Читать книгу After Engagement - Группа авторов - Страница 24

There is an optimistic story to be told about the future trajectory of US-China relations. The deterioration in the political relationship has been fueled by actions over secondary interests—most prominently, Chinese assertive behavior in the East China Sea and the South China Sea. A large war is unlikely to result from conflicts over secondary interests, because both states should be unwilling to run larger risks to achieve their objectives. This should not lead to complacency, however, because there are a variety of paths via which a crisis over these maritime disputes could escalate to a large war.⁵⁵ But far better to disagree over limited stakes than over truly vital ones. In addition, there are cooperative solutions that “should” be attractive to China. It could acquire a significant share of the resources in the disputed areas while avoiding the political costs generated by its assertive policies. Thus, although achieving these solutions seems unlikely in the near future, a positive path forward is imaginable.

Unfortunately, there are many reasonable objections to this optimistic story. For nationalist and status reasons, China appears to consider these maritime disputes to be far more than secondary interests, if not vital interests. More concerning, however, is that the greatest danger to the United States does not stem from the issues that have contributed most to the negative trajectory of US-China political relations. At the risk of some exaggeration, we can understand the maritime disputes as a distraction from the central disagreements between the United States and China, which are Taiwan and China’s possible desire for regional hegemony.

The disagreement over Taiwan is clearly dangerous because states are more likely to fight over vital interests than secondary ones. The Taiwan danger is further increased because, as described, China and the United States understand the status quo quite differently. Possibly the greatest danger, therefore, posed by the maritime disputes in the South China Sea and the East China Sea is their contribution to more malign US and Chinese views of each other. Consistent with this concern, Taylor Fravel and Kacie Miura find: “Each side now views the South China Sea disputes as a litmus test for the other’s intentions—for China, whether the U.S. seeks to contain it; for the US, whether China seeks to overturn the existing order.”⁵⁶ Negative shifts in assessments of intentions could lead both countries to adopt more confrontational approaches to Taiwan.⁵⁷ Arguably, this began under the Trump administration, including the Taiwan Travel Act and increased transit of the Taiwan Strait by US ships.⁵⁸

The danger is increased still further because, at times, the United States seems to have underestimated the significance of this disagreement. For example, Kurt Campbell and Ely Ratner hold: “A combination of U.S. diplomacy and U.S. military power—carrots and sticks—was supposed to persuade Beijing that it was neither possible nor necessary to challenge the U.S.-led security order in Asia.”⁵⁹ But how could US policy have made a challenge unnecessary, given that US policy created serious risks for China in a variety of Taiwan scenarios? The National Defense Strategy includes a similar mischaracterization, holding that a “free and open Indo-Pacific region provides prosperity and security for all. We will strengthen our alliances and partnerships in the Indo-Pacific to a networked security architecture capable of deterring aggression, maintaining stability and ensuring free access to the common domains.”⁶⁰ Clearly, a free and open Indo-Pacific does not benefit China, when this freedom is underpinned by US military capabilities designed to fight China in a large conventional war over Taiwan. At a minimum, although the United States rejects China’s position, analysis of US policy needs to recognize that China sees its own policies toward Taiwan—whether deterring moves toward independence or establishing Chinese control—as supporting its security.

Even without these misevaluations, military competition between the United States and China is likely to intensify. China’s ongoing enlargement and modernization of its military will continue to enhance its capabilities against Taiwan as well as throughout Northeast Asia and into Southeast Asia. To preserve the effectiveness and credibility of its commitments, the United States will need to respond. Layering on these misevaluations will further strain US-China relations and could encourage the United States to pursue policies that unduly threaten China’s security.

What, then, are the implications for US policy? Given that China’s pursuit of security requires policies that not only challenge the US ability to protect Taiwan but also might require pushing the United States out of Northeast Asia, do China’s motives and perspective even matter? In other words, given China’s possibly enormous regional ambitions, should US policy be influenced by whether China is motivated by security or, instead, greed?

For a variety of reasons, the answer is yes. Because China is motivated at least partly by security concerns, US policy needs to consider the benefits of cooperation and, possibly, changes to the status quo, as well as competition. Taiwan is the linchpin of China’s security concerns; therefore, ending the US commitment to Taiwan might transform the US-China military competition. In the extreme case, ending the commitment would eliminate China’s desire to dominate Northeast Asia. In contrast, if China also places great value on pushing the United States out of Northeast Asia for non-security/greedy reasons, then US incentives for changing its Taiwan policy would be much smaller and the risks would be larger. An in-between case may be most likely: China places great security value on dominating Northeast Asia and quite limited ideational value on it. In this case, ending the US commitment to Taiwan would significantly moderate military competition but not eliminate it. Of course, so radically changing US policy toward Taiwan might not be the best option for the US, even if China lacks greedy motives for wanting to dominate Northeast Asia;⁶¹ and the United States will remain at least somewhat uncertain about China’s motives. But, the case for this change is certainly stronger if China is motivated primarily by security.

The answer could also influence other features of US defense and foreign policy. For example, if the United States believes China is motivated largely by security, then it should give weight to policies that are less threatening to China. An easy example is US strategic nuclear policy. The United States could choose not to challenge China’s ongoing efforts to deploy a highly survivable, relatively large nuclear force. Whatever the marginal benefits nuclear competition and maintenance of a damage-limitation capability might provide, the risks are larger if China feels more insecure.⁶² In comparison, if China were not motivated by security, competition would be relatively more attractive. Whether the United States has significantly different conventional options is less clear, but important to evaluate. While different conventional strategies are likely to generate different pressures for escalation in a crisis, it may be that the basic options—including the more operationally offensive AirSea Battle and the operationally more defensive distant blockade—appear strategically similar to China.⁶³ This is because both would challenge China’s capabilities in Taiwan scenarios, albeit not equally quickly. In addition, tradeoffs between military effectiveness and political provocation could be more difficult for the United States, because the deterrent effectiveness of its conventional capabilities would likely vary more than would its nuclear capabilities. Similar comparisons of US trade and technology policy should be evaluated through this lens, focusing on whether policies that protect US security interests vary in the extent they increase China’s insecurity by communicating malign US motives, possibly by unnecessarily threatening China’s prosperity.

Given the need to factor China’s security into analysis of US policy, misperceptions and misevaluations of China’s motives remain important, even when facing a very ambitious China. The United States’ best options may be highly competitive and involve few if any concessions to China. But failure to adequately take into account China’s insecurity and, related, its understanding of the status quo, risks overlooking possibilities for restraint and cooperation that could be essential components of US policy as China’s power continues to increase.