On The United States and China

7
On the United States and China
the rise of the people’s republic of china (PRC) has the potential to
transform the balance of power in Asia. If the Chinese military and econo-
my continue to grow at their current pace over the next couple of decades,
the United States will confront a genuine peer competitor for the first time
since the Cold War. To be sure, there is no guarantee that the Asia-Pacific
will become a bipolar region.1 There are reasonable arguments for and
against the claim that China will complete its rise and join the United
States in the great power ranks.2 But assuming that the PRC does reach
that lofty position, interested observers want to know what U.S.–China re-
lations will look like. Will the two powers engage in an intense security
competition with the potential for war, or will they remain at peace?3
For international relations theorists, the answer to this question hinges
largely on how they think about the intentions issue. According to Susan
Shirk, “whether China is a threat to other countries cannot be answered
just by projecting China’s abilities . . . into the future as many forecasters
do. . . . Intentions—how China chooses to use its power—make the differ-
ence between peace and war.”4 Richard Betts and Thomas Christensen take
a similar line in their recommendations for how to evaluate the future of
U.S.–China relations. Analysts must not only determine whether China
will become a military and economic heavyweight, but they must also esti-
mate whether Beijing is likely to “become aggressive” or, conversely, to be
235
236 ON THE UNITED STATES AND CHINA
“pacified by globalization . . . [and] liberalization.”5 On this matter, theorists

split into two distinct camps.6
Structural realists assume that interstate trust is unachievable, and they
are therefore deeply pessimistic about the future course of U.S.–China re-
lations.7 Writing in the summer of 2000, Kenneth Waltz argued that what-
ever the United States did or said, other states, including China, would
“worry about its future behavior.” This would, in turn, lead those powers to
“strengthen their positions.” In fact, Waltz suggested that Beijing was al-
ready competing for security, albeit in a cautious fashion. It was adhering
to “the balancing imperative” and making “steady but modest efforts to
improve . . . [its] forces.” Because the United States was equally uncertain
about China’s intentions, he added, Washington was reciprocating Bei-
jing’s efforts: “Americans see a future threat to their and others’ interests
. . . [and] speak of preserving the balance of power in East Asia through
their military presence.” Therefore, if China continued its rise, the United
States and the PRC would be no exception to the iron law of great power
politics: “Countries have always competed for wealth and security, and the
competition has often led to conflict.”8 Ten years later, John Mearsheimer
made a closely related argument. To his mind, “there is no good way to
define what China’s intentions will be down the road or to predict its future
behavior.” Nor did he think there was any “way China’s leaders can know
who will be in charge of American foreign policy in the years ahead, much
less what their intentions toward China will be.” This being the case, both
sides would conclude that they confronted a rival “with significant offen-
sive capability and unknowable intentions,” and would reason that they
must “behave in aggressive ways” to ensure their security. In short, “Chi-
na’s rise . . . is likely to lead to an intense security competition between
China and the United States, with considerable potential for war.”9
Optimists are more sanguine about the prospects that the United States
and China will remain at peace, mainly because they think that the two
powers can find a way to trust each other. Although Christensen admits
that managing Beijing’s rise is a “challenge” for Washington, he contends
that the two sides have benign intentions: “the United States wishes China
well,” and China has good “reasons to avoid military . . . conflict with the
United States.” Consequently, Washington can enhance the likelihood of
ON THE UNITED STATES AND CHINA 237
regional and global stability by simultaneously deterring Beijing with “a

strong presence” and indicating that it means China no harm through a
“reassuring diplomatic mission.” Given that the two states “have ridden
these often choppy waters successfully since the end of the Cold War,”
Christensen sees “no reason to think that they cannot do so in the future.”
Hence, China’s rise “can be managed in a way that preserves . . . peace and
stability.”10 For Charles Glaser, it is material conditions that provide the
United States and China with incentives to have benign intentions and al-
low them to act in ways that communicate this fact to each other. The exis-
tence of nuclear weapons and the geography of Asia, he argues, give China
little reason to “push the United States out of Northeast Asia.” Similarly,
the United States will not face pressures “to launch a preventive war.” More
generally, both sides will manage “to avoid military competition that could
signal malign motives and strain their political relationship.” Therefore,
Glaser does “not find a general tendency for intense security competition.”11
Finally, John Ikenberry suggests that the United States and China will like-
ly interact within a “liberal” international order that “creates incentives for
China—as well as the United States—to exercise restraint.” It also gives
Beijing good reasons “to signal . . . peaceful intentions.” Moreover, it will
force Washington “to pursue a ‘not too hot and not too cold’ strategy” that
will both deter and reassure the PRC. Taken together, these facts make a
peaceful outcome “more likely.”12
Intentions pessimism resolves this debate in favor of realism. My argu-
ment, in brief, is that there is hardly any chance that the United States and
China will trust each other in a future bipolar Asia. The consequences are
likely to be profound. Unable to conclude, with confidence, that the other
side is benign and painfully aware of its tremendous capabilities, Washing-
ton and Beijing will go to great lengths to strengthen their military and
diplomatic positions in the Asia-Pacific, yielding dangerous action-reaction
spirals with the potential for arms racing, competitive alliance building,
crises, and possibly even wars.
The rest of this chapter proceeds as follows. The first section is about
intentions and great power politics. It begins with a review of my theory,
intentions pessimism, which is laid out in detail in chapter 1. I then sum-
marize the case studies described in chapters 3–6. It is clear from the
accounts in those chapters that great powers have invariably been acutely
uncertain about each other’s intentions. In other words, intentions pessi-
mism is borne out in the historical record. I also recapitulate the evidence
that mutual mistrust caused the protagonists in each case to compete with
each other for security. The following section focuses on U.S.–China rela-
tions from 2000 to 2020 and shows that the United States has already be-
gun to compete with China because Washington is acutely uncertain about
Beijing’s intentions. The final section addresses the all-important issue of
the future. Most important, I demonstrate that U.S. decision makers will in
all likelihood be far from confident that their Chinese counterparts have
benign intentions.13 Assuming, as I do, that China will be especially power-
ful at that time, this will make for a considerably more intense security
competition and a higher chance of war than is the case today.14
Intentions and Great Power Politics

In a nutshell, intentions pessimism maintains that information prob-
lems all but preclude great powers from being confident that their peers
have benign intentions. The theory begins with a straightforward observa-
tion: states encounter formidable obstacles obtaining dispositive informa-
tion about each other’s intended behavior. To start with, it is particularly
difficult to access firsthand information about current intentions. The rea-
son is that this kind of information—a state’s actual thinking about how it
intends to behave—is in the minds of a handful of decision makers who
want to keep their ideas to themselves. Of course, it is easier to acquire in-
formation about phenomena that are related to a state’s current intentions,
including its declarations, interests, and actions. Yet secondhand informa-
tion of this kind is unreliable, which is to say that it is consistent with both
benign and malign intent. Great powers can lie or tell the truth when they
declare how they intend to behave; they can intend to pursue their interests
by malign or benign means; and their actions can be interpreted as prepa-
rations for aggressive or nonaggressive behavior. These problems loom
larger when states ponder the future. There is no way for great powers to
access firsthand information about each other’s future intentions, since
these ideas do not yet exist. Moreover, although knowledge about current
intentions can serve as secondhand information about future intentions,

