A Restraint Approach to U.S.China Relations: Reversing the Slide … – Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft

Executive Summary

A responsible U.S. restraint approach to relations with China represents the least dangerous, most potentially beneficial and mutually productive strategy compared to any of the alternatives, including the current soft containment approach and a much more hardline strategy explicitly designed to weaken China and undermine the PRC regime. The current soft containment approach is part of a larger dynamic driven by a neartotal lack of strategic trust, worstcase, zerosum threat assumptions about intentions, and deep, mutually exclusive political and ideological approaches.

A genuinely hostile SinoU.S. relationship will at the very least undermine global stability, severely disrupt efforts to manage major common threats such as climate change, and increase greatly the chances of severe crises or even war between the two great powers.

Unless reversed or moderated significantly, this negative dynamic is likely, on balance, to produce a genuinely hostile SinoU.S. relationship that will at the very least undermine global stability, severely disrupt efforts to manage major common threats such as climate change, and increase greatly the chances of severe crises or even war between the two great powers.

Our preferred Restraint strategy for Asia centers on replacing the intensifying SinoU.S. security competition with a regional structure emphasizing bounded and clearly defined areas of competition and red lines, integrated and inclusive (to the maximum extent possible) economic and technological relations, positivesum political and diplomatic exchanges, and genuinely coordinated, highpriority efforts to combat climate change and other transnational threats. The ultimate success of this strategy will require persistent, longterm efforts to:

End the harsh, zerosum rhetoric that now dominates on both sides.

Reduce greatly the current heavy reliance on military posturing and signaling in preserving stability.

Clearly define and bound areas of bilateral competition.

Stabilize the Taiwan situation and other potential politicalmilitary sources of conflict through a clearer understanding of red lines and a revitalization of the U.S. One China policy, and work toward their longterm neutralization as a potential source of intense rivalry between Washington and Beijing.

Put in place a defensive, denial (not control)oriented force posture in the Western Pacific.

Redefine U.S. alliances in Asia not only to deter, but also to nurture expanding cooperative security measures and confidencebuilding measures (CBMs).

Establish clear SinoU.S. understandings to permit mutually productive economic and technological growth.

Enhance Americas overall economic and political attractiveness to Asia and the world, and its ability to compete and cooperate with China.

All of this likely requires a fundamental shift in the mindset of American (and Chinese) decisionmakers regarding threats, opportunities, and paths to future stability and prosperity in Asia. This new mindset should stress climate change, positivesum forms of bilateral competition, balance and inclusiveness over dominance or primacy, and the dropping of great power competition as a strategic frame.

Implementing such a strategy would involve a longterm process, initially including several lowrisk, lowcost actions designed to moderate the SinoU.S. rivalry (such as forgoing provocative U.S. force posture moves in Japan and revitalizing the One China policy toward Taiwan) but continually building over time through reciprocal CBMs between Beijing and Washington.

Despite the above efforts, if the SinoU.S. rivalry in Asia intensifies, and assuming Chinas aggregate economic and military power continues to grow at a historically low rate of between 3 to 5 percent per annum, Washington will gradually need to adjust to the new power realities in order to best protect its vital interests while avoiding a great power war. This scenario points to sustained, deepening rivalry.

The United States should continue to seek cooperation with China on issues critical to its interests and that of the international system.

Such a scenario will necessitate a significant restructuring (in both hard and soft directions) of existing U.S. commitments and alliances in Asia, likely involving a pullback from those existing alliance commitments in Southeast Asia that would expose the United States to unnecessary dangers, and strengthening of the security of Japan and South Korea, alongside a reduction in U.S. ground forces on the Korean Peninsula. It would not involve a dangerous and futile U.S. effort to reestablish regional primacy. Any such adjustments in U.S. alliances would be phased in over several decades and require stabilizing reactions by U.S. allies, thereby minimizing risk to themselves and the region.

Even in this scenario of deepening rivalry, however, the United States should continue to seek cooperation with China on issues critical to its interests and that of the international system. These include Asian stability, nuclear stability, the environment, and global health. A thinner level of cooperation under rivalry is indeed possible, as was demonstrated by U.S.Soviet understandings on nonproliferation and arms control during the Cold War.

Regarding the critically important issue of Taiwan, the U.S. should revitalize and sustain its One China policy under either the best case or sustained rivalry scenario of U.S.China relations. Under the former scenario, an overall improvement in SinoU.S. relations should facilitate a steady improvement of the Taiwan situation and a reduction in U.S. defense commitments to the island, commensurate with concrete positive actions by Beijing and Taipei.

Under the scenario of deepening SinoU.S. rivalry and a militarily dominant China in the area around Taiwan, Washington should put in place a multifaceted strategy designed to sustain its One China policy while permitting it to eventually end any intention to directly intervene militarily in a TaiwanChina conflict while doing all it can to reassure other Asian nations. Under such conditions U.S. intervention would almost certainly lead to a major war and quite possibly a defeat for the United States. If mishandled, such a policy could cause some of these allies to acquire nuclear weapons or strike differing levels of accommodating political and security arrangements with Beijing that alarm the United States and other powers, thus precipitating further instability.

