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Ties that Bind: Strategic Stability in the U.S.–China Relationship

2013; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 36; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/0163660x.2013.861718

1530-9177

Thomas Fingar, Jishe Fan,

International Relations and Foreign Policy

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes1. See, for example, Minxin Pei, “The U.S.–China Reset,” The New York Times, November 13, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/14/opinion/the-U.S.–china-reset.html?_r = 0; and Kenneth G. Lieberthal and Jonathan D. Pollack, “Establishing Credibility and Trust: The Next President Must Manage America's Most Important Relationship,” Brookings, March 13, 2012, http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2012/03/16-china-lieberthal-pollack. For an exaggerated characterization of the relationship as in crisis, see Mark Landler, Jane Perlez and Steven Lee Meyers, “Dissident's Plea for Protection from China Deepens Crisis,” The New York Times, May 3, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/04/world/asia/chen-guangchengs-plea-for-protection-deepens-a-crisis.html?pagewanted = all.2. See, for example, Zhang Tuosheng, “Tighter Sino–U.S. Ties Need More Trust and Less Suspicion,” China-U.S. Focus, August 5, 2012, http://www.chinausfocus.com/foreign-policy/tighter-sino-U.S.–ties-needs-more-trust-less-suspicion/. For a much earlier, and more appropriate characterization of the relationship as fragile, see Harry Harding, A Fragile Relationship: The United States and China Since 1972 (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1992).3. See, for example, Elbridge A. Colby and Michael S. Gerson, Eds., Strategic Stability: Contending Interpretations (Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute and U.S. Army War College Press, 2013).4. See, for example, Andrei Kokoshin, “Ensuring Strategic Stability in the Past and Present: Theoretical and Applied Questions,” (Cambridge, MA: Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, 2011), http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/Ensuring%20Strategic%20Stability%20by%20A.%20Kokoshin.pdf. See also, Albert Wohlstetter, “The Delicate Balance of Terror,” Rand Corporation, November 6, 1958, http://www.rand.org/about/history/wohlstetter/P1472/P1472.html.5. See, for example, Lawrence Freedman, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, Third Edition (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2003); and Yao Yunzhu, “Chinese Nuclear Policy and the Future of Minimum Deterrence,” Strategic Insights 4, no. 9 (September 2005), http://csis.org/files/media/csis/pubs/issuesinsights_v06n02.pdf.6. See John Wilson Lewis and Xue Litai, China Builds the Bomb (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988).7. See Lewis and Xue; and Gordon H. Chang, “To the Nuclear Brink: Eisenhower, Dulles, and the Quemoy-Matsu Crisis,” International Security 12, no. 4 (Spring 1988), pp. 96-123. For a somewhat different interpretation, see Evan Thomas, Ike's Bluff: President Eisenhower's Secret Battle to Save the World (New York: Little, Brown, 2012).8. See Jeffrey Lewis, “The Fifty-Megaton Elephant in the Room: Why aren't America and China talking about their nukes?” Foreign Policy, September 19, 2012, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/09/19/the_fifty_megaton_elephant_in_the_room?wp_login_redirect = 0.9. This point and other concerns regarding the U.S. nuclear posture are discussed in Thomas Fingar, “Worrying About Washington: China's Views of the US Nuclear Posture,” The Nonproliferation Review 18, no. 1 (March 2011), pp. 51-68.10. See the thinly veiled reference at U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian, “Joint Statement Following Discussions with Leaders of the People's Republic of China,” (Commonly referred to as the “Shanghai Communiqué”), Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976 Volume XVII, China, 1969–1972, Document 203, February 27, 1972, http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v17/d203. For more explicit depiction, see Beth Green, Issues in U.S.–China Relations, 1949-84 (Washington, DC: Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, 1984), p. 2 at http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD = ADA310513; and Zhang Tuosheng, “China's Relations with Japan,” Ezra F. Vogel, Yuan Ming, and Tanaka Akihiko, Eds., The Golden Age of the U.S.–China-Japan Triangle, 1972-1989 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), p. 195.11. See Lewis and Xue.12. Richard M. Nixon, “Asia After Vietnam,” Foreign Affairs 46, no. 1 (October, 1967), pp. 111-125.13. Henry Kissinger, The White House Years (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1979), chapters 6, 18, and 19.14. See, for example, Ezra F. Vogel, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), chapter 7.15. See, for example, Ezra F. Vogel, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), chapter 7., and Zbigniew Brzezinski, Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Advisor, 1977-1981 (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1983).16. Thomas Fingar, “China's Vision of World Order,” in Ashley J. Tellis and Travis Tanner, Eds., Strategic Asia 2012-13: China's Military Challenge (Seattle, WA: National Bureau of Asian Research, 2012), pp. 343-373.17. See, for example, Kenneth Lieberthal and Wang Jisi, Addressing U.S.