I don't see the outlook as negative as he portrays, but still a worthy read. It'd be nice to get more regular updates from him. I wonder if he'll start a blog as well.

As one of the attendees of that address by Professor John Mearsheimer, I was struck by one of the questions put forward by the audience. A particularly poignant insight was a query questioning the inherent nature of offensive realism as a self fulfilling prophecy. This as John mentioned is in fact what he calls the "great tragedy of great power politics."

Personally, I find myself quite bothered by the powerless situation in which this situation puts both the U.S, and China, and the wider south east Asian community. I can't help but compare Professor Mearsheimer's conclusions to a decidedly Marxist or Hegelian perspective of world history, where events are linear and lead inexorably to a foregone conclusion.

At the end of the day, in the words of Harold Macmillan, it's all about "Events dear boy, events." The question remains, will American power be able to find enough precision to deal with this potential problem in a nuanced manner?

It is interesting to read this and note how much weight a self-proclaimed realist like Prof Walt places on the "domestic-level" variables, as if the structural aspect of the China-US security competition is almost a fixed variable and thus the true wild card for this will be the influence of domestic politics and the quality of political leadership.

And given his stated concerns, all valid in my opinion, what does this say about a much more imminent security competition occurring between Iran and Israel? It makes the US-China "delicate political-military minuet" look like a 1950s sock-hop.

We'll never see again a "cold war confrontation" again.why? Because I think that is impossible to rise another superpower with an alternative project to liberal democracy, don't forget that cold war is an ideological war. to have an cold war confrontation china should "invent" a new, much performant project to be above the Occidental project of liberal democracy and to be persuasive about that.

The rise of China may not pose a genuine problem, despite John Mearsheimer's scholarly analysis. What is happening seems only natural, brought about by an abnormal set of circumstances which Washington imposed upon the Asian Pacific littoral, to wit, the destruction of the Empire of Japan and its replacement by a Japan which was designed to be ever-afterward a geopolitical midget in the same way a truncated Germany was designed to be the same thing.

Washington and Beijing are in a full, de facto economic alliance, which should continue far into the future. If they are economically joined at the hip, what is the incentive for conflict? They are mutually dependent, but America is clearly in decline. The strength of a nation flows from within and expands outward. The success of its foreign policy will be in close symmetry to that inner strength or lack thereof. A nation as heavily in debt as the United States--while concurrently beset with countless internal economic nightmares--cannot continue as a serious, respected power in the world.

There is no rational reason for the U.S. to be deploying a fleet of aircraft carriers etc. in the seas between China and Japan and elsewhere in the area, from Australia to India. It is meaningless to do that now, just like it would be meaningless for John Bull to do it, the British Empire having self-destructed decades ago. The geniuses in Whitehall realized too late that they had bankrupted the Empire in two pointless world wars, and could no longer maintain a presence East of Suez. Washington is still doing it out of habit and ego. Of course, there remains Japan, a near-defenseless ally of the U.S. thanks to World War II. But there is no sign China has designs on Japan. In any event, maybe it is time for circumstances to reset to "normal".

Post Vietnam, post Mao Tse-tung, and post Cold War, what remains to be done in the Far East and the Pacific is to bring about an amicable dissolution of the U.S.-Japanese defense treaty, which, as a fig leaf for the American sphere of influence in Asia, corresponds to NATO in Europe. The policy of treating Japan like a client-state has been inappropriate, insulting to Japan, counter-productive and superannuated. This is not in America’s or Japan’s best interest--anymore than President Roosevelt’s policy of forcing Japan to go to war against America was a good idea for the Far East or the world.

A potential problem may arise after Washington has faded from the scene, like England before it. Perhaps a rivalry will reignite between Japan and China, leading to other conflicts in the Far East, similar to those of the 1920's and 30's. On the other hand, it is more likely that leaders in China and Japan have learned from the past, and will not repeat the same mistakes.

Meanwhile, Uncle Sam is being taken for a ride by the usual suspects in Washington. I am afraid that Zionism and the Israel-first fanatics, like the Comintern before them, are the central problem facing America and the world today. In the meantime, let's stay on good terms with both China and Japan. Let's try to avoid problems with these two economic colossi in the Far East. We really have no other choice.

