# International Relations

> # A House of Cards

## Section I Theories

`Conventional Wisdom`

'' China will emerge as a true greatpower in the 21th century, gain the great power status.

## Answers Matter

'' Is China becoming a great power?

'' Will it threaten American interests?

'' Can its great power emergence be managed?

'' How much should America do to promote democracy in China?

## Relations

`Container`

Richard Berstein

Ross H.Munro

`Engagers`

Andrew J.Nathan

Robert S.Ross

`Authors View`

There is a *mainstream consesus* view about the furure of the Sino-American relationship and the differences between containers and engagers are *of degree, not of kind*.

> ### Concepts

**Containment**

> a *geostrategic* policy that would use American hard power, esp. *military power* to rein in China’s ambition and compel Beijing to adhere to Washington’s rules of the game.

> > **Washington’s rules of the game**

> On issues as arms control, weapons proliferation, trade and human

> rights. The liberalization of China's domestic political system.

**Engagement**

> a strategy to manage China’s rise to great power status by

> encouraging it to join the *multinational institutional framewaorks*

> and to integrate into the global economy, stressing the benefits to

> China of coorperating or make it another stakeholder.

> > **Tools of Statecraft**

> > Economic leverage, military power, exercise of ideology/America power.

**Security Dilemma**

> Vicious circle where the quest for security leads to increased insecurity.

> **Anarchic**

> '' no central authority to protect states from one another

> **Self-help**

> '' bipolarity was more stable than multipolarity

**Hegemonic Power**

> The preponderant state in the international system, a state powerful enough to get most of what it wants most of the time. Not usual state of affairs in world politics.

**System Stability**

> '' a fancy term for the absence of war, geopolitical competions, and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

**Overexpansion**

> '' A state's pursuit of enormous power. In defensive realists opinion, can't be justified by the quest for security.

## Section II Great Power

`Realist`

Great Power emergence results from the interlocking effects of differential growth rates, anarchy, and balancing.

Pessimistic about the prospects for eliminating conflict and war

Dominant theoretical tradition throughout the Cold War.

> ### Comcepts

> **Differential Growth Rates**

> '' The economic/technoligical/military power of states grows at differential, not parrallel, rates. Illustrates the improtance of relative power.

> **System Structure**

> '' The nature of international system. Plays a major orle in the process of great power emergence. Offering strong security-driven, "structual" incentives to states to acquire the same kinds of capabilities their rivals possess.

> **Sameness Effect/Respond In Kind**

> '' f

> **Countervailing Power**

> '' Realism expectation that hegemony should generate the rise of countervailing power in the form of new great power.

The immediate impetus for China's rise is a *defensive reaction* to American's *hegemonic position*.

Chinese policymakers indeed are sensitive to *realtive power* issues.

*Economic modernizastion* is driving China's policy too.

China is favoring a multipolar system in which U.S influence should be diminished.

## Section III Peace

`Three strands`

1. Economic interdependence

2. International institutionalism

3. Wilsonianism (spread of democracy)

### Economic interdependence

`Logic`

State: national wealth

Trade is a web of common interests, can lower possibility of war

- States cannot afford the disruption of trade that would result from war.

- Technology and information-oriented global economy is the most efficient road to achieving national wealth.

`Weaknesses`

- calculations of economic gain or loss are seldom the determining factor when policymakers decide on war or peace.

- economic cost of war is ephemeral

As China becomes more powerful, it increasingly appears willing to absorb short-term costs to its interests in economic interdependence in order to pursue its *geo-strategic interests*.

It is becoming more assertive in its external behavior as getting wealthier.

> ### Comcepts

> **Interdependence**

> '' Trade is a tie that binds states to follow peaceful, cooperative foreign policies.

> **Mercantilism**

> '' a practice of centuries past in which trade and foreign economic policies were manipulated to build up a monetary surplus that could be used to finance war.

> **Neomercantilist Economic Strategy**

> '' A country's overall strength depends on its accumulation of wealth.

