Weakness and strength in Beijing, NATO expansion and Russian red lines, the value of Israeli-Saudi normalization, and more.

Falling China

The paradox at the heart of U.S.-China relations

There's a paradox at the heart of U.S.-China relations—one the Washington foreign policy consensus doesn't seem to rightly comprehend.

On the one hand, Beijing stands with Moscow as one of just two plausible rivals to U.S. power on a global scale. China's nuclear arsenal is smaller than Russia's, but it’s backed by a markedly larger defense budget and GDP. A U.S.-China war would be catastrophic for the world even without going nuclear.

But on the other hand, Beijing looks less and less the economic and military juggernaut it's often made out to be. Open conflict with China is horrifying to contemplate; peaceful rivalry is not.

Chinese power

"By virtue of its large population and high level of economic growth, China is soon to replace the Soviet Union," as a rising pole, the first since the fall of the USSR. [DEFP / Michael Desch]
"If we must dabble in the absurd horror of ranking great-power conflicts, war with China is the deeper nightmare." In a 2022 wargame, "the U.S. prevailed over Beijing, but only at a terrible cost." [Reason / Bonnie Kristian]
"Even if war over Taiwan led to the collapse of the PRC regime—an unlikely outcome […] —it would create serious economic and security problems" for the U.S. and our allies. [DEFP / Peter Harris]

Chinese weakess

A number of recent reports indicate ill economic health …
- "The economic model that took [China] from poverty to great-power status seems broken, and everywhere are signs of distress." [WSJ / Lingling Wei and Stella Yifan Xie]
- "As a real estate meltdown ripples through the [Chinese] economy, small businesses and workers are owed hundreds of billions of dollars, and new projects have dried up." [NYT / Alexandra Stevenson]
- "China's long-term demographic problems don't fully explain its current financial difficulties, but they do tend to make those short-term problems worse." [NYT / Peter Coy]
- "China is facing a series of dramatic economic ailments, not least of which is growing resistance from its trade partners to its mercantilist economic policies." [RCP / Erik Gartzke]
… and unrealized strategic ambitions:
- China "developed an ambitious vision of itself as a 'near-Arctic' power, perhaps even a 'polar great power,' over the past decade or so." That vision has not come to pass. [The Hill / Andrew Latham]
- Look closely at Chinese maritime capabilities, and "the picture that emerges is less an unstoppable colossus and more a powerful, but uneven force, with important capability gaps." [DEFP / Mike Sweeney]
- "China hoped Fiji would be a template for the Pacific. Its plan backfired." [WaPo / Michael E. Miller and Matthew Abbott]
- Regionally, "mountains and oceans with capable militaries across them, and nuclear neighbors Russia and India, hem" China in. [DEFP / Benjamin H. Friedman]

Policy in the paradox

Washington's default response to this paradox of Chinese strength and weakness is strategically confused and there dangerous:
- overhyping the imminence and supposed inevitability of U.S.-China conflict
- recklessly escalating the very tensions that make such a conflict more likely
The right response, even if China's growth and ambitions advance, is the reverse:
- prioritizing avoidance of U.S.-China war, which is not inevitable and risks global catastrophe
- maintaining deterrence and regional balance, fostering prudent diplomatic relations, and deescalating wherever possible

Quoted

"Whatever the U.S. intent, Beijing will regard Biden's effort as involving the creation of an East Asian NATO, [and] that in turn raises the question of whether Beijing will be deterred or provoked."

— Rajan Menon, DEFP director of grand strategy, as quoted in "Biden's three-way Asia summit makes strides, but it's battling history." [CS Monitor / Howard LaFranchi]

Mapped

Europe's major military alliances, 1990 and 2023

NATO has dramatically expanded its territory since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and it is naïve to imagine this has no relevance to Russian President Vladimir Putin's decision to launch a war of aggression against Ukraine.

Indeed, as DEFP Policy Director Benjamin H. Friedman has argued, "the weight of the evidence says the prospect of Ukraine getting Western protection was an important cause of war, if not a sufficient one."

"This is not to justify the invasion or suggest it resulted due to legitimate security concerns," Friedman adds. "It is rather to note that Ukraine joining NATO, or getting NATO's protection less formally, was a Russian 'red line,' as so many officials and scholars warned."

Sober Analysis

Is Israeli-Saudi normalization worth it?

[National Interest / Daniel R. DePetris and Rajan Menon]

[I]t's unclear how this deal would improve U.S. security. True, the Biden administration could claim success for a major diplomatic achievement. But bragging rights aside, the gains would be minimal, the costs likely substantial. […]
As for the downsides, committing American forces to defend the kingdom risks dragging the U.S. military into regional rivalries and possibly conflicts of scant importance to U.S. interests. A security guarantee could embolden the kingdom to act more aggressively toward the Houthis in Yemen and more confrontational toward Iran—perhaps even at the risk of precipitating a wider war. All of this would be counterproductive at a time when the United States is seeking a negotiated outcome in Yemen and preserving diplomatic space with Tehran on the nuclear issue.

Read the full analysis here.

The China paradox