Abstract: Since the Crimean crisis, the US has continuously tightened financial sanctions on Russia.In the short term, this doesn’ t appear to be working very effectively, but in the long run, it has indeed had an irreversible impact on the Russian economy. Though the US has repeatedly upgraded its sanction plans, four puzzles have long remained unsolved: appropriate sanctions have avoided a humanitarian crisis, but raised moral dilemmas; actual enforcement of sanctions is getting more and more difficult; EU cooperation with the US is vital, but the two regions more often than not play different tunes; and the frequent use of sanctions weakens US legitimacy and integrity,leading to a degradation of the sanction mechanism. Sanctions have continued to be implemented since President Trump took office, but with some new adjustments. Full text available here.
Country or Region: United States
Cheng, Kefan
Abstract: Since the end of the Cold War ,the power comparison between the United States and Russia in the Middle East has been “strong US, weak Russia”. But since sending troops into Syria on September 30 of 2015, Russia has taken a forceful position of involvement in the Middle East and achieved fruitful results, not only boosting its military presence in the Middle East, but also greatly increasing its political influence. Russia is now an important external force influencing political changes in the Middle East. Since taking office as US president, Donald Trump has changed the policy of strategic contraction pursued by his predecessor, Barack Obama, in the Middle East,taking a proactive rather than a stiff approach to further intensify contention with Russia in a bid to reshape and consolidate its position as a top dog in the Middle East. US-Russia contention has led to new geopolitical divisions and realignment as well as profound and complicated changes in geopolitical structure in the Middle East, thus perpetuating US-Russia contention, as the two countries will lock themselves in fierce contention over regional dominance on both military and political battlegrounds. Full text available here.
Yu, Xiang
Abstract: The Trump administration’ s hostile trade actions against China since the beginning of this year violate World Trade Organization rules. To protect the free trade world economic system, China has stood up to fight this trade bullying. When the US administration continued with harsher actions, the escalation in trade friction increased the potential harm for both countries. China has been very clear that Trump’ s trade tariffs cannot improve the bilateral trade imbalance.Tit-for-tat ought to be a last resort but China is open to talking. Now the ball is in Trump’ s court. As two big, influential economies, China and the US should calm down and go back to negotiating table to avoid a trade war trap. Bullying is only one approach President Trump can choose, but arbitrary threats are no solution. Full text available here.
Zhang, Guoxi, and Xie Tao
Abstract: The year 2017 marked not only the 45th anniversary of the establishment of China-Australia diplomatic relations, but also significant turbulence in the relationship. While bilateral economic and trade relations, as well as people-to-people communication and cooperation continue to grow, a series of dramatic and negative events unfolded in Australia, advocating the so-called “China threat”, and instigated by anti-China sentiments. The recent anti-China backlash in Australia was caused by a combination of deep structural change in the current international system, and instability in Australia’s domestic politics. It is also the outcome of Australia’s dependence on the US-Australia alliance, while balancing between its own economic and security interests. It is worth noting that in comparison to the past, the current anti-China movement in Australia has been more profound and more focused, demonstrating new characteristics. This includes Australia collaborating with certain Western nations against China’s influence, as well as strategic warnings with more political and policy implications. Although Australia’s anti-China backlash will not have a fundamental impact on China-Australia relations, Australia’s anti-China stance and behavior is characteristic of an increasingly prevalent trend among the Western nations of concern about China’s rising influence, and new defense strategies against this. China must proceed with caution when dealing with the negative repercussions of this. Full text available here.
Yang, Rui, and Wang Shida
Abstract: In 2017, the Trump administration formally articulated its vision for the Indo-Pacific strategy, replacing “Asia-Pacific” with “Indo-Pacific” in policy papers and taking measures to promote the realization of an “Indo-Pacific dream”. This represents a significant adjustment in US regional policies. An important power in the Indian Ocean region, India is perceived as key to the successful implementation of this Indo-Pacific strategy. Generally speaking, the current Indian government and strategy circle actively support the upgrading of the “Indo-Pacific” concept from a geographical and academic term to a US vision for foreign strategies, anticipating that India could garner significant strategic benefits from it. Given this, New Delhi will continually adapt its foreign policies to the US Indo-Pacific strategy and may even direct the development of the strategy to counter the Belt and Road Initiative, work with other nations to balance China’s influence and finally make the rise of India as a great power a reality. Nonetheless, the Indo-pacific strategy is in its early stages, and the content is not completely pro-India currently. On top of this India is still skeptical of the US and will proceed cautiously, leaving room for maneuver in the future, fully tapping into the benefits of the Indo-Pacific strategy and avoiding direct confrontation with China. Full text available here.
Guo, Xiaobing
Abstract: Nonproliferation cooperation has always been a bright spot in China-US security cooperation for over more than a decade. China and the U.S. should timely adjust the focus of their nonproliferation cooperation on a more equal basis,expanding common interests and exploring new patterns for cooperation so as to create a model for the two countries to join hands in global governance and maintenance of regional order. Full text available here.