the link between what a state intends to do today and what it will intend to
do tomorrow is especially unreliable because intentions can change, for
many reasons and in unpredictable ways.
Given that certainty and uncertainty are largely a function of information—
broadly speaking, better information makes for greater certainty and worse
information makes for greater uncertainty—these access and reliability prob-
lems have significant implications for great powers’ conclusions about how
their peers intend to behave. First, there is hardly any chance that they can be
confident that their rivals have benign current intentions. Second, the odds
that states can be confident that other states will mean them no harm in the
future are even lower. Third, great powers are typically condemned to be far
from confident—that is, more or less acutely uncertain—that their peers have
or will have benign intentions.
There is abundant support for these arguments in the historical record,
even where one might least expect to find it. Intentions optimists have
identified five—and only five—cases in which they believe that great pow-
ers trusted each other or came close to doing so: Germany and Russia in
the Bismarck era (1871–90); Britain and the United States during the great
rapprochement (1895–1906); France and Germany, and Japan and the
United States in the early interwar period (1919–30); and the Soviet Union
and the United States at the end of the Cold War (1985–90). Yet there is
scant evidence that the protagonists in these cases trusted each other. At no
point did the leaders of any of these great powers conclude, with confi-
dence, that their counterparts meant them no harm. In fact, they routinely
claimed to be deeply mistrustful of each other. In this sense, these five
cases are no different from the rest of the modern diplomatic record, which
is shot through with examples of great powers being acutely uncertain
about the intentions of their peers.
Uncertainty, in turn, made for great power security competition in every
case. To be sure, Germany and Russia did not compete with each other as
vigorously in the Bismarck era as they did in the years immediately preced-
ing World War I, though their rivalry was quite intense. It is also undeni-
able that the Franco-German and U.S.–Japanese security competitions
were not as fierce in the 1920s as they were in the late 1930s. But this does
not mean that these relationships were peaceful in any meaningful sense
of the word. The protagonists competed hard for arms and allies, and, on
occasion, became involved in war-threatening crises. The same is true of
Anglo-American relations from 1895 to 1903 and of U.S.–Soviet relations
from 1985 to 1988. Of course, these two contests did end abruptly, in 1904–
6 when Britain withdrew from the Western Hemisphere, and in 1989–90
when the Soviet Union made major cuts to its military forces and allowed
its Eastern European empire to collapse. It is important to note, however,
that the British and Soviet decisions were driven largely by material rather
than informational factors. Ultimately, Britain and the Soviet Union capitu-
lated not because they trusted the United States, but because they conclud-
ed that they no longer had the wherewithal to compete with it.
U.S.–China Relations, 2000–2020

Relations between Washington and Beijing have not been immune to
this grim logic over the past two decades. In particular, acute uncertainty
about the PRC’s intentions has caused the United States to compete with
an increasingly powerful China for security.
American Perceptions of Chinese Intentions
As intentions pessimism predicts, Washington has not trusted Beijing

ever since it began giving the issue of Chinese intentions serious attention
in the early 2000s.15 The George W. Bush administration’s worries were
described by deputy secretary of state Robert Zoellick in an address that
famously urged Beijing “to become a responsible stakeholder” in world
politics. “China’s actions—combined with a lack of transparency—can cre-
ate risks,” he declared. In addition, “uncertainties about how China will use
its power will lead the United States . . . to hedge relations with China.” Of
course, U.S. officials hoped that Beijing would turn out to be benign, “but
none will bet their future on it.” Consequently, if the PRC wanted to im-
prove U.S.–China relations, it must “openly explain its defense spending,
intentions, doctrine, and military exercises.” The mere “idea of a ‘peaceful
rise,’ ” Zoellick noted, was not enough to allay American mistrust. Rather,
Washington would “look to the evidence of actions.”16 The Department of
Defense took an identical position in the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Re-

view (QDR): “The outside world has little knowledge of Chinese motiva-
tions and decision-making. . . . The United States encourages China to take
actions to make its intentions clear and clarify its military plans.”17
The Barack Obama administration was equally uncertain about China’s
intentions. In the first major speech on U.S.–China relations by an Obama
official, deputy secretary of state James Steinberg urged Beijing to clarify its
intentions and reassure the United States that it was benign: “China must
reassure the rest of the world that its development and growing global role
will not come at the expense of [the] security and well-being of others.”
Beijing had a “responsibility to reassure others that . . . [its military] build-
up does not present a threat.” Indeed, the United States encouraged Chi-
na’s government “to increase its military transparency in order to reassure
all the countries in the rest of Asia and globally about its intentions, avert-
ing instability and tension in its own neighborhood.” Moreover, like their
predecessors, Obama officials made it clear that comforting Chinese rheto-
ric was not enough. “We will be open to China’s growing role,” Steinberg
declared, “but we will also be looking for signs and signals of reassurance
from China. If China is going to take its rightful place, it must make those
signals clear.”18 Meanwhile, the Pentagon was as uncertain as it had been
during Bush’s presidency, claiming that a “lack of transparency and the
nature of China’s . . . decision-making processes raise legitimate questions
about its future conduct and intentions within Asia and beyond.” If matters
were to improve, the two states would have to initiate a “process of enhanc-
ing confidence and reducing mistrust.”19
There was little meaningful change in American thinking under Presi-
dent Donald Trump. To be sure, the 2017 National Security Strategy Report
(NSS) cast China as a “revisionist” power that “seeks to displace the United
States in the Indo-Pacific region . . . and reorder the region in its favor,”
thereby suggesting that, in contrast to their predecessors, Trump officials
considered China to be malign. On inspection, however, this was more a
change of rhetoric than one of substance. Even as they accused China of
being “revisionist,” the document’s authors suggested that its “intentions
. . . are not necessarily fixed.”20 Similar uncertainty permeated the Depart-
ment of Defense’s 2019 Indo-Pacific Strategy Report. On the one hand, the
PRC was described, much as it was in the NSS, as a “revisionist power”

determined to achieve “regional hegemony” by any means necessary. On
the other hand, military officials appeared to believe that it was not beyond
decision makers in Washington and Beijing “to set the military relation-
ship between the United States and China on a long-term path of transpar-
ency and non-aggression.”21
American Policy toward China
Given this mistrust of Beijing, the United States has competed with Chi-
na for security in the Asia-Pacific. To be clear, Washington has made no-
where near the effort that it did against the Soviet Union after World War
II. After all, China is not yet at the point militarily where it would make
sense for it to threaten or attack U.S. interests in the Western Pacific re-
gion, although it could stumble into a crisis or war. Nevertheless, the Unit-
ed States has steadily built up its arms and allies with a view to deterring
Chinese threats or uses of force against its strategic interests and defeating
them should deterrence fail. Occasionally, this security competition has
devolved into minor disputes.
Even before winning the presidency, then-candidate Bush announced
that he was determined to compete with China. Whereas President Bill
Clinton referred to China as a potential “strategic partner,” Bush identified
it as a “strategic competitor.”22 Condoleezza Rice, soon to be the national
security adviser, laid out the implications during the 2000 presidential
campaign. “China is a rising power . . . [and] a potential threat to stability in
the Asia-Pacific,” she noted. Accordingly, Rice argued that Washington
must emphasize both arms and allies. The United States must be so strong
as “to make it inconceivable for . . . China to use force because American
military power is a compelling factor in . . . [its] equation.” At the same
time, it was crucial that Washington not take its “friends . . . for granted.”
Rather, “the United States must deepen its cooperation with Japan and
South Korea and maintain its commitment to a robust military presence in
the region.” Only such a policy stood a chance of preventing the Chinese
from “controlling the balance of power.”23
Actions mirrored rhetoric. The Bush government moved to enhance
American military capabilities almost immediately after assuming office.
The Defense Strategy Review, drafted before the “9/11” terrorist attacks of
11 September 2001, argued that the United States must maintain superior-
ity in a number of “advantage areas” and improve the “suitability of [U.S.]
capabilities to the Asian theater broadly understood.”24 In the same way, the
2001 QDR sought to ensure U.S. “influence through the conduct of its re-
search, development, test, and demonstration programs” and the mainte-
nance or enhancement of “advantages in key areas of military capability.”25
Even as it decided to upgrade its capabilities, the United States began to
shift military forces toward the Asia-Pacific. Beginning in 2004, Washing-
ton expanded its bases on U.S. territories adjacent to Asia in Guam, Alaska,
and Hawaii, and reallocated naval assets to the region. The principal goal,
according to the Global Posture Review of that year, was to establish U.S.
military superiority in the region and thus dissuade the PRC from develop-
ing hegemonic ambitions.26
Washington also worked hard to build an anti-Chinese balancing coali-
tion. Initially, the United States planned to bear most of the costs. As the
QDR put it, the U.S. goal was “assuring allies and friends of the United
States’ steadiness of purpose and its capacity to fulfill its security commit-
ments.”27 Over time, however, the Bush administration sought to share the
burden with regional states. The main goal was to encourage Japan to be a
more equal alliance partner. In late 2005, Washington and Tokyo signed
the Alliance Transformation and Realignment Agreement and decided to
upgrade their cooperation on missile defense. The next year, they an-
nounced the U.S.–Japan Roadmap for Realignment Implementation,
thereby improving the interoperability of U.S. and Japanese military forces.
More ambitious multilateral projects followed. In 2007, Washington sup-
ported a Tokyo initiative to form a quadrilateral security dialogue among
Australia, Japan, India, and the United States, and took steps to upgrade
the Trilateral Security Dialogue among Australia, Japan, and the United
States. Then, in 2008, the Bush administration established an annual secu-
rity dialogue with Japan and South Korea.28
Occasionally, the emerging U.S.–China security competition was punc-
tuated by minor disputes. In April 2001, a Chinese fighter collided with a
U.S. EP-3 surveillance plane that was monitoring military developments in
China, triggering a diplomatic standoff.29 Tense exchanges also took place
in October 2006, when a Chinese Song-class submarine surfaced near the

aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk as it was undergoing exercises near Oki-
nawa, Japan, in the East China Sea.30 Meanwhile, U.S. announcements of
arms sales to Taiwan sparked considerable criticism in Beijing. The last of
these, in fall 2008, led the Chinese to cancel military-to-military dialogue
between China and the United States.31
The Obama administration took up where its predecessor left off. Secre-
tary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton set the table in a Foreign Policy article
entitled “America’s Pacific Century.” The United States, she announced,
was “vital to Asia’s future” and determined to “stay” in the region. To any-
one who questioned “whether we can make—and keep—credible econom-
ic and strategic commitments, and whether we can back those commitments
with action . . . the answer is: we can, and we will.” Arming and alliances
were to be the hallmarks of this “pivot” to Asia. Washington planned to
“pursue a more geographically distributed, operationally resilient, and po-
litically sustainable force posture,” while also “strengthening bilateral secu-
rity alliances” and ensuring that they could “deter . . . provocation.”32 The
2012 Defense Strategic Guidance Document substituted the word “rebal-
ance” for “pivot,” but proposed an essentially identical strategy, declaring
that “while the U.S. military will continue to contribute to security globally,
we will of necessity rebalance toward the Asia-Pacific region. Our relation-
ships with Asian allies and key partners are critical to the future stability
and growth of the region.”33
Although the pivot was criticized for lacking real substance, it represented
a major effort to enhance U.S. capabilities in the Asia-Pacific.34 Three initia-
tives are especially noteworthy. In 2010, the Defense Department unveiled
the AirSea Battle operational concept, which was designed to counter the
challenge posed by China’s burgeoning anti-access assets to U.S. power pro-
jection capabilities in the region.35 Two years later, Secretary of Defense Leon
Panetta announced a Pentagon plan to deploy 60 percent of the U.S. Navy to
the Pacific theater by 2020, which amounted to a 5 percent increase over the
previous administration’s naval deployment. Finally, in 2014, Secretary of De-
fense Chuck Hagel initiated the search for a strategic breakthrough, known
as the Third Offset Strategy, that would allow the United States to neutralize
the advantages accruing to adversaries that acquired anti-access capabilities.
Washington also strengthened its regional alliances and partnerships. In

2009, in a reversal of President Bush’s policy, the Obama administration
signed the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) Treaty of Am-
ity and Cooperation. The following year, it joined the East Asia Summit.36
Washington did not merely restrict itself to greater diplomatic engagement
with its allies and partners, however. The United States conducted military
exercises with Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom in
2009, and with Australia and Japan in 2012. In addition, Washington es-
tablished new facilities to host rotating U.S. forces in Australia and Singa-
pore in 2011 and regained access to naval and air facilities in the Philippines
in 2014. In April 2015, the United States and Japan further updated the
terms of their relationship, signing the Guidelines for U.S.–Japan Defense
Cooperation.37
The United States engaged in several disputes with China during Presi-
dent Obama’s term in office. In some cases, decision makers sought to
signal America’s determination to retain command of the seas. In 2009,
U.S. officials lodged an angry protest in Beijing after Chinese ships ha-
rassed the U.S. Navy ship Impeccable in the South China Sea. Then, in 2013,
the United States flew two B-52s off disputed islands in the East China Sea
to emphasize that it would not be deterred from operating in international
waters or air space near China. Two years later, the president ordered the
U.S. Navy to sail near a series of Chinese manmade islands in the South
China Sea to assert American rights under international law. For the most
part, however, disputes arose because Washington moved to back its allies
and partners in the region. Thus, the United States repeatedly warned Bei-
jing not to use force in its territorial disputes with Vietnam and the Philip-
pines in the South China Sea, and even monitored a standoff between the
Chinese Coast Guard and Filipino Marines on the disputed Second Thom-
as Shoal in 2014. Washington also supported South Korea in its various
disputes with the Chinese-backed North Korean regime in 2010, going so
far as to conduct joint military exercises with Seoul in the Yellow Sea. In
addition, the United States supported Japan in its dispute with China over
the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands in 2013. When the PRC declared an air de-
fense identification zone over the East China Sea to include the air space
over and around the islands, the United States reminded Beijing that it
recognized Japanese administrative control over the contested islands,

which meant that they fell under the auspices of the U.S.–Japan Defense
Treaty.38
The Trump administration was also bent on prosecuting a security com-
petition with China. In January 2018, Secretary of Defense James Mattis
announced that “great power competition between nations [is] becoming a
reality once again . . . [and is] the primary focus of U.S. national security.”39
Meanwhile, Vice President Mike Pence warned Beijing that the United
States would oppose any expansionist activity, declaring “that empire and
aggression have no place in the Indo-Pacific.”40 A few months later, Kiron
Skinner, the director of policy planning at the State Department, called for
the United States to revive the strategy of containment that it had used to
combat the Soviet Union during the Cold War.41 Then, in October 2019,
Secretary of State Michael Pompeo ominously referenced the U.S. desire to
ensure “that China retains only its proper place in the world.”42
To that end, Washington stressed the importance of enhancing its mili-
tary capabilities and alliances. According to the 2017 NSS, “the United
States must retain overmatch—the combination of capabilities in sufficient
scale to prevent enemy success.” To do so, it “must restore [its] . . . ability to
produce innovative capabilities, restore the readiness of [its] . . . forces for
major war, and grow the size of the force so that it is capable of operating at
sufficient scale and for ample duration to win across a range of scenarios.”43
Similarly, in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, El-
bridge Colby of the Center for a New American Security declared that “our
forces must be exceptionally lethal and capable, optimized to defeat China,”
adding that the United States must adopt a fundamentally new “approach
to warfighting.”44 The White House also reiterated the need to build a pow-
erful balancing coalition with regional states, indicating that the United
States “will redouble [its] . . . commitment to established alliances and part-
nerships, while expanding and deepening relationships with new part-
ners.”45 Nor was this emphasis on competing with China entirely rhetori-
cal. During Trump’s presidency, the United States increased its diplomatic
and military support for Taiwan, deepened political and military relations
with India and Vietnam, and revived the Bush era quadrilateral security
dialogue with Australia, Japan, and India.46
In one instance, competition flared into a dispute. In October 2018,

U.S. and Chinese naval vessels came within yards of colliding as they pa-
trolled contested waters in the South China Sea. In the wake of that inci-
dent, Chinese officials demanded that the United States stop threatening
its sovereignty, whereupon Washington canceled upcoming security talks
with Beijing.47
The Future of Great Power Politics