Germanicus
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Germanicus I like your post. I want to add that Walt's analysis is too American. That is going to be our downfall. The US is ignorant and isolated. Walt's conclusion got better, though I was itching to dissent.

We would do well to read "the Art of War" and to heed it's guidance. Between that and Asian ontology which doesn't see dichotomies as we do, there is a vast gulf of misunderstanding. I have no worry that China will have the "immature, ignorant, xenophobic, jingoistic, and highly risk-acceptant leaders" That's our game, baby. That's our politics. I worry that we will indeed try to confront and contain China, as Walt suggests. What hubris.

Do you speak to your banker like that? I have no idea why you or anyone would have such faith in armaments. History demonstrates that after bombing Iraq back to the stone age, starving and bombing her for 12 yrs and returning to bomb and invade we weren't able to dictate squat. Same in South America, Central America, Mexico, Vietnam... You may ignore it, but gov'ts get their authority from the consent of the governed. Your realist fantasies ignore this and the many example of us simply breeding enmity and distrust.

No one likes to remind us that the South Americans and the Arab world have the same disdain for us. Despite Islam, despite Catholicism these people wish to see us fail. As an independent observer, and lover of the underdog, that makes me a man without a country. It is my intention to leave this country asap. I love the ideals this country espouses, but the hypocrisy is wearing thin and is fooling only ourselves. I just hope I get out before we become post colonial America. (Waiting for grandparents to die)

George Kennan was the guy who came up with the term containment,, remember? It is one of the most -- if not the most -- interesting external links that I've yet seen during my stay here at FP (It was [cannot remember his name] who gave it, while Steve was on vacation) - namely the transcript of an interview that Kennan gave to David Gergen on PBS in 1996 - Kennan says that he never intended a military containment of USSR, but a political. Given that the Chinese are very soft on their interpretation of Communism, I vet that Kennan would have seen absolutely no problem in Chinas rise - on the contrary.

[Click] Interview with George Kennan, PBS 1996:

DAVID GERGEN, U.S. News & World Report: Professor Kennan, you’ve been a significant leader in American diplomacy and intellectual life since the 1930’s. So perhaps we could open, sir, as–with your book of reflections about American life in this century to talk a little bit about American foreign policy. Of course, you came into our consciousness for many Americans in 1947 when you were the author of so-called containment policy with regard to the Soviet Union, and yet you write in your book as a consistent theme that that, that that policy proposal that you made was misunderstood in our own government.

GEORGE KENNAN, Author, At A Century’s Ending: Well, it certainly was, and it’s my own fault that it was. It all came down to one sentence in the “X” Article where I said that wherever these people, meaning the Soviet leadership, confronted us with dangerous hostility anywhere in the world, we should do everything possible to contain it and not let them expand any further. I should have explained that I didn’t suspect them of any desire to launch an attack on us. This was right after the war, and it was absurd to suppose that they were going to turn around and attack the United States. I didn’t think I needed to explain that, but I obviously should have done it.

DAVID GERGEN: Well, you intended then to have political containment–

GEORGE KENNAN: Exactly.

DAVID GERGEN: –of the Soviet Union, not military containment.

GEORGE KENNAN: Exactly. And I was moved to this largely by what was happening in, in Western Europe, but also what I have been able to observe, serving in Moscow until 1936, through the final two years of the war–

DAVID GERGEN:: Right.

GEORGE KENNAN: –and then brought home, because I had seen us make one concession after another to the Soviet leadership, which I didn’t think it was necessary for us to make, and we were really misleading them because we catered so to them that we gave them the false idea of their own prestige.

DAVID GERGEN: Right. But you as a Soviet expert, as an authority who had lived there, found that you could not convince your own government.

GEORGE KENNAN: No, I couldn’t. I could–I found it easy to convince them that this was a very dangerous group of men. But I couldn’t persuade them that their aspirations were political.

DAVID GERGEN: And not military?

GEORGE KENNAN: And not military. They were not like Hitler.

And the Korean and Vietnam wars might have been avoided too:

DAVID GERGEN: Now in your book, you went on to argue, and I found this quite striking, that because of the containment policy, because what you believe is a misreading of Soviet intentions, we actually found ourselves in the Far East in a situation where we felt we could, we had to maintain a military presence in Japan, and in your opinion, that contributed to the North Korean invasion of South Korea. The Russians needed to take Korea. If we were going to have Japan, they needed to take Korea.