This shift away from direct military intervention in a crossStrait Taiwan conflict would be accompanied by continued strong U.S. support for Taiwan in other areas (including the provision of military material to the island), and a stronger focus on the U.S.Japan security alliance. Such a strategy will doubtless confront many challenges and will take many years to implement, but would be an advantage over a policy that would almost certainly end in a disastrous conflict with Beijing.1

This paper first presents those general core restraint views regarding U.S. interests and the international system today and in the future that justify and support the above best case and sustained rivalry Restraint strategies. It is followed by a Restraintbased assessment of the challenges and opportunities that China poses for the United States, followed by a more detailed presentation of the features of the two alternate (but overlapping) strategies for two potential futures of the U.S.China relationship. It ends with an assessment of the relative costs and benefits involved in implementing a responsible Restraint strategy toward China compared to more zerosum, adversarial approaches.

A Restraint approach to U.S.China relations is founded upon and reflects several overall views and assumptions regarding both vital American national interests and policies and several key features of the international system.

Efforts to maintain U.S. global military primacy, whether emphasizing deterrence or active intervention, have most often produced a more dangerous, less stable world.

One core Restraint set of views is that the United States is unnecessarily overextended in its military involvement across the globe, has an excessively broad definition of its vital interests, and too frequently relies on military over diplomatic means to defend those interests while seeking to maintain, to the maximum extent possible, economic and military dominance worldwide and to extend democracy to as many nations as possible.2

A second Restraint view that follows from the above is the notion that postCold War efforts to maintain U.S. global military primacy, whether emphasizing deterrence or active intervention, have most often produced a more dangerous, less stable world, thereby undermining the most vital U.S. interest of safeguarding the security and wellbeing of the American people.3

The United States is physically very secure behind two oceans and with two friendly neighbors on its borders, and in any event has the capability, through nuclear weapons and a territorybased conventional power projection capability, to counter any direct or indirect military threats to its most vital interests. The definition of vital national interests should thus be limited to the defense and preservation of conditions directly necessary to the territorial integrity, security, and wellbeing of the American people and their way of life.

This primarily requires the ability to protect the nation against both direct and indirect, national, transnational, and subnational threats to such interests, and a stable global order open, as much as possible, to trade, investment, technological innovation, and peopletopeople contacts. It also requires coexistence with countries with different political systems, congruent with a stable and open global order. Above all, it requires a strong and cohesive domestic political, economic, and social order. It does not require absolute security, the maintenance of a prominent global military presence, a reliance on frequent overseas military forays, or extensive, formal, often onesided, security commitments to a wide range of other nations.

A third Restraint viewpoint stresses the fact that the international system within which the United States defends or advances its interests is no longer unipolar.4 The conditions that elevated the United States to the status of global hegemon after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 no longer exist and cannot be restored. The United States has no practical alternative but to accept the reality of an increasingly multipolar world and recognize that both continued U.S. dominance and world peace are illusions. For the foreseeable future, mutual coexistence, compromise, and balance among the great powers will have to suffice as an operative conception of peace.5 This concept thus rejects the use of distorting and dangerous, usually zerosum ideological frameworks in understanding global politics, such as democracy versus authoritarianism, or a singular stress on great power competition.6

The Restraint view holds that, within this system, two existential or nearexistential international threats endanger humankind above all else in the present century: first, the increased possibility of largescale nuclear war (as a result of proliferation, new technologies, the erosion of arms control agreements, and deepening great power rivalries); and second, the largely unchecked worsening of the climate crisis as the preeminent expression of global environmental degradation.7

A third threat is primarily domestic and mostly affects democratic states, although it certainly also has international implications: the rise of extremely nationalist, antidemocratic, racebased nativism and the political polarization and dysfunction it engenders.8

For Restraint advocates, these threats supersede any supposed global, valuebased threats, including the commonly perceived inflated and distorted international struggle between democracy and authoritarianism, as well as narrower, conventional security or economic rivalries among nonnuclear powers.

In assessing the role of diplomacy (and other nonmilitary forms of international engagement and conflict resolution) versus military force, despite the introduction of new technologies, Restrainers believe that military conflict remains fraught with risk, uncertainty, higher than expected costs, and the likelihood of unexpected consequences. This fact, along with the gradual emergence of a multipolar order and the frequent historical failures of U.S.led attempts to invade, occupy, and remake distant nationstates, provide good reasons to prioritize diplomacy and economic or other forms of nonviolent tools of statecraft over military intervention.9 While the political use of military capabilities is in many cases essential in the conduct of diplomacy, any actual use of force should be considered a last resort, employed only under extreme conditions, and in the defense of vital interests only.