There is every reason to believe that the intensity of the U.S.–China se-
curity competition and the likelihood of war between the United States and
China will increase in the future. Consider that it is almost inevitable that
Washington will be uncertain about Beijing’s current and future intentions
for a long time to come. Given the extraordinary difficulties it will face ac-
cessing firsthand information and acquiring reliable secondhand informa-
tion on the matter, it can hardly reach any other conclusion. Therefore, if
China continues to grow more powerful, the United States will conclude
that it is confronted by a peer competitor that can, and may want to, do it
harm, and compete fiercely with it for security. Once that happens, war will
always loom as a possibility in the background.
China’s Inaccessible Intentions
As is the case today, it will always be extraordinarily difficult for the Unit-
ed States to access firsthand information about China’s intentions. To be-
gin with, Beijing’s ideas about how it intends to behave are in the minds of
only a handful of individuals. The most important of these is President Xi
Jinping. Andrew Nathan and Andrew Scobell explain, “In the case of the
PRC, the institution that has shaped foreign policy most decisively has no
formal existence: the post of supreme leader.” The rest are members of a
small decision-making group: “Today the policy center . . . consists of a
small, authoritarian, party-state-army elite that has the advantage of com-
pactness and insulation from other government institutions, media, and
civil society.”48 To make matters worse, Chinese leaders keep their inten-
tions secret. As two authorities on the matter note, discerning how China
intends to behave “is of necessity a highly speculative inquiry, since the
Chinese decision-making process is shrouded in secrecy.” Even experts can

do no more than take “stabs at guessing what the real discussion might be
behind the closed gates of Zhongnonghai.”49 Given that the relevant “de-
bate is largely held behind closed doors . . . the Chinese elite’s long-term
strategic intentions are secret.”50
China’s Declarations of Intent
The United States has and will continue to have little trouble acquiring
evidence of China’s declarations of intent since these are out in the open.
Yet such statements are unreliable guides to Beijing’s intentions, because
China may or may not be telling the truth.
Over the past two decades, China has routinely declared that it has be-
nign intentions. In 2002, a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) theoretician
and adviser to President Hu Jintao, Zheng Bijian, articulated the concept of
“peaceful rise” to describe Chinese foreign policy. Two years later, officials
abandoned the term on the grounds that it was too aggressive, and replaced
it with “peaceful development.”51 Zheng explained its meaning in an
interview with a U.S. foreign policy magazine: “China has blazed a new
strategic path . . . called ‘the development path to a peaceful rise.’ . . . [It is]
pursuing the goal of rising in peace.” Determined to “transcend the tradi-
tional ways for great powers to emerge . . . [it will] strive for peace, develop-
ment, and cooperation with all countries of the world.”52 Although this
formulation had some critics in China, they were officially rebutted by
State Councilor Dai Bingguo. “Peaceful development,” which he contrasted
with the Western “practice of invasion, plunder, war, and expansion,”
was “a strategic choice China has made.”53 Confirmation that this was
the official position came in China’s defense white paper of 2013: “It is
China’s . . . strategic choice to take the road of peaceful development . . .
China will never seek hegemony or behave in a hegemonic manner, nor
will it engage in military expansion.”54 More recently, President Xi has used
different language to make the same point, declaring that China has con-
sistently “advocated the building of a new type of international relations
underpinned by win-win cooperation” and promoted “a new vision featur-
ing common, comprehensive, cooperative, and sustainable security.”55 At
the same time, he has claimed that China “lacks the gene” that leads states
to seek domination.56 It is hard to dismiss these claims as empty rhetoric.

Chinese leaders have offered a series of logics to account for their benign
inclinations, noting, among other things, that China has a Confucian cul-
ture, that it has been the victim of imperialism in the past, and that it needs
a stable international environment to develop its economy.57
There is, however, no way for the United States to know whether these
declarations are an accurate reflection of China’s true designs. Indeed, sev-
eral skeptics have argued that “peaceful rise” is little more than a smoke-
screen to distract from what are, in fact, malign intentions. In particular,
they suggest that the Chinese government is following former leader Deng
Xiaoping’s well-known maxim that China should “hide our capacities and
bide our time,” a phrase that could be interpreted as an admonition not to
engage in threatening behavior, but that they read as an injunction to feign
benign intent until a more opportune moment.58 None of this is to say that
Beijing’s rhetoric of peaceful rise is a ruse. But because it is a smart strate-
gic actor, the possibility cannot be ignored.
One might argue that Beijing’s declarations will be more reliable indica-
tors of its intentions in the future if it commits to energetic diplomacy or
becomes a democracy. In this view, a diplomatically engaged or democratic
China is likely to be truthful. Neither claim is persuasive. Note that U.S.–
Chinese communication is already at an all-time high with little apparent
effect on Washington’s conclusions about Beijing’s intentions. Rosemary
Foot points out that Presidents Obama and Xi met more than twenty times
during their terms in office. At the same time, the United States and China
engaged in an unprecedented amount of military-to-military conversation.
More generally, both sides made repeated “attempts at dialogue and at rou-
tinizing the discussions of difficult issues” and showed “a willingness to
keep talking about the serious topics that often divide [them].”59 Yet the
Obama administration did not come close to trusting China. “Despite each
government’s repeated pledges to seek a stable and collaborative relation-
ship, and despite the numerous bilateral dialogues convened to clarify in-
tentions, provide reassurance, and build trust,” writes one analyst, “mutual
suspicion . . . continued to increase.”60
There is also little reason to think that observers will be able to put stock
in China’s declarations of intent if it democratizes. After all, the United
States is a democracy and has repeatedly professed its benign intentions,

