To Be or Not to Be-ijing

The United States and China are entangled in a great power competition, even a confrontation that risks becoming dangerous. The risk is a military engagement that would be a serious danger not only for the two powers, but for the entire region – and the region under question is potentially vast. It could escalate to involve the entire Eurasian continent, or, in the term employed by pioneer British geo-strategist Halford Mackinder,the “world island” (which stretches from Brittany to Siberia, enveloping all of South Asia including the Persian Gulf and the eastern shores of Africa, perhaps also the Mediterranean and Africa itself, at least the Maghreb).

The People’s Republic of China has engaged in a momentous project to tie the world island to its interests, even its domination. The project, The Belt and Road Initiative, aims to connect China by land via roads, rail and sea around South Asia. The land route would realize the dictum of Mackinder, who maintains that the power that controls the Eurasian heartland controls the world island, and that whoever controls the world island controls the world. This principle helps to explain the Western grand strategy, led by the United States, during the Cold War. The long-term goal was to contain the Soviet Union, to prevent communist power from gaining control of all of the heartland. This was achieved. Today the Russian vestige of the Soviet Union is no longer viewed as a serious geopolitical threat; if anything, it is generally seen as a relatively weak economic power that is no more than a nuisance, although sometimes a grave one, around its historic borders, employing its military assets in non-respect of longstanding international norms.

China, on the other hand, is a great power, a rising great power in the full sense of the term. It obviously sees itself as such and is determined to exercise its growing power, not only by land, but by the maritime “belt” around the world island. This venturing by sea recognizes the dictum of the American geo-strategist Nicholas Spykman, who modified Mackinder’s thinking by turning it inside out. For the American of Dutch origin, it is rather the power that controls the littoral around the world island, the “rimland”, which gains control of all of it. Since the end of World War II, part of the American grand strategy has been the rimland encirclement of the Eurasian landmass, from Greenland to Alaska. Even today the People’s Republic is indeed largely surrounded along the rimland by nations that view with varying degrees of alarm its pretensions to expansion. So, we currently see a geo-strategic competition for the largest “island” on the planet between a status quo power, the United States, and a rising power, China. The history of great power competition demonstrates that this has always been a volatile situation, when a rising power challenges the existing international hierarchy. When this is not carefully and judiciously managed, it has led to major wars. In fact, it has rarely been well managed, short of war.

Within the context of this geo-strategic competition, we must now evaluate the geo-political assets of both great powers. In the Anglo-American, even Western world, power is conceived in two grand categories: Hard power and soft power. Military power is clearly hard power. Some forms of economic strength may also be viewed as hard power, especially when it offers the foundation for the construction of military power. The United States spends more on its military than something like the next ten armies combined. This is a lot of money, but represents no more than four percent of American GDP. Such a rich country can give itself this kind of military establishment at this relatively low cost. This is all the more a small burden since most of the spending is plowed into the American economy, a kind of economic stimulus. Countries without an arms industry do not have this advantage.

However, it is not only the level of military spending that is vital, it is also the nature of the investment. Today’s first-tier military establishments, of which both China and the United States are pre-eminent members, have integrated into their militaries the most advanced post-modern, digital technologies – including the most recent innovations in artificial intelligence. It is impossible for outsiders to gain a clear understanding of which power exceeds in this realm of military technology because it is among their most closely guarded secrets. What we do know is that the United States is engaged in an effort to diffuse its military assets in order to deny China large, juicy targets like aircraft carrier task forces and big historic bases too close to China’s mainland, and thus vulnerable to the increasingly long range of Chinese missiles. There is a strategic movement to a myriad of small, dispersed weapons based on artificial intelligence – “swarm” weapons.

The geographic theatre of military operations is also relevant. Any military engagement against China will be maritime, although involving air and space assets, as well as cyberspace. A technological edge in all these areas is therefore vital, and is indeed a central aspect of current US strategy, leveraging the innovativeness of the private sector, a dynamic American advantage. A grave weakness of China in a prolonged war is its vulnerability in supplying its economy. Chinese trade moves through narrow “chokepoints” connecting the Pacific with the Indian Ocean. The possibility of being cut off from vital oil supplies has already led Beijing to construct land-based pipelines avoiding these chokepoints, which could be blocked by the US Navy and America’s allies in the region. In fact, allies are essential to Washington’s current strategy, what it labels as “smart power” – the combination of military, economic and diplomatic efforts.

So-called “smart power” brings us to the importance of soft power. This characteristic of power is viewed as the attraction, the positive resonance of culture, both in the broadest sense and more specifically political culture. This includes not only the political institutions and practices of liberal democracy, but also its entrepreneurial freedoms, which are intimately tied to the economic interests shared with the United States. Liberal institutionalism leads us to the complex panoply of Asian economic and security multilateralism. One other source of soft power is the capacity to create and shape multilateral institutions and their legal environments. Beginning with the League of Nations following the First World War, but especially since the Second, the United States has been at the forefront of the construction of the current vast number of such institutions, based on liberal values. These institutions have helped to sustain regional stability and the shared prosperity growing out of rule-based economic predictability, in the interests of the United States as well as its security and trading partners.

The vital question that finally needs to be addressed is, “Which institutional structure, in its broadest political as well as cultural form, is best suited for overall well-being: the Chinese or the well-established and time-proven liberal order?” On the other hand, what must be asked of the liberal order is, “To what extent can it accommodate the diversity of national interests and cultures without compromising its fundamental pediment of human rights?” In a showdown between the United States and China, this is the central existential question.