The joke here is on @Tricord the pseudo academic and his anti democratic heroes Zinn and Chomsky. This is a sample of what real academics get up to in this space.
Will China Impose a New World Order?
When Pax Britannica gave way to Pax Americana, the transition was peaceful. A repeat is unlikely, says the author of ‘Safe Passage.’
Tunku Varadarajan
Feb. 9, 2018 6:32 p.m. ET
When Kori Schake was a senior at Stanford in 1984, she enrolled in a seminar on Soviet politics taught by Condoleezza Rice, then 29. The two young women hit it off. “I was a dreamy, impractical kid, and didn’t have a plan for what I was going to do after I graduated,” says Ms. Schake (pronounced “shocky”). “Condi saw me at loose ends and offered me a job as her research assistant.” They worked together for a year on a book about “elite selection in the military that Condi never ended up writing. But I read everything about what makes the American military tick. Everything.”
Thirty-four years later, Ms. Schake has written a book—her fourth—whose jacket carries a glowing blurb from her illustrious former professor. The book, “Safe Passage,” traces the international order’s transition from British to American hegemony. With all of the talk of China’s rise and what it will mean for the U.S., Ms. Schake says, she “got curious about the history of transitions between a rising power and an established global hegemon. The only peaceful transition in all of history, I found, is the one between Britain and the United States.” (Ms. Schake has made that transition in reverse. She moved earlier this month from Stanford to London, where she is an executive at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a defense think tank.)
The U.S. did not fully supplant Britain until 1945. But the American challenge began in 1823 with the Monroe Doctrine, under which the U.S. declared the Western Hemisphere to be its own exclusive zone of influence. “It was the first opportunity the United States had to assert a different calculus for the rules of international order,” Ms. Schake says. “A hegemon isn’t just a country that’s powerful or wealthy, but one that aspires to set the rules and is willing to enforce them.”
Is China the next hegemon? President Xi Jinping appears to challenge the U.S. frequently and deliberately. Ms. Schake agrees that Mr. Xi is “clearly telegraphing that China wants different rules.” She points to the “One Belt, One Road” initiative—a plan to establish a China-centered global trading network that would extend to Western Europe, Northern Africa and Australia, under which Beijing would make loans to countries that need to expand their infrastructure. She also cites Beijing’s aggressive maritime claims, most prominently in the South China Sea, to which “Chinese scholars make comparisons with the Monroe Doctrine. It’s a legitimation device, by which they say, ‘You had your sphere of influence when you were a rising power. Now we have our sphere.’ ”
Illustration: Terry Shoffner
Not that Ms. Schake thinks the U.S. should accede. “There’s no reason for us to accept that Chinese assertion,” she says, because China’s neighbors—over whom Beijing seeks to impose its will—are “friends and partners and allies of the United States. We aren’t a modern parallel of European states seeking to colonize Latin America.”
Most states in the Asia-Pacific region seem content with the existing order, and “by being so brazen and uncooperative during its rise, China has actually activated the antibodies that will help prevent its success.” The exception is the Philippines, which has cozied up to Mr. Xi, “but that has less to do with China and more to do with the leadership in Manila”—a reference to the maverick Filipino president, Rodrigo Duterte.
In her book, however, she warns that “America is making the same strategic choice with China that Great Britain did with a rising America,” in assuming that the rising power “can be induced to comply with extant rules.” Does that mean that the Pax Americana must someday give way to a Pax Sinica? After all, that British tactic of accommodation helped pave the way for the U.S. to take over world leadership.
Ms. Schake demurs. “What the U.S. is saying to China,” she says, “is that if you behave as a liberal political and economic power in the international order, we’ll help you succeed in the existing global order.” The U.S. expects China to understand that “our allies will be protected, even if China is the challenger. If the autonomy or security of South Korea and Japan, Australia or Taiwan, is challenged, we’ll defend them.”
The U.S. has also made clear that disputes over territories and waters need to be resolved by peaceful negotiation. China, says Ms. Schake, will not be allowed to “use force to impose its will on weaker states in the region.”
Ms. Schake worries about the Trump administration’s protectionist inclinations: “I do think that President Trump is calling into question some of the fundamental rules of the liberal international order that the hard men who won World War II created in its aftermath.” Free trade, she says, “undergirds political relationships. Prosperity gives states reasons to cooperate, and to broaden participation in a liberal order.”
She fears that Mr. Trump “does not seem persuaded by those fundamental American arguments,” and she laments his withdrawing the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Ms. Schake invokes the late Nobel economics laureate who supervised her doctoral dissertation: “ Tom Schelling would be shaking his head if he were here, saying that Trump gave that enormous strategic advantage to China without even getting anything in return.”
The good news is that the other 11 members of the trade deal “have determined to continue to try to bring the TPP into effect without the United States. So it’s an example of the liberal international order being sustained without American leadership.”