but Chinese officials have been unmoved. Washington has hewed to a re-
markably consistent public position toward China for decades now. As
President Obama put it in his greeting on President Hu’s arrival at the
White House in 2011, the United States welcomed “China’s rise as a strong,
prosperous and successful member of the community of nations.”61 China
has not been reassured, however. In fact, according to Yuan Zheng, director
of the American Studies Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sci-
ences, “the two-faced and oscillating nature of U.S. China policy has in-
creased China’s anxiety about U.S. strategic intentions.”62 Similarly, Nathan
and Scobell find that “Chinese policymakers puzzle over whether the Unit-
ed States intends to use its power to help or hurt China. . . . [They] have a
hard time determining U.S. intentions.” In fact, Beijing sees an “inscruta-
ble America.”63 Michael Chase offers a neat summary of the situation, ob-
serving that while “the overall message is that the United States welcomes
the emergence of a more prosperous and powerful China. . . . Beijing ap-
pears to be hearing a different message.”64
China’s Interests and Its Intentions
Although there is no question that the United States can and will be able
to acquire a great deal of information about China’s interests, the connec-
tion between Beijing’s interests and its intentions is unreliable, since the
PRC can pursue its undoubted interest in security by aggressive or nonag-
gressive means. Some intentions optimists assert that this focus on secu-
rity is too narrow, and that Beijing also has—or may develop—nonsecurity
interests, including a desire to promote harmony, avoid conflict, and pur-
sue prosperity. Moreover, they say that the link between these nonsecurity
interests and benign intentions is unambiguous. There are good reasons to
doubt these claims, however. For starters, security considerations loom
larger than nonsecurity considerations in the formulation of China’s for-
eign policy. Hence, nonsecurity interests are not major drivers of its inten-
tions and are poor indicators of them. It is also not at all clear that the
various nonsecurity interests attributed to Beijing are bound to cause it to
have benign intentions. All of them can be pursued by aggressive or nonag-
gressive means.
chinese security
Beijing is interested in security not only for its own sake but also because
its achievement will allow China to pursue other interests, such as greater
prestige or prosperity. Many observers argue that Chinese leaders will look
to achieve this objective by driving the United States out of the Asia-Pacif-
ic.65 In their view, Beijing is committed to President Xi’s dictum: “In the
final analysis, it is for the people of Asia to run the affairs of Asia, solve the
problems of Asia and uphold the security of Asia.”66 The logic is simple: in
the event of an American withdrawal, China would be far more powerful
than any other state in the region and therefore as secure as any state
can be.
Although this seems plausible, it is hard to know if Chinese leaders will
seek to exclude the United States from the Asia-Pacific by aggressive or
nonaggressive means. According to some analysts, China’s past behavior
indicates that it is unlikely to resort to aggression. Taylor Fravel observes
that Beijing has used force in only six of the twenty-three territorial dis-
putes that it has been involved in since 1949.67 In the other seventeen cas-
es, China has compromised, sometimes making substantial concessions in
the process.68 Perhaps even more important, it has not become more ag-
gressive as its power has grown.69 Others claim that China will prefer dip-
lomatic to military instruments to drive the United States out of the region.
Thus, Stephen Walt suggests that the PRC will likely avoid a “clash of
arms,” and instead “persuade its Asian neighbors to distance themselves
from Washington.”70 China could, for example, exploit the fact that other
states depend on it economically to wean them from the U.S. alliance sys-
tem and drag them into its own orbit. In doing so, it would validate “Amer-
ica’s fear, sometimes only indirectly expressed . . . of being pushed out of
Asia by an exclusionary bloc.”71
There are indications that China is already pursuing such a policy. Over
the past few years, Beijing has sponsored various Chinese-led economic
institutions, including the New Development Bank (2014), the Asian Infra-
structure Investment Bank (2015), and the proposed Comprehensive Eco-
nomic Partnership. Notably, all three initiatives exclude the United States,
as do numerous economic deals between China and its neighbors, includ-
ing its free trade agreements with Australia, Singapore, South Korea, and
ASEAN. Furthermore, Beijing has launched the Belt and Road Initiative
(BRI), a massive infrastructure project that involves building a system of
railroads, pipelines, roads, and ports linking China more closely with the
rest of Asia.72 It is not unreasonable to think that all of this is meant to give
Beijing the economic leverage it needs to exclude the United States from
the region. As one analyst explains, “More robust engagement of the entire
Eurasian continent through BRI is intended to enable China to better use
its growing economic clout to achieve its ultimate political aims. . . . [It is]
a grand strategy that serves China’s vision for itself as the uncontested
leading power in the region.”73 Indeed, Beijing has already used its eco-
nomic might to punish South Korea for cooperating with the American-
built Terminal High Altitude Area Defense program, to loosen the U.S.–
Philippines alliance, and to demand allegiance from regional states on a
number of issues, including the nonrecognition of Taiwan.74
In contrast, China may intend to push the United States out of the Asia-
Pacific by aggressive means. There is a well-known historical precedent: in
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Washington repeatedly considered
or threatened military action to drive the European great powers out of the
Western Hemisphere and then to keep them out in order to preserve its
security. The United States twice threatened war against the French, in
1802 to dissuade them from taking control of Louisiana, and again in 1865
to compel them to evacuate their military forces from Mexico.75 Washing-
ton behaved in a similar manner toward Britain, threatening war in dis-
putes over Oregon in 1845, Venezuela in 1895, and Alaska in 1902.76 In the
years that followed, U.S. decision makers considered using force against
Imperial Germany, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union to prevent them
from establishing a military or diplomatic presence in the Americas.77
One can find some evidence that China may be attracted to this more
militarized approach even now when it is considerably weaker than the
United States. In 2010, immediately after the United States and South Ko-
rea announced joint naval exercises in the Yellow Sea, the deputy chief of
the general staff of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), General Ma Xiao-
tian, warned that “the location of the upcoming drill is very close to the
Chinese sea area, and China will strongly oppose it.” The PLA Navy (PLAN)
subsequently conducted a series of exercises in the area.78 The following
year, when the United States called for the peaceful resolution of China’s
disputes with Vietnam over control of the Paracel Islands and with Vietnam
and the Philippines over the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, Vice
Minister of Foreign Affairs Cui Tiankai suggested that “some countries are
now playing with fire. And I hope the U.S. won’t be burned by this fire.”79
Then, in the fall of 2012, Chinese ships began patrolling the waters around
the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, which Beijing claims belong to Chi-
na, but which Washington and Tokyo regard as falling under Japanese ad-
ministrative control. It is telling that China’s Foreign Ministry described
the patrols as an “enforcement action” designed to “reflect the Chinese
government’s jurisdiction over the Diaoyu Islands and safeguard China’s
maritime rights and interests.”80 More generally, Beijing appears to be in-
terested in developing the military capability it needs to force the United
States far from China’s shores. As Vice President Pence asserted in a heav-
ily publicized address on U.S.–Chinese relations, “Beijing has prioritized
capabilities to erode America’s military advantages. . . . China wants noth-
ing less than to push the United States of America from the Western Pa-
cific and attempt to prevent us from coming to the aid of our allies.”81
All of this means that China’s obvious interest in security is not an espe-
cially reliable guide to its intentions. Assuming for the sake of argument
that Beijing wants to reach that goal by driving the United States from its
neighborhood, this may cause the Chinese to be benign and may equally
cause them to be malign.
chinese culture
Intentions optimists sometimes suggest that China is obviously benign
because it is deeply imbued with a Confucian culture. Confucianism, ar-
gues Henry Kissinger, is “concerned . . . with the cultivation of social har-
mony,” and demands the creation of a “just and harmonious society.”82
Similarly, Yan Xuetong declares that a commitment to Confucianism in-
clines “Chinese rulers to adopt benevolent . . . rather than hegemonic
governance.”83 Elsewhere, he writes that Confucianism advocates the im-
plementation of “benevolent government as the foundation of humane au-
thority.”84 These interests are, in turn, said to inform China’s intentions in
a rather straightforward way. According to John Fairbank, Confucian
thought exhibits a “disesteem of physical coercion,” involves a “pacifist
bias,” and calls for the “downgrading of warfare.” Indeed, it maintains that
warfare “should be a last resort.”85
It is doubtful that China’s interest in establishing international harmony—
if that is in fact a key objective—has a meaningful effect on its intentions. The
reason is that Beijing is more interested in ensuring its security than in estab-
lishing a just and harmonious international society in the Asia-Pacific. After
all, it must first be secure if it wants to establish a new order, just and harmo-
nious or otherwise. To be clear, this is not to argue that national security and
international harmony are mutually exclusive. My claim is simply that secu-
rity is China’s primary interest and that this rather than Confucianism guides
China’s intentions.
Indeed, the evidence suggests that Confucianism hardly affects China’s
intentions. Rather than behaving in a nonaggressive manner, as one might
expect if Confucianism was at work, China has been just as aggressive as
non-Confucian states over the course of its long history. “No one even with
only a casual interest in Chinese history,” writes Hans Van de Ven, “can be
unaware that China’s capacity for war in the last few centuries has proved
truly awesome. . . . Leaving aside the issue of what a Chinese cultural es-
sence might be or if such a thing exists, it is plain that China’s history has
in fact been at least as violent as Europe’s.”86 Similarly, Victoria Tin-bor Hui
explains that a review of the historical record reveals “the primacy of brute
force rather than ‘humane authority.’ ” In her opinion, “it is difficult to un-
derstand such prevalence of military conflicts throughout Chinese history
from only the perspective of Confucian thought.”87 Meanwhile, Yuan-kang
Wang closes his study of China’s historical behavior as follows: “Chinese
leaders have preferred to use force to resolve external threats to China’s
security. . . . Confucian culture did not constrain the leaders’ decisions to
use force; in making such decisions, leaders have been mainly motivated
by their assessment of the balance of power.”88
Even if one were to concede that there is a connection between China’s
culture and its intentions, Confucianism does not invariably prescribe be-
nign behavior. Yan admits that “Confucius and Mencius . . . are not op-
posed to all war, only to unjust wars. They support just wars.” Moreover,
pre-Qin philosophers “hold that to speak of morality does not imply a total
rejection of violent force to uphold order. . . . The way of war should be
employed to punish the princes who go against benevolence and jus-