### International Institutions

`Logic`

- Removing the principal obstacle to cooperation.

- Change the usual calsulus of gains and loss, the incentive to cheat, transmiting norms of conduct.

- Exchange information help forster transparency.

- Regularize interactions in establishing a reputation in multiple transaction.

`Weakness`

- Theoretically flawed and unsupported empirically.

- Relative gains problems

> ### Concepts

> **Power Transition Theory**

> '' The largest wars result from challenges to the top position in the status hierarchy, when a rising power is surpassing (or threatening to surpass) the most powerful state.

> **Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence**

> **Regimes**

> '' A convention of rules pertaining to a specific type of international transaction to which states subscibe even though these rules are not embeded in a formal organization framework.

> **Prisoners' Dilemma**

> '' f

> **Iterative Plays**

> '' f

As China becomes deeply involved in international institutions and regimes, its participation will have little effect on its behavior as a great power.

### Democratic Peace theory

`Logic`

Democracies are inherently more peaceful

- Statemaen are restrained from war by the public, upon which the human and economic costs of war fall.

- Democracies governed by the same norms of peaceful dispute resolution.

`Weaknesses`

- Democracies have gone to war enthusiastically

- Democracies have gone to war with each other

> **Constructivism**

> '' International politics is shaped by persuasive ideas, collective values, and social identities. Emphasized the importance of language and discourse in shaping social outcomes.

## China’s policy

`Economic Growth`

modernization

`Domestic Political Situation`

China's drive to great power status may fail because of domestic internal developments.

Civil unrest stemming from failed political liberalization, or the centrifugal effect of regional autonomy undermining central government control.

`Military`

The perception of a *highly-threat international enviornment*, and *revisionist ambitions*.

**lacks**- Power-projection capabilities

- High-tech military

**innovate**

- Societal perspective: cohersiveness affect military effectiveness.

- Organizational perspective: pathologies of organizing innovate.

- Realist perspective: over time will close the gap

## Section IV Conflict

`Author's View`

US-China great power competition is highly likely in the future.

Great power rivalry is the norm in international politics for these reasons.

- Anarchy among states generates *legitimate security fears* that require and justify *self-help*.

- *Power relationships* predominate over *internal political characteristics* in determining state behavior.

Illustrate the pitfalls of *premature pursuit of the containment *option.

Within the US-China debate is not between containment and engagement, rather, is about the *tactics of containment*.

What seems clear is that China's rise to the great power status will leave the United States with only two viable grand strategy choice s in East Asia: *containment* or *offshore balancing*.

- American trade with China should be driven by strategic considerations.

- Aim to reduce China's export surplus to deprive it of hard currency reserves that Beijing will use to import high technology.

- Tightly regulate the direct overflow of critical advanced technology in the form of licensing, offset, or joint venture agreements

`Specific Issues`

1. the status of Taiwan

2. U.S. economic stakes in East Asia

3. Control of the sea lanes in the south China sea

### Taiwan

Washington has adopted a policy of *deliberate ambiguity* on this point.

- Ideoligical antipathy toward China

- Support for a democratizing Taiwan

### East Asia

Trade and investment links to East Asia are crucial to America's economic health. Current policy is to maintaining the geopolitical status quo.

- Clash the ambition of a rising China. The potential for future tension exists

### South China Sea

Lies astride shipping routes between East Asia and the Middle East.

- A buffer zone protects mainland China, become more important on overseas energy sources.

`Realistic Alternative`

> **Offshore Balancing**

> '' Rather than confronting China itself, the U.S. leave it to other *states in the region* to assume responsibility for containing China and manageing the rise of Chinese power.

# 2.America and China 1941-1991

China has always been of *secondary significance* to the U.S.--important simply in the *context of crisis with other countries*. Strategic partner and expansionist aggressor

It's a distorted relationship.

Normalization based on opposition to a common enemy rather than on *mutual understanding* provided only a temporary respite from frictions

`The U.S.`

- views China as a *regional power*.

