Applying Hegel's dialectical lens unveils a nuanced counter to Mearsheimer's assertion of inevitable U.S.-China conflict, dissecting the deep structural contradictions at play.
A supreme authority needs a monopoly of violence (in a state, police has a monopoly of violence to enforce the law). This is not the case in international relations. As no country is strong enough to enforce a monopoly of violence on all the world, especially in the context of a future compétition of 2 rivaling powers
What about a global supreme authority that achieves power through, not violence, but mutual agreement among component jurisdictions? What if such an authority then formed an international monopoly on violence larger than any one nation?
Let's hope of another scenario more optimistic of 2 tired competitors that grow old and become wise or at least tired and cooperate to minimum rules to avoid war and extinction
In martial arts the practitioner observes the assailant closely with calm detachment. S/he reads the energy of movements & changing positions. S/he is neither on offensive nor defensive but stands ready for what may transpire. Always assessing the potential weakness of the assailant. & the opportunity of the moment, a sudden shift in balance can collapse the situation without violence (such as pulling the rug out from under the assailant). Non-force is the greatest power.
I would push back against the assumption that “logic” is limited to the pursuit of self-interest. Unfortunately this thinking is influential in politics and economics but does logic and reasoning a great disservice.
First, there is nothing illogical about seeking win-win outcomes, and overcoming the Prisoner’s Dilemma. Second, there is nothing illogical about overcoming prejudice, bias and parochialism in our choices. Third, impartiality is an objective basis for cooperating.
So please don’t dignify prejudice, bias, parochialism and self-regarding choices with “logic”. Call it prejudice instead.
You may have some misunderstandings about "win-win". Strictly speaking, "win-win" does not actually exist, especially for competition in the form of national conflict. The reason is simple.
The competition between China and the United States is about the flow of world wealth, that is, whether it flows to China or to the United States. This is the core issue of the dispute between China and the United States. The current situation is that with the rise of China, the world's wealth has begun to flow to China, rather than the United States, which has lost the blessing of the world's wealth, is declining and collapsing step by step.
So I think the dispute between China and the United States may be unsolvable, and there is no win-win solution. To be honest, "win-win" is just a unilateral wishful thinking of we Chinese, and it is not what the United States expects.
Xiaoguang Yin, does this perspective unduly assume that the distinction between US & China is everlasting and insurmountable? USA exists now, that previously was divided into Union and Confederate forces (War subsumed the distinction, though). USA and UK are now aligned, yet a few centeries ago fought to a standstill. Perhaps internationalization of insurance firms covering war damage can build a guiding financial power against China-US war.
The reason why the United States is so powerful is that its own dollar hegemony can suck the global wealth. After China's rise and industrial upgrading, its dependence on the dollar will decrease, which is fatal to the United States' control of global wealth. Therefore, this is also the fundamental reason why the United States cannot tolerate China's industrial upgrading and China's rise.
If the United States does not have peaceful means to suppress and contain China's rise, then the United States may resort to war. We certainly do not want this to happen, but we must be fully prepared to prevent the United States from taking desperate measures.
That is to say, even if a war breaks out between China and the United States in the end, we must survive as much as possible and then win the war.
For Russia, it may be just a proxy war, but for China, it may be a direct conflict with the United States, which is dozens or even hundreds of times more tragic than the Russia-Ukraine war. We must be fully prepared for this. , especially military preparations.
Nonetheless, you are right that China must be prepared for the worst. There are fools in control of US foreign and defence policy. They have no understanding of win-win.
All I object to is to dignify the foolishness and prejudice by calling them “logic”. They are at best a very narrow kind of logic limited to self-regarding goals. Whereas humans and nations can have goals that go beyond self-seeking ones. For example, saving the planet from catastrophic climate change and nuclear Armageddon for the sake of future generations of humanity.
Hi thank you for taking time to read my comment and also to reply. From your reply, I can’t help thinking your training must be in international relations (a horrible discipline that has no conception of win-win), and not in economics where win-win is a basic idea, not just in international trade, but also in politics.
