Can the US win the new cold war with China? Not without risking a nuclear war

America is using flimsy means to confront the strongest adversary it has ever faced, and needs to ask itself if it is willing to fight a hot war to maintain its position in Asia

Hugh White

Published: 2:30am, 6 Mar 2019

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Declaring a new cold war against China is easy, but working out how to fight it and win it is much harder. While almost everyone in Washington these days seems to agree that resisting China’s seemingly insatiable ambition is now America’s highest strategic priority, the nature and scale of the task is still enveloped in uncertainty.

No one seems too worried about this, however, because they assume that a new cold war with China is going to be easy to win.

The few attempts we have seen to formulate a strategy to against China, from think-tankers’ policy papers to Congress’ recent Asia Reassurance Initiative Act (ARIA), radiate confidence that America can defeat China’s challenge by doing just a little bit more of the things it has been doing in Asia for decades.

The talk is of closer links to allies, more active partnerships with friends, more military deployments and increased economic and people-to-people links. But this is just what America has been saying and doing for years, and none of it has worked to stop China’s growing influence.

America need not go to war with China to defeat its challenge, but it must convince Beijing that it is willing and able to do so

By expecting to win this way, today’s new cold warriors massively underestimate China. That is a huge mistake, reflecting major misunderstandings of China’s power, ambitions and resolve.

When these are properly understood, it becomes clear that America faces a huge and daunting task if it is really serious about confronting and containing China’s ambitions in East Asia. The new cold war could be just as hard and dangerous and costly as the old cold war was.

Let’s start by being clear what the contest is really about. US officials – like Vice-President Mike Pence in Munich recently – often talk as if America’s problem with China concerns specific Chinese policies, like its expansive maritime claims and predatory economic policies.

US Vice-President Mike Pence crosses a street to give a statement in front of the Hotel Bayerischer Hof at the 55th Munich Security Conference on February 16. At the conference, Pence called on world leaders to reject Huawei, calling it a threat to critical telecoms infrastructure. Photo: AFP

If so, success would simply mean convincing Beijing to abandon these policies, and then all will be well again.

But these specific issues are no more the real driver of US-China rivalry than the status of Danzig was the cause of the second world war. They are just the symptoms of a far bigger dispute with much greater stakes for both sides, over which of them dominates East Asia.

Very simply, America wants to remain East Asia’s preponderant power, and China wants to take its place.

This is a contest, then, between the world’s two most powerful states over the leadership of the world’s most prosperous and dynamic region. Compared to that, the disputes over maritime law or intellectual property dwindle to insignificance.

The second thing to understand is the strength of the Chinese resolve to win this contest. It springs from their deep sense of the kind of country China is. Americans tend still to see China as a poor, weak country – albeit one which has unexpectedly and temporarily struck it rich.

But the Chinese have never stopped thinking of themselves as a great power, and see their recent rise as the natural restoration of their traditional place at the apex of wealth and power. So while Americans see a US preponderance in Asia as natural and proper, the Chinese see it as unnatural, anachronistic – and insufferable.

To see how insufferable, recall Henry Kissinger’s acute observation many years ago that the US-China relationship is driven less by the two counties’ differences than by their similarities – especially their similar images of themselves as international actors.

Imagine how Americans would feel if China dominated the western hemisphere the way America has dominated East Asia. That gives some idea of how determined the Chinese are to push America out of its region and take its place.

The third thing to understand is China’s power. It is the strongest adversary America has ever faced, and getting steadily stronger. Like any country, the foundations of its power is its economy, which is already far bigger, relative to America’s, than the Soviet Union was at its height. Before long, it will almost certainly overtake America altogether.

What the US needs to fear most is Chinese fear itself

Of course China has serious economic, political and social problems, but to assume that they will stop, let alone reverse, its rise to power is pure wishful thinking.

So is the assumption that China’s economic weight – and its fast-growing technological expertise – will not translate into formidable diplomatic weight and military power. Indeed they already have.

None of this means that China will soon “rule the world”. But it does make China a truly formidable adversary, and it raises deep questions about whether America can credibly expect to succeed in preserving the old US-led order in Asia in the face of China’s determination to overturn it.

Certainly nothing Washington has done even begins to look like a serious effort on the scale that will be required.

Congress’ ARIA, hailed by some as a powerful statement of US resolve, committed just US$1.5 billion a year to shoring up America’s position in Asia. By comparison, the war on terror is now estimated to have cost around US$1 billion a day since the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Nor is it just a matter of money. Like the old cold war, a contest with China over Asia will soon become, above all, a military contest. America need not go to war with China to defeat its challenge, but it must convince Beijing that it is willing and able to do so – just as it had to convince the Soviets of the same thing.

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And that raises the ultimate question: is America so determined to contain China’s challenge and preserve its leadership in Asia that it is willing to fight a major war – quite possibly a nuclear war – to do so?

Because if it isn’t willing to do that, and if it can’t convince China of its willingness, then America will not win this new cold war. And if it is not going to win this contest, then it might be better not to begin it.

Hugh White is emeritus professor of strategic studies at the Australian National University

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