- abandon ill-founded assumptions of transforming China internally

`China`

- could offer cooperation unemcumbered by *ideological reservations*, and internal order less repressive of its own people and opprntunities not destined to be burieed by *bureaucracy* or disputed by *unheaval*.

- 1940s Defeating Japan and Germany

- 1950s

- 1960s Slowing Soviet industrialization

- 1970s

- 1980s Complicating Moscow's defenses

- 1990s With the disintergration of the Soviet Union and the absence of a new credible enemy

# 3.After Financial Crisis

*Interdependence* involves short-run sensitivity and long-term vulnerability.

**Sensibility**

> '' Refers to the amount and pace of the effects of mutual dependence.

**Vulnerability**

> '' The relative costs of chaning the structure of a system of interdependence, produces more power than does sensibility.

The asymmetry of interdependence involves a potential power relationship.

**Symmetry**

> '' Situations of relatively balanced dependence. Balancing asymmetries decide whether economic interdependece produces power.

`U.S.`

- need to increaing savings

`China`

- Domestic patterns of consumption and investment

- Liberating exchange rates, interest rates and markets.

- Demands for political participation.

Misperceptions about the financial crisis could lead to policy miscalculations in both Beijing and Washington.

`U.S.`

- Fear of decline

`China`

- Nationalism

- Hubris

China's rise doesn't mean war. The U.S. and China would not only keep the balance of asymmetries that locks them together, but also realise that they have much to gain.

# 4.Liberal System

China will try to use its growing influence to reshape the rules and insitutions of the international system to better serve its interests.

Other states in the system, especially the declining hegemon will start to seen China as a growing security threat.

Differences from past transition:

China faces a Western-centered system that is open, integrated, and rule-based, with wide and deep political foundations. Hardly overturn but easy to enjoy.

- The Western order is built around nondiscrimination and market openess.

- Coalition-based character of its leadership.

- The postwar Western oeder is broadly endorsed system of ruls and institions.

- reinvest Weatern order

**Power Transition**

**Power Diffusion**

# 5.Thucydides Trap

> **The Thucydides Trap**

> '' The cause of the great Peloponnesian War of the rise of Athens and the fear it inspired in Sparta. How power shiftd have led to competitive tensions, which sometimes have been managed, sometimes led to conflict.

>

> **New Type Of Great-power Relationship**

> '' Share a basic commitment to the international system, and shoulder the responsibilities for preserving and extending systemic interests.

> '' Anticipate the economic and even institutional changes that lie ahead.

> '' Indentify mutual interests in supporting structual reform and "rebalancing" in both countries.

> '' - Energy and enviornmental sectors

>

>

> **New Balance of Power**

> '' How economics and security interconnect in today's foreign policy.

>

> **Middle-income Trap**

> '' The tendency for productivity and growth to slow after developing economies reach middle-income levels.

`China`

- Rely heavily on investment in *fixed assets*, principally by the government, and on *export-led growth*.

- Balancing a near-term growth stategy.

- China should change its growth model to rely on greater domestic demand and concumption.

- Move to an open innovation system to move up the value chian.

- Reconstructing fiscal systems to match accountability for revenues and expenditure

**Devaluation**

'' The tendency for productivity and growth to slow after developing economies reach middle-income levels.

# 6.Taiwan's Finlandization

A Finlandized Taiwan would reposition itself as a neutral power rather than a U.S strategic ally. Taiwan's Finlandization should be seen as an alternative strategy to pacifying China. It's a test of liberal approached to international relationships.

`Taiwan`

- small but internally sovereign state that is geographically close to a superpower with which it shares culture and historical ties.

- Its fierce sense of independence is balanced by a pragmatic sense of the need to accommodate that superpower's vital interests.

- The evolving views of its leader and its people focus on seeking security through integration rather than confrontation.