Waterman, Kit, and Doug Stokes
Abstract: In spite of fiscal pressure at home and China’s continued rise abroad, the United States shows no signs of reversing its costly grand strategy of deep engagement. In the context of America’s relative decline, we evaluate existing proposals to ease pressure on the United States. We argue that the key aspects of American decline are often operational rather than strategic in nature; consequently that the undifferentiated fashion in which rise and decline is often presented is not useful in describing current changes or in proposing how to address them. Problems at the operational level do not necessarily demand higher-level strategic level alterations. As such, although restructured forms of deep engagement will help alleviate resource constraints in the medium to long term, their utility in addressing the operational changes wrought by relative decline are less apparent. Given that resource constraints are not necessarily the primary concern, therefore, the major strategic elements of American deep engagement are more durable than commonly supposed. America’s current strategic objectives are not constrained by changes by virtue of its relative material decline with respect to China but by changes in the operational environment. Full text available here.
Katagiri, Nori
Abstract: While the Obama administration’s Asia rebalance strategy received some praise from scholars and practitioners, it generated three problems that caused the USA to overlook many opportunities and neglect vital concerns. First, the strategy left Asia less stable by undermining US relations with China and smaller states in Southeast Asia. Secondly, it weakened America’s influence outside Asia by committing fewer resources. Finally, the rebalance was executed out of a relatively small cadre of government officials, allowing primarily civilian agencies to dictate Asia policy and excluding key branches of government. Furthermore, although the strategy competed with the strategies of restraint and offshore balancing, it never had the solid support of any international relations theories, leaving few scholars to directly associate it with a theory. Ultimately, the rebalance’s multiple logics prevented it from achieving intellectual hegemony in the American foreign policy discourse, and its substantive flaws and theoretical inconsistencies made difficult its acceptance as an enduring strategy in the Asia-Pacific region. Full text available here.
Zhou, Jianren
Abstract: The rise of China is one of the most notable events in the early 21st century. The strategic impacts of its rise and interactions between the hegemonic power and the rising power have become focal points for scholars in the field of international relations. This article uses prospect theory, power transition theory, and nuclear deterrence theory as the basis for constructing a theory of strategic competition to explain the relationship between the hegemonic power and the rising power, and the strategic interactions between them during the power transition process. This new theory of strategic competition maintains that states take diplomatic actions not just to seek gains, but also to avoid losses. Building upon a critical review and revision of power transition theory, the theory of strategic competition proposes that before the rising power overtakes it, the hegemonic power will take action to avoid incurring losses, and that in response the rising power will passively take action to avoid its own losses. After the rising power has overtaken the hegemonic power, however, it will take action to expand its interests, and the hegemonic power will then passively take action to avoid its own losses. Under the inhibitive influence of nuclear deterrence, strategic competition between the hegemonic power and the rising power is limited to peaceful measures including diplomatic means. This article tests the theory of strategic competition through examining the paradigm shifts in diplomacy of the US and China that have occurred since 2010. Full text available here.
Li, Wei
Abstract: Tremendous changes have occurred in China–US relations since Donald J. Trump took office in the White House, but the most significant event is the outbreak of the China–US trade war, whose unprecedented scale and impact has drawn wide attention in China and sparked considerable debate. This article aims to review the four main stages of this great debate on the China–US trade war among China’s influential intellectuals and prominent thinkers. It covers the three-year period since beginning of the Trump administration. The initial argument among Chinese academics was whether or not there could ever be a trade war, which led to a dividing line between optimists and pessimists. Soon after, when China-US relations took a sharp downturn and a trade war seemed inevitable, Chinese scholars shifted their focus to reasons why the United States should wage a trade war against China. This culminated in three different perspectives embodied respectively in the structural conflict theory, institutional conflict theory, and the theory on exporting domestic problems. After China and the United States began slapping additional tariffs on one another’s exported goods, and with the flare-up of the Zhongxing Telecommunication Equipment Corporation (ZTE) and Huawei incidents, the debate on how to respond to a trade war cleaved between the ‘whole nation system school’ and the ‘market reform school’. As to coping with the technology war, Chinese intellectuals were divided between the paths of ‘independent innovation’ and ‘open innovation’. More recently, in view of the many signs that the China–US trade war could continue indefinitely, and an economic decoupling of the two nations is no longer unimaginable, a fierce debate has arisen between those that advocate full preparations for such economic decoupling and those who insist on further links with the US economy. Although the main themes of the four stages of the debate differ somewhat, they share a certain degree of consistency as regards the conceptual pedigree of the debating parties. Their divergence derives, in essence, from different perspectives on such issues as state power versus market force, independence versus interdependence, and zero-sum competition of power versus win-win economic cooperation. This also exemplifies the competing views in Chinese academia on classical political economy. Full text available here.
