Correspondence: Power and Resolve in U.S. China Policy

In "Posing Problems without Catching Up," Thomas Christensen criticizes balance-of-power arguments that highlight the United States' relative military superiority and proclaim that China is not a military threat. Instead, he argues that asymmetric strategies (waiting until the U.S. military is bogged down elsewhere, undermining the United States' Asian alliances, emphasizing information and electronic warfare, etc.) allow China to pose major problems for U.S. security interests without the need to catch up militarily. He also suggests that Chinese policymakers view the United States as weak-willed (the Somalia analogy), thus increasing the likelihood of misperception and con(integral)ict in the Taiwan Strait. Christensen therefore recommends that the United States deter Chinese belligerence through enhancing its military capabilities and demonstrating that it has the political will to fight. Christensen's approach to Chinese motivation is too narrow. Intentions should not be inferred from power alone, whether relative or asymmetric. The actions of other states and a variety of emotions (pride, anger, etc.) also in(integral)uence decisionmakers. Christensen's policy prescriptions are also problematic. In arguing that the United States build up its military capabilities and demonstrate resolve to disabuse the Chinese of notions about an American lack of will, Christensen is overly optimistic about the ability of the United States to control Chinese interpretations of its behavior. What Americans view as defensive displays of resolve, Chinese may view as acts of belligerence, provoking the very aggression that the United States seeks to deter. Even more ominously, credibility arguments play into the hands of China-bashing hawks, undermining the U.S. national interest in stable bilateral relations. Is China a peaceful, status quo power seeking to incorporate itself into the world system? Or is it a revisionist state with a chip on its shoulder, out to settle old scores with the West? Because intentions are not self-evident, foreign policy analysts have generally focused their attention on China's material power. One group infers intent directly from capabilities. The Washington Times's Bill Gertz, author of The China Threat and leader of the Blue Team of China bashers on Capitol Hill, points to every Chinese arms acquisition as evidence of Chinese revisionism. The Brookings Institution's Bates Gill and Michael O'Hanlon also infer intent from capabilities, but reach the opposite conclusion: China does not pose a threat. It is not a superpower, and in a head-to-head fight the United States would win hands down. Americans can therefore sleep easy. Responding to Gill and O'Hanlon, former U.S. Ambassador to China James Lilley has argued that China nevertheless has the capacity to threaten U.S. interests in Asia. He paints a sinister picture of Chinese intentions: China has ambitions for Taiwan that superior American conventional forces cannot deter. Christensen joins Lilley in criticizing those such as Gill and O'Hanlon who deploy "simple realist notions" (p. 6) about the balance of power and suggest that the United States has nothing to worry about. As a structural realist, however, Christensen distances himself from Lilley's assertions about Chinese motives, basing his argument instead on more solid rationalist ground: China's asymmetric military strategies. Christensen's logic is contradictory, however. He opens by arguing that U.S. military capabilities will not necessarily deter China, but paradoxically concludes by prescribing an American and Taiwan arms buildup to deter China. Christensen is right that U.S. military superiority will not necessarily deter Chinese aggression. His rationalist focus on asymmetric strategies, however, does not advance debate very far. The broader problem is that mainstream international relations theory is ill suited to address the issue of intentions. Scholars of both the neorealist and neoliberal traditions have despaired of ever understanding the motives that drive policymakers; they therefore focus their attention on material power. For instance, in Engaging China, Randall Schweller explores the question of what policy a hegemon such as the United States should adopt toward a rising power such as China. He does an admirable job of cataloguing potential policy options: preventive war, balancing, band- wagoning, binding, engagement, buck-passing, and so on. In his conclusion...