To understand what win-win means, it helps to first imagine what it would be like for each party to “go it alone” (eg, don’t trade, don’t interact). The “payoff” each party gets is just what they can get by themselves. But trade and cooperation creates additional value that no party can obtain by themselves. That’s what win-win is.
The IR perspective imagines the world to be some “prize” which is for either the US or China to dominate. They think that the value of this “prize” is fixed whether the US and China work together or not. But the reality is that this world will be poorer without cooperation between the US and China. It’s hard for IR people to understand this because IR programs don’t seem to teach this basic insight in their programs. That’s why we get someone like Meirsheimer who is literally unable to grasp what Sachs tried to explain.
Please, for the sake of the future of humanity, reconsider your basic assumptions about the world.
The dilemma with the US/west vs Global Majority is that the US/West is controlled by a small elite cabal that wishes to rule the world while China Russia etc while certainly ruled by an elite, rule on behalf of the nation and its people rather than for themselves. Since the 1990s with the fall of the Soviet Union, this cabal truly believed they won the world and believed themselves masters of the universe and can do as they please. This hubris is exemplified in their so called rules based order where they gives orders and habitually and brazenly break their own rules as it suites them. This illusion of their superiority and genius had led to the strategic mistake of dismissing emerging rising nations as inferiors that can never catch up. Thus we have tropes like Russia is a gas station masquerading as a nation or China can only produce cheap copies of western products. This notion of superiority is beyond an economic only greed as this cabal controls the international financial system of financialization and trade. It literally creates "money" out of thin air and imposed a toll on all international trade transaction. They own most of the debt of the world. As the MMT practitioners say the US debt of $36 trillion is really the savings of the American people as the other side of debtor is creditor. And who are the creditors. The majority is the American "public". Well we can safely say the American "public" does not include Daisy the pole dancer or Bob the plumber or Eugene the service station attendant. The public $8 trillion T bills does not square with the presented poster boy club of billionaires ie Musk, Gates, Bezos, Buffet etc who we are told have their wealth primarily in equities and who only have a couple of hundred billions to their name. There is no official known trillionaire in the world. And when we see what the current leaders of the west has done to their nation with the neo-lib woke ideology how can you say they are trying to build a powerful world leading nation? The cabal is nationless. The US is a tool for their quest for world domination. The cabal has an eschatological belief in their superior right to dominate. Is it a wonder that many of the identified individuals have a strong affinisation and blind loyalty to Zionism. Please do not misconstrue this as an "anti-semite" (a meaningless word in any case) as this is not directed against people who believe in Judaism as many Zionist are Christian and atheist. So this is the true Thucydides trap if it exist at all. If it was merely a competition between nations than it should be obvious that all would be much better off with trade and cooperation rather than war and mutual annihilation.
BTW, China’s best (and logical) response to US unilateralism is for China to double-down on multilateralism with the rest of the world. Leave the US to “go it alone”, they will eventually end up falling into the trap of the Ming/Qing dynasties, isolating themselves from the benefits of cooperation with the rest of the world. China can carry on with a win-win relationship with the rest of the world, especially the Global South. N America and Europe will steadily shrink to irrelevance if they continue sanctioning everyone else.