tice.”89 What this means is that Confucianism can justify malign as well as
benign intentions. As Hui notes, “just war principles are easily abused by
the powerful to justify any use of force.”90 Peter Perdue concurs: “[Chi-
nese] sources frequently use the term . . . ‘righteous extermination’ . . . to
justify the elimination of rival states and rebels.”91 In this way, Confucian-
ism is no different from ideologies such as liberalism and communism,
both of which contain a warrant for aggressive as well as nonaggressive
behavior.92
Furthermore, Confucianism competes with and often loses out to other
cultures as a potential driver of China’s intentions. According to Alastair
Iain Johnston, Confucian culture coexists with a “parabellum” strategic cul-
ture, which maintains that “violence is highly efficacious for dealing with
the enemy” and “translate[s] into a preference for offensive strategies.” Cru-
cially, the two cultures “cannot claim separate but equal status in tradition-
al Chinese strategic thought. . . . The parabellum paradigm is, for the most
part, dominant.”93 In a similar way, Scobell asserts that China has a “dual-
istic strategic culture,” composed of both Confucian and “Realpolitik”
strands, which interact to produce “offensive military operations” that are
“rationaliz[ed] . . . as being purely defensive and a last resort.”94
chinese democracy
Some intentions optimists claim that China may become a democracy, at
which point it will have an interest in avoiding violence and hence will de-
velop benign intentions.95 In this vein, Bruce Gilley claims that a switch “to
a democratic system” would have two salutary effects. The first is that “Chi-
na’s external policies would become less aggressive and expansionist,” that
is, it would become benign. The second is that a transition of this kind
would convince observers of China’s benign intent. “Suddenly, talk of a
‘China threat’ would be so much nonsense,” Gilley notes, before adding
that China could “be trusted to share the burden of Asian regional securi-
ty.”96 This is, in fact, a popular opinion. Aaron Friedberg, for example,
views China’s democratization as the only development that could reassure
the United States that Beijing does not pose a threat. To his mind, “the
United States can learn to live with a democratic China as the preponderant
power in East Asia.” Were the Chinese to embrace democracy, this would
alleviate “uncertainty, mistrust, and tension.”97
It is hard to see why a democratic China is especially likely to be benign.
The reason is that any interest it might have in nonviolence would be sub-
ordinated to its interest in security. To be sure, it would want to avoid the
costs of war if it could, but if it judged that the threat or use of force would
make it more secure—for example, by driving the United States out of the
Asia-Pacific—then it would likely develop malign intentions. There is
abundant historical evidence to suggest that a democratic China would not
be especially inclined to be benign. Take the Cold War, the last time there
were two great powers in the world. The democratic United States was in-
volved in 172 militarized disputes and the nondemocratic Soviet Union was
involved in 154 such disputes. Data on dispute initiation reveals a similar
pattern: the United States initiated more disputes than the Soviet Union by
a margin of 142 to 133.98 As noted, it is also clear that the United States did
not hesitate to consider or threaten the use of force when it had the oppor-
tunity to expel other states from its region of the world in the nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries. Importantly, it was prepared to confront de-
mocracies and nondemocracies alike.
Moreover, and contrary to the claims of intentions optimists, even if Chi-
na does generate its goals through a democratic process, it is unlikely to
have a powerful interest in avoiding war.99 Those claims rest on the as-
sumption that China’s citizens will not want to expend blood and treasure
on military adventures and that elected officials will therefore refrain from
fighting. That assumption is wrong. China’s citizens, like the citizens of
most modern states, are imbued with nationalism.100 They take “pride in
China’s national heritage” and are “dedicate[ed] to making China a leading
power in the world.”101 This, in turn, means that they are prepared to incur
significant costs in the name of the state and their co-nationals. If they be-
lieve that the national interest is at stake, then they will not prevent Beijing
from engaging in military conflict. Indeed, the Chinese public may push
the government toward aggression. William Callahan observes that Chi-
nese nationalism contains an increasingly powerful strand that calls for
“revenge against foreign devils,” including the United States, that made the
Chinese suffer grievously during the so-called “century of national humili-
ation” (1839–1949) and that continue to harbor “nefarious schemes . . . to

‘deny the right of a Chinese renaissance.’ ”102 Ian Buruma concurs: “Chi-
nese nationalism . . . increasingly rests on that most explosive of goals: wip-
ing out the national humiliations of the past.” The oft-cited “Chinese
Dream . . . is nationalist through and through: hatred of Japan is officially
encouraged, and so is resentment of the United States.”103
A case can even be made that a democratic China may be prone to having
malign intentions. As is often noted, China’s authoritarian government has
proved quite adept at resisting popular demands to act aggressively abroad.
Jessica Chen Weiss points out that the Chinese government is skilled at
“curtailing popular mobilization” and “has repeatedly stifled popular na-
tionalism when street protests would have jeopardized the government’s
efforts to improve diplomatic relations and defuse a potential crisis.”104 A
democratically elected Chinese government might not be willing or able to
impose such moderation on its citizens. According to Fei-Ling Wang, “a
‘democratic’ regime in Beijing, free from the debilitating concerns for its
own survival but likely driven by popular emotions, could make the rising
Chinese power a much more assertive, impatient, belligerent, even aggres-
sive force.”105 Even Gilley acknowledges the point, observing that “China’s
nationalism . . . would continue to affect foreign policy. . . . China could eas-
ily find itself swept up in anti-U.S. protests over one slight or another.”106
chinese prosperity
Several observers argue that China has a keen interest in prosperity that
inclines it to have benign intentions. All states want to be wealthy. Given
that the CCP’s legitimacy is bound up in its ability to deliver economic
growth, this may be even more true for China than it is for other states.107
Intentions optimists argue that this will, in turn, cause China to seek good
relations with the United States and its allies, especially Japan. The reason
is that it is interdependent with those states and relies on continued eco-
nomic intercourse with them to sustain and enhance its prosperity. Given
that military conflict would have disastrous economic consequences, Bei-
jing will go to great lengths to avoid it.108
It makes little sense to argue that Beijing’s interest in prosperity has
a significant effect on its intentions. Like any other state, China views
security as a more important goal than prosperity, reasoning that it cannot

maximize its wealth if it is not secure. Chinese leaders surely subscribe to
Adam Smith’s contention that “defence . . . is of much more importance
than opulence.”109 Accordingly, when China formulates its intentions it will
ask itself what course of action is likely to make it secure, not what course
of action is likely to make it prosperous.
There are good reasons to think that security trumps prosperity as a driv-
er of a great power’s intentions when the two come into conflict. Perhaps
the most famous example is World War I. Although there was substantial
economic interdependence among the great powers prior to 1914, Imperial
Germany was determined to establish its hegemony in Europe, by force if
necessary, so as to enhance its security.110 Similarly, Japan traded heavily
with the United States in the interwar period, but this did not stop it from
attacking Pearl Harbor in 1941 when officials in Tokyo concluded that U.S.
policies threatened their very survival.111
China appears to be no exception to this kind of thinking. Take the fact
that it views an independent Taiwan as a national security threat of the first
order. Were such a situation to come about, China would be confronted by
what General Douglas MacArthur referred to as an “unsinkable aircraft car-
rier” from which an outside power such as the United States could threaten
the Chinese coastal periphery.112 This being the case, Beijing has repeatedly
stated that despite the huge economic cost of doing so—Thomas Friedman
has described the consequences as tantamount to “mutual assured eco-
nomic destruction”—it will go to war if Taipei declares independence.113
Furthermore, even if China’s interest in prosperity somehow turns out to
be the principal driver of its behavior, this goal will not invariably generate
benign intentions. There are two reasons to doubt that the desire for pros-
perity will cause China to eschew aggression come what may. First, expan-
sion can be quite profitable if it allows a state to control, or establish secure
access to, natural resources. It is widely believed, for example, that there are
abundant natural resources on the floor of the South China Sea. Moreover,
control of those waters would grant China more secure access to Persian
Gulf oil, which is essential to its continued economic growth. Second, the
monetary costs of fighting and breaking off interdependence need not be
severe, especially if a state contrives to keep the war limited and to win it
quickly. In the event that China believes that it can win a quick and decisive
victory, and concludes that the United States lacks resolve or is deterred by
the prospect of nuclear retaliation, then Beijing may well opt for war.114 In
other words, while an interest in prosperity may dampen China’s inclina-
tion to threaten or use force, it will not come close to eliminating it.
China’s Actions and Its Intentions
Gathering evidence of China’s actions is a relatively simple task, given

