‘S. Korea or Japan, not India or Pakistan, could drag America into war with China’

Graham Allison is Director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. In his forthcoming book Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?, he argues that confrontations between the two powers are inevitable. He answered questions from The Hindu by email.

In your view, is it possible for Trump to cut a deal with China on trade and leave China's desired sphere of influence in Asia unchallenged?

I do not want to speculate about any specific details of any potential deals, but I do think that a negotiated long peace between China and the United States is one possible outcome. In my book, I note that there is ample precedent for an agreement between the US and China to take a hiatus that imposes considerable constraints in some areas of their competition. This would leave both parties free to pursue advantage elsewhere. From the Thirty Years’ Peace that Athens signed with the Spartans to the US-Soviet détente in the 1970s, rivals throughout history have found ways to accept intolerable (but temporally unchangeable) circumstances in order to focus on more urgent priorities.

In the current stage of the Chinese-American rivalry, both governments face overwhelming demands at home. Given China’s view that progress advances in decades and centuries rather than days and months, it has historically shown a capacity to set problems aside for long periods, as it did in reaching the Shanghai Communiqué in 1972, which effectively set aside the issue of Taiwan, or in 1978 when Deng Xiaoping proposed to Japan that disputes over islands in the East China Sea be shelved for a generation.

Americans tend to be less patient. Yet the menu of potential agreements is long and fruitful: a pact to freeze disputes in the South and East China Seas, to affirm freedom of navigation for all ships in all international waters, to limit cyber attacks to agreed domains and exclude others (for instance, critical infrastructure), or to forbid specific forms of interference in each other’s domestic politics.

How do you think Asian countries will try to balance the US - China rivalry?

That is an interesting issue, and I suspect each country will grapple with this challenge differently. As an American analyst, a related danger that I do not think gets enough attention is the potential that a third-party will drag the United States and China into a war that neither side wants. Of course, this did happen last time the United States and China came into direct conflict during the Korean War. We came close to such a scenario again in 2010, when North Korea sank the South Korean warship Cheonan, killing forty-six South Korean sailors. China supported North Korea’s denial of involvement. Seoul, meanwhile, insisted that Pyongyang be held accountable. Ultimately, the two Koreas and their allies stepped back from the brink. But with a new set of background conditions and accelerants today, it is not clear that it would be so easy to avoid war, especially if the third parties involved were less inured to the sort of slow, grinding tensions that the Korean Peninsula has endured for decades.

Besides Korea, the prime candidate for this is probably not India or Pakistan but Japan, a country with a post–World War II history of pacifism, but whose politics have become increasingly militaristic in recent years. Disputes between Japan and China over islands in the East China Sea thus present special risks. If the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe succeeds in revising Japan’s pacifist constitution and strengthening its military capabilities, including amphibious landings to seize disputed islands, China will do more than take note.

The President had named China and Islamism as two challenges to deal with. Do you see any signals that he may prioritize one over the other?

Although Islamic terrorism garners more headlines, my belief is that the cardinal challenge of the 21st century will be the rise of China and its impact on the United States and the US-led international order. Over the past five hundred years, in sixteen cases a major rising power has threatened to displace a ruling power. In twelve of those, the result was war. The four cases that avoided this outcome did so only because of huge, painful adjustments in attitudes and actions on the part of challenger and challenged alike. So, I think Trump’s biggest challenge is finding a way to avoid war as effectively as Britain and the US did a century ago or the US and the Soviet Union did through four decades of Cold War.

Does the stiff opposition within the US regarding better ties with Russia limit his options with regard to China?

I believe that improving relations with Russia would significantly help the United States deal with the challenge of China’s rise. US strategic interests require preventing an alliance or even alignment between Moscow and Beijing. Short of a formal alliance, which neither seems to seek at this point, Russia’s backing will embolden China to take tougher positions in confronting the United States. Just as Richard Nixon’s opening to China during the Cold War expanded America’s leverage with the Soviet Union, closer relations with Russia may help counterbalance a more powerful and assertive China.