–China Strategic Distrust (Washington, DC: John L. Thornton China Center at Brookings, 2012), http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2012/3/30%20us%20china%20lieberthal/0330_china_lieberthal.pdf; and David M. Lampton, Power Constrained: Sources of Mutual Strategic Suspicion in U.S.–China Relations (Seattle, WA: The National Bureau of Asian Research, 2010), http://www.nbr.org/publications/nbranalysis/pdf/2010_US_China.pdf.18. The term and its use are borrowed from Aaron L. Friedberg, A Contest for Supremacy: China, America, and the Struggle for Mastery in Asia (New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 2011). See also Avery Goldstein, Rising to the Challenge: China's Grand Strategy (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005).19. John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 2001).20. See analysis and sources cited in Bonnie Glaser and Brittany Billingsley, “U.S. Pivot to Asia Leaves China off Balance,” Comparative Connections series, Center for Strategic and International Studies, January 2012, http://csis.org/files/publication/1103qus_china.pdf.21. See Friedberg, A Contest for Supremacy; and John J. Mearsheimer, “The Gathering Storm: China's Challenge to U.S. Power in Asia,” The Chinese Journal of International Politics 3, no. 4, pp. 381-396 at http://cjip.oxfordjournals.org/content/3/4/381.full.22. Chinese and American leaders have articulated views similar to our own. See, for example, “Full Text of Hu Jintao's Speech at Welcome Luncheon by U.S. Friendly Organizations,” Xinhua, January 20, 2011, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2011-01/21/c_13700418.htm; and Thomas Omestad, “Secretary Clinton, Minister Yang Lay Out U.S.–China Relations at USIP Event,” United States Institute of Peace, March 8, 2012 at http://www.usip.org/publications/secretary-clinton-minister-yang-lay-out-U.S.–china-relations-usip-event.23. See, for example, Friedberg, A Contest for Supremacy; and Thomas Fingar, “China's Rise: Contingency, Constraints, and Concerns,” Survival 54, no. 1 (February–March 2012), pp. 195-204.24. Examples of thoughtful analyses focused on uncertainties about military capabilities and intent include Ashley J. Tellis and Travis Tanner, Eds., China's Military Challenge (Seattle, WA: The National Bureau of Asian Research, 2012); and Richard D. Fisher, Jr., China's Military Modernization: Building for Regional and Global Reach (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010).25. See, for example, Foreign Ministry Spokesman, “Rising Military Power is in Line with China's Defense Needs,” Xinhua, June 5, 2012, http://eng.mod.gov.cn/TopNews/2012-06/05/content_4373953.htm; and Information Office of the State Council, People's Republic of China, China's National Defense in 2010, March 2011, http://english.gov.cn/official/2011-03/31/content_1835499.htm.26. See, for example Nanae Kurashige, “Japan Clearly Concerned About China's Growing Military Buildup, The Asahi Shimbun, July 31, 2012, http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/politics/AJ201207310087.27. Julian E. Barnes, Nathan Hodge, and Jeremy Page, “China Takes Aim at US Naval Might,” The Wall Street Journal, January 4, 2012, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204397704577074631582060996.html.28. See U.S. Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service, Pivot to the Pacific? The Obama Administration's ‘Rebalancing’ Toward Asia, by Mark E. Manyin, et al, (Washington, DC: GPO, March 28, 2012), http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R42448.pdf.29. See Fingar, “Worrying About Washington.”30. See John W. Lewis and Xue Litai, “Making China's Nuclear War Plan,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 68, no. 5 (September-October 2012), pp. 45-65.31. See, for example, Liam Dann, “U.S.–China Tension a Tricky Challenge,” The New Zealand Herald, October 15, 2012, http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id = 3&objectid = 10840486.32. See, for example, Jeffrey Bader, “U.S.–China Relations Under Obama and Xi Jinping,” transcript, at the Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy in Beijing, China, November 29, 2012, http://www.brookings.edu/∼/media/events/2012/11/29%20us%20china%20obama%20jinping/1129transcripten1.pdf.33. See National Intelligence Council, Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds (Washington, DC: National Intelligence Council, 2012), http://www.dni.gov/files/documents/GlobalTrends_2030.pdf.34. See Robert A. Manning, Principal Drafter, Envisioning 2030: US Strategy for a Post-Western World (Washington, DC: The Atlantic Council, 2012), http://www.acus.org/files/publication_pdfs/403/Envisioning2030_web.pdf.pdf; and “China-US Cooperation: Key to the Global Future,” Atlantic Council, China–U.S. Joint Working Group, September 17, 2013, http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/publications/reports/china-us-cooperation-key-to-the-global-future.35. See Fingar, “Worrying About Washington.”36. See, for examples, Sun Xiangli, “China's Nuclear Strategy,” China Security, no. 1 (Autumn 2005), pp. 23-27, http://www.chinasecurity.us/pdfs/Issue1full.pdf; and Department of Defense, Nuclear Posture Review Report (Washington, DC: 2010), http://www.defense.gov/npr/docs/2010%20nuclear%20posture%20review%20report.pdf.37. Nuclear Posture Review Report; and Department of Defense, Ballistic Missile Defense Review Report (Washington, DC: 2010), http://www.defense.gov/bmdr/docs/BMDR%20as%20of%2026JAN10%200630_for%20web.pdf.