GEORGE KENNAN::Yeah. I, I felt that we should have tried to negotiate with the Russians in a realistic way before we went about rearming the Japanese and building up our own forces there and concluding a treaty, which left our forces there indefinitely.

DAVID GERGEN:: So in your view, though, we might have avoided a Korean War?

GEORGE KENNAN: I think we might have avoided it, and avoided the whole great Korean problem had we done this.

DAVID GERGEN: But did you–you wrote in your book that you felt that Vietnam also had its roots in the containment policy–

GEORGE KENNAN:That’s right. And this was unnecessary. I don’t–these are not my own ideas, but John Davies, who is a formidable expert on China’s affairs, Davies always told us, don’t kid yourself, Ho Chi Minh is a nationalist, not a Communist. Communists are going to try to use him but that he’s too smart, and they can’t do it.

1. The constant use of "maturity metaphors" to describe the relationship -- you're immature if you act like a Great Power and mature if you play the International System game. The fact is that it is just as mature for China to play the Lone Great Power as it would for China to become a junior member of the international system like Japan. More mature, in fact.

2. Germanicus' comments are purty, but they have nothing to do with the situation on the ground. Events are already in motion; China has claims to Taiwan, the Senkakus, the Indian state of Arunuchal Pradesh, and since Dec of last year, all of the South China Sea. It has already annexed two of its neighbors, Tibet and East Turkestan. The reality on the ground is that China is at present pursuing a policy that will eventually bring it into conflict with a coalition of powers. The future is already happening, and it isn't something that "might happen if the leaders of Beijing learn from the past." Germanicus is discussing a state of affairs in an alternate universe. In this one China points 2,000 missiles at Taiwan. Is that mature or immature? I don't know, but I do know that it is highly effective in getting Beijing what it wants, including the US foreign policy community to kow-tow to it.

I don't know which particular historical analogy is right -- is the US the UK to Beijing's Kaiser Wilhelm? Is Taiwan Czechoslovakia for Hitler? Or is Obama Philip the III surrounded by greedy advisers and presiding over a treasury emptied by his father in stupid crusading wars, even as France rises with its "Courts of Reunion" to give it legal fictions that enable it to claim neighboring countries. Food for thought. But I do know that this universe of maturity vs immaturity isn't the one I live in.

It may or may not be "mature" for China to do so, but if we stop imagining that global conflict can be properly thought of as a high school where behavior either displays maturity or doesn't, perhaps we can start thinking seriously about what is actually happening in the real world. In that world it is totally rational for the US to be deploying a fleet of aircraft carriers in East Asia; that US military and economic presence has made possible the stability that has brought half a century of economic growth, including China's since the late 1970s. China's move to challenge the US is utterly irrational, since it has grown wealthy by freeriding its state capitalist system on the global economic system, helped partly by the US' insanely self-destructive commitment to market fundamentalism, and partly by the large number of US foreign policy makers and Washington movers and shakers who do business with China. I bet the old Kremlinites are kicking themselves in their graves for not adopting the facade of market capitalism and purchasing the US foreign policy community like China.

To reply to Germanicus, China's aggressive attempt to displace the US from its east asian perch is what is massively irrational -- it reminds one forcibly of Japan's mad plan to wage simultaneous war on the western powers and Russia, when if Japan had pursued peaceful development, it would have hit its 1980 levels in 1960. A microcosm of Beijing's ongoing aggression is China's treatment of Japan. A weakly anti-US, weakly pro-China government comes to power, the Japanese people are sympathetic to China, and US bases in Japan and Okinawa look more precarious. The obvious move would be a peace offensive and cultural and buying campaign, if you were Beijing, to displace the hated Yankee imperialists in the hearts of Japanese. But China has definite goals -- instead it chases a Japanese vessel out of "disputed waters", buzzes Japanese warships with helicopters, and sends flotillas into international waters around Japan, including a circumnavigation of the Japanese islands. The result was predictable. China would be much better off lying low, continuing to soak the US economy and free ride on the international system, and parasitize its way to power. Instead, its position has become pure power politics, and it is now -- as we have seen in the recent moves to establish a US-Vietnam military and diplomatic alliance against China -- convincing its neighbors that it is going to go to war against them.