The United States, as the dominant military and economic power on the planet, has developed and maintained the dangerous notion that only American global primacy and leadership can keep the world peaceful and ensure prosperity.10 Restrainers believe this idea has led the United States to engage frequently in a feckless misuse of military power, resulting in large part from inflated threats, overconfidence, and a deep belief in American exceptionalism. With the possible exception of Israel, no nation employs force as frequently. Moreover, many Americans remain strongly supportive of high levels of U.S. defense spending and Washingtons many global security alliances. However, many citizens are also growing weary of U.S. military interventions and the heavy reliance on military options in handling foreign problems.11 Large numbers of Americans now favor diplomacy over military force.12 And some question the need for large numbers of overseas military bases around the world.13 This suggests popular support for a Restraintoriented foreign policy, including reduced defense spending if and as security competitions with other great powers are reduced.

Compounding the problems caused by military intervention in the service of primacy is the emergence in the United States of deep levels of public uncertainty and insecurity about the future. The many factors underlying this feeling of uncertainty include a crisis of legitimacy involving widespread dissatisfaction with prevailing conceptions of freedom and democracy when viewed through the lens of race, gender, and sexuality, as well as egregious government ineptitude, fiscal irresponsibility, and persistent social problems.14

Politicians often exploit the worsening domestic situation by inflating the threats posed by undemocratic states like China to divert attention from their own responsibility for problems at home and to unify their political base.15 Domestic circumstances have also created a strong tendency toward an excessive level of economic protectionism which, in the absence of countervailing domestic policies, undermines growth and weakens incentives to cooperate with China and other nations in handling common global economic and financial threats.16

The United States, as the dominant military and economic power on the planet, has developed and maintained the dangerous notion that only American global primacy and leadership can keep the world peaceful and ensure prosperity.

Restrainers assert that this dynamic, along with a deeplyrooted commitment to sustaining high levels of defense spending and hundreds of overseas bases, are increasing the chance of conflict with nondemocratic powers while undermining efforts to properly define, prioritize and deal with threats at home and abroad.17

Finally, many U.S. friends and allies have both the capacity and the need to do far more to provide for their own defense, thereby allowing the United States to significantly reduce its own global military posture. But Restraint does not encourage those countries to rapidly ramp up their defense spending. Deepening interdependence, the possibility of largescale nuclear war, and the emergence of high priority common security threats such as climate change all argue in favor of efforts to reduce interstate security competition, which would lower the need for ever higher defense budgets, and enhance incentives for more cooperative forms of security.18

If successfully implemented, Restraint as a basis of policy visvis China will buy the United States time to repair its severely damaged domestic order and reallocate national security resources to concerns that pose a greater threat to the security and wellbeing of the American people than China. More broadly, it will facilitate the identification of clear red lines based on the protection of genuinely vital interests, the adoption of prudent and balanced approaches to contentious issues, and the opening of intellectual and political space allowing for greater dialogue, understanding, and compromise between Washington and Beijing.19 This will significantly reduce the chances of conflict.

Multipolarity and the end of American dominance, rising domestic problems, looming, highpriority transnational threats, heavy levels of global economic and technological interdependence, and the resulting need to create a stable longterm basis for productive and peaceful coexistence together justify an array of Restraintbased U.S. policies toward Beijing. This must begin with a serious effort to rightsize the threats and opportunities that China poses, both now and over time, to the international system, American democracy, economic growth, and U.S. national security.20 Rightsizing the threats posed by China, along with a factbased assessment of current and likely future U.S. and Western resources and capabilities, will provide the foundation for a realistic and effective Restraintbased strategy toward China.

A responsible Restraint perspective acknowledges that there are competitive aspects to the SinoU.S. relationship, and that a SinoU.S. security dilemma, along with low levels of trust, is to some extent unavoidable, especially given the different political systems of the two nations and Chinas growing power, both globally and especially in Asia. However, the security dilemma can certainly be alleviated significantly, and not all great power competition need be zerosum in nature. Furthermore, most SinoU.S. competitions will not end in a neat victory for one side over the other, unless one or both regimes collapse, an unlikely prospect. Excessive levels and types of competition can unnecessarily undermine attempts at cooperation over issues such as climate change, as trust disappears and the good will needed to fashion mutual compromises evaporates.21

The current U.S. policy toward China is largely based on a zerosum, adversarial mindset that assumes above all else a fundamental Chinese commitment to weakening and countering the West and resisting any form of meaningful bilateral cooperation. Beijing is regularly presented as a vaguelydefined existential threat, a rapidly growing military and economic power bent on global domination through predatory trade and investment practices and/or armed coercion, a burgeoning hightech superpower determined to control the key drivers of future global growth, a hostile opponent of the existing socalled rulesbased international order, and a pernicious threat to democratic societies from within.22 Moreover, in many instances, the alarm over such supposedly dire threats is magnified by the inaccurate claim that Washington had been essentially asleep at the wheel until very recently as China worked to undermine the United States and all democratic societies.23

