes between China and the Middle East. As with Korea,
the outcome of all of these scenarios would be nowhere near as consequential
as a superpower war in the heart of Europe during the Cold War.
Because the stakes are smaller and a number of the possible conflict scenarios
involve fighting at sea—where the risks of escalation are more easily
contained—it is somewhat easier to imagine war breaking out between the
China and the United States than between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. It is
also worth noting that there was no territorial dispute between the superpowers—
Berlin included—that was as laden with intense nationalistic feelings
as Taiwan is for China. Thus, it is not hard to imagine a war breaking
out over Taiwan, which is not to say that the odds of such a war are high.
Another important difference between the Cold War and a future Sino–
American rivalry concerns ideology. The superpower competition was especially
intense because it was driven by sharp ideological differences between
the two sides as well as by geopolitical considerations. Communism and
liberal capitalism were potent ideological foes not only because they offered
fundamentally different views about how society should be ordered, but also
because both American and Soviet leaders thought that communism was an
exportable political model that would eventually take root all over the globe.
This notion helped fuel the infamous ‘domino theory’, which helped convince
US leaders that they had to fight communism everywhere on the
planet. Soviet leaders had real concerns, as the spread of liberal capitalism
posed a serious threat to the legitimacy of Marxist rule. The incompatibility
of these rival ideological visions thus reinforced the zero-sum nature of the
rivalry, and encouraged leaders on both sides to wage it with unusual
intensity.
There are certainly some ideological differences between China and the
United States, but they do not affect the relationship between the two countries
in profound ways, and there is no good reason to think that they will in
the foreseeable future. In particular, China has embraced a market-based
economy, and does not see its current version of state capitalism as an
exportable model for the rest of the world. If anything, it is the United
States that shows a greater tendency to want to export its system to
others, but that ambition is likely to be tempered by setbacks in
Afghanistan and Iraq as well as the impact of the 2008 recession. This
situation should work to make a future rivalry between Beijing and
Washington less intense than the ideological-laden competition between
the superpowers.
Finally, the Soviet Union and its close allies had remarkably little economic
intercourse with the West during the Cold War. Indeed, there was little direct contact between the elites, much less the broader publics, on the two sides. The opposite is the case with China, which is not only deeply integrated into the world economy, but is also actively engaged with Western elites of all kinds. For those who believe that economic interdependence produces peace, this is good news.29 However, it is bad news for those who think that these ties are often a major source of friction between great powers. My view is that economic interdependence does not have a significant effect on geopolitics one way or the other. After all, the major European powers were all highly interdependent and prospering in 1914 when First World War broke out.
六
再來，建州派要請鄉親們讀美國一名資深媒體人Robert Kaplan對Mearsheimer教授的觀點的介紹，他指出，
There will be important differences, however, between the superpower competition
during the Cold War and a future rivalry between China and the
United States. For starters, the Soviet Union was physically located in both
Asia and Europe, and it threatened to dominate both of those regions.
Therefore, the United States was compelled to put together balancing
coalitions in Asia as well as Europe. China, on the other hand, is strictly
an Asian power and is not likely to threaten Europe in any meaningful way.
As a result, the major European states are unlikely to play an active role in
containing China, but will probably be content to remain on the sidelines.
The United States and the Soviet Union also competed with each other in
the oil-rich Middle East. Both superpowers had allies in the region that
sometimes fought wars with each other, and the United States was seriously
worried about a Soviet invasion of Iran following the ouster of the Shah in
1979. Given China’s dependence on oil from the Persian Gulf, it is likely to
compete with the United States for influence in that strategically important
region, much as the Soviets did. But a Chinese invasion of the Middle East is
not likely, in part because it is too far away, but also because the United
States would surely try to thwart the attack. China is more likely to station
troops in the region if a close ally there asked for help. For example,
one could imagine China and Iran establishing close ties, and Tehran
then asking Beijing to station Chinese troops on its territory. In short,
while the Americans and the Soviets competed actively in Europe, Asia,
and the Middle East, China and the United States are likely to compete in
only the latter two regions.
Although the Soviet–American rivalry spanned most of the globe, the
main battleground was in the center of Europe, where there was the
danger of a large-scale conventional war for control of the European continent.
That scenario was especially important to both sides not only because
there was considerable potential for nuclear escalation in the event of a war,
but also because a decisive Soviet victory would have fundamentally altered
the global balance of power. It is hard to imagine similar circumstances
involving China and the United States, mainly because Asia’s geography
is so different from Europe’s. Korea is probably the only place where those
two countries could get dragged into a conventional land war; in fact, that is
precisely what happened between 1950 and 1953, and it could happen again
if conflict broke out between North and South Korea. But the stakes and the
magnitude of that conflict would be nowhere near as great as a war between
NATO and the Warsaw Pact for control of Europe would have been.
In addition to Korea, one can imagine China and the United States fighting
over Taiwan, over disputed islands or islets off China’s coast, or over
control of the sea lanes between China and the Middle East. As with Korea,
the outcome of all of these scenarios would be nowhere near as consequential
as a superpower war in the heart of Europe during the Cold War.
Because the stakes are smaller and a number of the possible conflict scenarios
involve fighting at sea—where the risks of escalation are more easily
contained—it is somewhat easier to imagine war breaking out between the
China and the United States than between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. It is
also worth noting that there was no territorial dispute between the superpowers—
Berlin included—that was as laden with intense nationalistic feelings
as Taiwan is for China. Thus, it is not hard to imagine a war breaking
out over Taiwan, which is not to say that the odds of such a war are high.
Another important difference between the Cold War and a future Sino–
American rivalry concerns ideology. The superpower competition was especially
intense because it was driven by sharp ideological differences between
the two sides as well as by geopolitical considerations. Communism and
liberal capitalism were potent ideological foes not only because they offered
fundamentally different views about how society should be ordered, but also
because both American and Soviet leaders thought that communism was an
exportable political model that would eventually take root all over the globe.
This notion helped fuel the infamous ‘domino theory’, which helped convince
US leaders that they had to fight communism everywhere on the
planet. Soviet leaders had real concerns, as the spread of liberal capitalism
posed a serious threat to the legitimacy of Marxist rule. The incompatibility
of these rival ideological visions thus reinforced the zero-sum nature of the
rivalry, and encouraged leaders on both sides to wage it with unusual
intensity.
There are certainly some ideological differences between China and the
United States, but they do not affect the relationship between the two countries
in profound ways, and there is no good reason to think that they will in
the foreseeable future. In particular, China has embraced a market-based
economy, and does not see its current version of state capitalism as an
exportable model for the rest of the world. If anything, it is the United
States that shows a greater tendency to want to export its system to
others, but that ambition is likely to be tempered by setbacks in
Afghanistan and Iraq as well as the impact of the 2008 recession. This
situation should work to make a future rivalry between Beijing and
Washington less intense than the ideological-laden competition between
the superpowers.
Finally, the Soviet Union and its close allies had remarkably little economic
intercourse with the West during the Cold War. Indeed, there was little direct contact between the elites, much less the broader publics, on the two sides. The opposite is the case with China, which is not only deeply integrated into the world economy, but is also actively engaged with Western elites of all kinds. For those who believe that economic interdependence produces peace, this is good news.29 However, it is bad news for those who think that these ties are often a major source of friction between great powers. My view is that economic interdependence does not have a significant effect on geopolitics one way or the other. After all, the major European powers were all highly interdependent and prospering in 1914 when First World War broke out.
六
再來，建州派要請鄉親們讀美國一名資深媒體人Robert Kaplan對Mearsheimer教授的觀點的介紹，他指出，