We are heading for conflict, because that is what China wants at this point. If the goal is to head conflict off, stop hoping that leaders will learn from the past (they will but the lessons they will draw are different from what you all think) and stop imagining that maturity = joining the international system and immaturity = fighting it. Instead start thinking about how you are going to deter Beijing from its goal of blotting out Taiwan's democracy, grabbing islands from Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam, and annexing an Indian state.

Michael Turton
The View from Taiwan

Both of you men are very knowledgeable.A tendency of human nature is to perceive based on our dulled senses,hence the gloom in Mr. John Mearsheimer scholarly assessment.The behaviour of the comunist Chinese have more than anything proven to be about healthy self interest.They have gone about investing in parts of Africa and as most know have heavy stakes in America.It would seem to me and The Israel Lobby proves the point and Americas behaviour supports it" buy allies". Jimi Hendrix said in and interview timing is almost everything.......I think the yuan is the rest. After all the Russian bear had a great fall......correct sense perception is priceless.

this analogy: the Democratic Athenian empire to the Nondemocratic pelopennesian league? I know im going way back in history for this one, but it points out something to Americans which is often missing in contemporary examples, that regardless of the morality or effect of the other's behaviour, ones downfall is mostly cause by self-injury, which is especially likely to happen in a democracy. The Athenians ended up losing the war because they thought that they were powerful enough and their "allies" would make up for their shortcomings, while the Spartans used every resource they had to make sure nothing was left to chance.
And in response to Michael Turton,
I wouldnt say that the US hegemony in east asia is responsible for the economic performance of China. I highly doubt any non-American pundits would agree with this. Did American military assisstance make Israel rich? I dont think so. It is perfectly fine to believe in this theory, but it will cause no end of trouble as soon as you use it to demand something back (like being an "international stakeholder in your system") out of "gratitude." To be rational, one must soberly consider ones own ability to do things for oneself, and if China allowed the US military to remain in east asia it means they would accept an ever-increasing vulnerability to being blockaded. Not so rational to me.
As for Japan, you completely skip over historical grievances, but you also dont mention that Japan is the most pro-American country in the world. It is "natural" for many Chinese that they should be in charge of Asia but even before that it feels unnatural for the Americans or the Japanese to do so. A "charm offensive" against Japan is unnatural because of the Chinese people's historical conflict of Japan and an already existing pro-American paradigm in power. Conflict between the two is not going to be because "China wants war" but because of American or Japanese refusal to let the Chinese have their space.
Recent developments in Southeast Asia are genuinely troubling, but they do not signal Chinese policy mistakes. For one, China hasnt changed its policy regarding the region for decades, and its shortcomings are stirred up entirely by the US for what I believe is an attempt to validate Obama's otherwise ineffective foreign policy. I personally think it is dangerous to encourage smaller countries, like Vietnam, to openly challenge China on sovereignty issues since it is more likely that a difference in power might lead to "preemptive" conflict.
China's goal is to be a great power, and if you insist on pointing out the inherent aggresiveness of that status, I would have to point out its rational and natural basis. The US interferes with other countries, obtains territory from them for bases, and maintains hegemony over the seven seas because that is how one best defends an interest which spans the globe. China is no different. Just because there is an existing superpower should everyone accept it? Or should someone who is also powerful try to emulate it? To deter China from acting in its own interests in Asia would be to validate deterrence of the US from doing the same, through perhaps acts of sabotage, rhetorical belligerence, or perhaps terrorism. Nobody like to have their interests stomped on, and if one's goal is to avoid conflict, then one should tread lightly on other people's dreams.

Stephen Walt has to know that nations always act according to what they perceive to be in their best interest at any given point in time.

Everybody agrees that a second cold war has started, this time between US and China.

If US thinks that it is in its best interest to appease China since US businesses are hooked to huge profits that cheap Chinese products provides them and US government is hooked to huge investments that China makes in US treasuries, then US will do so, as US did when it agreed to water down UNSC resolutions against Iran and North Korea to get Chinese blessings to make a mock show of progress on those issues, necessitated by US domestic compulsions.

Similarly China agreed to let its currency float before last G-20 meeting to neutralize US pressure, knowing fully well China’s export base will not be affected a damn bit by such small revaluations as events have born it out, with China’s forex reserves keep zooming upward in spite of those minor currency revaluations.