China does pose certain challenges to existing and likely future U.S. interests. These consist primarily of:

In the military arena, the danger of costly and destabilizing conflicts or severe crises, resulting from military and political provocations by either Beijing or Washington (or by U.S. allies) e.g., over Taiwan, disputed territories in Asia, the Korean Peninsula, or as a result of incidents involving U.S. and Chinese ships and aircraft operating in close proximity to one another.24 Chinese military and political actions could also weaken U.S. alliances and reduce support for the forwarddeployed U.S. military presence in Asia and elsewhere, thereby increasing the likelihood of arms races and miscalculations by the United States, China, and other states.25

In the economic and technological area,26 the possibility of Chinese behavior eroding U.S. economic growth rates, U.S. competitiveness in some key hightech areas, and possibly, in some extreme cases, U.S. access to certain technologies and critical regions, most notably Asia. Chinese actions in this area could also reduce the incentives for other nations to trade and invest heavily with the United States, whether as a result of Chinese pressure or zerosum forms of competitiveness. China could weaken free market norms in various ways, through its loan practices and political influence. And Beijing could damage key U.S. corporations by ejecting them from the critical Chinese market.

In the area of norms and values, a concern that Chinese behavior over time could weaken existing Western norms regarding liberal democratic governance, centered on the rule of law, freedom of political speech and behavior, various cyber freedoms, and individual voter rights, as well as current or future norms concerning forms of foreign international intervention relating to human rights. China challenges many of these norms by stressing economic and physical security and top-down state authority over the protection of individual political freedoms and the activities of non-state actors outside of government control.

While certainly very troublesome, and requiring effective countermeasures in many cases, these concerns are not grave enough to justify the kind of absolute, largely zerosum and confrontational approach now common in U.S. policies toward Beijing. Many gray areas exist in all three of the above realms, largely reflecting Chinese support for longstanding core principles of the international order, such as state sovereignty, a preference for diplomacy over force in resolving disputes, the use of force only in defense of imminent and clear security threats, open air and sea lines of communication and transport across international zones, many marketbased forms of economic intercourse, and various other United Nations norms and approaches.

The current U.S. policy toward China is largely based on a zerosum, adversarial mindset that assumes above all else a fundamental Chinese commitment to weakening and countering the West and resisting any form of meaningful bilateral cooperation.

In fact, critics of Chinas global stance often conflate the values and norms of the global order, as reflected in various international regimes and practices, with the U.S.centered structure of global economic and military power.27 In reality, the preservation or constructive adaptation of most of the values, structures, and processes of the global order does not require a single, dominant, democratic ruling power. The limited and contingent nature of Chinese threats requires a strong, competitive United States, clearer, more extensive, and to the extent possible, binding bilateral and international agreements, and specific, credible red lines regarding violations of truly vital interests. It also requires a common international commitment to resolve differences over contentious issues such as Taiwan, political rights and protectionism or state capitalism through negotiation and compromise.

Contrary to the prevailing mindset in Washington, China does not pose an existential or nearexistential threat to the United States in the above areas. It is not in a position either to replace the dominance of U.S. and Western economic and military power worldwide or to overturn the socalled liberal world order.28

As a military power, Beijing poses no threat to the existence of the United States except possibly via an extremely unlikely nuclear attack, which would be suicidal. There is no evidence that China wants to threaten, much less use, its relatively small (but growing), secondstrike, countervalue strategic nuclear force to attack the United States or its allies. To the contrary, there is much evidence to suggest that Chinas leadership regards nuclear weapons predominantly as a deterrent, not as a possible firststrike, offensive war weapon.29

Moreover, Beijings recent improvements of its strategic nuclear forces are almost certainly intended primarily to increase the survivability of its secondstrike force in the face of significant improvements in U.S. offensive nuclear capabilities and ballistic missile defense. The Chinese might also be expanding their nuclear arsenal in response to an increased fear that Washington would level nuclear threats or actually employ tactical nuclear weapons in a future Taiwan conflict, if the U.S. military were losing on a conventional level.30 That speaks to the urgent need to stabilize that worsening situation (as discussed below).