And Ms. Schake’s overall view of the administration’s foreign policy is favorable. Trade, she says, is “the only area in which Trump has, so far, been demonstrably damaging to the liberal international order.” In other areas, she thinks the administration “has actually made policy decisions consistent with the existing order,” even if Mr. Trump is an “outlier” regarding the philosophy on which it rests.
She points to Mr. Trump’s “continuing to assist Afghanistan until it has the ability to secure its own territory from threats to itself and to us.” She also cites U.S. assistance to the government of Iraq, “to secure it against malign external and internal influence,” as well as support for the security of “our stalwart Asian allies.” Besides, she says, Mr. Trump’s predecessor was hardly a champion of the Pax Americana: “I think you could make a strong case that President Obama’s foreign policy was one of retrenchment, shifting burdens onto allies and off America’s shoulders.”
As for China, Ms. Schake says she is “less convinced than many other people” that its rise will continue. But if Beijing does seriously challenge the U.S., she is “deeply skeptical that a hegemonic transition would happen peacefully.” A fundamental difference between the two countries is that even when the U.S. acts in ways that many would regard as globally unpopular, it does so while sincerely proclaiming universal values.
What values might a hegemonic China impart on the world? “Their leadership is groping to come up with something,” Ms. Schake says. “Xi has talked about the Chinese Dream, but it’s of a prosperous China where people don’t agitate for political control, where they trust the leadership to do the right thing for them.”
The unwillingness of major Western leaders to endorse One Belt, One Road illustrates for Ms. Schake “how much concern the established powers—the U.S., France, Britain—have about China attempting to change the rules.” She cites with evident pleasure Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’s remark last year: that in a globalized world “there are many belts and many roads.” Mr. Mattis and Ms. Schake are close friends and longtime colleagues, and have edited a book together.
The Chinese initiative has also served, unintentionally, to highlight the attractions of the American-led international order: “The rules we established are advantageous not only to us, but also foster prosperity and peace for other countries.” The rest of the world sees its interests advanced by sustaining the current system, and the U.S. rarely has to enforce the rules. As Ms. Schake puts it, “we get the advantage of playing team sports because of the nature of the rules we’ve established.” That isn’t true for China. It claims One Belt, One Road is mutually advantageous, “but other countries’ concerns about sovereignty and what happens if loan terms aren’t met may yet stall China’s ambitions.”
In other words, unless China can come up with a more attractive narrative about itself and its ambitions, most countries will continue to favor the American-led order. “We have been a clumsy hegemon, certainly,” Ms. Schake says, “but we have also been a largely beneficent one.”
Mr. Varadarajan is a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.
Will China Impose a New World Order?
When Pax Britannica gave way to Pax Americana, the transition was peaceful. A repeat is unlikely, says the author of ‘Safe Passage.’
Tunku Varadarajan
Feb. 9, 2018 6:32 p.m. ET
When Kori Schake was a senior at Stanford in 1984, she enrolled in a seminar on Soviet politics taught by Condoleezza Rice, then 29. The two young women hit it off. “I was a dreamy, impractical kid, and didn’t have a plan for what I was going to do after I graduated,” says Ms. Schake (pronounced “shocky”). “Condi saw me at loose ends and offered me a job as her research assistant.” They worked together for a year on a book about “elite selection in the military that Condi never ended up writing. But I read everything about what makes the American military tick. Everything.”
Thirty-four years later, Ms. Schake has written a book—her fourth—whose jacket carries a glowing blurb from her illustrious former professor. The book, “Safe Passage,” traces the international order’s transition from British to American hegemony. With all of the talk of China’s rise and what it will mean for the U.S., Ms. Schake says, she “got curious about the history of transitions between a rising power and an established global hegemon. The only peaceful transition in all of history, I found, is the one between Britain and the United States.” (Ms. Schake has made that transition in reverse. She moved earlier this month from Stanford to London, where she is an executive at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a defense think tank.)
The U.S. did not fully supplant Britain until 1945. But the American challenge began in 1823 with the Monroe Doctrine, under which the U.S. declared the Western Hemisphere to be its own exclusive zone of influence. “It was the first opportunity the United States had to assert a different calculus for the rules of international order,” Ms. Schake says. “A hegemon isn’t just a country that’s powerful or wealthy, but one that aspires to set the rules and is willing to enforce them.”
Is China the next hegemon? President Xi Jinping appears to challenge the U.S. frequently and deliberately. Ms. Schake agrees that Mr. Xi is “clearly telegraphing that China wants different rules.” She points to the “One Belt, One Road” initiative—a plan to establish a China-centered global trading network that would extend to Western Europe, Northern Africa and Australia, under which Beijing would make loans to countries that need to expand their infrastructure. She also cites Beijing’s aggressive maritime claims, most prominently in the South China Sea, to which “Chinese scholars make comparisons with the Monroe Doctrine. It’s a legitimation device, by which they say, ‘You had your sphere of influence when you were a rising power. Now we have our sphere.’ ”
Illustration: Terry Shoffner
Not that Ms. Schake thinks the U.S. should accede. “There’s no reason for us to accept that Chinese assertion,” she says, because China’s neighbors—over whom Beijing seeks to impose its will—are “friends and partners and allies of the United States. We aren’t a modern parallel of European states seeking to colonize Latin America.”
