The Evolution of the Sino-American Nexus, With a View From Washington: From Hostility to Smart Appeasement and Back (original) (raw)
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Sino-American Relations in the Era of Globalization—A Framework for Analysis
Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2010
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And a robust U.S. presence in East Asia, including strong alliance relationships with Japan and other traditional U.S. allies, will continue to be important to maintain regional stability, provide reassurance to regional states during this period of "China's rise", and to "hedge" against the possible emergence of a more conflictual relationship with China as well as possible conflict over Taiwan. But the United States is not likely to conclude that a strategy of containment toward China is either necessary or feasible. Similarly, China will likely continue to pursue a strategy of seeking close ties with the United States rather than adopt an anti-hegemonist coalition strategy to counter American power and influence. i At the same time, the Chinese will likely seek to develop closer ties and cooperation with the European Union and other powers to bolster China's bargaining position vis-vis the United States and hedge against the possibility of a sharp deterioration in Sino-American relations. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. 1. Constraints on U.S. and Chinese Strategic Options Globalization has created a new "strategic interdependence" among globalizing states as these states' economic power has become increasingly dependent on maintaining, deepening and broadening economic ties with other globalizing states and the international system of peace and stability in which those economic ties thrive. Jockeying among states for political influence and economic advantage will continue, but this is likely to occur almost exclusively within the parameters of the international system that the major powers, now including China, recognize must be respected and jointly defended to preserve their own national interests. Thus, although successfully globalizing states may be economic and political competitors in the future, they are not likely to be strategic competitors in a zero-sum contest in which gains for one power, including economic, are necessarily a loss for the other, and in which their long-term strategic goal is to weaken if not defeat the other power as was the case in the U.S.-Soviet strategic competition of the Cold War. Rather, these states will find the growth, prosperity and security of other powers essential to their own security and economic well-being. 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President Bush, in his 2002 National Security Strategy report, declared that "today, the international community has the best chance since the rise of the nation-state in the seventeenth century to build a world where great powers compete in peace instead of continually prepare for war. Today, the world's great powers find ourselves on the same side-united by common dangers of terrorist violence and chaos." iii And Ambassador Richard Haass, as President Bush's Director of Policy Planning in the State Department, said in 2002, "war between the great powers" is "almost unthinkable." iv Even Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld noted in early June, 2004, that "future dangers will less likely be from battles between great powers, and more likely from enemies that work in small cells, that are fluid and strike without warning anywhere, anytime enemies that have access to increasingly formidable technology and weapons." v
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The Instability of China-US Relations
The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2010
China and the United States signed a joint statement during US President Barack Obama's four-day state visit to China in November 2009 in which President Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao, 'reached agreement to advance China-US relations in the new era'. 1 These relations, however, soured after successive fallings-out over US trade sanctions on Chinese seamless steel tubes, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton's criticism of China's internet freedom, US arms sales to Taiwan, and Obama's meeting with the Dalai Lama in the White House-that began only one month after Obama's visit and carried on through to February 2010. 2 Just as political commentators began to understand the reasons for this 180-degree shift over such a short period they were taken back afresh on April 2 when the relationship made a rapid recovery, evident in the hour-long telephone conversation that day between President Hu and President Obama on cooperation. 3 Few appeared to have noticed that sudden deteriorations followed by rapid recoveries have been the norm in China-US relations since the 1990s. This article explains the enduring phenomenon using a theory of superficial friendship-namely the policy of pretending to be friends. Destabilizing Factors Two explanations among the several for Sino-American disputes that arose so soon after Obama's visit are most frequently heard. One is based on the theory of growing nationalism in China; the other on the argument that
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"The Difference a Day Makes: Understanding the End of the Sino-American “Tacit Alliance”
International Studies Review, 2014
Late on June 3, 1989, and into the next day Chinese soldiers brought to an abrupt end the 7-week standoff between the Chinese state and students and citizens of Beijing. It has been common to see balance of power considerations as bringing China and the United States together in 1972 to balance against the Soviet Union, and it has been equally common to see the end of what Kissinger called the Sino-American “tacit alliance” (1972–1989) to be, naturally, the end of the Cold War and/or the breakup of the Soviet Union. Borrowing from Hopf’s societal constructivism (2012) and Wendt’s “cultures of anarchy” (1999) here applied at the second level of analysis, the following study concludes that June 4 was actually key to the end of the Sino-American “tacit alliance,” leading to a major shift in mutual perceptions, which caused a shift in the Sino-American dyadic culture, from that of trusted friends to that of distrusted adversaries for a season, effectively ending the “tacit alliance” between the US and China.
H-Diplo Article Reviews 1037, 2021
In-depth review of article by Ilnyun Kim, that focuses upon how American liberals, primarily those associated with the Democratic Party, sought to address the vexed and controversial issue of China policy during the 1950s. Kim focuses particularly on three figures: Fairbank, the leading U.S. academic specialist on China and Asia; Fairbank’s brother-in-law and Harvard colleague, the historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.; and Chester Bowles, U.S. ambassador to India from 1951 to 1953 and again from 1963 to 1969. All three were New Deal Democrats, liberal supporters of domestic reform who believed that internationally the United States should oppose colonialism and seek to encourage the non-Communist left, a faith expounded by Schlesinger in 1949 in his influential book The Vital Center. Married to sisters, Fairbank and Schlesinger were personally as well as politically close. Helped by generous funding from the Ford Foundation and other sources, during this decade Fairbank was engaged in the process of making Harvard into one of the leading academic nodes of Asian studies in the United States, while writing extensively himself and mentoring dozens of doctoral students. The review suggests that, while these individuals were Democrats, from the mid-1950s onward, a significant contingent of the Republican Party likewise began to question the wisdom of the existing American policies on China, especially the continued recognition of the Nationalists on Taiwan as the sole legal government of China. Yet what ultimately broke the logjam in relations between mainland China and the United States was not a revolt against the irrationality of the existing situation, but a response to perceived clear and present dangers. In spring 1969, armed skirmishes between Soviet and Chinese troops on their joint border apparently caused Chinese leaders, especially Mao Zedong, to panic that a full-scale Russian attack might be imminent. Chinese overtures to the new administration of Richard Nixon, a president embroiled in an unwinnable war in Vietnam with no proper exit strategy, and acutely conscious that on the international scene the United States needed to manage its substantial but by no means limitless resources more effectively, arrived at the right psychological moment. Top policymakers in both countries finally came together in identifying substantial immediate advantages their own nations might derive from the resumption of at least partial relations. On the American side of the great divide, Fairbank and his allies had done much to facilitate a reversal of policy, not least by persistently and plausibly highlighting the potential ensuing benefits for the United States. Chance and political contingency, however, determined whether and when their vigorous and protracted campaign would finally be rewarded.