On the conventional level, Chinese military capabilities are for the foreseeable future only of serious concern in the western Pacific, where Beijing has reached a rough parity of forces with the United States and Japan along the first island chain near Taiwan, and is arguably now the dominant military power in the South China Sea, as measured in numbers of naval and air platforms.31 But even in this vast region, China is not poised to acquire the kind of overwhelming conventional power that would give it the military confidence, even in the face of high political and economic costs, to attempt to seize Taiwan by force, eject the United States from the region, or assert total, direct control over the South China Sea or maritime Asia as a whole unless, that is, the United States were to force it to undertake the acquisition of such capabilities and take such actions by threatening to permanently separate Taiwan from China, or by precipitating a conflict in the region.32

Fears that China has decided in the near or medium future to invade Taiwan and, going further, is planning eventual aggression against other Asian states are therefore unconvincing.33 The lessons of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and particularly Russias failures in Ukraine reinforce for the Chinese the difficulties of an allout invasion of Taiwan, as discussed further in the appendix.34

Beyond this, China is nowhere near acquiring the capabilities to replace the United States as a global military hegemon and shows few if any signs of having made a commitment to do so.35 This would require a force structure capable of successfully fending off any attempt to defeat Chinese military components within virtually any ocean or air space, and to safeguard passage to virtually any major world port. The United States has enjoyed something approaching this capacity for decades. China is far from attaining it and currently has no clear imperative to do so. This does not mean China will eschew developing a military with a significant global presence. It has already done this to some extent in the naval realm. And Chinese leaders have said that their goal is to develop world-class forces by 2049.36 But such a presence could take many forms well below anything approaching that of the U.S. military today, including relatively smallsized, highquality flotillas or expeditionary groups capable of conducting a variety of important missions well short of achieving control overall critical international ocean areas and air spaces.37

The above suggests that China is unlikely to undertake an unprovoked, outoftheblue lunge at Taiwan, or anywhere else in the region, either today or in the neartomedium-term (i.e., to about 2035). The most prominent threat will emerge from miscalculations stemming from efforts by the United States, China, and other nations to deter one another in an extreme, zerosum manner within an increasingly hostile and polarized security landscape. This could involve a highrisk miscalculation and resulting overreaction in the use of military force by one or both sides stemming from excessive overconfidence or insecurity, in response to perceived provocations. In other words, the primary Chinarelated threat is not about the threat Beijing poses to the United States, other nations, or the global order. It is the threat that arises from an interactive, worsening security competition driven by threat inflation and zerosum worst casing of actions and motives on both sides.38

The primary Chinarelated threat is not about the threat Beijing poses to the United States, other nations, or the global order. It is the threat that arises from an interactive, worsening security competition driven by threat inflation and zerosum worst casing of actions and motives on both sides.

Moreover, the Chinese almost certainly realize that any effort to achieve global (or even regional) military dominance over the United States will prove extremely costly, could ultimately fail, or place it in a virtually endless, mutually debilitating zerosum military rivalry with Washington. This sort of gamble is even more unlikely given the enormous domestic challenges that China faces, including high levels of pollution, a rapidly aging population, a weakened leadership succession system, limited domestic natural resources, low levels of productivity, and an excessively ideological, repressive, and topdown policy approach to development and social order.39

These challenges demand a continuous, longterm emphasis on ensuring domestic order and growth, not expanding Chinas powers to dominate all others. All this implies that, despite its ambitious goals, likely belief that the West is in decline, and increasing suspicion and pushback toward the United States, Beijings policies will necessarily allow for some level of flexibility that could make global (and even Asian) competition more constructive and less destructive, while keeping many doors open to some level of meaningful cooperation between the two powers, including in the militarysecurity arena.

It is certainly not inconceivable that growing threats to Chinas sea lines of communication (SLOCs) and overseas economic and political interests could one day cause Chinas leaders to fundamentally reassess the nations strategic interests and goals in the direction of a costly, dominanceoriented military strategy. Nonetheless, it would be reckless to assume that such a reassessment is inevitable and that the many factors in favor of cooperation and balance in Chinas presentday global (and regional) strategy will disappear. Indeed, the huge costs and risks involved in a Chinese attempt to displace the United States as the dominant global military power are unlikely to diminish to such a degree in the decades ahead that Beijing would conclude it is worth the effort to undertake unless, of course, Washington makes it clear that it is using its global military dominance to support efforts to strangle China and threaten the stability of its government.40

In the economic and technological arenas, blanket, unqualified characterizations of Chinas economy as predatory or mercantilist and its loan and assistance programs as debtinducing distort the reality that some Chinese abuses exist alongside huge levels of mutual economic benefit for many countries.41 Moreover, China poses a limited, not comprehensive and existential, economic and technological threat to the United States, in the form of commercial and technology theft (of which at least the latter is apparently diminishing), unfair trading practices, and other activities that result in unfair advantages or possibly dominance in some specific areas.42

It is highly unlikely that such practices would result in decisive Chinese leverage over the United States, given the likelihood of continued American global economic and technological power and expertise, based on the continuation of its highquality higher education system, its rule of law, its competitive energy and drive, its overall receptivity to talented immigrants, and its ample domestic resource base.43All of these features urgently need strengthening. But this places an even greater premium on reducing distracting and destructive tensions with China. And in any event, Americas advantages are unlikely to diminish to such an extent that China will achieve decisive leverage over the United States, given its own huge domestic problems.

