Douglas, William A

Abstract
During 2010 to 20112, considerable discussion took place in policy circles about avoiding a putative US-China competition through and East Asia multilateral balance of power in which neither power would dominate. The discussion was responding to what many observers saw as the prospect of a geopolitical power struggle (Economist 2014) in which the United States would seek to retain its present naval and air dominance in the western Pacific and China would, at a minimum, seek to degrade US dominance (Gurtov 2013a) or, at a maximum, regain what many China view as China’s historical place as the Middle Kingdom. These US and Chinese goals might well be incompatible in that, as the Chinese proverb puts it, “one mountain cannot be shared by two tigers.” Both governments have repeatedly expressed their desire to avoid such a “Thucydides trap” by prudent managing of the relationship between an established and a rising power. To President Xi Jinping that means establishing a “new type of relationship between the major powers” (Chen 2014b; Wang 2014).
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