Most states in the Asia-Pacific region seem content with the existing order, and “by being so brazen and uncooperative during its rise, China has actually activated the antibodies that will help prevent its success.” The exception is the Philippines, which has cozied up to Mr. Xi, “but that has less to do with China and more to do with the leadership in Manila”—a reference to the maverick Filipino president, Rodrigo Duterte.
In her book, however, she warns that “America is making the same strategic choice with China that Great Britain did with a rising America,” in assuming that the rising power “can be induced to comply with extant rules.” Does that mean that the Pax Americana must someday give way to a Pax Sinica? After all, that British tactic of accommodation helped pave the way for the U.S. to take over world leadership.
Ms. Schake demurs. “What the U.S. is saying to China,” she says, “is that if you behave as a liberal political and economic power in the international order, we’ll help you succeed in the existing global order.” The U.S. expects China to understand that “our allies will be protected, even if China is the challenger. If the autonomy or security of South Korea and Japan, Australia or Taiwan, is challenged, we’ll defend them.”
The U.S. has also made clear that disputes over territories and waters need to be resolved by peaceful negotiation. China, says Ms. Schake, will not be allowed to “use force to impose its will on weaker states in the region.”
Ms. Schake worries about the Trump administration’s protectionist inclinations: “I do think that President Trump is calling into question some of the fundamental rules of the liberal international order that the hard men who won World War II created in its aftermath.” Free trade, she says, “undergirds political relationships. Prosperity gives states reasons to cooperate, and to broaden participation in a liberal order.”
She fears that Mr. Trump “does not seem persuaded by those fundamental American arguments,” and she laments his withdrawing the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Ms. Schake invokes the late Nobel economics laureate who supervised her doctoral dissertation: “ Tom Schelling would be shaking his head if he were here, saying that Trump gave that enormous strategic advantage to China without even getting anything in return.”
The good news is that the other 11 members of the trade deal “have determined to continue to try to bring the TPP into effect without the United States. So it’s an example of the liberal international order being sustained without American leadership.”
And Ms. Schake’s overall view of the administration’s foreign policy is favorable. Trade, she says, is “the only area in which Trump has, so far, been demonstrably damaging to the liberal international order.” In other areas, she thinks the administration “has actually made policy decisions consistent with the existing order,” even if Mr. Trump is an “outlier” regarding the philosophy on which it rests.
She points to Mr. Trump’s “continuing to assist Afghanistan until it has the ability to secure its own territory from threats to itself and to us.” She also cites U.S. assistance to the government of Iraq, “to secure it against malign external and internal influence,” as well as support for the security of “our stalwart Asian allies.” Besides, she says, Mr. Trump’s predecessor was hardly a champion of the Pax Americana: “I think you could make a strong case that President Obama’s foreign policy was one of retrenchment, shifting burdens onto allies and off America’s shoulders.”
As for China, Ms. Schake says she is “less convinced than many other people” that its rise will continue. But if Beijing does seriously challenge the U.S., she is “deeply skeptical that a hegemonic transition would happen peacefully.” A fundamental difference between the two countries is that even when the U.S. acts in ways that many would regard as globally unpopular, it does so while sincerely proclaiming universal values.
What values might a hegemonic China impart on the world? “Their leadership is groping to come up with something,” Ms. Schake says. “Xi has talked about the Chinese Dream, but it’s of a prosperous China where people don’t agitate for political control, where they trust the leadership to do the right thing for them.”
The unwillingness of major Western leaders to endorse One Belt, One Road illustrates for Ms. Schake “how much concern the established powers—the U.S., France, Britain—have about China attempting to change the rules.” She cites with evident pleasure Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’s remark last year: that in a globalized world “there are many belts and many roads.” Mr. Mattis and Ms. Schake are close friends and longtime colleagues, and have edited a book together.
The Chinese initiative has also served, unintentionally, to highlight the attractions of the American-led international order: “The rules we established are advantageous not only to us, but also foster prosperity and peace for other countries.” The rest of the world sees its interests advanced by sustaining the current system, and the U.S. rarely has to enforce the rules. As Ms. Schake puts it, “we get the advantage of playing team sports because of the nature of the rules we’ve established.” That isn’t true for China. It claims One Belt, One Road is mutually advantageous, “but other countries’ concerns about sovereignty and what happens if loan terms aren’t met may yet stall China’s ambitions.”
In other words, unless China can come up with a more attractive narrative about itself and its ambitions, most countries will continue to favor the American-led order. “We have been a clumsy hegemon, certainly,” Ms. Schake says, “but we have also been a largely beneficent one.”
Mr. Varadarajan is a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.