Mearsheimer perspective for great power politics is essentially western colonialism of dominating power conquering and subjugating lesser victims. It has been the global paradigm for the past 4 or 500 years so he is not wrong. Where it may fail is where it encounters new a player (China) who does not subscribe to the old playbook of using military power to build and maintain great power status. Anyone who has any inkling of Chinese history and culture knows China has a rich martial culture and know how to fight wars and are masters of strategy. The fact that China's phenomenal rise in the late 20th and early 21th century has been peaceful is more than extraordinary. Will China supplant USA in power and influence in the 21th century? Absolutely. War against China is the only envisioned solution the USA has. So is war inevitable? I think the answer lies in whether the USA elite also has a Samson option like Israel. China has advanced by late 2024 on a more or less military technological parity with the USA in both conventional and nuclear weaponry. China is only lacking in quantity in areas like military aeroplanes and nuclear warheads. However China does appear to have matched if not exceed US qualitative advantages in aeroplanes and will use its massive manufacturing and resource base to quickly build an military aviation fleet to dwarf the in the coming years. The PLAN navy already exceeds the USN in number of ships and technological sophistication. The USN just has more tonnage of older aircraft carriers. In nuclear and missile technology, China and Russia are the two most advanced nuclear technology nations and the most advanced new hypersonic missiles. As we have seen, Russia has outproduced the entire west, what can we expect of China's MIC if it was to face an existential war with the USA. And can a war be limited to US and China? Surely not as the US will always seek to entangle its proxies first, Philippines, Taiwan, S Korea, Japan and then its other vassals in the EU, Australia and Canada. Would China fight alone? Surely the Global South/BRICS would realize the destruction of China would be the recollarization of the slavery shackle around their necks. Would the US dare to start WWIII with its vassals vs the Global Majority? It is an unthinkable scenario as global nuclear annihilation would be the consequence as the US would not prevail against the manufacturing and resources of the Global Majority. This is the paradigm shift that Mearsheimer does not fully grasp. When the incumbent hegemonic power suddenly encounters a rival power that exceeds its power it every way and to counter would mean it own certain destruction if not mutual destruction, will the hegemon still act so rashly? The school yard bully will always try to maintain its power in the school yard, first by violence then by fear. When the bully finally meets its match and gets a bloody nose it inevitably slinks away as a coward.
Precisely because of the United States' own lack of military strength, the United States may be more inclined to use the method of peaceful evolution against China, that is, to incite the Chinese people's dissatisfaction with the government, and then achieve the goal of dismembering China.
A supreme authority needs a monopoly of violence (in a state, police has a monopoly of violence to enforce the law). This is not the case in international relations. As no country is strong enough to enforce a monopoly of violence on all the world, especially in the context of a future compétition of 2 rivaling powers
What about a global supreme authority that achieves power through, not violence, but mutual agreement among component jurisdictions? What if such an authority then formed an international monopoly on violence larger than any one nation?
Let's hope of another scenario more optimistic of 2 tired competitors that grow old and become wise or at least tired and cooperate to minimum rules to avoid war and extinction
In martial arts the practitioner observes the assailant closely with calm detachment. S/he reads the energy of movements & changing positions. S/he is neither on offensive nor defensive but stands ready for what may transpire. Always assessing the potential weakness of the assailant. & the opportunity of the moment, a sudden shift in balance can collapse the situation without violence (such as pulling the rug out from under the assailant). Non-force is the greatest power.
Would be BRICS capable to play such a role (supreme authority)? The western powers are already trying to undermine It.
I don't think so, even a common currency can't be published, so you can imagine there is impossible for BRICS becoming a supreme authority.
I would push back against the assumption that “logic” is limited to the pursuit of self-interest. Unfortunately this thinking is influential in politics and economics but does logic and reasoning a great disservice.
First, there is nothing illogical about seeking win-win outcomes, and overcoming the Prisoner’s Dilemma. Second, there is nothing illogical about overcoming prejudice, bias and parochialism in our choices. Third, impartiality is an objective basis for cooperating.
So please don’t dignify prejudice, bias, parochialism and self-regarding choices with “logic”. Call it prejudice instead.
You may have some misunderstandings about "win-win". Strictly speaking, "win-win" does not actually exist, especially for competition in the form of national conflict. The reason is simple.
The competition between China and the United States is about the flow of world wealth, that is, whether it flows to China or to the United States. This is the core issue of the dispute between China and the United States. The current situation is that with the rise of China, the world's wealth has begun to flow to China, rather than the United States, which has lost the blessing of the world's wealth, is declining and collapsing step by step.