The real question will be:

How long can China continue to amass huge forex reserves before US and other countries say, enough is enough and no more and decide to junk WTO?

How long can US continue to borrow before the rest of the world decides that enough is enough and no more and decide to let dollar plunge?

China will become a lender of last resort to many a countries and many a companies in the world with its ever increasing forex reserves. This will of course increase China’s political clout while that of US decreases. Can China literally own US government one day with its gargantuan investments in US treasuries?

Can US really afford to go to war with China? Can a US president ever challenge China the way Kennedy did in 1961? There is joke going around that if US ever wants to go to war with China, US will have to ask China to send shoes for its own troops so that US can send those troops to fight China. US economy has become that dependent on Chinese goods.

If US had an upper hand against Soviet Union in first cold war, China has an upper hand against US in this second cold war.

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I wouldnt say that the US hegemony in east asia is responsible for the economic performance of China. I highly doubt any non-American pundits would agree with this.
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US military hegemony, and US economic assistance, created conditions for East Asian capitalist success. China has grown rich exporting to the US, because it is US policy to permit it to do that -- to enable it to grow rich hoping it would join the US-led international system. I doubt any rational pundit would disagree since that has been stated policy among US foreign policy elites since the late 1980s.

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Did American military assisstance make Israel rich? I dont think so. It is perfectly fine to believe in this theory, but it will cause no end of trouble as soon as you use it to demand something back (like being an "international stakeholder in your system") out of "gratitude." To be rational, one must soberly consider ones own ability to do things for oneself, and if China allowed the US military to remain in east asia it means they would accept an ever-increasing vulnerability to being blockaded. Not so rational to me.
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It is not I who holds the belief that China should become part of the US-led system, but US foreign policymakers. I merely described their position.

The whole point of the US policy is that China could gain endless benefits (like Japan, Taiwan, and Korea) if it played the game. But it won't even though it is manifestly in its "interest" to do so. China's own fear of blockade is rational *only if* China desires to be a hegemon. Japan and Taiwan are both even more vulnerable to blockade but since they play their roles in the US system, and reap huge benefits, they have no fear of it.

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As for Japan, you completely skip over historical grievances, but you also dont mention that Japan is the most pro-American country in the world. It is "natural" for many Chinese that they should be in charge of Asia but even before that it feels unnatural for the Americans or the Japanese to do so. A "charm offensive" against Japan is unnatural because of the Chinese people's historical conflict of Japan and an already existing pro-American paradigm in power. Conflict between the two is not going to be because "China wants war" but because of American or Japanese refusal to let the Chinese have their space.
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I ignored the history because the brainwashing of their own people on the "historical grievances" are another example of where Chinese aggression costs the nation the benefits of positive relations. The point is not whether a charm offensive would have worked, but whether, at a time when the US position in Japan is threatened, it was wise policy to chose a policy of blustering aggression rather than some sort of conciliatory policy that would have further weakened the US position. Instead, the Chinese aggressed further, creating a stronger rationale for a US presence in the area. Brilliant.

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Recent developments in Southeast Asia are genuinely troubling, but they do not signal Chinese policy mistakes. For one, China hasnt changed its policy regarding the region for decades,
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That is incorrect. All current Chinese expansion in its littoral is post-WWII. The desire to annex Taiwan dates from the late 1930s, the demand for the Senkakus from 1969, and the upgraded claim that the South China Sea islands, which no Chinese emperor ever owned, is a serious policy change this year, which is why the US responded so strongly. It is the evolving nature of China's grasp, grower ever wider, that is so frightening.

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and its shortcomings are stirred up entirely by the US for what I believe is an attempt to validate Obama's otherwise ineffective foreign policy. I personally think it is dangerous to encourage smaller countries, like Vietnam, to openly challenge China on sovereignty issues since it is more likely that a difference in power might lead to "preemptive" conflict.
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By all means, let us stop encouraging smaller nations to resist larger nations' use of force. Let us instead build a world where larger nations always get whatever they demand, immediately.

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China's goal is to be a great power, and if you insist on pointing out the inherent aggresiveness of that status, I would have to point out its rational and natural basis. The US interferes with other countries, obtains territory from them for bases, and maintains hegemony over the seven seas because that is how one best defends an interest which spans the globe. China is no different. Just because there is an existing superpower should everyone accept it? Or should someone who is also powerful try to emulate it?
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But didn't you just advocate in the case of Vietnam that the smaller power should give way? So why don't you here?