Zhao, Minghao
Abstract: In recent years, Chinese scholars and policy elites have discussed the ever intensifying strategic competition between the United States and China and its multifaceted implications for Chinese foreign policy. Some even worry about the possibility of a new Cold War between the United States and China. This article aims to offer an analysis of Chinese perspectives on US–China strategic competition. In the view of most Chinese observers, US–China strategic competition is inevitable because China is closing the national power gap between itself and the United States, while the latter resolutely upholds its global primacy. Other factors, including ideological disagreements, may fuel the major power competition that has extended to most aspects of US–China relations. Chinese observers believe that economic and technological rivalry between the United States and China has heightened and that the Western Pacific is the focal point of US–China strategic competition. Meanwhile, certain Chinese scholars attach greater importance to US–China competition over international prestige and leadership. However, Chinese analysts are not overly pessimistic about the prospects for US–China relations and have raised policy recommendations geared to managing US–China strategic competition and restoring a new equilibrium between the two major powers. Full text available here.
Lake, David A
Abstract: The United States–China relationship is more likely than not to slide into economic and military competition, despite the perhaps best intentions of both states. This new bipolar competition is not inevitable. The key question is whether both governments have the self-restraint to limit domestic rent-seeking interests who will undoubtedly demand protection at home and exclusivity in their spheres of influence abroad. If not, the new superpowers will, like great powers in the past, ‘race’ for economic privileges that can quickly divide the world up into exclusive blocs. Like the security dilemma, great powers need not actually exclude one another from their economic zones; the fear of exclusion alone is enough to ignite the process of division. There was always some likelihood of a competitive economic spiral given China’s close business–government relations in a ‘state-capitalist’ economy. Now, for the first time in seven decades, there is a chance that the United States, in the grips of economic nationalism, might abandon its historic policy of free trade and ignite a new race for economic privilege as well. Full text available here.
Yang, Yuan
Abstract: The ‘Thucydides trap’ exaggerates the risk of war breaking out between the rising power and the ruling power in the contemporary age. The greater challenge facing China and the United States is to avoid falling into the ‘Churchill trap’. That is, falling into a long-term confrontation by repeating the mistakes of the Cold War between the US and the USSR. Both the ‘old’ history of the ancient East Asian bipolar system and the current experience of Sino-US interaction in East Asia suggest that, in addition to hegemonic war and cold war, there is a third type of great power relationship between the two poles, which I call ‘co-ruling’, whereby rather than being geographically demarcated according to their respective ‘spheres of influence’, the two superpowers jointly lead all or most of the small and medium-sized countries in the system. The theoretical and case studies examined in the article imply that the ‘co-ruling’ mode will appear and be sustained at a time when the two superpowers’ foreign functions are differentiated (i.e. each of the two poles can only meet one of the indispensable needs of small countries, and the two needs that the two poles can respectively meet are different ones), when inter-great-power war is no longer a viable strategic option. The antagonistic and geopolitical colours of the Cold War ‘divided-ruling’ mode of power politics will be less strident in the ‘co-ruling’ mode, so offering an illuminating escape from both the ‘Thucydides trap’ and the ‘Churchill trap’. Full text available here.
Islam, Md. Safiqul, Huand Ailian, and Zhang Jie
Abstract: Although the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Economic Corridor (BCIM-EC) has the potential to enhance economic and geo-strategic benefits of the four participating countries in the long run, its building process has often been stagnated due to India’s lingering concern about the implications of the Corridor for its national security and, more importantly, to the growing competition among major countries including China, the United States and India. Moreover, there remains ethnic insurgency in Northeast India and Myanmar as well as the Rohingya issue between Bangladesh and Myanmar, which poses lasting security threats to the building of the Corridor. By analyzing the nature of those challenges, this article shows that the emerging Indo-U.S. strategic coalition for checking China’s influence and India’s reluctant stance in building the BCIM-EC are the biggest challenges, whereas neither the ethnic insurgency nor the Rohingya issue can affect BCIM-EC building substantially. Therefore, it is concluded that the BCIM-EC cannot succeed unless China and India can both fully commit to the building process while enhancing all-round cooperation based on their mutual strategic trust. Full text available here.
Ling, Shengli and Lv Huiyi
Abstract: With the rise of China and relative decline of the United States, the question of whether both countries will fall into the so-called “Thucydides’ Trap” — an analogy to the Peloponnesian War in ancient Greece — has triggered heated debate within international academia. By discussing the misunderstanding about the concept and conducting a three-level analysis of modern Sino-U.S. relations, this article identifies a few major flaws in making a simple analogy between the Athens-Sparta confrontation in ancient Greece and the Sino-U.S. relationship today. It concludes that a war between China and the United States is unlikely to take place thanks to the confines of the international system, the different nature of alliance networks from the ancient Greek period, the economic interdependence among countries, and the changing public attitude toward war. It also suggests both countries expand their economic, political, security and cultural cooperation, so as to ultimately overcome the “Thucydides’ Trap.” Full text available here.
