China, US as strategic collaborators
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Starting with Deng Xiaoping's historic reform, China integrated its economy with that of the rest of the world, marking the tipping point between an international liberal trade order built on the West and finding completion with the "rest".
But China's participation comes at the cost of a dangerous resource dependency far greater than the US has known. Over time, China's economy will depend ever more on energy and minerals. For now, the US essentially covers that security risk through its global policing role, but that effort is unsustainable. For China to succeed in its core goal of creating a well-off society, globalization must be simultaneously advanced and stabilized.
Sino-US strategic collaboration plays to each nation's current core competencies. China does not have a military with global reach, but the US has one now and it is deeply experienced. Yet the US forces struggle with nation building, while Chinese multinationals clearly excel at creating infrastructure, markets and opportunities for income growth in developing economies. China is also a major contributor of peacekeeping troops to the United Nations.
Today, as the primary face of globalization, the US is targeted by virtually every threat mounted by the enemies of global integration and economic modernization. China has already surpassed the US as globalization's primary integrating force - and inevitably its face too. Irrespective of China's intent, it will become the main target of violent extremists bent on keeping globalization at bay. Today the "long war" belongs to the US; tomorrow it will burden China.
For years I have written of Washington's need to "lock in China at today's prices", meaning the cost of China's cooperation would rise with time. Back then I believed that, without such cooperation, the US' strategic choices would narrow considerably.
That day has arrived, meaning the choice is now China's: lock in US cooperation in safeguarding China's vital global export and supply lines or watch your own strategic choices narrow. Imagine a Middle East regional war years from now that the US chooses not to manage because it's primarily China's energy that's at risk. That burden will be devastating for China.
Thus, Sino-US collaboration on stabilizing less-developed regions mitigates significant strategic risk to both nations. Globalization, buttressed by Sino-US strategic cooperation, cannot possibly fail. But globalization, when divided in spheres of influence, dissolves into zero-sum contests where humanity is the ultimate loser.
About such danger, our collective past speaks clearly to our shared future.
The author is the chief analyst of Wikistrat, an Israeli startup company that offers strategy consulting, and has several books, including Great Powers: America and the World After Bush, to his credit.
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