that many of its military and diplomatic moves are out in the open. Yet this
evidence is an unreliable guide to Beijing’s intentions, since China will
perform these actions whether it is benign or malign. Intentions optimists
have a ready response: some actions are especially reliable indicators of
intent. Specifically, observers can be confident that Beijing is benign if it
joins regional security institutions or procures defensive weapons. Only a
state with benign intentions, so the argument goes, would act in these
ways. The problem is that Beijing will embrace institutions and build de-
fensive capabilities even if it is malign. In fact, China would have to take
extreme measures—for example, join a truly binding security institution or
adopt a purely defensive military stance—to provide unambiguous evi-
dence of its benign intent. But the Chinese will not do this for fear that it
might allow other states to take advantage of them or prevent them from
taking advantage of other states.
ambiguous actions
One need not look far to find evidence that the connection between how
Beijing acts and how it intends to behave is unreliable. Over the past de-
cade, China has gone to great lengths to increase the size and quality of its
navy. This much is known. At the same time, however, there is considerable
disagreement about what this development says about Beijing’s intentions.
For some, China simply means to defend itself. Remarking that China’s
2010 defense white paper discusses the PLAN strategy in terms of “the re-
quirements of offshore defensive operations,” Bernard Cole concludes,
“China’s ‘maritime strategy’ is traditional: it is concerned primarily with
defense of the homeland.”115 Sam Roggeveen also interprets Beijing as be-
ing benign, though he bases his conclusion on different reasoning. As he
sees it, China believes that the United States will ultimately withdraw from
Asia of its own volition, and is building a navy not “so much to challenge
U.S. maritime supremacy as to inherit it.”116 In stark contrast, Robert Kap-
lan interprets China’s naval buildup as a signal of malign intentions. “Chi-
na’s naval leaders,” he suggests, “are displaying the aggressive philosophy
of the turn-of-the-twentieth-century U.S. naval strategist Alfred Thayer Ma-
han, who argued for sea control and the decisive battle.”117
Nor have officials been able to form confident assessments of Beijing’s
intentions by tracking its diplomatic actions. During President Bush’s sec-
ond term, China was, by most accounts, conciliatory. To begin with, Bei-
jing agreed to establish two important dialogues during this period,
namely, the U.S.–PRC Senior Dialogue on Security and Political Affairs,
and the Strategic Economic Dialogue. At the same time, it cooperated
actively with the United States and its major allies—Japan and South
Korea—during the Six Party Talks on Korean denuclearization. China also
moved to repair its relations with U.S. allies and friends in the region. In
2008 alone, President Hu made the first trip to Japan by a Chinese leader
in more than a decade, and Beijing concluded a series of agreements with
Taiwan.118 All of this appears to have done little to alter U.S. uncertainty
about Chinese intentions, however. In an article written at the time, Secre-
tary of State Rice warned that “China’s lack of transparency about its mili-
tary spending and doctrine and its strategic goals increases mistrust and
suspicion,” and demanded that Beijing “move beyond the rhetoric of
peaceful intentions toward true engagement . . . to reassure the interna-
tional community.” This despite her belief that China was moving “to a
more cooperative approach on a range of problems,” and appeared to un-
derstand that with “membership in the international community comes
responsibilities.”119
In the wake of the 2008–9 global financial crisis, China’s diplomacy
took on a more truculent cast.120 In some cases, it clashed openly with
Washington. Chinese leaders reacted harshly when the United States sold
arms to Taiwan, and they stood by North Korea as it faced off against the
United States, Japan, and South Korea. In other cases, China confronted
U.S. allies and partners. Notably, it became more aggressive in prosecuting
disputes with the Philippines and Japan in the South and East China Seas.
Although this “new assertiveness” had some effect on U.S. perceptions of

Chinese intentions, it did not prompt a significant reevaluation. In a 2011
statement on U.S. policy in the Asia-Pacific, Secretary of State Clinton de-
clared “we have sought clarity as to [China’s] . . . intentions.”121 Meanwhile,
Secretary of Defense Hagel was keen “to talk with the Chinese about all of
that, particularly transparency—a key dimension of relationships. Trans-
parency, intentions, what governments are doing, why.”122
regional security institutions

Although intentions optimists do not dispute these particular claims,
some argue that China’s actions toward multilateral arrangements—
specifically, its willingness to form or join a number of regional security
institutions that require member states to refrain from threatening or us-
ing military force—are especially reliable indicators of benign intent. For
Ikenberry, China’s participation in these accords “convey[s] restraint and
leadership. Indeed, to the surprise of many states in the region, China has
actively engaged in regional institutions, such as ASEAN plus 3, ARF [ASE-
AN Regional Forum], and the Asian Summit. These regional groupings
give Beijing tools to signal what it hopes will be seen as its non-belligerent
intentions. To avoid being seen as a disconnected and increasingly power-
ful regional wild card, China uses institutions to reassure and engage.”
The PRC “is now actively seeking to reassure and co-opt its neighbors by
offering to embed itself in regional institutions.” Ikenberry suggests that
the strategy has worked: “Neighboring states . . . seek to bind China within
regional institutions—and they pursue this goal because they realize that
binding has some impact on Chinese behavior and the prospects for
conflict.”123
On close inspection, however, China is not especially restrained by its
membership in regional security institutions. The ARF, which is thought
to be the most important of these institutions, is a case in point. It is true
that members are expected to act in a peaceful fashion. Johnston writes that
“cooperative security,” which is the “normative core of the ARF . . . embod-
ies a number of principles: the non-legitimacy of military force for resolv-
ing disputes, security through reassurance rather than unilateral military
superiority, non-provocative defense, and transparency.”124 There are no
explicit rules prohibiting the threat or use of force, however. According to

Amitav Acharya, the “Asia-Pacific way” that characterizes the ARF exhibits
a preference for “non-binding commitments.” Procedures within the ARF
are “informal and non-legalistic.” Nor can states be punished for violating
the peaceful norms that they have signed up to. The consensus decision-
making procedure means that a state would have to agree to its own pun-
ishment, which seems unlikely. As Acharya explains, the “consensus
approach remains hostage to the imperative of national interest.”125 And, in
any event, there are no provisions for punishing recalcitrant states. The
ARF, Johnston concludes, looks to foster “‘habits of cooperation’ in the ab-
sence of material threats and punishments.”126
One might concede that Beijing is not particularly restrained by its par-
ticipation in regional security institutions today, but argue that it may estab-
lish truly binding accords—arrangements that prohibit the use of force and
provide stiff sanctions for rule breakers—in the future, thus confirming
that it has benign intentions. Ikenberry gestures toward such an argument:
“Going forward, there will be growing reasons for regional cooperation.
Since the security dilemma . . . will continue to create insecurity, regional
security dialogues and mechanisms will be useful. . . . Regionalism will
grow because the demand for it will grow.”127 This is highly unlikely, how-
ever. Powerful states such as China do not willingly impose significant con-
straints on their freedom of action.
defensive weapons
Other intentions optimists argue that China’s adoption of a defensive
arming policy is clear evidence that it has benign intentions. It is widely
recognized that China is pursuing an “assured retaliation” nuclear strate-
gy. Fiona Cunningham and Taylor Fravel describe such an approach as
seeking to “maintain the smallest possible force capable of surviving a first
strike and being able to conduct a retaliatory strike that would inflict unac-
ceptable damage on an adversary.” Such a force is useful for two and only
two purposes: “deterring a nuclear attack and preventing nuclear coer-
cion.”128 Moreover, there is little indication that Beijing wants a nuclear
force that can do anything more than this. Chase observes that “China has
shown it is determined to maintain the secure, second-strike capability
that is required to ensure a credible strategic-deterrence force.” Chinese

strategists believe “that going much beyond what is required for an
unquestionably credible assured-retaliation capability would lead to dimin-
ishing returns at best and strategic instability at worst.”129 Intentions
optimists draw what they think is an obvious inference: China has benign
intentions. Indeed, Glaser goes so far as to argue that the PRC should be
considered benign even if it seeks to enhance its retaliatory capability.
“There is no question,” he asserts, “that China’s conventional and nuclear
buildups will reduce some U.S. capabilities. . . . But the United States
should not rush to impute malign motives to those buildups and should
instead be sensitive to the possibility that they simply reflect China’s legiti-
mate desire for security.”130
It is not at all obvious, however, that China’s assured retaliation posture
means that it has benign intentions. Christensen notes that while there ap-
pears to be little change in China’s strategy—it remains committed to as-
sured retaliation—the recent modernization and expansion of its strategic
forces means that what has long been a vulnerable retaliatory capability is
now a much more secure one.131 This, in turn, raises the possibility that
China could choose to be more aggressive in the Asia-Pacific. “Chinese
leaders,” Christensen surmises, “might become much bolder in defending
their perceived regional interests in the face of resistance by the United
States and regional U.S. allies and security partners than they have been in
the past.” The logic is simple: “under the expectation that the convention-
ally superior United States would not want to run the risks of nuclear esca-
lation by challenging China’s important interests at the conventional level,
a China with a newly established second strike capability might prove more
aggressive.”132 In fact, Avery Goldstein finds evidence of this kind of think-
ing in an analysis of China’s public statements and official policy. Chinese
decision makers, he writes, appear to believe that “adversaries readily un-
derstand that the likelihood of mutual devastation precludes resort to gen-
eral nuclear war” and therefore both sides have “an interest in restricting
[themselves] . . . to conventional conflict or only very small, carefully cali-
brated nuclear strikes.”133
In theory, there is an arming policy that China could select that would
identify it unequivocally as having benign intentions: Beijing could adopt a
purely defensive posture. Specifically, it could continue to pursue assured

