US-China relations: could a 19th-century accord between Britain and France serve as a model to avoid conflict?
- Any US policy to either seek regime change or modify Chinese behaviour risks escalating the rivalry
- Rather, a strategy of collaborative confrontation could serve as the foundation for stable US-China relations, as it did for Britain and France in the 19th century
The continued deterioration in Sino-US relations has sparked an intensifying debate about what objectives the United States should pursue towards China. On one side are those who argue that the only way to prevent an endless conflict is for the US to favour regime change.
Others counter that such a strategy would greatly exacerbate tensions between the two nations while also weakening alliances critical to American national security. Instead, they argue, the US should centre its efforts over the next several decades on modifying Chinese behaviour to reduce the risk of conflict.
Both strategies, however, unnecessarily risk escalating the rivalry.
Opponents of regime change warn that the US must avoid deepening the crisis in relations or risking an overt conflict that may well result from launching a crusade against the Communist Party.
US policy would seek to prevent Beijing from “undermining fundamental US diplomatic, economic, technological and military interests”, while targeting a wide range of Chinese activities, from abusing the international trading system to technology theft and intimidation of US allies, etc.
The competition would not be entirely zero-sum and would reflect challenges that would be both dynamic and disruptive, and best able to defend American interests across the globe.
As I show in my book, Undermining the Kremlin, this exact debate occurred early in the Cold War when many American policymakers doubted that the US could survive as a democracy while engaging in a long battle with an authoritarian state.
Fearing the loss of the “American way of life”, US planners called for the extensive use of covert action and psychological warfare to exploit the deep divisions within the Soviet communist leadership, military and party officials, and the security services to create gaping weaknesses that could result in the collapse of the regime.
However, after a few years, Charles Bohlen, then counsellor to the secretary of state, convinced the US government that only a war could bring about the collapse of the Soviet regime. Instead, the US needed to remain confident that the intrinsic strengths of its system would survive a struggle that would be long and hard. This lesson still holds true for the US today.
A historic example offers an alternative approach with hope for stability in the 21st century: the collaborative and confrontational relationship between Britain and France in the 19th century.
Though bitter enemies for centuries, following the Napoleonic Wars, both nations decided to seek an accommodation that would prevent another war.
Britain and France frequently cooperated to resolve diplomatic crises around the world and fought together to prevent Russian expansion into the Eastern Mediterranean, while simultaneously engaging in an often bitter commercial rivalry and arms race that triggered war scares in Britain several times throughout the 19th century.
It took the growing might of Germany in the early 20th century to finally end the confrontational nature of their relationship. Nevertheless, collaborative confrontation led to a century of peace between the two powers after hundreds of years of conflict.
US, China must learn to cooperate or war may ruin us all
However, that the British and French could achieve this following centuries of warfare offers hope that the US and China might as well. The alternative – war between these two nations – would not be a zero-sum outcome but, rather, a disaster.
Gregory Mitrovich was co-principal investigator for the project “Culture in Power Transitions: Sino-American Confrontation in the 21st Century”, funded by the United States Department of Defence, Minerva Research Initiative