Chinese grand strategy and American hegemony

White states that optimists and pessimists alike in the United States agree that America should respond to China's rise by hedging, by which they mean that it should, "accept and accommodate China's growing power so long as China does not challenge US primacy, otherwise America must and will do whatever it takes to defend and maintain its position."

In place of hedging, he argues for a "Concert of Asia", modelled on the nineteenth-century 'Concert of Europe' in which the great powers share primacy and America shares power with China."

But a Concert of Europe was an alliance of conservative states intended to prevent radical revolutions like the French Revolution and it worked until 1917.

Britain was content with this arrangement since its primary objective was to prevent a single power like Napoleonic France from dominating the continent. But in the case of Asia and the years to come, China would be the dominant continental power and the objective of the concert would be quite unclear.

Other Asian states, already feeling the need for a counterbalance against Chinese power, are currently urging the United States not to pull back. White's argument breaks down as he spells out the implications of America treating China as an equal.

America would have to abandon its residual doubts about the legitimacy of China's political system and become much more circumspect about criticising its internal affairs. That means no more lecturing China about dissidence, Tibet, or religious freedom.

It would have to accept that China's international interests will legitimately differ from America's and be prepared to compromise to settle those differences amicably, that means no more lecturing China about its failures to meet US expectations on such matters as Iran, Sudan and North Korea. And America would have to accept that China has a right to build armed forces as large and capable as America's in order to defend its interests. That means no more lecturing China about excessive defence spending or lack of transparency about its military plans.

That's a formidable list of concessions and it doesn't appear to set any reciprocal requirements on China. White states that in order to avoid the costs of confrontation with China we should be prepared to appease it. He writes that appeasement has had a bad press since the allied powers abandoned Czechoslovakia to Hitler at Munich in 1938. But that:

Perhaps Chamberlain's mistake was not that he accommodated Hitler over Czechoslovakia. He was, after all, right to fear war with Germany and to want to avoid it if possible. His mistake was that he did not prevent the even bigger war that broke out 12 months later by making it absolutely clear that there would be no accommodation over Poland. Had he done that, World War II could quite possibly have been avoided.

He's in error at every point here. Hitler was far weaker militarily and politically in 1938 than in 1939 and had the Allies stood up to him at Munich and called his bluff, he had far more to fear than they did.

Secondly, Chamberlain did make absolutely clear that there would be no accommodation over Poland, it's just that Hitler didn't believe him. In the interim, because the Allies had caved in at Munich, Stalin had cut his own deal with Hitler and that was the decisive blow to peace which guaranteed that Hitler would go to war. White compounds his errors by writing that:

…the best way to manage China's ambitions is both to offer it enough to be reasonably satisfied and make absolutely clear that further demands will need determined resistance from a regional coalition, one prepared to use force if necessary to prevent any Chinese attempt to use its power aggressively.

Where, however, does this leave the proposed 'Concert of Asia'? What coalition of states does he have in mind? One led, presumably, by the United States but from what base areas, and with what alliance structures?