`the U.S.`

1. Taiwan has played a strategic role in U.S. foreign policy.Keeping Taiwan within the U.S. orbit would demonstrate that U.S will continue to engage in Asia. Beijing's fears of encirclement and naval inferiority in turn has prompted China's own military buildup.

Diffuse one of the most worrying trends in Sino-U.S. relationship.

2. Moderating the Washington-Beijing security delimma

3. Taiwan was becoming the strategic liability to U.S.

4. U.S. military security could be attained through other Asia bases and operations.

**文章观点句 (6篇)**

**A House of Cards: American Strategy toward China ----by Christopher Layne**

1、It is unsurprising, therefore, that American policymakers and analysts are beginning to focus on the strategic implications of China’s rise to great power status.

\2. When realists talk about international politics being anarchic, they are referring to this lack of a governing authority.

3、Unlike offensive realists (who believe that states should maximize their power), defensive realists believe states only want to maximize their security.

4、It is the difference between China's growth rates and America's that holds out the prospect ("if the present trend continues") that China could eventually surpass the United States as the dominant power in the international system.

5、But China's rise is likely to occur sooner rather than later because in a unipolar world China has very strong incentives to balance against U.S. power.

6、As realist theory suggests, security concerns are driving China's economic modernization.

7、"Interdependence" is another way of saying that trade is a tie that binds states to follow peaceful, cooperative foreign policies.

8、Calculations of possible economic gain or loss are seldom the determining factor when policymakers decide on war or peace.

9、In fact, however, neoliberal international institutionalism is flawed theoretically and unsupported empirically.

10、Hence, expanding the "democratic zone of peace" is deemed a vital American security interest. Bernstein and Munro simply are reflecting the conventional wisdom when they say that "stable democracies are more likely to behave responsibly in international affairs than are dictatorships."

11、The impulse to be a "crusader state," however, invariably has pushed the United States down the road of foreign policy misadventure.

12、From a realist perspective, one must conclude that a U.S.China great power competition is highly likely in the future.

13、But if rivalry is certain, war is not. This is because for the great powers, war itself is a deterrent, albeit an imperfect one.

14、China today lacks the two strategic prerequisites of great power status: power-projection capabilities and a high-tech military.

15、Beyond the arguments. that Chinese military action against Taiwan would undermine U.S. interests in a stable world order and constitute unacceptable "aggression," ideological antipathy toward China and support for a democratizing Taiwan would be powerful incentives for American intervention.

16、Unless U.S. and Chinese interests can be accommodated, the potential for future tension - or worse - exists.

17、To be sure, short of preventive war, there is nothing the United States can do to prevent China from eventually emerging as a great power.

18、American attempts to "export" democracy to China are especially shortsighted and dangerous.

19、Looking down the road a decade or two, it would be a geopolitical act of folly for the United States to risk war with China for the purpose of defending democracy in Taiwan.

20、Thus, far from leading to peace, the need to protect interdependence in East Asia at best causes the United States to overextend itself strategically and, at worst, could entangle it in a future great power war in East Asia. The hegemonic strategy is a house of cards.

21、Rather than directly confronting China itself, the United States would leave it to other states in the region (including potential great powers like Japan, India, and Russia, and powerful middle powers) to assume responsibility for containing China and managing the rise of Chinese power.

22、Rather than attempting to contain both China and Japan simultaneously, the optimal American strategy would be to allow China and Japan to contain each other, while the United States watches from a safe distance.（offshore balancing）

**The Rise of China and the Future of the West ----By G. JOHN IKENBERRY**

40、And as the world's largest country emerges not from within but outside the established post-World War II international order, it is a drama that will end with the grand ascendance of China and the onset of an Asian-centered world order.

41、That course, however, is not inevitable. The rise of China does not have to trigger a wrenching hegemonic transition.

42、Today's Western order, in short, is hard to overturn and easy to join.

43、Today, China can gain full access to and thrive within this system. And if it does, China will rise, but the Western order -- if managed properly -- will live on.