There is also the threat that would result from excessive decoupling of the United States and China in many economic and technological areas. Such actions would produce high levels of inefficiency, lower the benefits of global exchange, and create excessive confidence in the quixotic goal of removing all vulnerabilities to the U.S. economy.44 As a result, U.S. (and Chinese) economic growth and resiliency would decline, along with overall global growth and prosperity.

In addition, it is virtually certain that any effort by Beijing to create a Sino-centric, hegemonic regional (or global) order would encounter serious resistance from many other major states aside from the United States (such as Japan, South Korea, India, Germany, France, and the U.K.), many of which have or could muster considerable economic and military capabilities and would politically and ideologically oppose being dominated by an autocratic China. Although these states could not counterbalance Chinese aggression on their own, they would likely unify to greatly augment a U.S. effort to do so, if necessary.45

It is virtually certain that any effort by Beijing to create a Sino-centric, hegemonic regional (or global) order would encounter serious resistance from many other major states aside from the United States.

Regarding global norms, despite assertions by some to the contrary, China is not committed (and does not have the capability) to overturn what many describe as the global order, replacing it with an autocratic, mercantilist, Sinocentric order.46 First, this argument relies on the false notion that such an order is centered primarily, if not solely, on the three principles of democracy, human rights, and a free market economic system. In reality, the global order consists of a wide array of normbased regimes and understandings, only some of which are associated with Westerndefined concepts.47 Moreover, numerous studies have shown that Beijing benefits from and upholds the goals and norms of many of these regimes, such as those governing relatively free trade and finance, weapons of mass destruction (WMD) proliferation, freedom of navigation, the peaceful resolution of disputes, and the management of transnational security threats China presses for reforms in global institutions that are, in many cases, long overdue, including the idea of providing greater representation for China and developing states in multilateral economic organizations.48

Beijing does want to reduce the influence of Western liberal democratic values within global regimes in favor of a more statecentered set of views that reflect the values of economic growth, topdown political control, limited political freedoms, and social order. However, despite some American rhetoric to the contrary, Beijing is not energetically engaged in a deliberate effort to duplicate its system across the world, nor poised to establish a predatory, debtinducing network of dominance across Eurasia via the Belt and Road Initiative.49 In fact, unlike many 19th and early 20th century imperialist powers, with some limited exceptions during the revolutionary Mao Zedong era in the 1970s, China has not espoused an ideology or mindset that views the acquisition of other territories or the coercive expansion of its system to other countries as essential to its continued national vitality.50

Finally, the socalled global order is rapidly becoming a multipolar order that no single country can dominate in most or all spheres.51 Hence, even if Beijing wanted to create a Sinocentric order, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to see how they could make this happen.

Despite the above developments and conflicting interests, Beijing continues to recognize its own need to sustain substantive areas of cooperation with Washington and to avoid slipping into a truly adversarial, destructive, and purely mercantilist form of competition. While increasingly assertive, the Chinese see the obvious problems of such a stance. Of course, it is possible that Beijing eventually comes to regard the high risks of engaging in such intense competition as worth taking, if the danger of not doing so increases. Such a change in perception could occur in part as a result of a continued U.S. or broader Western drive toward confrontation and zerosum competition with Beijing. This development would greatly undermine those voices within China who favor moderation in the U.S.China rivalry. In addition it would significantly raise the danger of SinoAmerican crises and military conflict, and divert huge amounts of U.S. resources away from desperately needed nonmilitary uses at home and abroad.52

From the above, it is clear that a responsible Restraint strategy toward China should seek to replace the current, largely zerosum, comprehensive competition and confrontation with Beijing with a stable, balanced, mutually beneficial form of peaceful coexistence and bounded competition that can sustain global peace and prosperity while effectively addressing the primary threats facing both countries. This will require a policy toward China geared to effective deterrence regarding red lines, alongside mutual, credible reassurance in key areas, and the channeling of SinoU.S. competition into as many constructive realms as possible, most importantly including the effort to combat the overriding threats posed by climate change, pandemics, nuclear war, WMD proliferation, and global financial and economic disorder.

An openended, winnertakeall security competition can substantially increase the chance of crises and conflict and eliminate options for cooperation in dealing with the truly existential threats all nations face. Ending hostile, zerosum political rhetoric, and replacing simplistic, confrontational policies with prudent, balanced approaches to contentious issues holds the possibility of creating the intellectual and political space for compromise and the search for common ground.

A Restraint strategy toward China would thus have six main goals:

1.) To construct a new national public narrative that redefines and expands the concept of national security to prioritize common transnational threats over narrow, interstate security competition and arms racing. Avoiding or reducing greatly the intensity of the latter should obviously be an important precondition permitting a focus on the former. In this regard, China should be seen as one major pole in an increasingly complex and multipolar world that no single nation will have the capacity to dominate or lead. Instead of casting Beijing as an existential threat and intense, zerosum competitor for global control, Washington should focus on reducing the effect of those ideological, political/military, and historical factors driving the current highly interactive SinoU.S. rivalry to which both nations contribute, while developing more positivesum modes of interaction.

