Are US and China doomed to conflict?
- By Sumantra Maitra
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E-mail China.org.cn, November 7, 2015
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Coming together [By Zhai Haijun/China.org.cn] |
Asia Society Policy Institute President and former Australian PM Kevin Rudd and Kissinger Institute Director Robert Daly recently faced off with University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer and Heritage Foundation Senior Fellow Peter Brookes over the argumentative and controversial motion: "China and the U.S. are long-term enemies." The debate cannot come at a more significant time. The U.S. navy has just conducted their long declared Freedom of Navigation tour in South China Sea, with their guided missile destroyer the USS Lassen being shadowed by Chinese navy near Nansha (Spratly) Islands, among vehement protestations of the Chinese government.
This comes at a difficult time for global politics. There is a three-stage development going on, which we need to understand. First of all, it is the fragmentation of the European alliance system and the subsequent tilt towards China. China is now being wooed by the mercantile economies ofBritain and Germany, regardless of where their age old alliance with the United States stands. However, the rest of Europe is increasingly fragmenting with the rise of various ultra-nationalist forces, and borders are being redrawn and soldiers being redeployed. German Chancellor Angela Merkel in a recent dramatic speech in East Germany echoed the fear that is slowly eclipsing Europe, of national wars. She said that the redrawing of borders essentially stands at the extreme opposite of the declared goal of the union, and one small misunderstanding could engulf the entire continent into devastating wars which have just been dormant since the 1990s.
The continent is also riled by a newly revanchist Russia, which is currently pushing back the United States in every possible quarter of the globe, including the middle east, eastern Europe and even in the Arctic region. This is bringing up questionsconcerning whether or not the U.S. has been too inactive for the past eight years.
Anyone aware of the history of post second world war U.S. foreign policy knows that it ran through stages which could be broadly classified into containment, détente and roll back. These were not divided across party lines or even administrations, but were linked to prevalent global politics during the times. Recently, the Obama administration tried a failed reset with Russia and looked inward concentrating on domestic record and legacy.
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