An Agenda for a US-China Balance of Power

222 Pages·2016·5.87 MB·English

BEIJING BEIRUT BRUSSELS MOSCOW NEW DELHI WASHINGTON
C
R MICHAEL D. SWAINE
E
A with Wenyan Deng and Aube Rey Lescure
T
I
N
G

A

S
T
A
B
L
E

A
S
I
A
An Agenda for a
U.S.-China Balance of Power
CarnegieEndowment.org
MICHAEL D. SWAINE
with Wenyan Deng and Aube Rey Lescure
An Agenda for a
U.S.-China Balance of Power
© 2016 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. All rights reserved.
Carnegie does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented herein are
the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Carnegie, its staff, or its trustees.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without permis-
sion in writing from the Carnegie Endowment. Please direct inquiries to:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Publications Department
1779 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20036
P: [phone]
F: [phone]
CarnegieEndowment.org
This publication can be downloaded at no cost at CarnegieEndowment.org/pubs.
CONTENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHORS .................................................................................................v
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................................vii
SUMMARY ..........................................................................................................................1
INTRODUCTION ..............................................................................................................5
1. THE SHIFTING POWER ENVIRONMENT IN THE WESTERN PACIFIC ......13
2. THE COSTS OF PREDOMINANCE AND THE BENEFITS
OF A STABLE BALANCE OF POWER ....................................................................61
3. THE SEVEN COMPONENTS OF A STABLE BALANCE OF POWER .............71
4. GETTING TO A STABLE BALANCE OF POWER .............................................103
CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................135
APPENDIX A: SINO-U.S. TRADE ..............................................................................141
iii
APPENDIX B: R&D RESEARCHERS .........................................................................147
APPENDIX C: A NOTE ON METHODOLOGY ......................................................149
APPENDIX D: REGRESSION ANALYSIS ..................................................................151
APPENDIX E: SINO-U.S. WEAPONRY COMPARISON ......................................153
APPENDIX F: ASIAN ALLIED/FRIENDLY POWERS ...........................................167
NOTES ...............................................................................................................................181
CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL PEACE ..............................212
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
MICHAEL D. SWAINE is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace and one of the most prominent American analysts in Chinese
security studies. Formerly a senior policy analyst at the RAND Corporation, Swaine is
a specialist in Chinese defense and foreign policy, U.S.-China relations, and East Asian
international relations.
He has written and edited more than a dozen books and monographs and many journal
articles and book chapters in these areas. He also directs several security-related projects
with Chinese partners and advises the U.S. government on Asian security issues. He
received his doctorate in government from Harvard University.
WENYAN DENG is a former junior fellow in the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace’s Asia Program, where her research focused on international rela-
tions in the Western Pacific, Sino-U.S. crisis-management behaviors, Chinese military
development, and U.S. military strategy in Asia. She is currently a graduate student in
international relations and security studies at the University of Chicago.
v
AUBE REY LESCURE worked as a research assistant in the Asia program at the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace. She received a bachelor’s degree in political science
from Yale University in 2015. She speaks Chinese, English, and French with native profi-
ciency and focuses her writing and research on foreign affairs and Asian geopolitics.
vi CREATING A STABLE ASIA
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A LENGTHY AND DETAILED REPORT IS ALMOST ALWAYS THE PRODUCT
OF MANY MINDS, and this one is no exception. Although the argument contained
herein is essentially my own, some of the supporting qualitative analysis, and all of the
quantitative analysis, were produced and written by my two very talented co-authors:
Wenyan Deng and Aube Rey Lescure, junior fellow and research assistant, respectively,
in the Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. This report
would have been impossible without their steadfast assistance, and I owe them a great
debt of gratitude.
In addition, we three authors are very grateful to several individuals for taking the time
to read all or part of the manuscript and providing comments at various stages during
the drafting process. These include our Carnegie Endowment colleagues Vikram Nehru
and Yukon Huang, as well as Bert Keidel, Mike Mochizuki, Dennis Blasko, Bernard
Cole, Paul Heer, Stapleton Roy, Lonnie Henley, William Murray, Eric Heginbotham,
Ken Allen, Mike McDevitt, Lyle Goldstein, Amitai Etzioni, John Corbett, and Karl
Eikenberry. Their insights were essential to our efforts to avoid some significant pitfalls
in logic and argument along the way. But of course none of them are responsible for the
views and argument expressed herein.
vii
We are also deeply indebted to the two formal reviewers of the report, David M.
Lampton and Philip Saunders, for providing detailed, insightful comments and sugges-
tions. Their efforts improved the final product enormously.
Finally, the authors greatly appreciate the efforts undertaken by the Carnegie
Communications Department for its excellent editing, and to expedite the production of
this report.
—Michael D. Swaine
viii CREATING A STABLE ASIA
SUMMARY
THE WESTERN PACIFIC is experiencing a fundamental and potentially destabilizing
military and economic power transition driven primarily by China’s economic and mili-
tary rise and a corresponding relative decline in American power. Efforts by the United
States or China to secure future predominance will prove futile and dangerous, given
a host of security, economic, and diplomatic factors. Instead, creating a stable de facto
balance of power is necessary and feasible for both countries. This shift could take the
form of a more durable balance that would necessitate major regional changes that would
be difficult to achieve, or a more feasible but less stable balance involving more modest
adjustments. The incremental, conditional process this would entail involves developing
domestic consensus, securing allied and friendly support, deepening U.S.-China dia-
logue, and achieving interlinked changes in several existing regional security policies.
THE EMERGING WESTERN PACIFIC ORDER
• This trend of power transition and heightened instability is highly likely
to deepen. China will almost certainly manage to significantly increase its eco-
nomic and military capabilities vis-à-vis the United States and its allies. Moreover,
1