What Should Be Done About China?
Thucydides Trap vs Bipolar Stability
Thucydides and Kenneth Waltz have different theories about great power competition. Thucydides’ perspective, for starters, comes from his analysis of the Peloponnesian War, a conflict between Sparta and Athens that he judged to have resulted from the tendency of a rising power, Athens, to threaten a standing power, Sparta. This perspective has been carried forward in time and used to explain many more conflicts, resulting in the theory known as Thucydides Trap, the belief that whenever a new power rises and threatens to displace the standing power, conflict will inevitably ensue. Currently, the United States is the only superpower in the world, but China is seemingly rising to meet it economically and militarily; for this reason, Thucydides represents the stance that the US and China are destined to fight for this dominant position.
Waltz, however, disagrees. His theory of Neorealism looks to the structure of the international system and the balance of power and security in it to conclude that actually a bipolar world, one where there are two superpowers, is relatively stable, at least compared with a multipolar world, one where there are many great and minor powers all jostling for relative security. A bipolar system, Waltz says, renders wars cold rather than hot because of the clarity of real threats, the certainty about who has to address them, and the increased consequences of acting irresponsibly. Now, perhaps a bipolar system isn’t as stable as the unipolar system the US now stands on top of, the Cold War certainly wasn’t a more secure time than the one the US is in now, but compared to Thucydides, Waltz is optimistic about the future of great power competition between the US and China.
Another difference between these theories is the motivations for states acting differently. Thucydides’ theory claims that state actions are deliberate, that the standing power chooses to try and hold on to its dominance against the rising power. Thucydides sees power as the ultimate end states pursue. Waltz’s Neorealism updates this Realist assumption, claiming that states pursue security over power and that their actions aren’t deliberate but instead determined by the international structure. This is especially the case in a bipolar system where the two superpowers must focus on each other in order to remain secure, knowing each other to be the real threat, and allowing smaller conflicts between allies or unrelated states to be of lesser priority. In this way states tend not to be dragged into war inadvertently by alliances or miscalculations, instead necessarily and cautiously mirroring each other and remaining stable.
For these reasons, the advice Thucydides and Waltz would give American policymakers are quite different. Thucydides would argue that China is becoming a threat to US power, and if the US wishes to avoid a war that could result in a new balance of power, the US should try and limit China’s rise now, before it is too late. This could be done by targeting their economy. Detaching our economy from theirs would hurt us both, but to Realism, only relative gains and losses matter, and the US could likely recover faster than China. International sanctions could also be applied through our alliances. Furthermore, in order to limit China’s potential military expansionism, the US could create a NATO-like mutual defense alliance surrounding China with nations such as Taiwan, India, Indonesia, Korea, and Japan.
Waltz, on the other hand, would oppose this hawkish and escalatory strategy, believing that artificially making the system resemble a multipolar one by involving other nations in this bipolar conflict would increase the likelihood of hot war; though he would still support disconnecting our economies as to limit yet another area of potential conflict. Fundamentally, Waltz would advise a more inward-oriented approach, seeing a bipolar struggle for security as relatively safe so long as the two superpowers don’t overreact to each other. Under this strategy, the US should watch in what ways China changes and acts, and try to mirror it. Since China’s economic growth is currently its largest strength, the US should try to outperform it. Since China is developing its military, the US should too, not necessarily to use it in a fight, but rather to force China to use up ever more resources the way the arms race with the Soviet Union did. China is also expanding its economic influence in Africa, where the US could easily compete. If China seeks out territorial expansion, perhaps then a NATO-like agreement would be warranted, but the difference is China should make the first move.
I personally find Waltz’s theory more convincing and preferable. It is generalizable; a system-level analysis of the international structure is applicable to any time and applying it does seem to reveal the implications of multipolar and bipolar systems. Waltz focused on the twentieth century where WW1 is an example of multipolar dangers, with Germany being dragged into war to defend its ally Austria-Hungary and Russia being dragged into the war to defend France, and the Cold War is an example of bipolar stability, where the US and the Soviet Union didn’t directly engage each other in war for decades, despite tense conflict. There are some anomalies that don’t seem to be explained by Neorealism, such as why the US fought in Vietnam when it contributed little to either America’s or Russia’s security, which limits the validity question. But Neorealism is useful in explaining what policy is warranted in the future, especially concerning China and how to avoid hot war.
