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By: Dr.Fariborz Saremi
The world has never seen anything like the rapid, tectonic shift in the global balance of power created by the rise of China. If the US were a corporation, it would have accounted for 50 percent of the global economic market in the years after WWII. By 1980 that had declined to 22 percent.
Three decades of double-digit Chinese growth has reduced to 16 percent today. If current trends continue, the US share of global economic output will decline further over the next decades to just 11 percent. Over this same period, China’s share of the global economy will have soared from 2 percent in 1980 to 18 percent in 2016, well on its way to 30 percent in 2040.
China’s economic development in transforming it into a formidable political and military competitor.During the Cold War, as the US mounted clumsy responses to Soviet provocations, a sign in the Pentagon said : “ If we ever faced a real enemy, we would be in deep trouble.” China is a serious potential enemy. The possibility that the United States and China could find themselves at war appears as unlikely as it would be unwise. The centennials recalling World War I, however have reminded us of man’s capacity for folly.
As far ahead as the eye can see, the defining question is about global order is whether China and the US can escape Thucydide’s trap. Most contests that fit this pattern have ended badly. Over the past five hundred years, in sixteen cases a major rising power has threatened to displace a ruling power.
The United States and China can likewise avoid war, but only if they can internalize two difficult truths. First, on the current trajectory, war between the US and China in the decades ahead is not just possible, but much more likely than currently recognized. If leaders in Beijing and Washington keep doing what they have done for the past decade, the US and China will almost certainly wind up at war. Second war is not inevitable. History shows that major ruling powers can manage relations with rivals, even those that threaten to overtake them, without triggering a war.
China is following a different trajectory than did the United States during its own surge to primacy. What does President Xi Jinping’s China want? In one line: to make China great again. China should not only be rich but powerful.
In truth, the paths to war are more varied and plausible than we want to believe. From current confrontation in the South China Sea, the East China Sea, and cyberspace, to a trade conflict that spirals out of control, it is frighteningly easy to develop scenarios in which American and Chinese soldiers are killing each other. Though none of these scenarios seem likely, when we recall the unintended consequences of the Hapsburg archduke or Khrushchev’s nuclear adventure in Cuba, we are reminded of how narrow the gap is between “unlikely” and “impossible”.
The return to prominence of a 5000 year old civilization with 1.4 billion people is not a problem to be fixed. It is a condition that will have to be managed over a generation. Success will require not just a new slogan but more frequent presidential summits.
It will require a depth of mutual understanding not seen since the Henry Kissinger –Zhou En-lai conversations that reestablished US-China relations in 1970’s. Avoiding Thucydid’s Trap in this case will require nothing less than bending the arc of history.
Dr.Fariborz Saremi, based in Hamburg-Germany is a strategic and geopolitical analyst.Dr.Saremi advises governments and parties on Foreign and Security Policy Topics.