An openended, winnertakeall security competition can substantially increase the chance of crises and conflict and eliminate options for cooperation in dealing with the truly existential threats all nations face.

2.) To minimize the chances of a nuclear or major conventional conflict with China by stabilizing the Taiwan situation (see Appendix), reducing incentives for arms racing and security competition, and increasing incentives for positivesum, cooperative approaches in the economic, technological, and security realms.

3.) To maximize economic openness and stability by building more inclusive and integrated, Asiawide and global economic structures and relationships, limiting economic and technological decoupling with China to genuinely critical national security areas, avoiding competing economic blocs, and strengthening the U.S. ability to play a stronger and more influential economic and technological role in Asia and beyond.

4.) To facilitate the Asian (and especially SinoU.S.) contribution to combating climate change by reaching regional (and especially American and Chinese) acceptance of the primary threat that rapidly developing phenomenon poses to all nations, as a first step toward developing a coordinated regional (and global) strategy involving e.g., broad agreements on the trade of environmental products and the development of climate technologies.

5.) To buy the time that will enable Americans to repair their severely damaged domestic political and economic order, a goal essential for maintaining U.S. economic and technological competitiveness, and for creating predictability in U.S. policies across administrations, and raising the overall image of the United States in the world.

6.) To reallocate national security resources to address concerns that pose a greater proximate danger to the security and wellbeing of the American people than does China. Two specific concerns stand out: first, an erosion of faith in the established domestic constitutional order, and second, environmental degradation, most prominently expressed in the climate crisis.

To achieve these goals, a best case version of a longterm U.S. restraint strategy should focus on building an inclusive, cooperative, highly interdependent, and multipolar global and regional order that does not rely upon either American or Chinese military or economic primacy or dominance. This should involve two elements:

Regionwide, cooperative political/diplomatic, economic/technological, and military security structures and agreements to address specific common regional and global threats, including first and foremost climate change, followed by pandemics, financial instability, cyberattacks, and WMD proliferation.

Limited collective security arrangements with U.S. allies and partners, China, and possibly other nations to ensure maritime security and combat terrorism, and resolve local disputes and conflicts.

These two sets of best case elements of a Restraint strategy will require at least a dozen sets of preconditions:

1) The official abrogation of the Bush Doctrine of preventive war in favor of a policy that commits the United States to using force only as a last resort and (except in immediate selfdefense) only with the prior authorization of Congress and in compliance with the U.N. Charter. Washington should demand that China also honor the latter norm.

2) Acceptance by senior policymakers of an expanded, overarching redefinition of national security and wellbeing that includes a primary focus on addressing common transnational threats and global challenges over narrow, interstate security competition and arms racing, and a recognition of the common need for all countries to promote economic justice alongside economic growth.

This change in priorities will likely require the emergence of a less paranoid and more pragmatic, diplomacyoriented leadership in both China and the United States, involving a reassessment and reordering of threat perceptions. This could emerge from a deeper appreciation of the dangers of conflict inherent in the current SinoU.S. dynamic, along with a genuine recognition of the overriding need to increase cooperation to deal with increasingly obvious common threats such as climate change.53

3) Detailed, sustained U.S. policy deliberations with key East Asian allies, the ASEAN states, other East Asian nations (including China) India and the E.U. regarding the most appropriate norms and types of fora, understandings, etc. required for developing regional approaches to handling common transnational threats and strengthening cooperative security interactions. In the critical area of climate change, given the manifestly unsatisfactory progress under the U.N. Climate Change Conference of Parties umbrella, Washington should propose the creation of a PRC/U.S.led Emergency Climate Change Commission, with the two wealthiest and top pollutionemitting nations on the planet jointly undertaking a massive and wellfunded effort to address the problem and thereby demonstrating the feasibility of collaboration, rather than adversarial competition.

As part of this overall process, Washington should also revisit versions of some of the more positive-sum initiatives that were proposed during the 200010 time frame, including the cooperative maritime security strategy of former Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen, South Koreas Sunshine policy toward North Korea, the joint SinoJapanese proposal to develop the East China Sea into a realm of peace, prosperity, and cooperation, and the East Asian Community concept promoted by many Japanese policy elites during the late 1990s and early 2000s.54

4) The deployment of a less provocative, more affordable, defensivelyoriented, U.S. regional force posture sufficient to support stability across the Taiwan Strait, perform emerging cooperative and collective security functions, and dampen the security dilemma. This will likely require, at a minimum, over at least the short to medium term, a set of denial (not control)oriented military capabilities and force postures, CBMs, and cooperative security dialogues among the top Asian powers sufficient to deter against realistic threats of attack without provoking openended arms racing.55

