1. Anarchic East Asia on an American Tether—and Cushion
- Author:
- Bruce Cumings
- Publication Date:
- 04-2015
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
- Abstract:
- The usual explanation for the recent turmoil in East Asia goes under the rubric of “the rise of China.” For practitioners of the “realist” school, like John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago or the late Samuel Huntington of Harvard, all this is merely, and entirely, predictable: “rise” is what budding great powers do, just as in the fullness of time, a war with the leading great power is only to be expected (as both predicted in their most famous books—The Tragedy of Great Power Politics and The Clash of Civilizations). Realists of the containment school take this a bit further, to a strategy for America: contain rising China. This was certainly the policy of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, lining up publicly as she did with the Philippines and Japan against Chinese island encroachments—which may also turn out to be the policy of President Hillary Clinton in 2017. And this is unquestionably how nearly all experts in China see American policy: containment, encirclement, all in the interests of keeping rising China . . . down. Of course, President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry fall all over themselves to deny that containment is the policy—and under their (questionable and unsteady) leadership, perhaps it isn’t. Instead the overriding Obama strategy is benign neglect of the political and the military, thus to engage China in the overarching global commons, neo-liberalism, bringing it ever deeper into capitalist practice and the world economy thus to muffle if not contain its insurgent impulses. But then that has been American policy since Richard Nixon ended the Cold War between Washington and Beijing, supported all along by a quiet but very secure bipartisan coalition in Washington embracing Democrats and Republicans, and more broadly Wall Street and multinational corporate leaders. Everybody has been making money in China, even recently-bankrupt General Motors (China now has the largest auto market in the world, and Chinese like to buy GM’s Buicks even though hardly anyone else does, perhaps because forefather Sun Yat Sen drove a Buick). The watchword here is neo-liberal interdependence, but the practice is to let the colossal dailiness of Sino-American exchange fly under the radar, or remain sotto voce, unacknowledged, even secret—hoping no one pays too much attention.
- Topic:
- Development, Government, Politics, History, and Finance
- Political Geography:
- East Asia and United States of America