So I think the dispute between China and the United States may be unsolvable, and there is no win-win solution. To be honest, "win-win" is just a unilateral wishful thinking of we Chinese, and it is not what the United States expects.
Xiaoguang Yin, does this perspective unduly assume that the distinction between US & China is everlasting and insurmountable? USA exists now, that previously was divided into Union and Confederate forces (War subsumed the distinction, though). USA and UK are now aligned, yet a few centeries ago fought to a standstill. Perhaps internationalization of insurance firms covering war damage can build a guiding financial power against China-US war.
There is actually no "win-win" in the dispute between China and the United States, only "win", that is, either China wins or the United States wins.
The reason why the United States is so powerful is that its own dollar hegemony can suck the global wealth. After China's rise and industrial upgrading, its dependence on the dollar will decrease, which is fatal to the United States' control of global wealth. Therefore, this is also the fundamental reason why the United States cannot tolerate China's industrial upgrading and China's rise.
If the United States does not have peaceful means to suppress and contain China's rise, then the United States may resort to war. We certainly do not want this to happen, but we must be fully prepared to prevent the United States from taking desperate measures.
That is to say, even if a war breaks out between China and the United States in the end, we must survive as much as possible and then win the war.
For Russia, it may be just a proxy war, but for China, it may be a direct conflict with the United States, which is dozens or even hundreds of times more tragic than the Russia-Ukraine war. We must be fully prepared for this. , especially military preparations.
Nonetheless, you are right that China must be prepared for the worst. There are fools in control of US foreign and defence policy. They have no understanding of win-win.
All I object to is to dignify the foolishness and prejudice by calling them “logic”. They are at best a very narrow kind of logic limited to self-regarding goals. Whereas humans and nations can have goals that go beyond self-seeking ones. For example, saving the planet from catastrophic climate change and nuclear Armageddon for the sake of future generations of humanity.
Hi thank you for taking time to read my comment and also to reply. From your reply, I can’t help thinking your training must be in international relations (a horrible discipline that has no conception of win-win), and not in economics where win-win is a basic idea, not just in international trade, but also in politics.
To understand what win-win means, it helps to first imagine what it would be like for each party to “go it alone” (eg, don’t trade, don’t interact). The “payoff” each party gets is just what they can get by themselves. But trade and cooperation creates additional value that no party can obtain by themselves. That’s what win-win is.
The IR perspective imagines the world to be some “prize” which is for either the US or China to dominate. They think that the value of this “prize” is fixed whether the US and China work together or not. But the reality is that this world will be poorer without cooperation between the US and China. It’s hard for IR people to understand this because IR programs don’t seem to teach this basic insight in their programs. That’s why we get someone like Meirsheimer who is literally unable to grasp what Sachs tried to explain.
Please, for the sake of the future of humanity, reconsider your basic assumptions about the world.
The dilemma with the US/west vs Global Majority is that the US/West is controlled by a small elite cabal that wishes to rule the world while China Russia etc while certainly ruled by an elite, rule on behalf of the nation and its people rather than for themselves. Since the 1990s with the fall of the Soviet Union, this cabal truly believed they won the world and believed themselves masters of the universe and can do as they please. This hubris is exemplified in their so called rules based order where they gives orders and habitually and brazenly break their own rules as it suites them. This illusion of their superiority and genius had led to the strategic mistake of dismissing emerging rising nations as inferiors that can never catch up. Thus we have tropes like Russia is a gas station masquerading as a nation or China can only produce cheap copies of western products. This notion of superiority is beyond an economic only greed as this cabal controls the international financial system of financialization and trade. It literally creates "money" out of thin air and imposed a toll on all international trade transaction. They own most of the debt of the world. As the MMT practitioners say the US debt of $36 trillion is really the savings of the American people as the other side of debtor is creditor. And who are the creditors. The majority is the American "public". Well we can safely say the American "public" does not include Daisy the pole dancer or Bob the plumber or Eugene the service station attendant. The public $8 trillion T bills does not square with the presented poster boy club of billionaires ie Musk, Gates, Bezos, Buffet etc who we are told have their wealth primarily in equities and who only have a couple of hundred billions to their name. There is no official known trillionaire in the world. And when we see what the current leaders of the west has done to their nation with the neo-lib woke ideology how can you say they are trying to build a powerful world leading nation? The cabal is nationless. The US is a tool for their quest for world domination. The cabal has an eschatological belief in their superior right to dominate. Is it a wonder that many of the identified individuals have a strong affinisation and blind loyalty to Zionism. Please do not misconstrue this as an "anti-semite" (a meaningless word in any case) as this is not directed against people who believe in Judaism as many Zionist are Christian and atheist. So this is the true Thucydides trap if it exist at all. If it was merely a competition between nations than it should be obvious that all would be much better off with trade and cooperation rather than war and mutual annihilation.
Thanks for your thoughts…
BTW, China’s best (and logical) response to US unilateralism is for China to double-down on multilateralism with the rest of the world. Leave the US to “go it alone”, they will eventually end up falling into the trap of the Ming/Qing dynasties, isolating themselves from the benefits of cooperation with the rest of the world. China can carry on with a win-win relationship with the rest of the world, especially the Global South. N America and Europe will steadily shrink to irrelevance if they continue sanctioning everyone else.
Mearsheimer perspective for great power politics is essentially western colonialism of dominating power conquering and subjugating lesser victims. It has been the global paradigm for the past 4 or 500 years so he is not wrong. Where it may fail is where it encounters new a player (China) who does not subscribe to the old playbook of using military power to build and maintain great power status. Anyone who has any inkling of Chinese history and culture knows China has a rich martial culture and know how to fight wars and are masters of strategy. The fact that China's phenomenal rise in the late 20th and early 21th century has been peaceful is more than extraordinary. Will China supplant USA in power and influence in the 21th century? Absolutely. War against China is the only envisioned solution the USA has. So is war inevitable? I think the answer lies in whether the USA elite also has a Samson option like Israel. China has advanced by late 2024 on a more or less military technological parity with the USA in both conventional and nuclear weaponry. China is only lacking in quantity in areas like military aeroplanes and nuclear warheads. However China does appear to have matched if not exceed US qualitative advantages in aeroplanes and will use its massive manufacturing and resource base to quickly build an military aviation fleet to dwarf the in the coming years. The PLAN navy already exceeds the USN in number of ships and technological sophistication. The USN just has more tonnage of older aircraft carriers. In nuclear and missile technology, China and Russia are the two most advanced nuclear technology nations and the most advanced new hypersonic missiles. As we have seen, Russia has outproduced the entire west, what can we expect of China's MIC if it was to face an existential war with the USA. And can a war be limited to US and China? Surely not as the US will always seek to entangle its proxies first, Philippines, Taiwan, S Korea, Japan and then its other vassals in the EU, Australia and Canada. Would China fight alone? Surely the Global South/BRICS would realize the destruction of China would be the recollarization of the slavery shackle around their necks. Would the US dare to start WWIII with its vassals vs the Global Majority? It is an unthinkable scenario as global nuclear annihilation would be the consequence as the US would not prevail against the manufacturing and resources of the Global Majority. This is the paradigm shift that Mearsheimer does not fully grasp. When the incumbent hegemonic power suddenly encounters a rival power that exceeds its power it every way and to counter would mean it own certain destruction if not mutual destruction, will the hegemon still act so rashly? The school yard bully will always try to maintain its power in the school yard, first by violence then by fear. When the bully finally meets its match and gets a bloody nose it inevitably slinks away as a coward.
Precisely because of the United States' own lack of military strength, the United States may be more inclined to use the method of peaceful evolution against China, that is, to incite the Chinese people's dissatisfaction with the government, and then achieve the goal of dismembering China.