China's aggression is stupid, costly, irrational, and eventually, will doom it to a series of wars in which it will face a coalition of local powers backed by the most powerful nation(s) on earth. How is that in its interest?

Or it could simply back off, reap the gains from its state capitalist economy parasitizing on the international system, let the US right destroy the United States, and win in the long run.

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To deter China from acting in its own interests in Asia
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"Interests" are constructions. We are not arguing over whether China should act in its interests, that is a given. We are debating WHAT THOSE INTERESTS ARE. Defining China's "interest" as narrow territorial expansion is the same kind of adolescent thinking that Walt engaged in when he defined "entering the US system" as "mature" and "confronting it" as "immature."

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would be to validate deterrence of the US from doing the same, through perhaps acts of sabotage, rhetorical belligerence, or perhaps terrorism. Nobody like to have their interests stomped on, and if one's goal is to avoid conflict, then one should tread lightly on other people's dreams.
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China at present seeks to annex a number of territories representing part or whole of all its neighbors. Why does your comment about the US trampling on China's dreams of power not apply to China trampling on Tibet, Vietnam, Taiwan, or Japan? Your highly abstract discussion makes no reference to the rather alarming aspects of China's "interests" including.

1. the fact that none of the claimed territories ever belonged to any ethnic Chinese emperor

2. the fact that when China claims or grabs territory A, this leads to a further claim on nearby territories. See Taiwan/Senkakus or Tibet/Arunachal Pradesh.

3. the fact that this territorial expansion is totally unnecessary, and that China as a whole would benefit from a few more decades of peaceful expansion. Instead its military dreams threaten its economic advancement. Brilliant.

We are now headed for several rounds of hegemonic warfare. How do you propose to stop it?

Michael Turton
The View from Taiwan

By the time Obama ballances the budget by eliminating the US military and power-projection there will be no question who is the master of the Pacific. Japan will be left alone to face China and Korea, with America power-less to do anything but rattle empty sabers. Its butter before guns and Obama has made his unhappiness with US primacy very clear.
A response to Ippon: I agree the US annual spending of three billion dollars on self-subsidy disguised as foreign aid to Israel must stop. So must the 500 million to lebanon, the three billion to Egypt, the 100 billion keeping the Gulf safe for US "allies" and let us not forget to charge Kuweit for the expense of the 1991 Gulf war and the maintenance of the No Fly Zones.

History shows us, time and again, that the larger China gets and more powerful it becomes externally, the more it weakens itself internally (is the US not undergoing the same?). Tianemen Square was a revolution delayed, not averted.

ybrand, Egypt gets, by treaty half of what Israel gets in foreign aid, not the same amount..

to write about noth korea, the region is on the verge of war although middle east is more interesting why the lack of coverage

As John Mearsheimer points out it is the US not China that has been the aggressor nation in modern history (admittedly this seems par for the course if you are top dog) and it is the US that is the waning power in this scenario and therefore more likely to do something aggressive in an attempt to maintain the status quo. A natural readjustment to the realities of a changing world order are likely to be painful to the pride of the declining power. Yet much of the discussion has been from the view point of China as the threat to peace and not enough on the dangers of a still very powerful US which is have troubling coming to terms with not being able to call all the shots. It is this wounded, and very unhappy, bear which I think we should be paying a lot more attention to. The American public are not used to, and are unlikely to take kindly to, being told they are not free to wander into other people’s back yards. They should also consider how they are going to react if China is invited to setup an Okinawa scale base in Venezuela and perform joint carrier group exercise off Houston. It is always worth looking at your own actions and reversing the names of the players and locations to check how it may look if viewed from the opposition’s view point – veil of ignorance and all that.

I notice that there's no mention of foolish leaders in China, even as the nation grows increasingly nationalist and only a few years ago the government was openly encouraging protesters to throw stones at the Japanese embassy. Let's not assume that only one nation has the monopoly on bad leadership and it's entirely possible for the U.S to be rational and willing to compromise only to be met with irrational Chinese action (both the U.S and U.S.S.R had that problem with each other at different point in history).