44、If the defining struggle of the twenty-first century is between China and the United States, China will have the advantage. If the defining struggle is between China and a revived Western system, the West will triumph.

45、Rising states want to translate their newly acquired power into greater authority in the global system -- to reshape the rules and institutions in accordance with their own interests.

46、But not all power transitions generate war or overturn the old order.

47、The nature of the rising state's regime and the degree of its dissatisfaction with the old order are critical. But even more decisive is the character of the international order itself -- for it is the nature of the international order that shapes a rising state's choice between challenging that order and integrating into it.

**48、**OPEN ORDER：Any international order dominated by a powerful state is based on a mix of coercion and consent, but the U.S.-led order is distinctive in that it has been more liberal than imperial -- and so unusually accessible, legitimate, and durable.

49、Three particular features of the Western order have been critical to this success and longevity.

First, unlike the imperial systems of the past, the Western order is built around rules and norms of nondiscrimination and market openness, creating conditions for rising states to advance their expanding economic and political goals within it.

Second is the coalition-based character of its leadership.

Third, the postwar Western order has an unusually dense, encompassing, and broadly endorsed system of rules and institutions.

50、The Western order's strong framework of rules and institutions is already starting to facilitate Chinese integration.

51、The road to global power, in effect, runs through the Western order and its multilateral economic institutions.

52、China not only needs continued access to the global capitalist system; it also wants the protections that the system's rules and institutions provide.

53、The United States must reinvest in the Western order, reinforcing the features of that order that encourage engagement, integration, and restraint.

54、The key thing for U.S. leaders to remember is that it may be possible for China to overtake the United States alone, but it is much less likely that China will ever manage to overtake the Western order.

55、The task now is to make it so expansive and so institutionalized that China has no choice but to become a full-fledged member of it.

**American and Chinese Power after the Financial Crisis-- Joseph S. Nye, Jr.**

75、Indeed for all the fashionable predictions of Brazil, China, or India surpassing the United States in the next decades, the greater threats may come from cuts from modern barbarians and non-state actors.

76、It is still too early to judge the long-term effects of the crisis on U.S. power, but the blow need not be fatal if, in contrast to Japan in the 1990s, Washington moves quickly to absorb the losses and limit the damage.

77、Nevertheless, while few expect China to surpass the United States in military power in the next two decades, many still see the crisis as transformative in economic and soft power relations.

78、The so-called ‘‘Beijing Consensus’’ on authoritarian government with a successful market economy has become more popular than the previously dominant ‘‘Washington Consensus’’ of liberal market economies with democratic government in parts of the developing world.

79、Moreover, even if the authoritarian growth model produces soft power for China in authoritarian countries, it does not produce attraction in democratic countries. In other words, what attracts in Caracas may repel in Paris.

80、Interdependence involves short-run sensitivity and long-term vulnerability.20 Sensitivity refers to the amount and pace of the effects of mutual dependence; that is, how quickly does change in one part of the system bring about change in another part?

Vulnerability refers to the relative costs of changing the structure of a system of interdependence. The less vulnerable of two countries is not necessarily the less sensitive, but rather the one that would incur lower costs from altering the situation.

81、Asymmetry： If two parties are interdependent but one is less so than the other, the less dependent party has a source of power as long as both value the interdependent relationship.

82、Even if China’s GDP passes that of the United States around 2027 (as Goldman Sachs projects) the two economies would technically be equivalent in size but not in composition.

83、Moreover, as countries develop, there is a tendency for growth rates to slow.

84、But generations change, power often creates hubris, and appetites sometimes grow with eating.

85、Many observers report an intense nationalism in the younger generation.Reinforced by misperceptions about the power effects of the financial crisis, such attitudes could lead to policy miscalculations in both Beijing and Washington.

86、The fact that China is not likely to become a peer competitor to the United States on a global basis does not mean that it could not challenge the United States in Asia, and the dangers of conflict can never be completely ruled out. Given the global challenges that both China and the United States face, they have much to gain from working together.