retaliation but reduce its conventional capabilities to a bare minimum.
Were it to do so, observers would be hard pressed to argue that China’s
nuclear deterrent was simply a shield that would allow it to threaten or at-
tack the United States and its allies with conventional forces. It is unlikely
that China would ever do this, however. Even if Beijing has benign inten-
tions, it still makes good sense for it to deploy offensive as well as defensive
forces. For example, it will need offensive forces to deter aggression, show
resolve, or defend interests beyond the homeland. It is also likely to require
offensive forces in the event that it is attacked by the United States and its
allies, either to regain territory lost in battle or because those states will quit
only if they suffer great pain. The evidence suggests that Chinese thinking
runs along these lines. Christensen finds that China’s “nuclear moderniza-
tion is occurring at the same time that China is developing, for the first
time, credible conventional options to use in a coercion campaign against
U.S. friends and allies in East Asia and, perhaps, against forward deployed
U.S. forces.”134
There is a further problem with this argument: the capabilities states
develop and deploy to defend themselves also have significant offensive
potential. Consider China’s current approach. For more than twenty years
now, it has been fielding a series of missile, sensor, and other technologies
designed to constrain the deployment of hostile forces in the air and waters
off its coast and to limit their freedom of maneuver once they enter those
areas. These anti–access/area denial (A2/AD) capabilities enhance China’s
ability to keep adversaries from intervening in conflicts off China’s coast or
from attacking China itself. In these respects, they aid the defense. At the
same time, however, they also improve China’s offensive prospects. Ste-
phen Biddle and Ivan Oelrich make the point starkly, pointing out that A2/
AD may ultimately give China the option of coercing Taiwan, while Japan,
South Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam, Singapore, Australia, and even the
continental United States will not be “wholly invulnerable to Chinese coer-
cion.”135 As the 2010 QDR puts it, “anti-access strategies seek to deny out-
side countries the ability to project power into a region, thereby allowing
aggression or other destabilizing actions to be conducted by the anti-access
power.”136
China’s Future Intentions
The principal impediment to divining China’s future intentions is that

they have not yet been formulated. It is impossible to access thinking that
does not exist. Some intentions optimists suggest that there is a way around
the issue: take what is known about how China intends to behave today and
apply that knowledge to predicting how it will intend to behave tomorrow.
The problem is that China’s intentions are liable to revision. Goldstein ad-
mits that his read of Beijing’s current thinking “ultimately leaves open the
important question of China’s strategic intentions in the more distant fu-
ture.” Why? Because even if one were to hazard a guess as to China’s cur-
rent attitude, it can change: “there is simply no way to know whether . . . [it]
will be forsaken . . . [or] might eventually become China’s preferred
choice.”137 Jeffrey Legro tries to go further and predict what the Chinese
“might want tomorrow,” but is compelled to acknowledge “the contingent
nature of China’s future intentions.” Specifically, he finds that “future in-
tentions will depend on the degree to which the expectations of particular
dominant ideas are defied by events, negative consequences result, and
some socially viable replacement idea exists.”138 In other words, any knowl-
edge about China’s current intentions is an especially unreliable guide to
its future intentions.
The Coming U.S.–China Security Competition
This uncertainty, coupled with an awareness of Chinese capabilities, will

lead the United States to compete ferociously with China for security. What
will that security competition look like? American officials are likely to de-
pict Beijing in increasingly threatening terms. At the same time, China will
be identified as an especially dangerous competitor that needs to be con-
tained. As far as military capabilities go, the United States can be expected
to step up its arming efforts. Washington will also go to great lengths to
innovate new military practices and to imitate or offset any technologies
and doctrines invented by Beijing. Therefore, arms races could become a
central feature of the rivalry. This emphasis on its own efforts notwith-
standing, the United States is also likely to strengthen its existing alliances
and form new ones with minor powers in the Asia-Pacific. At the same
time, U.S. leaders will exploit opportunities to weaken China’s influence

over, and ties to, its allies and partners. Given the chance, they are also
likely to limit China’s capabilities by denying it access to discoveries, tech-
nologies, and goods that have military applications. In short, the United
States is likely to behave toward China in much the same way it behaved
toward the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
As the intensity of U.S.–Chinese security competition ratchets up, the
two sides are more likely to find themselves involved in war-threatening
crises. A powerful Beijing may be tempted to threaten or use force to make
Taiwan an integral part of China once again. If that were to happen, there
is a good chance that the United States would come to Taiwan’s defense,
not only to prevent the Chinese from shifting the balance of military capa-
bilities in their favor, but also to preserve Washington’s reputation. Such a
move would trigger a significant crisis and could conceivably drive the two
sides to war. One can also imagine scenarios in which a war breaks out
between North and South Korea, and both China and the United States get
dragged into the conflict, again out of a desire to create a favorable balance
of capabilities and to preserve their reputations. For the same reasons, it is
also possible that Washington might intervene in a crisis or war between
China and Japan over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. American intervention
in a conflict between China and the Philippines or between China and Viet-
nam over the Spratly and Paracel Islands in the South China Sea is also not
unthinkable. Finally, Beijing and Washington could conceivably fight over
control of the South China Sea or East China Sea, or the major sea lines of
communication in the region. To be clear, the odds of any of these events
happening are not high, but nor are they insignificant.
The fact that both the United States and China will possess large nuclear
arsenals is likely to reduce the chance of war, but not eliminate it. Clearly,
Washington and Beijing will be extremely cautious about going to war with
each other for fear that they may end up in a devastating nuclear exchange.
But war is not beyond the realm of possibility. Consider that the stakes in
many of the potential disputes are likely to be relatively low. For example,
control of the Spratlys or of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands will not in and of
itself bring about a seismic shift in the balance of military capabilities. In-
deed, even a change in the status of Taiwan will not be enough to flip the
military balance one way or the other. Therefore, leaders on both sides may
doubt the willingness of their counterparts to escalate to the nuclear level
and may thus be prepared to risk a conventional war.139
If China completes its rise, then, Washington and Beijing are on a collision
course in the Asia-Pacific. All indications are that the two sides will engage
in an intense security competition with the potential for war. This will be
true even if the United States and China both have benign intentions.
Therein lies the real and ongoing tragedy of great power politics.
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7

On the United States and China

“paciﬁed by globalization . . . [and] liberalization.”5 On this matter, theorists

regional and global stability by simultaneously deterring Beijing with “a

Intentions and Great Power Politics

intentions can serve as secondhand information about future intentions,

U.S.–China Relations, 2000–2020

American Perceptions of Chinese Intentions

As intentions pessimism predicts, Washington has not trusted Beijing

Defense took an identical position in the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Re-

PRC was described, much as it was in the NSS, as a “revisionist power”

American Policy toward China

in October 2006, when a Chinese Song-class submarine surfaced near the

Washington also strengthened its regional alliances and partnerships. In

recognized Japanese administrative control over the contested islands,

In one instance, competition ﬂared into a dispute. In October 2018,

The Future of Great Power Politics

China’s Inaccessible Intentions

Chinese decision-making process is shrouded in secrecy.” Even experts can

China’s Declarations of Intent

to seek domination.56 It is hard to dismiss these claims as empty rhetoric.

States is a democracy and has repeatedly professed its benign intentions,

China’s Interests and Its Intentions

employed to punish the princes who go against benevolence and jus-

ation” (1839–1949) and that continue to harbor “nefarious schemes . . . to

security as a more important goal than prosperity, reasoning that it cannot

China’s Actions and Its Intentions

Gathering evidence of China’s actions is a relatively simple task, given

Although this “new assertiveness” had some effect on U.S. perceptions of

regional security institutions

explicit rules prohibiting the threat or use of force, however. According to

that is required to ensure a credible strategic-deterrence force.” Chinese

purely defensive posture. Speciﬁcally, it could continue to pursue assured

China’s Future Intentions

The principal impediment to divining China’s future intentions is that

The Coming U.S.–China Security Competition

This uncertainty, coupled with an awareness of Chinese capabilities, will

time, U.S. leaders will exploit opportunities to weaken China’s inﬂuence

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