Such a U.S. force posture would require a significant restructuring of U.S. forces in the Western Pacific, with a narrower focus on improving air and navalbased denial capabilities, a greatly reduced ground force presence, much greater levels of U.S. and allied resilience to Chinese missile attacks, and enhanced Taiwan defense capabilities. This would likely entail greatly improved passive and active defenses on land, a more dispersed pattern of force deployments, greater numbers of antiship and antiair cruise and other missiles, less reliance on large, forward deployed aircraft carriers, a greater reliance on more limited-range unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), submarines and antisubmarine warfare (ASW) capabilities, and a greater ability to resupply Guam and more forward areas from Hawaii and Continental United States. In a crisis or conflict, these capabilities would focus on interdicting, deterring or destroying offshore Chinese forces arrayed against Taiwan without striking logistics points and C4ISR locations deep within the Chinese mainland, thereby limiting escalation. The overall objective of this force posture would be to blunt any Chinese attack long enough to permit additional U.S. forces to be brought in from out of theater without escalating the conflict by striking early on targets on the Chinese mainland.

Aside from these changes in force structure and defense strategy, an effective active denial posture would also require serious U.S. efforts to reduce tensions with Beijing and thereby lower Chinas incentives to sustain high levels of military modernization and employ force in the first place, and to improve both U.S. and Chinese crisis management and deescalation capabilities. Such efforts should center on stabilizing the Taiwan situation through a variety of measures outlined in the appendix. Moreover, such a force posture and strategy will likely be welcomed by U.S. allies and partners because it is more credible and economically and politically sustainable than the alternatives and because it would be sensitive to the crosspressures and tradeoffs allies and partners face regarding the rise of China.56

5) Likely greater levels of defense burden sharing by U.S. allies in Asia, in support of specific, agreedupon security goals, along with discussions on redefining the purpose of U.S. alliances, to transition gradually from largely onesided bilateral security pacts based on high levels of U.S. forward presence directed at China and North Korea, to support for broader cooperative and collective regional security arrangements, CBMs and a Korea peace regime, the latter as part of a twotrack strategy of tension reduction and demilitarization leading to the eventual denuclearization of the Korean peninsula and the signing of a peace treaty and CBMs with Pyongyang.

The United States should affirm its existing security commitments to Japan, South Korea, Australia, Thailand, and the Philippines, but with no further expansion of forces or bases. Washington should also sustain a comprehensive schedule of military exercises with regional allies while scrupulously adhering to defensive scenarios. In this process, the United States needs to provide greater assistance in strengthening the independent, indigenous defense capacities of allies and filling in gaps in their deterrence capabilities.

However, U.S. policies should place an equally high priority on encouraging all Asian states to support a more cooperative and inclusive regional order, providing for their own welfare and security as much as possible through positivesum forms of engagement with one another that reduce the worst casing of objectives and intentions and hence lower the need to expend huge amounts of resources to build up their military capabilities. Under this scenario, the U.S.Japan alliance would likely approximate what Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama had in mind in 200910: a more equal alliance, with a reduced U.S. military presence and Tokyo strictly adhering to a defensive policy even while increasing defense expenditures and pursuing a multilateral cooperative security process.

In this, the United States should play a lowlevel role, allowing other Asian nations to define their own security and development needs without relying primarily on U.S. forwarddeployed forces or U.S. economic assistance or leverage. Washington should consider promoting the creation of an Asian equivalent of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), to bridge differences and build trust between states by cooperating on conflict prevention, crisis management and postconflict rehabilitation.57 The aim will be to encourage greater collective Asian responsibility for Asian stability.

As part of this process, the U.S.-led security pact AUKUS, which seeks to position a highly costly, new offensive capability in Australia, should be seriously reconsidered.58The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) comprising the United States, Japan, India, and Australia should eliminate its military dimensions and greatly enhance its ability to deliver the public goods it has promised.59

6) Related to the previous point, given its sensitive position in Asia, this best case strategy should avoid any efforts to push Japan away from its current peace constitution or greatly increase its defense spending (especially if this is geared towards a Taiwan intervention), as long as progress is being made toward lessening regional security competition and increasing cooperative security measures. Japan should make any decision to increase its military capabilities or alter its peace constitution largely on its own, without U.S. pressure.

In addition, absent the complete collapse of SinoU.S. understandings regarding Taiwan and a marked increase in hostility, the Japanese government should continue resisting any commitment in advance to backing a U.S. decision to employ force in a possible confrontation or conflict with Beijing over the island. The United States should accept such a restrained Japanese stance, which could create more incentives for Washington to act in turn in a restrained manner toward the Taiwan issue. Indeed, under this best case scenario of increasing cooperation with Beijing, Tokyo should avoid acquiring provocative new weapons systems (such as intermediate and longrange, land attack missiles), while working with South Korea and other allies to use its leverage as a location for U.S. bases to argue for such restraint.

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A Restraint Approach to U.S.China Relations: Reversing the Slide ... - Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft