“China is an illiberal state seeking leadership in a liberal world order.”
The author is a former Deputy Governor of the Bank of England and a Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School's Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government. He is also a Senior Fellow at Harvard's Center for European Studies, and the author of Global Discord and Unelected Power.
The following are a couple of excerpts taken from Global Discord: Values and Power in a Fractured World Order (2022), outlining the four possible scenarios in U.S.-China relations.
Global Discord
US-China Relations: 4 Scenarios
Since predictions are foolhardy, this book offers four scenarios: Lingering Status Quo; Superpower Struggle (that most resembling Britain and France’s eighteenth-century struggle); New Cold War (retreat to autarkic blocs); and Reshaped World Order (with a new top table reconfiguring international regimes and organizations). This leaves space for Washington and Beijing to emulate their eighteenth-century predecessors by occasionally trying to put boundaries around their contest, for other powers to rise, and for Europe or Japan to reassert themselves as hard powers.
The United States Goes Rogue, or Just a Temporary Problem of Credibility and Competence?
Even before the Trump years, the United States was going much further, suggesting a long-running ratchet. In the early 1990s, Washington declined to ratify the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, perhaps the most detailed international code, even after it and other industrialized states gained concessions on deep-sea mining. Since the convention affects claims in the Arctic (from Russia among others) and the South China Sea (from the PRC), it was an interesting choice.
In 2003, not only did the United States go into Iraq without a clear UN mandate, but it then conducted the war in, let’s say, a particular way. Commenting on George W. Bush’s law officers, the late Tom Bingham, Britain’s former leading judge, described a “cynical lack of concern for international legality.”[1] Given his international standing, this lashing was no small thing, evidencing self-inflicted harm to the leading state’s soft power.[2]
Against that awkward background, the Trump family government’s conduct—erratic commentary on NATO, tantrums over the WTO while dropping out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, walking away from the Paris climate talks, and “national security” tariffs on allies, to cite only a few examples—and its obscure relationship with Russia’s rulers inevitably raised questions about the longer-term reliability of the United States as guardian of the post–World War II Order-System. Coming after earlier underperformance, it was not irrational to query Washington’s strategic and tactical competence.
Those concerns persisted after the Biden administration’s abrupt exit from Afghanistan and its blindsiding Paris, an active presence in Southeast Asia, from its 2021 nuclear deal with Australia. Notwithstanding having also failed to deter Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, they were, however, somewhat assuaged by the well-coordinated response, based on apparently revived intelligence and diplomatic capabilities. But the worries will not be put to rest so long as a Trumpian-comeback of some kind remains possible; something having happened shows it can happen.
Summary
Two centuries ago, the Anglo-Irish politician-cum-commentator Edmund Burke, a friend of American independence and scourge of Warren Hastings’s abuses in India, spearheaded the war of ideas against the French Revolution. His problem was that France had become the wrong kind of power, jeopardizing international order. Today, while the jealousy of trade unquestionably adds spice to Washington and Beijing’s rivalry, it matters more that the West views China as the wrong kind of power: a party-dominated authoritarian state openly rejecting supposedly universal norms. As Elizabeth Economy puts it, “China is an illiberal state seeking leadership in a liberal world order.”[3]
The response of the United States, essentially unchanged since first articulated by then–vice president Mike Pence, is firm in its mixture of regret and concern.[4] Both sides are under pressure. Beijing is certainly a revisionist power. But, notwithstanding 2022’s shifts, depending on who contests the 2024 election, so might be the incumbent.
[1] Bingham, Rule of Law, p. 127.
[2] Roberts, “With Blinders On?” (summarizing Is International Law International?), attributes this to US law schools teaching international law as an adjunct of the domestic law of foreign affairs.
[3] Economy, Third Revolution, p. 17.
[4] Pence, “Remarks Delivered.”
