Delusions of Détente: Why America and China Will Be Enduring Rivals

With U.S.-Chinese relations worse than they have been in over 50 years, an old fairy tale has resurfaced: if only the United States would talk more to
China and accommodate its rise, the two countries could live in peace. Th e story goes that with ample summitry, Washington could recognize Beijing’s redlines and restore crisis hotlines and cultural exchanges. Over time and through myriad points of face-to-face contact—in other words, reengagement—the two countries could settle into peaceful, if still competitive, coexistence. Talk enough, some analysts contend, and the United States and China might even strike a grand bargain that establishes stable spheres of influence and something akin to a G-2 to solve global problems such as climate change and pandemics.

From this perspective, the dismal state of U.S.-Chinese relations is not an inevitable result of two ideologically opposed great powers clashing over vital interests. Rather, it is a mix-up between partners, blown out of proportion by the United States’ overreaction to counter China’s overreach, as Susan Shirk, a Sinologist and former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state, has put it. For the past two decades, the thinking goes, China has simply been doing what rising powers usually do: flexing its muscles and demanding a greater say in global affairs. Although many of China’s actions, such as its menacing of Taiwan, worry advocates of reengagement, the main target of their critique is the United States—specifically, its relentless pursuit of primacy and the self-serving actors behind it.

In this dark imagining, grandstanding politicians, greedy defense contractors, sensationalizing pundits, overzealous human rights activists, and belligerent bureaucrats fan the flames of rivalry for profit, creating an echo chamber that crowds out different perspectives. Some individuals are supposedly repeating hawkish narratives to protect their careers. Th e result, the journalist and author Fareed Zakaria has argued, is that“ Washington has succumbed to dangerous groupthink on China.” Th e fact that most Americans also hold hawkish views on China just provides more evidence of how irrationally aggressive U.S. policy has become. “Th e problem today isn’t that Americans are insufficiently concerned about the rise of China,” the historian Max Boot has insisted. “Th e problem is that they are prey to hysteria and alarmism that could lead the United States into a needless nuclear war.”

Read the full article at Foreign Affairs.